Non mommy related vent

Sorry, this post has almost nothing to do with motherhood, but I still felt like venting to the blogosphere, so read and enjoy and soon we'll return to your regularly scheduled programming. Ok, when we lived in Arkansas, we had this really kinda quirky neighbor. She was sweet as could be, though, and was always giving us stuff, especially Jacob. She would bring toys over all the time for him, and he loved it. Sometimes she brought over a tomato she had grown in her garden. Her tomatoes were, without a doubt, delicious, and I loved getting the fresh vegetables. One time she stopped to chat about the tomatoes, talking about how she hates to eat canned tomatoes, or any canned tomato products, because she used to live by a tomato canning factory. The smells of the chemicals wafting over from the factory used to make her sick, she said, and she has vowed not to eat canned food since. She went on and on about how she thinks that the increase in consumption of canned vegetables and the chemicals that go with it could be the reason that America has such a high incidence of cancer, and certainly those chemicals can't be good for you. Then she lit up a cigarette. Call me crazy, but I'll pick a can of pureed tomatoes over a cigarette any day. Now we live in Virginia, and have an awesome garden of our own. We talk tomatoes and pesticides and fertilizers with all our neighbors. One neighbor, a woman who has particularly robust tomato plants, claims that she does not put Miracle Grow on her plants, that she has tilled the earth with good, natural compost that has added sufficient nutrients to the soil to give her some seriously kick-butt plants. I believe her, too. Not everybody does, however, and she was going on today about how she doesn't believe in pesticides or fertilizers, that those are things that are not good for the environment or good for her food. Then she, too, lit up a cigarette. The irony is just maddening.