green

Very cogently expressed, Wasa. Bravo! It is not that we choose perversely not to believe, it is that there seems to be absolutely no reason to believe. We see zero evidence to support belief, is all.

I can only wear a big sleep shirt or nightgown and the item has to be thin cotton or linen. Silk/synthetics are too hot, lace is scratchy, and pajamas end riding up right into my crotch area. Very uncomfortable and I don't wish to spend my nights pulling clothing out of my privates.

We keep our plastic flamingoes in the backyard where only a few select neighbours can enjoy them. The front half of our house looks like normal folk live here. Bwahahaha! I love your signature work, the work at the foot of your posts that is, by the way. (Is that Hitler running around and around that tree?)

I think that cheap fake flowers are the best. I love it when they fade from the sunlight, get dirtier and dirtier and are still sadly blooming in January. Fake birds, flamingoes if you can get 'em, will add to the charm. These gardens are often the most interesting and are a lovely thing to plant if you live in a conventional neighbourhood.

Yep, this sounds normal to me. I sleep with the fan on throughout the year and I always have to have my feet, at least one, protruding. Often I sleep with the duvet covering only one leg. My sensitive mate loves to cuddle up to me, his little "furnace," but I snarl at him to leave me alone, wailing that I am too hot to sleep with him crushing me! The poor guy. I don't cuddle. Too damn hot! And I live in Canada, eh. This means that in the winter I can wake up sweating only to find him and the cats, those heat-seeking missiles, glued to me. Argh!

Hey there, Indio. Yep, I haven't been posting much because I am still undergoing daily radiation treatments and the occasional chemo on top of all the nuking. This means that I am either at the hospital or trying to sleep off the nasty side effects. Cancer is very slimming but not in a good way. I am now getting my butt reamed for losing weight and am told to drink whole milk, eat butter, icecream...in short, my new diet instructions run counter to the band way. Now I have to try to eat like a weight lifter and I am not enjoying it at all. The funny thing is that I am often starving; it is just that my taste buds have been smashed by the treatments and everything I try to eat tastes like toxic sludge to me. Now, they have said that I will eventually get my sense of taste back. I sure hope that they are right! Anyhow, here are my new stats: I am still 5'6" tall but I now weigh 133 lbs and my skin looks terrible as there is far too much of it. I have no muscle mass because my new sedentary life style doesn't encourage it. On the plus side, I have only 3 more weeks of radiation and one more chemo session to go. Then it will be time for me to heal up from this. And they do say that I am gonna be okay at the end of it all. So that part is cool, eh.

I have been following this thread with interest. I believe that it is normal to wish one's children to hold the same values and beliefs as oneself. This is only human nature. I know that as an atheist I would be inclined to shield my children from religious influences until they were old enough to sort through the information with what I would consider to be reasonably well developed critical faculties. It is understandable that believers feel the same way.

This is wonderful news. Big congratulations are certainly due. You must feel terrific about this milestone!

I've known two women who have had hysterectomies because of fibroids. These growths were benign and the surgeons could have taken the slow route and opted excise the masses instead of a full-out removal of their container. Both women afterwards mourned the loss of their wombs claiming that the quality of their sexual pleasure was severely impaired. As for myself, for many years when I was young I was intent on getting a hysterectomy. This was because I had always had bad problems with my period - cramps - and because I had no desire to have children. Why suffer the downside of being able to reproduce when I had no intention of do so? I thought. My doc at the time talked me out of this by telling me that my orgasms would be affected by the removal of my uterus. You see, during arousal it assists the area in becoming engorged and thus hyper-sensitive to orgasms. Now, I am aware that this is a dissenting opinion but I thought that you might be interested in the information. Good luck in whatever you choose to do.

I agree. I, too, am fairly nit-picky about how I say something and I prize this quality in others. And when someone takes the trouble to attend to the rules of written communication you will usually find that their thoughts likewise become clearer and more disciplined and easier for the rest of us to understand. Clarity in thought and in language is just the finest thing that I can think of.

Men and women tend to like very different things. Men, for instance, do not collect plush animals and yet many women love the things. When giving a gift to an independent old man it would be best to ask your male friends and members of the family what they would suggest. Women do tend to like windchimes. An old man might just find them to be noisy and an irritant. I give this advice in all respect. I spent the past 20 years of my life working on the floor with men in an aircraft factory. During that period of time there were no birthday parties, showers, or pot lucks. And any plush toys or cheap votive candles handed out were always gifts given by some of the handful of women working there. I myself did not participate in these grrl activities. In many respects I am kinda like a 89 year man myself. I would rather have a quart of single malt scotch or some well aged cheddar or a double-creme brie. Quality chocolate is also appreciated by many men. The key ideas are quality and that the gift doesn't stick around long enough to become a dust catcher. (I guess I display my feminine side in my fondness for cut flowers.)

Bravo! Excellent post!!

If he is not very sociable it probably means that he enjoys drinking. Get him some nice cheeses, some quality salamis, peperonis, and a bottle of Jack. He is a man and that is the kind of stuff they like.

Mandela after Nelson Mandela. Or call him Nelson.

Ooh, I want me one of those. Right now I have a husband who does it but I have to nag him first.

I now weigh 134 lbs and I am 5'6" tall but I still have an equator where my waist was supposed to be. Now that is not very nice, is it? Tummy tuck, the next frontier, eh.

I don't believe that the ACLU is against the practice of one's religion inside a church, synagogue, mosque or inside one's home. I am under the impression that this organization seeks to separate state and religion and that is all. Doesn't seem like such a big deal to me. Of course, I am a foreigner and don't fully understand the American ways.

Yep, what MacMadame said.

I prefer cats. My tenant has cats and turtles, we have cats, and whenever she is away we look after her lot and vice versa. Cats are low maintenance compared to dogs and yet they can still be very loving. They don't smell and you don't have to wash 'em. They also dress up the place; get enough of them and it looks like you have a nice collection of fur throws draped over your furniture while they are sleeping. And they give you the comfort of sharing your bed when you are sick or feeling down. Cats is where it is at for the lazy pet owner.

Diane, I am so sorry to hear this news. All my thoughts and hopes are with you at this time. Please do keep us updated on your situation. Remember that we are your support group and that we are pulling for you.

My advice would be to dump the dumb girlfriend. You have enough on your plate. Good luck on all your other projects.

She sounds like quite the 2-faced bitch, one without any sense of kindness or of social borders when it comes to her peers. It also sounds like the boss enjoys her company a lot. This would indicate that she is cold-hearted and manipulative, able to crap on her colleagues and suck up to her superiors all at the same time. Play your cards right and you will be able to crap on her while she is on her way down or out the door but do be careful. This one doesn't play nice!

It seems to me that the above comments can just as easily be considered social or economic stereotyping: poor people are likely to be lousy tippers no matter their colour. It makes sense that women tend to be cheap at tipping; we generally make less money than men do. Sadly, there are some rich people who are cheap, too, and these are individuals who don't have reason to be. To some extent stereotypes do make sense and do express a degree of reality. People in Texas like cowboy music, Italians love pasta, Russians love to drink, Canadians are polite, and English cuisine is boring. They wouldn't have come about if there wasn't more than a grain of truth behind them. What is tragic is when one refuses to meet the individual, and instead chooses to only see the stereotype. People can always surprise. I myself am half Scottish, half Jewish, a woman and I tip very generously as do all my grrlfriends.

My band experience has been entirely positive. I was a bulk eater and I loved my carbs. The band caused me to feel full on much, much smaller amounts of food. As for me, I have always eaten well but after being banded I did more home work on nutrition and food and I began to eat even more carefully than I had before. I lost 50 lbs over 10 months and looked and felt great. The one problem which I thought might be band related, acid reflux, turned out to be cancer of the larynx, a whole other story.

Thanks for replying. I think about you a lot these days, especially when I am lying down under some machine or other. I think of you throwing up on the nasty lady and that always makes me smile. I am hoping hard that your cancer never, ever returns. I am also hoping hard that mine goes and never, ever returns. My scans have been clear so far but they have yet to do my brain. The brain will get scanned this week so it is more isotopes for me. I am assuming that it will be okay: I never get headaches or blurred vision. My oncologist is a Canadian Korean and one of the best looking men I have ever laid eyes on. He looks a little bit like Keanu Reeves but more exotic. He is also very charming. I guess that, like yourself, I will continue to have ties to CancerLand via scans and other forms of monitoring.