green

Omigawd, Carlene, you are the international woman! :girl_hug: I promise you that I will take care of bizness. :phanvan By the way, welcome to virtual Canada. You ought to come up for a real visit. It is summer up here and the weather is too hot for me which means that you will feel comfortable, grrl. :biggrin1:

Audrey, Robgob, Jetlag, and babyg all speak the truth in my opinion. The girl has reached her full growth and she is carrying far too much weight. Both of her parents are big people and this indicates that this is not an issue of baby fat. We all know that sending the poor kid off into a cycle of yo-yo dieting isn't going to work and is just going to mess up her metabolism as well as ensure that she feels like even more of a loser each and every time that her attempts fail. As I had advised in my earlier post, have her see a dietitian, have her practice healthy eating habits for the following 6 months and then get the poor kid banded. Even amongst us there is still far too much of this puritanical attitude that the fatty must be punished. Obesity is a medical issue, not a moral one.

Nume, big congratulations for jumping in and posting! :clap2: It is quite a jump from being a reader to being a writer. And now I will confess that I am one of the regulars in the Rant & Raves section. It is true that this is a zone which is not for the faint of heart :girl_hug: but it is a very interesting area for some of us to spend time in. This is the area where we debate hot topics such as religion, politics, etc. As you can imagine, we do get into a number of intellectual brawls with each other and to those members who do not have a taste for this kind of debate life over there in R&R can look pretty ugly. The thing is that while members can be at each other's throats over one issue they will also be close to each other on a different thread. It is a weird and wild world over there but it ain't as bad as it looks. On to other stuff: I have got to confess that I am not a hugger, either. Neither of my parents were physically warm, we were a formal family, and while I am a warm and charming person who does care about other people, I don't like to be touched. This is why I am very uncomfortable around small children and babies for little kids are naturally touchy-feely. (I never had any kids of my own, by the way.) Your eldest daughter sounds very much like me. Now, my husband is the opposite, wouldn't you know! He loves to cuddle and so we do when we are watching TV together. This makes him very, very happy. Unfortunately the man also likes to sleep all knotted up with me and this freaks me out!:target: I end up by snarling at him and insisting that he move over to his corner of the bed. The poor guy! Opposites really do attract.:phanvan

Thanks for replying, Gadget. I found it interesting that the girls thought that she was ugly because of the make-up and that they felt that she was trying to cover up something. To tell you the truth, I myself have never "got" her looks. I think she looks vapid and squinty-eyed and, well, plastic. I was also amused by their response to her name, Paris. It might be interesting to ask them what effect they feel that her fame might have on her sense of herself, particularly as it is not anchored to actual accomplishments. You might also ask them what they feel about Paris's obvious resentment about being punished. These are just suggestions of course. Please post more about your conversation with your kids concerning this. I find it fascinating to view the sillier aspects of our culture as viewed through the sensible eyes of a couple of children. Again, thanks from Green.:girl_hug:

Thank you, thank you for your congratulations. :)I lost 45 lbs altogether and I am 5 lbs from the goal which TLBC set for me. The last 15 were kind of a cheat.:phanvan I caught a nasty bowel bug in Mexico and food doesn't stick around all that long.:girl_hug: I gotta get that fixed. I also got to get some more fill. I can eat quite a lot again. I gotta, gotta phone the fill nurse!:straight

Oh, we got some up here, but not that many of 'em and nobody much pays 'em any heed. Politicians are aware that they must downplay their own beliefs - our current (conservative) Prime Minister is a Christian - because this sort of thing tends to alienate most voters. This government is a minority government and has a number of social conservatives sitting as members of parliament who were elected in Canada's Bible Belt, the Province of Alberta. (Indeed, our current PM is an Alberta boy.) These individuals had promised their constituents that abortion and same-sex marriage rights would be repealed should their party gain power. The party has been in power for something like 18 months now and these issues have not been revisited. There was recently a pro-life demonstration in our capital city. Most of the media ignored it altogether. One of the national newspapers discussed why it was considered a non-event by our media. That is how life is up here in godless Canada where atheists roam wild in the streets.:target:

This is an interesting post, Gadget. Did your kids have any other comments about Hilton? I am interested.

As I have often commented on LBT my city is a large one, indeed the greater Toronto area numbers more than 3 million people, and more than half of these individuals are either immigrants or the children of immigrants. My parents were immigrants and most of my neighbours are immigrants. What I know about my neighbours is that their children all speak flawless Canadian style English. What my neighbours tell me is that some of their children resist even learning the language of their parents; some of these children only want to speak English. My point is that although the first generation of immigrants may never arrive at achieving any degree of competency in the language of their new home, their kids will and so will their grandchildren and their great grandchildren. It is unfair and unkind to expect new immigrants to be able to achieve fluency in the language and the folkways of their new home. Not everyone is equally as capable of adapting. And the truth is that many immigrants choose a new country for their children and their children's children as much as for themselves. They want to make sure that their kids will have a chance of having a prosperous and a safe life.

I eat hamburger patties, filet mignon, and pork tenderloin. Red meat is easier than chicken because it isn't as dry. I have PBed on chicken but never on red meat. Of course you have to remember to chew, chew, chew!

Fuel man, I appreciated your post. Thanks.

It seems to me that when we choose to employ the entire arsenal of modern medical technologal knowledge we are certainly "playing God" if we are to apply your standard to the letter. In other eras those preemies, to give one example, certainly would have been in their own little graves; it is modern medicine which saves these little creatures and surely this, too, can be considered to be playing God. You have a well defined double standard. You are happy, I am sure, to see to see people who are in distress, be it by reason of cancer, heart disease, whatever..., be saved from death through the means of modern medical knowledge - and is this not "playing God?" - but you are unwilling to allow others who are suffering from terminal diseases and who are in unendurable pain choose to exit this life when it becomes unbearable because this is "playing God." You should get your lines of logic straight. You cannot have it both ways. And by the way, the word is spelled euthanasia.

Oh, I picked up something intestinal in Mexico and my doctor won't prescribe me any meds until she knows what it is. I tried to suggest to her to just prescribe a big bunch of everything because I have a drug plan and something is bound to cure it. And I don't want to have to do the test because it is gross. I have lost a further 15 lbs over the past 5 weeks since I returned to Canada thanx to Montezuma's revenge. BJean knows all about my woes.:paranoid

Green has lost a bunch of weight. I now weigh 155 lbs. And my giant liver is normal sized. I just got the results of the ultrasound. The downside is that my bushy hair is kinda thin at the moment. blehhh!

One cat at the moment, a rather unpleasant orange and white female. She was a stray and was nice to us until she knew that she was here for good. Now she bites, scratches, knocks things off tables, desks, etc, and plays with them until they are broken/lost. She also empties out our garbage cans while we are sleeping. We had a lovely black male who died of kidney failure not long ago. I still miss him. He was a fine companion. Now we live with the kitten from Hell! She is not a picky eater, though.

I would be inclined to let the girl be banded. It sounds as though she has reached her full physical growth and she is certainly carrying a lot of weight. This must be a terrible thing for her emotionally and physically this will lead to a bunch of problems. I guess the test that I might put her through in order to ensure that she is ready for the band is to have her see a dietitian, learn about healthy eating habits, and watch her put these into practice for the next 6 months or so; afterall, this is how she will have to work with her band for the rest of her life if she wants it to be an effective tool. Forcing her to go through years of yo-yo dieting before she gets the band will only mess up her metabolism and make losing weight - even with the band - that much harder.

I got banded because I wanted to lose between 40 and 50 lbs. I was banded last Sept and I was self-pay. I lost 40 lbs and I have seen my liver shrink in size and my cholesterol readings drop. These are added bonuses for me. I am very pleased about my band.

While Canada is officially bilingual - English-French - we did at one time make a concerted attempt to erase the Aboriginal languages. We forced these peoples to send their kids away to residential Christian schools where they were beaten if they were caught speaking in their own mother languages. The kids were brutalised and sometimes sexually abused as well. The end result was a generation of damaged and dysfunctional individuals who have passed along this damage to succeeding generations. This bit of Canadian history is one of our own ugly skeletons.

Thanks, KariK, for your post. It may help a lot of people.

Hey, BJean, that's fantastic news!:clap2: And that info about the downside of an overfill makes news to me. I believe I might need a little fill because I can eat rather a lot of the healthy stuff. The only reason I am losing is because of my Mexican bowels. Yes, I really gotta suck it up :tiredand harvest my poop. Ugh! Oh, gawd! I am such a neurotic princess that I keep choking when it comes to doing this. But, the equipment is now in my bathroom and I have finally read the instructions. This is my big step forward. Dynamo and Denise - the double Ds:) - what you grrls want to do is spend some time around Italian men. They tend to be good looking, love women and love to flirt, and they are often kinda easy if you are in the mood for a crazy fling. Green knows. When she was younger she flung with a few Italian guys and quite enjoyed herself.:girl_hug: She has always been a sucker for a brunette.:girl_hug:

There are reasons, other than homosexuality, why men will have little sex interest in their partners. One reason could be depression and another might be that he is on medication, like I am, which interferes with his sex drive. There are also physical problems which men get which interfere with their ability to perform and then they become ashamed and don't want to talk about it. And men will develop psychological hang-ups, too, and be unable to face these issues. We women find it much easier to talk about things, to visit doctors, to do take steps to solve even the most embarassing of problems. That a man be a stud is a major part of every man's identity. I have read that the numbers of men who have problems in the sexual arena, especially as they age, is higher than one might think. And for you who live in small towns your men may feel that it is impossible for them to the get help they might need: not enough anonymity and not any of the right kind of specialists. In my big city there is at least one men's clinic dedicated to sexual problems. And then there are those guys who are having affairs and getting it from someone else.

And Green likes younger men. In fact her mate is 9 years younger than she is but even if she were single she could never consider performing a sportif act with a laddie young enough to have been her son. Well, maybe she could if the guy was cute and legally blind.... Green doesn't want to put herself in the way of possible humiliation, ya know.

Thanks, grrl. (Green smiling, eh.)

MsDad, you ought to move to Canada. Lousy climate but no legal nor financial discrimination. You can even get married. And this month is Pride month in my town. Yippee!

I was hoping she would become someone's bitch. And grow to enjoy it.

I really appreciated Fuel Man's comments on this issue. It seems to me that the Pro-life lobby is keen to stop abortions but not so interested in investing in the following 20 years after those children are born. Dropping an unwanted infant off for adoption is not always the answer. Some babies are more marketable, more desirable than others. What happens to the duds, eh? For that matter what will happen to all the unwanted babies, even the good ones, once the adoption market is flooded with these children? I guess the orphanages will come back. Generally speaking, it seems to me that the Pro-life lobby is also the far right lobby and these are the folks who are unhappy to see a rise in taxes in order to ensure that the poor and ill-educated will have access to better schools, better health care - something which, by the way, can be done if Americans would agree to get rid of the businessmen which run the health insurance plans and go for universal health care. It is you right to lifers who claim that there are huge numbers of pre-borns being slaughtered every year. Ask yourselves if you are prepared to pony up the cash to pay for these unwanted individuals; are you willing to pay for the schools, the health care, and the judicial/penal system in case these individuals fall between the cracks of society? Or is it indeed the facile crap of, well, "I donate to these pro-life societies which help pregnant girls....? We help them have their babies........! We are saving lives." And then what? What are you going to be doing when that baby is 3, 5, 10 or 15 years old? And if your statistics are correct there are a huge number of these pre-borns for whom you will be both morally and financially (via taxes) responsible if you manage to repeal the legislation allowing women the freedom of choice. And Canada will be harvesting a whole lot of Yanqui tourist dollars for it is unlikely that Canada will ever repeal its pro-choice legislation. My advice to any young sexually active woman will then be to use birth control, and make sure that you have a valid passport just in case, eh.