green

Ouch! I knew a woman who married in order to leave her parents' roof. That marriage didn't last long, either.:rolleyes

Yep! Right now everyone believes that the Left is made up of no one but us evil atheists.:phanvan

The big difference between the left and the Christian right is one of Hypocrisy!

I am with Devana. There is a lot in Tina's life to make her depressed at the moment. The unwanted 0 is just the icing on the cake. Just keep on loving her and fussing over her. This is what my mate does. It eventually gets through. How about a little get-away? Just you and Tina....... This can often break a pattern of thought, you know.

I am one of those people who can eat it but I have to chew, chew, chew. I choose not to eat very much of it, however.

Hooray for you, Yoda!!!!! :clap2: This is onderful news, grrl!

Green sez wow! I neatly avoided going to my niece's wedding a coupla years back (I could pull this stunt off because my family is dysfunctional:heh: ) but found myself agreeing to go to my nephew's wedding last summer. This seemed like a good move on my part because our mum and my kid brother had died. The family was still dysfunctional but it was badly bruised and I - lol - became the senior member. This involved more money than I could have spared had I not come into an inheritance - so this was kind of creepy - but my husband and I flew out to Halifax on my mother's dime for the family gathering and the wedding. It was a lot of hard work even though my poor nephew and his bride and her family had worked hard to make everything nice. His mother and his sister's child arrived about three weeks early. His mother set about dissing his bride and her side of the family. She also went on about how the poor girl was looking fat and kept telling everyone that the marriage wouldn't last more than a year or two. Well, it turns out that the bride was pregnant and this was something that both my nephew and his bride were quietly thrilled about because she had fertility issues and they both were anxious to have a big family. By the morning before the wedding the groom, his mother, his sisters and his grandmother on his mother's side are all in a physical knock-down brawl. His father, who is my brother, his second wife, my husband, and myself were secreted in a cottage on the coast of Nova Scotia. There was no telephone except for my brother's cell and that was long distance because he lives in Virginia. It was heat wave humid hot and I had to go outside for a smoke and there was a gazillion flesh eating bugs outside. My brother ended up feeling pissed off because we were living in a bug infested shack and he was the one who had helped the couple buy their property in the first place. I was cranky because I was covered, really covered in bug bites and because I am allergic to them I was itching all over. My husband was much worse off. He had eaten bad shellfish. He was trapped in this shack and he was spewing from both ends and he was running a temperature. In fact he ended up being dragged to various events, stuffed full of dope in order to stop him from vomitting and pooping, and was stuck being warehoused on beds in homes of people whom he had never met. He missed the wedding of course. And as for the groom, my nephew ended up brawling with his mother. As a result one of his sisters refused to do her reading. My brother got hurt because he has underwritten so much of my nephew's life and then during the inevitable this is your life episode of the wedding event he was edited out. Yep, my brother never did appear in any of those slides and the guy found himself hurting. And yah, my nephew did spend his later teenage years living with his father. As for me, I was happy to see my nephew married to a woman whom he loved and I was happy to see that he had married into a family who obviously adored him. I also respected the fact that there had been loads of local social events planned for all of us who had taken the trouble, time, and expence to make our way out to the east coast of Canada. But, nevertheless, the family psychodrama was very bluddy hard. It might be kinda interesting to note that we had a Scottish relative in tow. He ended up with me, my husband, my brother, and his second wife. I say "ended up" with because he had been promised better and then abandoned. The dude was good fun and I proposed to him that he could write something about this experience: I said that he could call it My Big Fat Canadian Wedding. He thought that this was pretty funny and we spent some fine hours together smacking bugs, smoking cigarettes, and drinking coffee and scotch.

Hey, this thread is an interesting one, isn't it? Wavy, the 120 grand looks extra big to my eyes because I am a Canadian and our dollars are mini-dollars. And even in Can bucks a 120 grand is nothing to sneeze about. It won't buy you a house in my city but it will give you a down payment and that is, as Martha says, "a good thing." And your wedding, pierced, sounds great. Good food, a laid back environment, and a laid back bride and groom - what more can any guest want, eh? Even though I didn't want to get married, I just wanted to live with my man, my one official wedding was pretty good. We had a buffet so that everyone, even the vegetarians, could find food that they would enjoy. My (then) husband was a musician and a number of his friends played at the wedding. They were talented guys and they played a lot of jug band music along with the standard rock stuff. The bar was open and that is always a hit. It seems that my father was approached a number of times by the staff; they wanted to know if he wished to close down the free bar but he said no. As for me - the bride - I wore a tobacco brown velvet suit with hip high suede boots. I wanted something that I could wear again and the wedding took place in February. I also threatened to carry a cauliflower up the aisle in my bouquet. I said that I could cook it later. I was a practical kid! I wore the boots and the velvet jacket, they both looked great with jeans by the way, until they rotted, and then I threw them out. Shortly after this I threw the husband out. :phanvan I got married when I was 22 and the marriage collapsed when I was 27. Oh, and by the way, the reason we got married was because it meant the world to my then husband's family. My family were atheists and would have been entirely comfortable to see us live together. His family were Catholics and our marriage meant a lot to them and so we were married in the Catholic church. And at this point I will mention, as I always do, that I was treated with great respect by the Church.

Great! I still have mine. Where do you live? I am going to visit you and I am going to bring my Docs with me.:biggrin1: I also have workboots.

Holy mackeral! That's a lot of bucks!! That's a fine down payment on a piece of property or some pretty sweet cash to put into an investment portfolio! A grrl could also buy very some fine household furnishings for that kinda cash or some terribly respectable jewellery. I am very curious and have a question for anyone who can answer it. Do these bridezillas actually settle down and enjoy the "magic" day once it comes or are they still so charged up over this issue of perfection that they don't? I would love it if someone could supply me with an answer.

This post made me laugh out loud. I think that the only reason I don't make that mistake is because I am a depressive and the best I can ever say is that I am doing okay....:phanvan

I am entirely with you, TOM, on this one. Why should the bride behave like a bitch? What gives her the right, objectively speaking? Viewed through the lens of social anthropology, weddings, like funerals, are communal events; that is to say that the intent of these rituals is to bring the immediate community together in order to assist a family who is a member of that community in celebrating or mourning a change in their status. At one time this community would be the tribe or the village. Today this community usually consists of family, friends, and, possibly, business associates. The irony for me is that those performances which these bridezillas generate on their special days are all so boringly uniform, all so very much the same. The memories of these weddings will for most of us all blend into each other but the memories of the brides' bitcheries will last forever. And of course most of 'em will be divorcing later on because the marriage didn't live up to the wedding!

Yah, I have what I call Lesbian feet - though I would never say that in front of my friends who are Lesbians! I call 'em that because I can only wear sensible shoes; no Jimmy Choos nor Manolo Blahnicks for this grrl. My paws hover between size 10 and size 11 and are both boney and wide. I can only wear flat shoes with a wide toe box. I used to wear Doc Martens when they were in fashion.

What really, really bothers me is the confusion that so many people make between the plural and the possessive noun. There are inappropriate apostrophes popping up all over these days and yet this same apostrophe is often missing in a possessive noun. It was decided that that girl's book would now belong to all the girls. The other thing that bothers me is the difference between lay and lie. One is transitive and has an object and the other is not. One should never say I was laying down but rather I was lying down. A person lays an object down but lies down. This beef of mine is, however, a lost cause.

Yah, Montreal is much worse than Toronto for being lookist! And French women can be real nasty to outsiders. When I lived in France almost all my friends were men and other foreign women.

Hey there you newbies who are feeling scared, don't be. I was 57 when I had the surgery done. I was surprised at how easily it went and how comparatively painless it was thanks to the excellent pain control drugs the doctor gives you. I healed up really rapidly even though I smoke and that is a negative for surgery. The thing that caused me the most grief was the gas pains.:rolleyes I was operated on a Thursday and I spent the next three days in bed reading and dozing off with the cat to keep me company. These were three of the most relaxing days of my life. Monday I had a bath, put on day clothes and hung out on the computer. I was only using the pain meds at night time and finally ended up with almost half the prescription left over. This came in useful whenever I visited the dental hygienist and during the Christmas period.:phanvan As for PBs, I had my first one at Christmas, three and a half months after I was banded. You can limit them by remembering to chew, chew, chew, by not getting over-filled, and by loosening up your band in the morning by having something hot to drink. In my opinion, the most useful tools post-op to have are a piece of furniture by your bed which you can grab in order to haul yourself up into a sitting position when you want to go to the toilet, a pill crusher, and lots of pillows to lie on. And you need a TV or books in order to really enjoy the bed rest.:biggrin1:

I've been told that the artificials tend to have a life span of 20-25 years before wearing out. This is why doctors do arthroscopies, etc first. They like to delay the installation of a knee or hip replacement. The only person I knew who had a replacement was my mum and she was old. I did meet a man who had had both of his hips replaced and he was pretty spry. The funny thing about him was that he had had them done at different times and the older one was steel and the newer one was titanium, a much, much lighter metal. He said that he had to make adjustments when swimming for this variance in weight.

Oh man, am I ever happy about it! It was an excellent move. I was very, very messed up about my body. I found it a humiliation. My weight gain pattern is odd and exactly like my mother's; I kept slim arms and legs and all the weight went to my torso, especially my gut. I looked like a spider!:cry The other thing that was hard about being overweight is that I live in the core of a large city. There are very few fat people here. Most people are fairly trim and well groomed. It had become almost impossible for me to buy clothes.:phanvan (They don't sell a lot of linen clothes in the big grrl shops up here, eh. They are all about synthetics and frou frou and pastels and cute!) I feel so much better about myself at my current weight and I love the restraints which the band places on my appetite. How about you, BJean? Any regrets?

Lee4, you have got one big advantage in the weight loss game. You are a man and men tend to lose more easily and more quickly than we do. From your comments it does sound like your wife and friends were trying to sabotage your weight loss. That is a real drag! But now you have lost the wife and you do have A Plan. That's cool! Keep us in the loop with news of your journey. BJean, my mother had her knee replaced when she was in her early 80s. She came through it okay and she continued living on her own in her condo. It will hurt at the beginning and you will need physiotherapy and the use of a cane for awhile.

I was 200 lbs and growing when I arranged for the surgery. I made an appointment with the clinic that did my operation, asked them if I was a suitable candidate, and when they said yes I wrote a cheque. Then I decided I better learn more about the band so I joined this site and I read the information materials which they sent home with me. I kinda jumped into the band back to front but that was because I had become so fed up with this post-menopausal weight gain loop that I was on I was ready to do anything to stop it. Sometimes I used to wake up at 3 in the morning, grab my gut, and think to myself that if there was such a thing as an emergency liposuction clinic I would call a cab and go there immediately!

Sounds like a good plan to me.:eek: Speaking of scotch, Green currently has a vicious hangover caused by using too much scotch and too many cigarettes yesterday.:cry I'm gonna blame the pain & suffering and the old wino cough on my old university pal.:eek: Yep, he was the one who made me do it!:confused:

I have visited the UK. I have relatives who live there. It is very different from Canada. Everything but everything is horrifically expensive there, far more expensive than on the continent. Even a cup of tea in a cafe. I did have a minor medical emergency - I cut one of my corneas - while I was there and it cost me zip.

I was banded in September just like BJean. I don't know whether I have had any hair loss or not. My hair is kinda coarse and very thick and it is difficult for to tell if the amount that I shed when washing it is the same old amount or not.:confused: It sometimes looks like I am shedding but I still have lots of it on my head. I take the Calcium because my spine is thinning.:cry I went through an early menopause and my doc didn't want me on HRT. I take the vita D because we don't get much sunshine up here in Canada at this time of year. And I take the Bs because they are very good for the heart, nerves and general stamina.:eek: And I take the multi in order to get anything that I might be missing. Everything I take except the Ds are in a chewable form.

My mother probably would have been against the surgery, too, but she died a couple of years ago. The irony is that I was able to finance it through my inheritance. It cost me $16,000 Canadian to have it done in Toronto which is where I live.

It sounds like you are going to have to cut the old girl off from this business of decision making. She seems far too volatile and neurotic. My advice to you is to live your life according to your desires and to present the decisions which you have already chosen and followed through with to your parents only after these are completed acts. This limits your parents' ability to trip out on you.