New Rule: Wednesday (the weirdest named day anyway) is now called Requestday. It’s the middle of the week, and if you’re anything like me this week, asking for and receiving some help would be nice.

New Rule: Salt should be self-regulating. If more of it winds up in a dish than is going to taste good (especially if that dish is homemade raw chocolate ice cream) it should quickly apologize and excuse itself out of the dish.

Hey Mister Too-Much-Salt. Get outta my ice cream!

New Rule: When I have bad breath, a little blinking light will alert me before others around me become aware of it. This may require nano-bot receptors in my nose calibrated for detecting bacterias.

New Rule: It’s totally acceptable to tell cops who pull you over for not having a front license plate that they (and the law) are lame. And that if they have a power drill in their trunk, you’re happy to put the plate on with them watching.

New Rule: Cops should hold signs that say free hugs and stand in malls and by the beach. Hugging a cop might do a lot for my judgments of them.

Do you have any new rules for this week?

I’m starting a new Friday tradition for the blog. (Saweet!)

Each “Five On Friday” will bring you an awesome new list of 5.

Maybe 5 recipes. 5 jokes. 5 cool links. 5 juicy bits from my week. Or 5 randomites like tonight’s list. (And of course I’ll take requests.)

So here goes Five On Friday #1!

1. Have you eaten fresh plums and nectarines chopped up in a white bowl with a blue rim? It’s worth doing at least once.

2. Airbags used to be reserved exclusively for Drivers. Everyone else could fly out the window. Good luck. But the Drivers…those folks were given a little face pillow so that they could survive. Only so that society could later feel vindicated by putting them in jail.

3. Sitting in a parking lot in the back seat of a white Camry. Knees curled up against the back of the front seat. The car is running. The heat is on. It’s 10:12 pm. Staring out the back window you watch the women walk by. That One bounces up and down in her high heeled boots, dry cleaned slacks, and sand colored trench coat. Her dark tries to keep up with her and she thinks about how great her life is. Or how she doesn’t want to go home to her cats again. I couldn’t tell.

4. This One walks looking down at her legs. She likes what she sees. Her legs. Her socks. Her very striped, very high knee socks. Her funny little shoes. Oh, and her knee caps! She sees the hem of her skirt above her knee. She walks face down with a smile inside. It’s been a while since she felt so proud of herself. She walks looking at her legs and her striped knee-high socks so that she can remember she’s good and everything is okay.

5. Our friend came over and was sitting at my desk. Here’s a snippet of chatter…

Friend: You have a lot of pens.

Me: Yeah, I love pens.

Friend: You must have a lot going on in your mind.

Me: <Wait. Is he saying he doesn’t like pens?>

I used to be the kind of person who would hear an idea that sounded good and then would run blindly toward it to be part of the “obviously good idea” (OGI) because it was so…good.

My rationale was that being on the side of the “obviously good idea” would make me a Good Girl – and that used to be very important to me.

I felt a little twinge of “I Wanna Be A Good Girl” this morning when I read about this “OGI” here from Deepak Chopra about taking a vow of nonviolence, in your speech, your thoughts and your actions.

But this time I didn’t run blindly into the Obviously Good Idea because I’ve come to realize that everything has a side-effect.

Everything.

Go to Borders and read this. It's cute!

It’s like this children’s book: If You Give A Mouse A Cookie.

It starts out like this:

If you give a mouse a cookie…

(Next page)

He’s going to ask for a glass of milk.

(Then it goes on from there about what’s going to happen if you give him a glass of milk…and on and on.)

It seems like, suuuuuure!

Of course it’s a good idea to give the mouse a cookie. Who doesn’t want to watch a cute little mouse eat a cookie, right? Sofa King adorable.

So in the book all these “side-effects” start happening…which creates more adorableness (especially if you’re reading it with a 5 year-old who thinks it’s all hysterical.)

It’s a cool book because while it’s funny to watch the chain reaction, we (as the reader) also get to look at the situations in the story book and consider whether we’d like the results that come.

Sure, there lots of side-effects that are great:

• I love that a side-effect of getting into my bed is that I wind up feeling comfy.
• I love that when I jump into the ocean, the side-effect is that my whole body feels slippery with salt water.
• I love that when I push the keys down on my computer, the side-effect is that my thoughts come out and I can see them.
• I love that the side-effect of pushing my gas pedal down is that I go faster on the highway. Zoooom!

But each of those things has other side-effects that I usually don’t consider because I’m so focused on the short-term (positive) side-effect. Know what I mean? Sometimes we don’t consider the side-effects because they would make the Obviously Good Idea seem not so good anymore – or we don’t think far enough into the future to consider the impact of our actions in the present moment.

Example time…

I grew up believing in pro-life.

Of course I wanted to make sure that babies weren’t being killed and that they had a chance to be born and have a life.

That’s was an Obviously Good Idea to me based on the information that I had at the time.

But it wasn’t until years and years later…until I was about 27, that my eyes were opened to the side-effects of what having a pro-life only stance can have.

When abortion is made illegal, there are side-effects from that.

Yes, more babies are given a chance at life and more babies are given up for adoption possibly which makes lots of families who want to adopt very happy…yay for them!

But what also happens as a side-effect is that more women wind up getting unsafe abortions where sometimes both the mother and the baby wind up dying…

And there are young girls trying to give themselves abortions and they get seriously injured because there’s no safe place to go to take care of themselves.

And while yes, more babies are given a chance at a life, the *quality* of that life may not be ideal…

Young girls who “shouldn’t be raising kids” wind up with kids and they don’t know what the hell to do with them or how to take care of them. So the babies wind up being raised in poverty.

So there is a trade-off for everything.

Everything has a side-effect.

And the more objectively we can look at how our actions and beliefs and even our non-action (which is a form of action) affects the system of our humanity or our planet…the better off we’re all going to be. That’s how I see it.

Like when a pebble is dropped into a pond, the ripples from that event affect much more than just the area where the pebble was dropped. The ripples aren’t personal or good or bad. It’s just a matter of realizing that they’re going to ripple out in concentric circles and things are going to be affected by them in some way.

What I value in my life now is being able to see things from multiple perspectives.

Can I understand as many possible scenarios as I can? Can I understand where both sides of the political world are coming from? Can I understand where I’m coming from and where my partner is coming from when we don’t agree on something? Can I see what we have in common?

How about with Deepak?

If I take the “vow” of non-violence with Deepak Chopra, what impact will it have on me? On my relationship with myself? On my relationship with my partner? On my business? What impact will it have on Deepak’s mission? On the planet?

Deepak Chopra’s “Obviously Good Idea” about taking a vow of non-violence so that we can create world peace and have a less violent world, got my Good Girl mind very excited to do it…

Here’s the thought flow I noticed:

Me: I agree. Being non-violent is good! I’m going to sign up and take the vow.

Me: Wait a minute, I do have violent thoughts, speech, and actions sometimes. What if I wind up using this “vow” to be mean to myself about being mean to others or in my thoughts? That’s going to suck.

Me: Yeah, but there’s not going to be anyone patrolling you. It’s okay if you don’t get it right 100% of the time with the non-violent thing. Just taking the vow will make you more aware of whether you’re being violent or not…so that’s going to be improvement.

Me: I don’t want to let Deepak down. When we were at the book talk with him on my birthday last year, he said not to take the vow unless you were really serious about it; that it was a life-long commitment. As if by taking this vow of non-violence I’m going to be stuck in this cycle of beating myself up when I don’t do it right. As if just by saying one thing: “I take the vow” I’m committing myself to a life of paranoia about what my thoughts, words, and actions are doing. I’ve been there before with other inner practices and I don’t want to go there again.

Me: You’re taking this way too seriously. It’s just about opening your mind and bringing more awareness to being non-violent. You’re freaking out about it for some other reason. Some old pattern of yours.

Me: Yeah, you’re right. I’m reacting to this in a big way. Since it doesn’t feel super kind to me to sign up for the vow and commit to being non-violent in my thoughts, actions, and words…I’m not going to take the vow. I’m going to respect the space and leave it for others who *do* feel ready to make that commitment. And if they’re not ready, but they feel like doing it anyway, they can. I love them. And I love me. And I trust me.

I am good even when I don’t jump into “Obviously Good Ideas.”

So there we have it.

I’m not signing up or taking the non-violent vow because – right now, it would actually be a form of violence toward myself to sign up. Also noticing: One of the side-effects of all this talk about Deepak, the vow, abortion, impact, mice, and cookies has helped me be kinder and more non-violent toward myself today. Sweet.

When I was 15, our friend Rick built a 4th bedroom in our garage.

He wore shoes about 3 times a year. And he had big long Willie Nelson braids and a wild beard.

He was awesome.

The room he built was the coolest thing. Ever.

I was going to have my own room – FINALLY!

First place I went when it was done?

Home Depot.

(I know, I know. The official name is THE Home Depot, but really – who actually calls it that?)

Went to pick out some way-cool paint for the walls.

Wound up with two walls green and two walls pink.

But not just any green and pink.

They had exotic names like Timid Lilac and Emerald Field.

Timid Lilac & Emerald Field in my bedroom when I was 15.

When I was in my bed, I had a view of the Emerald walls.

From my couch and chair behind my desk, I got to enjoy the faint Lilac.

My room got some funny looks over the next several years…until I came back from college and painted all 4 of them Golden Maize yellow.

Apparently four Golden Maize walls are less eyebrow-worthy.

Who knew?

But it was a BIG deal getting to move into that new room and paint the walls ANY color I wanted when I was 15…

It was a BIG deal to have free reign over my space in there…

Not needing to check in with my little sister, Rose, about how things were decorated…

Not needing to worry about what she thought or what she wanted…

It was my space. All mine!

So I proudly marked my territory with Emerald and Lilac.

And now, 17 years later, I’m marking my territory again with a 2009 version of Emerald and Lilac here on my new blog.

This is my new space where I can do or say anything I want.

I can decorate it however I want…

And if we’re lucky (which, let’s both agree, we are!)

You’ll read some things here that will make one, if not all of your eyebrows rise.

So let’s get started shall we?