green

Actually, although the subject matter in this section drifts into what one of my literature profs called The Big Questions, I don't think that anyone of us has been trampling on anyone else's feelings. I suspect that we are all aware that we are dealing with sensitive material and that we wish to examine these topics in a dispassionate manner. Your concerns are understandable, however. The most interesting topics are often the most loaded. My hunch is that what we are trying to do here is step away from the spin that so often accompanies these issues, particularly when they are being dealt with by political machinery.

My own experience with the Roman Catholic church has been good. My own parents were not at all religious but they did have us baptised in the Anglican church (Episcopalian church south of the border); this was because my sibs and I were born during an era when employers still had the right to ask a candidate for his religion and Anglicans are always in good taste. Later on I was sent to a boarding school run by Anglo-Catholic nuns and I briefly "got" religion. I chose to get married in the Roman Catholic church because it was important to my in-laws and my side of the family didn't care. The father who was officiating knew that I would be using birth control and said not a word against this, nor did he try to convert me. He did require that my husband to be and I attend a series of 6 lectures given under the auspices of the church to interfaith couples before our marriage. The father who gave these lectures opened by saying that he knew that he would be talking to individuals who were likely not deeply engaged in their own religions since otherwise they would not be choosing partners outside of their own faiths. The lectures themselves were a mix of psychology and sociology 101 and the method of presentation was both very loving and very interesting. Of course I had been expecting something quite different back in 1972 when we came knocking on the church's front door, requesting to be married. And this interfaith initiative seems to have been one that may have been limited to my city. It is also worth noting that the kind man who did marry us advised us against a nuptual Mass. He said that this would only alienate the bulk of the attendees, folks who were not Roman Catholic. As for my mother-in-law, it is impossible to think of anything I could have done for her that would have meant more at that time.

Cute, very cute! :rolleyes

I've always been a rebellious kid and a foul-mouthed Northerner. (You can't get any further north than Canada, eh?) My parents shipped me off to boarding school with hopes of getting me fixed up. After years of getting into trouble there I finally got expelled. Now my (Scottish) mother was born and raised in England and came from a good family. Her accent was rather like that of the Queen's. Towards the end of her life I taught her quite a bit of foul language and then I used to fall about laughing when I heard her say rude things with that voice.

I like reading your stories, too, Bjean. I found the story of your annulment particularly interesting. I had heard before that the Catholic church will offer this, the option of buying your way out of an inconvient previous marriage, as a solution. I first heard about it when I was living in France.

Buffalo was hard hit last night with a blizzard; there has been power outages and now there are school closures. As usual, Toronto has escaped the weather. We seem to live, largely snow-free, inside a snow belt. They say that all that concrete has created a mini-climate here.

Is that a girl or a life raft?

I use the word twat or the c-word. I've never been comfortable with cute words and my anatomy. This used to embarass my mother.

The WellbutrinSR pills are bigger than the XL pills but you can crush them. I had some that were left over and was crushing them during the first week after the band was installed. I also take Celexa for depression. The pill is small and can be crushed. It doesn't help you quit smoking, though.

Ah, Carlene, I think that there will always be women who will elect to see their pregnancies through and then make sure that there is a child who is there for you and for folks like you. That abortion is one of the choices available does not mean that it will be the option that all women will choose. Many fine women will elect to continue with their pregnancies. I knew a woman who was working for women to have the right to choose and yet was hoping to adopt her brother's ex-girlfriend's child. The irony was not lost on her and she did adopt the baby! He is now pushing 30 and has a family of his own. Indeed the irony is not lost on me. My kid brother, the sweetest of us three sibs, was an accident and might have been aborted had this been readily available at that time.

There is this touchy issue of racial profiling, isn't there? Though I tend to "dress to the left" I must confess that I feel that we should leave our politically correct sensitivities behind us. Blonde-haired, blue-eyed families lugging tiny children are not a target group; these folks will not be blowing up aircraft. Why spend time and resources on them? On my way back to Canada from Mexico City via Atlanta post 9/11 I had my carry on luggage isolated and swept for gun powder residue. I was fascinated since it all seemed so Law & Order but it did take time and there was a long line-up and I was just passing through. Moreover, I am post-menopausal, a woman, and so white I seem almost blue. And in a similar fashion my Scottish cousin, another person who cannot tan, was given the gears when he wanted to cross the border in order to watch a hockey game in Detroit. Neither one of us is likely to want to blow ourselves up for Allah and 72 virgins, eh.

Thanx for your kind words, BJean, and for your always thoughtful comments, Carlene. The man who pioneered freedom of choice in Canada was Dr. Henry Morgentaler. He is a little munchkin of a man, and is someone who survived the Holocaust. He opened an abortion clinic when it was still illegal because he felt that every child should be a wanted child and that unwanted children were more likely to go on to commit attrocities as adults. I don't know whether I agree with his theory but that is his philosophy and that is what drove him to challenge the system up here. He was charged with breaking the law a couple of times, spent time in the slammer, and the law was eventually changed so that freedom of choice became legal. My brother, a doctor, and one of his daughters were skiing at the same time and place as Morgentaler was. My niece commented on his appearance - he really is a little shrimp of a man - and my brother told her that she was looking at the best friend that Canadian women have ever had. (I have heard that he is, like many idealists, not a pleasant person to be around.)

I have a friend who is quite a bit bigger than I am who loves restaurants that offer buffet meals. I don't. I prefer my meal to be cooked to my specifications and delivered to me while still fresh and hot. I am aware that my attitude is kinda picky in an overweight woman.

Earlier in this post I was prepared to give a fairly smug answer and I can still say that I have been lucky in that my city has become, more than ever, a city of immigrants. I live in Toronto, Canada, and our population is over 3 million people; most of us are first, second, or third generation immigrants. A lot of the people who live in this city have arrived from somewhere else and a lot of the newest Canadians are not white. Toronto is a city where multiculturalism does seem to work. There are many ethnic or racial festivals but these are open affairs and are widely publicized; the understanding is that other local folk will join in and will be welcomed. It should be remarked that there may have been some polarization of the Muslim community since the horrible events of 9/11 and the overall political shift within that community. But this is recent. As for green herself, this blonde girl was treated like gold when she moved onto her street fourteen years ago. She was single and she was the token blondie. She received regular care packages of chow from her Greek neighbours as well as her West Indian, Italian, and Portuguese neighbours. (Life was different once her significant other moved in, ya know. She had to start cooking for herself.)

Interesting info, Wheetsin. In those days when I was seeking to have my tubes tied I was much younger and so was the world - this was during the 1970s-80s. One thing I did discover was that sterilization of men or women in France was illegal. At the time I was having my abortion the medical folks involved were concerned that I wouldn't become a regular. They wanted to talk birth control methods with me. I thought that this was good management on their part and I suggested that while they were moseying aroung the neighbourhood they might take the time to sterilize me. "Mademoiselle!" They were shocked and I later discovered that what I was asking them to do was illegal in France. I learned all about it in my Systeme Juridique class. I was shocked. Sterilization is illegal in France. "Even for guys?" I squawked. My prof was amused. She couldn't imagine any macho French man voluntarily submitting to sterilization. I ended up living in France for three years and during that time I met a married French woman who had had two children with great difficulty. She had followed this by two abortions because her birth control failed her and she was not able to be legally sterilized. I guess I find myself noting all of this because this issue of women's rights and the question of how one should react in face of our fecundity seems to be a loaded question.

Argon, I would like to answer your inquiry. I am on Wellbutrin XL300mg for reasons of depression, hereditary in my family. This drug is also marketed as Zyban and has been useful for those individuals wishing to quit smoking. I've got to come clean now about my own dirty habits; I've been smoking since I was 19 years old and am deeply addicted. (Please note my age at the top right of this post.) Though I haven't managed to quit smoking I think that you should give this drug a shot. It has worked for many people and it has helped me to cut down on my smoking habit. It is also an anti-depressant that does not ruin one's sex drive nor cause one to gain weight. I have a Big depression problem and I am on other medications that have these side effects. My advice to you would be to try Zyban/Wellbutrin. If you don't like it, you can quit it. Aunty green says, "go for it and good luck, kiddo."

As some of you may know, I am Canadian and I am, therefore, commenting from a point of possible ignorance. What we have heard up here is that the value of the school system in your country depends on which school board you live in since the school taxes raised will go to that school board only. Up here the educational system is run on more egalitarian lines; school taxes from rich and poor sectors are thrown in together and are apportioned out equally. What poor schools may suffer from is the lack of the parental back-up. These families are poor and often are single parent families. The parents are not too engaged in what is going on at school except perhaps in an adversarial way; if the kid is doing poorly, the family wonders if this is due to racism. It also seems that the kids' own lack of comfort in and sense of anxiety in their immediate social environment does a huge amount of damage. These kids are not short changed in school. In the junior grades these kids tend to do just fine. It is when they hit junior high that their sense of bitterness and alienation kicks in and their performance both academically and socially ends up in the crapper. The drop-out rates are high and the girls go on to have babies.

Green is getting her first fill next Tuesday. I think I need it. I am just through mushie land and my big appetite is back! I am thinking of doing a bloody steak before the fill. My mate has some in the freezer.

Thanx, Carlene. You always make thoughtful and gracefully expressed comments. green

Sex is, along with the instinct to preserve one's own life, probably the most powerful primal urge. It is part of our hardwiring and has to do with passing on our genetic code. Sex is up there with food and shelter. It is for this reason that counselling people who do not want children to remain abstinent does not work. It should be noted that the drive to have sex is strongest in the young, and this makes sense for it is when they are physically at their reproductive prime even though emotionally and economically they are not prepared for parenthood. I believe that my counsel to teenagers would be to abstain but I would back this up with solid information on human sexuality and birth control methods. And I would never, ever have a woman suffer through an unwanted pregnancy in order to punish her for her sexuality. I remain entirely convinced that the issues involved in the termination of a pregnancy should remain between a woman and her doctor. I must confess that I am especially scornful of old white male legislators who wade in on this question. What do they know about this issue? As we all know, the overweight deal with problems that are largely invisible to yer average person. And of course the story is the same whether you are a woman or a person of colour or someone who is handicapped or any other group with specific needs. Those groups must have their own authentic voice. Employing this line of reasoning, I say that the right for each woman to choose must remain her right. Any woman who finds herself uncomfortable with electing to have an abortion may opt to keep her child or to give the child up to another couple. Such women are very special, there is no denying this, but not all women are capable of this.

Women can find themselves pregnant for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with being "lazy and immoral." In my own case it was a failure of birth control. I had never wanted children and had been most scrupulous about using birth control from day one in my sexual life. I would have had my tubes tied had I been able to find a doctor who was prepared to do the operation on a woman of my age. Twelve years later I found myself pregnant. This was a nightmare for me. I was living in France at the time and was able to arrange an abortion through the local hospital. This cost less than $300. I, on the other hand, was neither emotionally nor physically equipped to have a child. It was made clear to me that if I had wanted to follow through with the pregnancy the government would have provided help in the form of free medical assistance as well as any other assistance that I might have needed. France's birthrate is very low and the government provides cash incentives to women to have children. They also have state run day care centres and pre-schools. In addition, a woman may take up to 3 years off work and still come back to her job. It is much easier to have and raise children over there than it is in North America. The taxes are much higher, though.

And Poodles' family sounds like it is both the most interesting and fun. You've got a generous mix of cultures and cuisines there, Poodles. Green wants an invite to dinner.:hungry:

You don't have to be White for the colour thing to be an issue. One of my friends is from Jamaica. She is quite dark. She has told me that the lighter skinned members of her own family almost always elect to estrange themselves from their darker skinned relatives. This has been going on for generations. And in India the matrimonial adverts will list the candidate's colour of skin if he or she is light, along with other qualifications, such as caste, education, size of dowry.

While it is to be hoped that all women are responsible about sex and take appropriate birth control measures we all know that this ain't always the case. Some women are more careless than they should be, and sometimes accidents do happen. I suspect that those women who use abortion as their primary method of birth control are not too common but nevertheless this type of woman is the favored profile of the anti-abortionists for obvious reasons. Most women have abortions because of a one time mistake or because of a failure in birth control. I believe that it should be the woman's right to choose and that her needs trump those of the foetus. She is already engaged in living her life; the foetus has not begun his or hers. I also believe that every child should be a wanted child. It is a terrible thing to grow up unwelcomed and unwanted. Indeed, this is a fine way to start a dysfunctional life.

The way I look was a major factor in my choice to have this surgery. I live in the core of a large Canadian city. Like New York, we have good urban transit and we walk a lot. People who live downtown tend to be well-groomed and slim. I started gaining weight after I went through an early menopause just like my mother, and just like my mother all my weight gain was on my torso. At first I was fairly relaxed about this but when I was switched, for reasons of treating my problems with depression (also hereditary), to a fattening cocktail of pharmaceuticals, this weight gain stopped being a joke. I joined a gym but exercise alone wasn't doing much and by now I weighed too much for liposuction and a tummy tuck. The truth was that I had become fat, was going to get fatter, and I felt that my body was totally out of control. It had become my enemy and I was embarassed by myself. A friend told me about this procedure. I made an appointment in order to find out whether I would be a suitable candidate and now here I am, another bandster! I was banded September 7 of this year. I haven't been weighing myself because I got out of the habit of using a scale when I was 25 and I can't seem to break the groove. I have been having some NSVs however and I am learning how to break some of my more self-destructive habits. But it was my vanity that started this journey.