green

Have you considered talking to him about this situation and about your feelings? I am unsure as to how valuable his friendship is to your husband and how valuable the continued friendship of your husband and of you yourself is to this man. It does strike me that his love for his wife was genuine and it also strikes me that men - men much more than women - can become unanchored under these circumstances. As we all know, women can rest in a state of widowhood, go through their time of mourning, and then perhaps remarry. Men tend to leap into a second marriage right away. Indeed, it is true that folks who are widowed may seek a replacement mate much more quickly than those who have gone through a divorce. In a perverse way this may count as a compliment to the departed; this displays that the one who is bereft found the married state to be a wonderful state. Obviously your boy is jumping the gun and is displaying an unsettling degree of callousness. There is no reason why you should be expected to swallow this! On the other hand, it strikes me that he is an old man and that he is confused, frightened and is behaving very, very badly as a result. He sure as hell can't talk to his new woman about any of his internal, ethical or spiritual conflicts. He can't talk to this woman about his grief, fears, despair or qualms over his current behaviour. Let us assume that he has some. Let us also assume that he may not be able to talk about these issues with your husband....men being what they are. Why don't you corner this guy, tell him what you think, and open the door for him to say anything that he might wish to get off his chest? This might be a good move for both of you.

It is my impression that Jimmy Carter is a fine, fine human being.

And he plays the sax....I'd a done him but I would have wanted a reverse BJ. This is only because Green is a very, very lazy grrl. :heh:

I don't know why although I think I once did. lol This is the effect of age, blondieness, and retirement, I guess. All I can say at this point is this: come to Toronto during one of our heat waves when there is an air advisory due to our truly horrible air quality and then our nick name makes sense.:heh:

All of us lapbanders want to lose weight and to be able to wear what the normos wear. Indeed, we want to look like normos. My point is that I feel that women of size should not be punished for being outsized by only having ugly clothes available as their one shopping option. As a case in point: it is much harder to find a plain cashmere sweater with a three-quarter length sleeve in size 3X than it is to find this garment in size 4. I was at my local department store the other day. They had 'em in regular sizes but not in our sizes. And as we all know, a plain cashmere sweater with a pair of jeans, chinos or a funky skirt looks good and feels great. Another case in point: I do a lot of shopping at Winner's which is what TJ Maxx is called up here in Canada. They recently had their cashmere event - for those who fit normo sizes. They generally have some good pickings within the normo size range but the clothes begin to get kinda ugly once we begin to drift in the plus zone. All of a sudden it becomes synthetic city, the natural fibres begin to disappear and so do the subtle and elegant colours; these are replaced by weird and garrish colours which means that you can walk out of the store looking like Jaba the Hut dressed in synthetic orange or, if you don't like orange, then there is the same garment in exactly the same colour of blue of that plastic water bowl which you bought for your dog. Of course such colours are good colours to wear if you are planning to go duck hunting. There ain't nobody other than Dick Cheney who is likely to shoot you by accident. So we are presented with these excessively garrish clothes or we are given the other choice, those damn cute clothes with their sequins, appliquees, Walt Dismal's characters, flowers, hearts, care bears or kittens printed on them. This second choice makes us look like giant, ageing pre-teens. And of course these clothes, too, are rich in synthetic fabrics. There is nothing more comfortable than clothes which are made from natural fibres. They age better, have better drape, and you will sweat less. The only syntho-fibre that I personally like is micro-fibre which drapes beautifully. As you can see from the posts which I have contributed to this thread, I have very strong feelings on this topic. I never really did pay any attention at all to this issue of clothing until I became fat. And I always assumed that I would be able to dress the way I wanted to since I am kinda lucky in that I am not on a tight budget. But I learned that I no longer had the choice. As a fat grrl I had dropped out of sight. This was how I discovered that there is a huge element of discrimination which is being perpertrated by clothing manufacturers against a segment of society which is no longer a minority. Many of the folks who live in North American are overweight and are battling obesity. I believe that we are in the majority at this point. And yet clothing manufacturers do not cater to us. Nor for that matter does the airline industry. As we grow taller and wider the airlines have been demanding that the aircraft companies configure the seating room in order to cram more and more passengers into each flight. But this is a different, though related, complaint of mine. Thanks for letting me blow off steam, folks. I've been brooding over this for a long, long time now.

Rats! Foiled again!:bandit But the Doonesbury cartoon is pee yer knickers funny.......:heh:

Could be tough.... Afterall, this is the Year of the Vomit.:omg: Hahahaha! :help:

I am glad that you had fun in da Big Smoke, Wheezy.

Actually TOM, there are a number of young war resistors up here in Canada along with their young families. These are young soldiers who have gone AWOL and who are now petitioning the Canadian government to be allowed to stay here as refugees, claiming that they will suffer if they are returned to their home country. Things are not looking too good for them. Our immigration rules have tightened up since the days of the Vietnam War. In those days individuals could come here on student or visitor visas and then apply for immigration status and this would almost always be granted. Now there is a point system that must be satisfied, the applicant must apply from outside the country, much paperword must be completed and the process can take up to two or more years. And as for a refugee, he has to make the case that he will suffer undue cruelty/death should he return home. Some of these kids have already been turned down. Their cases are now under appeal. I feel for these kids. The worst thing is that we have recently elected, with a minority only, a Prime Minister who is fond of BuSh. He is sometimes known as BuSh lite.

Wow! :faint: Thanks for providing this info. I am left feeling speechless.

Jodie, your country is a super power and its actions do have a serious impact internationally. This is why foreigners and these are not just us Canadians feel comfortable analysing and, yes, criticizing your country. In one sense you are like your own Hollywood stars; with power and fame your actions have become fodder for the rest of us to discuss. No one here is talking about Finland or New Zealand even though these are democratic countries with sucessful economies. I believe that I am right when I say that many of us foreigners are anxious to see that your country remain strong and economically healthy. You are, you see, the linch pin upon which the stability of the west rests. In a few decades the chief competing economy will be that of China. Some also say that India's economy is growing fast. It is difficult to say whether these countries will be as concerned about international peace-keeping as the western countries now are. This war in Iraq is causing your economy to bleed out and that is not a good thing. Iraq never did have ties with al Quaeda and bin Laden. And according to the report made by Hans Blix to congress prior to the invasion no weapons of mass destruction had been found on Iraqi soil. As to this point that you make about shedding blood for your government: it is true that your country was born out of a revolution, one that had to happen! Canada grew much more slowly due to our lousy climate as much as anything else. There were only handfuls of settlers here when you were giving birth to yourself. There were mostly aboriginals and fur traders and explorers in this part of the world. Even today our population is small: only about 35 million. No blood was shed when this country was hatched. So what's your point? We like our form of government as much as you like yours. Both forms seem to work just fine. In my post I am not picking on you either. You raise some interesting points that I wanted to discuss. (And by the way, congratulations on your weight loss, grrl!)

I was banded on Thursday, September 7 of this year. I never felt any sense of restriction after my two first fills and my third fill only brought me up to 6cc. For the first couple of weeks I was sure that I was going to need more but the band then began to tighten up a little. As Christmas rolled around it was getting tighter and tighter but I was still having no real problems and I have never, ever PB-ed until last night when I was at my in-laws for Christmas dinner. My mother-in-law is German and Christmas Eve is almost more important than Christmas Day. My plate arrived with all the food already served. There was a lot but I was hungry.:hungry: I took a couple of bites, got a golf ball, belched, took a sip of wine, and thought it would go away.:omg: Then I felt myself beginning to sweat, turning red and then turning white! :present: Thirty seconds later I abruptly got up from the table, went to the downstairs can, the food just bounced out, and I was fine.:heh: What a weird experience! And so easy! :present: Historically I have always had a tough time with puking. Of course they all knew that something was wrong. I had left the table so suddenly. They sent my husband down to investigate.:girl_hug: This was the embarassing part.:embarassed: And that is the story of my Christmas PB. And, oh yah, my -in-laws said that I looked fabulous!!! :clap2:

Yup, you are right, T.O.M., Gerald Ford was a class act, and may I also say that it is a fine thing to hear your voice again. (You might thank yer wife for her patience on my part, eh.)

I don't want to dress like a teenager. I want to have options and I want to be treated by clothing manufacturers with respect. This is what drives me nuts as a big bitch!!! I sure as hell don't want to be infantalized. Green is very, very cranky on this subject!!!!!!!!!

I am always impressed by those who have given up smoking and I can fully understand why non-smokers demand to have the right to work in a smoke free work place but let us get real here - during that period when smokers ruled folks were not dropping off with smoke-related illnesses in huge numbers due to their exposure to second hand smoke. There is some degree of hysteria here and some of it is deliberately misguided, I think. It is much easier to blame all our air-borne nasties on second-hand smoke than it is to finger our inefficient power plants and the inefficient transit systems - i.e. the car - that North American society has chosen to continue with. I live in southern Ontario, in a city that is considered the 6th largest city in North America. As the summers have grown hotter and hotter our region has suffered more and more with heat and smog advisories. These advisories mean that we should stay indoors and refrain from physical activity. What makes our air so toxic is that it is too damn hot and smoggy to go outside and as a result everyone has their A/C running. Some of our power plants are still fired by coal and that ain't a good thing. The other thing that makes our air so toxic is that, even though this big city has a superb mass transit system, many people still choose to drive. Cars spend a lot of time idling and when they are doing this they are pumping a lot of toxins into the air. My city has recently enacted an anti-idling law but how are you going to enorce this? It is so much easier to blame everything upon the smoker and this certainly does let all the big players off the hook.

Never, ever listen to the fashion advice of a guy who is straight, sez Green. Everyone knows that straight guys have got bad taste; they want their girlfriends to look like hookers and their wives to look like their mommas!

Thank you, Sunta, for your latest post. I must confess that I have not carefully read through the entire post - lazy Green! - but as you know Canada is a northern country and so I have comments to make. The ecological structure becomes more and more fragile as we move towards the polar regions and along with this fragility goes a lack of resilience. We are no longer living in a lush part of the globe and the damage done to the creatures and the plant life that are to be found in these regions cannot easily be repaired. The continued survival of polar bears is a big problem and is representative of the issues which complicate the discussion of the polar regions. The aboriginal folk of the Canadian north deny that there is a problem vis-a-vis the polar bear issue but then they are making money off wealthy southerners who want to bag a polar bear. The American government and international organizations admit that this species is in trouble. The species is in trouble because the ice conditions that this species requires for hunting purposes have degraded; we don't have much ice in our polar regions because our winters are now too damn warm. It is ironic that the American government admits to a concern about this species but will not admit to the fact that there is global warming. It seems that some of Canada's northern folk, and these are mostly aboriginal people, are also in trouble. They have chosen to live in the north and they have always relied upon winter shipments of hard goods by land. This is because the watery north freezes up solid and this is when the year's supplies of heavy goods are customarily trucked in to these settlements. Well, a year ago the land never really did freeze over until very late in the winter months. This left these northern settlements hanging of course; would they be able to receive their supplies for the year or not? And now I find myself, a Canadian, writing to you all from Toronto, Canada. We haven't seen snow this year. It has been rare when the temperature has dropped below 32 degrees F. The lawns are green on my street and the squirrels are out there gambolling. I own two sheepskin coats; I have worn one of 'em once this year. I am saving a lot on heating costs but I find myself missing winter - I am a Canuck born and bred - and I find myself dreading summer for I know that whatever I have saved on fuel costs now I will more than blow away on air conditioning next summer.

Actually, Ill Jedi, I believe that your last post was what we old f**ks were looking for. You raise a lot of good points in this post. President Polk was a president who slithered into obscurity for good reasons. Presumably there are other underperformers. And your comments about the messier/more controversial aspects of the administrations of Lincoln and FDR are fascinating. Both of these men have acquired great lustre over the years of course. You do well by reminding us of the underbelly of these administrations for there is always an underbelly, is there not? Now, I should mention here that I am Canadian and am therefore not as conversant with your history as most of the other contributors to this thread might be. Though the rules, as I see it, of good discussion or debate or whatever you want to call it do require that we avoid the cop-out of utilising the sound-bite technique - that is to say, issuing a statement and then bailing - it is always important to provide detail, the more the better, in order to press home your point. And if the detail that you provide is sufficiently rich you will not only educate those foreigners who frequent this site, foreigners such as myself, you may well have won them over to your viewpoint. This will be a tough act to perform in the present case: George W is wildly unpopular abroad.

Oh, Wheetsin, my heart goes out to you! I can imagine the horror.... Pumpkin appliquees and sequin ghosts, ugh! I was in the mood to go shopping today after my visit to my therapist. I was feeling in a better mood after she had debriefed me of all my Christmas stresses, I was in the heart of the best shopping district in the city, and we are in the season of sales. So I went snuffling around all sorts of stores ready to buy and came home with nothing. I found out that when you visit the "fat grrl" zone of stores you will be ambushed by pastels even when it is Winter. I found out that most every top will be a Vee-neck and that the one collection of black and white pure cotton Ts that didn't have V-necks and who were from a relatively up-scale designer had designs pressed into them. I like my clothes to be kinda plain and entirely grown-up. If I want to dress them up I want this to be my choice. I have a lot of jewellery, mostly costume, but no one can wear this over clothes that have been junked up by the manufacturer with cute appliquees, sequins and the like. It strikes me that many clothing manufacturers treat women of size as though they were mired in adolescence or pre-adolescence. The cuteness and the baby colours, and the cheap synthetic fabrics that are characteristic of pre-teen clothes show up again in the plus grrl sizes. I personally find this very disrespectful. It's been sticking in my craw for a long, long time now. Green has been a smart, cynical, surly old bat for some years now. She is not prepared to go to bed wearing sleepers which have Walt Dismal's characters printed on them even if they fit her and they are made of 100% pure cotton.

Most Canadians, the ones who have grown up in the cities, have never been near guns. We certainly don't own 'em. This means that your old farts can beat our old farts. lol

BJean, my theory about it is that these kids have grown up on sound bites and thus they believe that this is how one conducts rational discourse.

Poodles, you are describing a look that I look good in and like - the big white shirts and skiny black pants/jeans with vests look. I also look great in boat or jewel neck sweaters but these are hard to find. The clothing manufacturers assume that everyone wants to show off their boobs. The other thing is that I am a true Winter and look best in black, white, gray, and red. There are certain seasons of the year when it seems that it is raining pastels unless you are prepared to shop at the high-end clothing stores. I only wear cotton and linen. Why is it that so many stores think that overweight women want to wear pink or baby blue synthetic garments with cute appliques of flowers, hearts or kittens on them? A woman of size who wants to save money but still look like a grown-up is sh!t outta luck!

OMG, it could be that this year will be the Year of the Vomit! Hahahaha:(

Shucks - I didn't PB for all those months and then I did it twice within a week. 2007 could be the year of vomit for Green, eh. Ya never know...... Bleh....

It is ironic that the Muslims hate the Jews so intensely for Islam and Judaism are closely yoked and of course both Arabs and Jews are both Semitic peoples. Christianity was a religion that drifted away from the exigencies of the desert but both Judaism and Islam are desert religions. Both these religions have a much stronger sense of the responsibility of the host towards those who are in need. Hospitality and help towards travellers and others who are in need are one of the formal demands of both of these religions. This makes sense when you consider that these folk are living in an unkind part of the world. To deny someone help means that you are consigning them to death. The desert is unforgiving, you know. I've travelled through the Sahara in a carvan of specially outfitted cars. Even then we all remained in communication with each other. When I was a young student and hanging out in Morocco with a couple of other European students we were befriended by a young Moroccan who put us up in his crib. He slept on the floor. He didn't want anything from us even though we assumed that he did. The next day he took us over to meet his mum who lived in the old part of the city. She lived in one room which opened out onto a courtyard. There was a communal kitchen. She fed us tea and cakes. Over the years since then I have come to know many Muslims. Some of my family are Jews and though I have been raised more or less atheist I have done some reading and some observing. The practice of good works is formally enshrined in both Judaism and Islam. Indeed, one of the requirements to be a good Jew or to be a good Muslim is to practice kindness and show good works towards others: this is demanded by the religion. Such behaviour is always righteous but for those who live in the harsh conditions of the desert a slip from this will cause death. And of course you will remember that both Jews and Muslims follow certain dietary laws that Christians have taken a pass on.