green

And now for the shallow stuff: I just came back from seeing my doc and while I was there I weighed myself and I now weigh 155 lbs! Yippee!

My first husband, and the only one I actually married, and not just common-lawed, died 3 years ago this month. We got married when we were in our early 20s and our marriage only lasted five years. He was a musician and they don't tend to make reliable mates. Nevertheless, after enough water went under the bridge we resumed our friendship and he eventually became involved with a splendid woman who is now his widow. He introduced her to me and we ended up becoming very close friends. Apart from our relationships with him and his family we have a lot in common and so we remain very, very close. They had a long, long relationship and it had its ups and its downs - he was a musician, remember - but his death was a bad one and his widow, my wife-in-law as I often call her, suffered acutely both while he was dying and for the first couple of years after his loss. There is a phrase, "mad with grief," and there were many times when my friend was in that very state. To see someone go through this makes you fear losing your own mate; it is a foreshadowing for it makes you aware that relationships can and will be ruptured eventually. I find myself writing this in order to let those of us - the over 50 bunch - who have experienced widowhood know that I am aware, I think, that you have undergone an experience which is significantly different - infinitely more painful, infinitely more profound - than the rest of us.

Though it seems that you, your 14 year old mate, and your 12 year old sister have beaten the odds by going on to have sucessful marriages and to raise your children happily it is not generally considered to be a wise move to start having children at such a young age and indeed there are laws against children becoming sexually active before they reach a certain age. Before this age they are considered to be minors and these laws are in place in order to protect them and to allow them to continue to mature both physically and intellectually without having to deal with the additional stresses that starting their own families will bring. These laws are relatively recent constructs. In other eras people did get married and started having children much younger than they do now but times are different now and life is much more complicated. When families were working a farm little formal education was needed and much of what boys and girls needed to know was learned by working alongside the older folk. Now, however, the baseline of education required to get by is highschool and even then that is often not enough; college, university, technical training, or an apprenticeship is the next step. It is difficult to do this when you have babies and a relationship and no money. I believe that you and your sister have beaten the odds because you were lucky that you do have a large and supportive family. They were able to help you out by caring for your babies whenever you needed a break, and in the case of your 12 year old sister, drive her and the baby to the doctor, to the mall, and teach her how to look after an infant. It sounds as though you come from a wonderful family and that you have a wonderful family of your own. If some of us sound a little shocked and judgemental it is because both your husband and your sister were minors at the time when they started their families and for most young people this would have ended up poorly, not only for themselves, but for their babies as well.

Congratulations, Anniejo, on getting banded and your weight loss. Yippee! I also lost about 15 lbs in my first six weeks after receiving The Band. It sounds like you are off to a very good start. Denise822, thanks for answering my question concerning nutrition facts on labels. It really is surprising what you learn once you start reading this info, isn't it? And, Dynamo, I think that it is true that those individuals who project more energy do get more attention paid to them but I also believe that the old and the overweight and the plainer folks do disappear in the eyes of the public. I have read accounts on this site from fellow bandsters who have commented that as they lost weight people began to pay attention to them. They found that sales clerks were more helpful and that strangers would smile at them. BJean's idea is a good one. We will band together and kick butt.:scared:And be very noisy about it. :tea: "Ovaries with Attitude" as one of my lesbian friends likes to say.:drum:

Oh, yes, The Invisible Women!!! It seems that fat will do it and so will ageing. I remember taking my mother shopping for clothes when she was in her 80s. The woman was old but had all of her marbles. In fact I inherited a sizable chunk of my own from her. She was shopping for a dressy winter coat. The saleswoman wanted to put her in a baby blue item; she chose a black leather coat with a fur collar. We called the coat Norton because the fur reminded me of my cat. The coat is chic and I was happy to inherit it. A year later we returned to the same boutique - they did have nice clothes - and dealt with another saleswoman. My mother wanted a pair of pants. The bluddy saleswoman persisted in ignoring my mother and talking to me! I kept redirecting her inquiries to my mum but she was too thick to get the hint. I finally said, "I dunno, you'll have to ask her." I have another friend who has found that she has become invisible. She claims that this is because she is brunette. We do a lot of recreational shopping together and it is true that she gets lousy service. She truly is invisible. She uses me, the blondie, as her wing-man in these situations. Although I have gotten kinda old and it is only going to get worse and I was getting fat (before the miracle of the band) I found that I was only disappearing on the sexual front. It had been a long, long time since anyone had eyeballed me with anything approaching lust (except for old guys, my husband, and folks with bad eyesight, that is). But I seem to still be visible otherwise; now, I don't know whether this is because I am blonde (now assisted by Lady Clairol and Madame L'Oreal) or because I have a somewhat humorous extroverted personality or whether it is the way I dress or some combination of the above factors, but I do know that this will not last in a society like ours. We do live in or think we live in a society which has grown increasingly ageist and lookist, I think. It strikes me that the qualities which are valued by society, the ones which are promoted and the ones which are paid the big bucks, are youth, looks, and brawn. Athletes are valued more than scientists, are paid much more, and have much more street cred. Young people carry more weight than old people. People do age out of having a say with respect to marketing polls. Our concerns seem to become increasingly irrelevant. At the same time, I remember when I was young. I am part of the boomer generation and so I was part of the hippy don't trust anyone who is older than 30 gang. We wanted to start a revolution. I think that in many ways today's youth are more respectful than we were. Still, disappearing sucks, doesn't it? I suspect that in many ways men may have a harder time of it than we do. They are, after all, used to taking up more space than we are.

Up here in Canada every item of food that is boxed, canned, or bottled is required by law to provide the nutrition facts as part of the label. This includes calories per serving as well as a breakdown of the fats - saturated and trans - cholesterol, sodium, carbs, fibre, sugars, proteins, calcium, vitamins, and iron. Some of these numbers are expressed as a percentage of the total in-take needed by the average adult per day. Before I was banded I used to ignore this information but now I do read it carefully and it does contain some surprising news. Many if not most of the vegetable soups we eat in fact contain surprisingly little vitamin C. Eggs are loaded with B vitamins but few other foods seem to be except for such things as whole wheat pasta and bread. Most processed foods have tons of salt. This has turned into a longish post and the real reason I started it was to ask you if American law requires that all the nutritional info be listed on your packaged food, not to yap on about my discoveries. :straight

I love aged sharp cheeses, creamy yet tangy blue cheeses, and double or triple creme bries and camemberts. I adore Romano Pecorino and those horribly expensive regional Italian parmesan cheeses, and I just adore a fine aged Canadian cheddar made at one of those little country dairies. Ooooh! Yep, I've spent a lot of money on cheese over the years and gained a lot of lard. And I have a life-time subscription to Lipitor, thanks to my cholesterol readings. *sob* (Actually, my cholesterol has dropped since I got the band and cut back on the cheese in-take! How could something so wonderful be so evil????) As for the litter cake, I could never consider eating it. I have had cats and dealt with their litter for far too long now. Just looking at the photo makes me feel and knowing that it's edible makes me feel kind of strange. But I think it is hilarious in a barfy sort of way!

My husband's brother is quite greedy and kind of crass. He got married in France because it is more "romantic," came back, had a pool party in his backyard and asked everyone to bring his own chair to sit on and money instead of a gift. The invitations were made up on his computer and printed up on regular computer paper. He and his bride had been living together for years and owned a house, by the way. I was pretty grossed out and didn't bother attending.:rolleyes I later heard that quite a number of other people, including his parents, were shocked, too. I wish I had saved the invite, though.

Hmmm..... As it happens, I have enjoyed every Barbara Kingsolver novel I have read and I am deeply in love with cheese. In fact I got fat by eating cheese, lots of cheese! Weird, eh? I guess this thread cannot be killed!

Melinda was robbed.

Devana's questions are good ones, I think. I have been keeping quiet on the illegal question for although my tendancy is to be sympathetic to them, at the same time I have no understanding at all of the stresses and strains which they may be placing on American society. Up here in Canada we do have illegals but we have proportionally speaking many fewer of them than you do by all accounts. Our largest city, Toronto, the city where I live, is a city comprised of immigrants, many of them recent and I have heard it said that well over half of us speak a mother tongue which is not English. Multi-culturalism seems to work extremely well here and gives this city a real vibrancy, but perhaps this is because our citizens come from all over the globe and not from one single area. It may be that in areas where there are large numbers of Mexicans and Americans living together that relationships become more us-them and thus more socially antagonistic. The health care thing is not a sore point for us, either, because we have, as you are probably aware, universal health care. This means that while we do pay for health care, we pay for this through our taxes, not as a direct hit through an insurance policy. Then there is this point to take into account, I think. From all that I have heard the Mexicans head north in order to work and they do find employment on the American side of the border. If they weren't getting work, would they come? Aren't Americans complicit in this situation when they continue to hire illegal workers? And why are illegals doing this work when there are many Americans who are jobless and receiving welfare? Why don't the Republicans institute workfare programmes? Or the Democrats raise the minimum wage so that these jobs would become more attractive to Americans? And as to the complaint that many of the older Mexicans only speak Spanish, my hunch would be that those individuals who are illegal are afraid to move outside their own groups for fear that they might be discovered and deported. They will have little chance to learn English. Remember, too, that these are individuals who likely received little formal education at home. These are the poor people of Mexico who only wish to survive and hope that their anchor babies will have much better lives in America. Educated folks usually have no need to leave home and enter another country as illegals.

I live in Toronto and I have never been to Grano although I have heard wonderful things about it. I should go.

Now I know what the Flying Nun's son looks like.... I can die happy.

Yippeeeee!!!!! Congrats to senor Yoda!

I was gonna say I'd do ya, but I wouldn't.:Banane40: I would be your friend, however. And if we were crossing the border I would hide a kilo or two in your folds of skin. Just think of all the money we could make,.......eh! Of course you know that I am just talking, don't you?:success1: One thing is for sure, you've got your own parachute! LOL

Yep, Devana, I had been feeling the same queasy way. In fact I hadn't been feeling in this much need of political Gravol since Mulroney had his giant chin up Reagan's arse. But it would appear that our Conservative government is turning out to be a more unusual animal than we had thought and it may actually have a backbone! It seems to have stood up to the rednecks who wanted to undo the legislation allowing same sex marriages, we women still have the right to choose, and the government seems to have stood up to Bush and his whacked out Attorney guy in this business of l'affaire Arar. Quelle surprise! I do, nevertheless, dress to the left of this party, eh.

From what I have been reading in articles about China and its birth policies it appears that these policies have already resulted in a terrible imbalance of the sexes in a generation of young men and women. It seems that young women are largely missing from rural China for two reasons: many fewer have been born and of those who were these young women have made it their practice to leave the rural areas in order to seek work in the cities. These two factors have left these villages socially destabilized. Their populations consist of elderly people and of comparatively large numbers of un- or under-employed young men, men who are in their twenties and who pass their days drinking, gambling, and fighting. These young men know that they will never find wives, nor will they have families. They are a lost generation of men and they are alienated from society as a result. The Chinese government is aware that this imbalance is a dangerous thing and that a stable society requires that its young males have their energies best harnessed by raising their own families. Nevertheless, rural folk still want to have boy children and still view girls as being valueless even though they are already seeing a generation of lost, alienated, and lonely young men who will never have the chance to settle down and start their families. Any culture where there are a lot of unemployed young men will likely be less stable. Young men who are left without anything meaningful to do to fill their days have a lot of energy, a lot of testosterone, and a lot of rage. This is why the crime statistics for violent/impulsive crimes are higher in areas where there is a) poverty b)unemployment and c)lots of young people. I have heard it mentioned that this is one of the reasons that much of the Middle East is such a mess: there is no work and there is a large population of young males. It has been suggested, according to some of the articles which I have read, that China may be growing very concerned about this very thing: that the country will be flooded for some generations to come with a superabundance of emotionally unanchored males due to the sexist response to its birth control policies.

Yah, I can imagine that there are a few folks who inhabit the right in Washington who would be happy to invade Canada.:Banane40: After all, it was Pat Robertson who called us Soviet Canuckistan and members of our previous government ran afoul of Washington by virtue of their thinly, very thinly veiled contempt for BuSh and his gang. Diplomatic relations between the two countries were certainly at a low until our new Conservative government took office.:paranoid Yep, I miss TOM, too. His comments were always interesting and well-thought out. I hope he comes home soon.

Wow! So that's the story of l'histoire de fromage, as the French might say. Thanks a bunch for filling us newbies in, FunnyDuddies. Those really do sound like the Days of Terror. And the Cheese Brigade sounds brilliant, kinda like you were all channelling the spirit of Wisconsin or a Brie double creme. :clap2:

My ex-husband was a musician. Like most musicians he was poor and unfaithful. It is more fun being a musician than being married to one.

There is a tendency to want to place kids with blood members, I believe. This can work out just fine when it applies to cases where the mother is a drug addict and living on the streets and it is the grandparents who apply to raise their grandchildren.

There's a couple who live across the street from me, he's a sociology prof and she is a family lawyer, who came up to Canada during the time of the Vietnam War. The sad thing now is that our immigration rules have changed and our new crop of evaders who have landed here will likely be sent back home. These are young men who have enlisted and have sometimes been sent over for a tour of duty in Iraq. They have come home and find that they don't want to go over there and so they and their young families have crossed the border. With our current immigration rules their only option is to plead refugee status and so far this seems to be going unsuccessfully. Of course until recently our new Conservative minority government had been making super nice with BuSh and company. The mess over the Maher Arar situation has served to cool the love affair off somewhat. The demand that all folks crossing the Canadian-U.S. border present passports hasn't won Washington many friends in our capital, either, for this has thrown up a serious barrier to tourism and trade which customarily goes on between our two countries.

No compassion here for that gasbag!

There was a case in Toronto a year or so ago where a grandparent asked for and received custody of 4 of her grandchildren who had been seized by Children's Aid. The entire extended family lived on welfare and such monies as were contributed by those who were working. There was quite a large number of them living in one house. Well, for some reason two of the four children were isolated to one room and slowly over a period of years both maltreated and slowly starved to death. The grandmother had them drinking water out of the toilet and eating food out of the dog's bowl when she did let them outside of their room, a room which was underheated in winter, by the way. After one of the two children died the family called an ambulance. The kid, who was 5 years old, weighed less than an year old. His body was covered in faeces, urine, and mould. The other child, still alive, was in the same condition. The trial was interesting. The grandmother was found to be of subnormal intelligence with behaviour issues and it was discovered that one of her own babies had died under suspect circumstances when she herself was 17. These are folks who shouldn't be breeding but they do. Children's Aid had goofed when assigning these kids to their grandmother. They hadn't troubled to do a background check. All this info on granny was already in their files. I have told you this story because my hunch is that this family likely is as stupid and as whacked out as the parents of this baby are.

Yep, my experience of abortion was much the same as that of Alexandra's. The array of emotions I felt, including my initial denial, all hinged upon my discovery that I was pregnant. The abortion was the solution to the blind terror which was one of the feelings which I felt. I have never felt guilt or regret over this decision. An interesting side note, perhaps: my mother did feel regret from time to time; she would have liked me to have given her a grandchild.