green

I think that this is a very interesting discussion. (And thank you, Lee4, for the compliments.) I am inclined to believe that very, very few of us are entirely free of racial bias. In the case of those of us who truly do believe that we are entirely free of racism I suggest that we simply haven't found ourselves in a situation which tests our belief that all people are equal and equally valuable. How are you going to feel when your child wants to marry an Arab? Or your neuro-surgeon is black? Such situations can often end up being deal-breakers for folk who genuinely believed that they were not racists. And as Lee4 points out, racism isn't just the white man's crime although it is true that we are quite talented at this. I can tell you a whole bunch of stories of people whom I know who have been given grief by their families and communities for hanging with and dating people outside of their own race and culture. Some of these people are Chinese, some of them are South Asian, and some of them are Carribean. You see, my city is a city which is rich in new Canadians; though our new-comers are anxious to see their children master the ways of the new culture, they are equally anxious to preserve their own folkways, and it is when their kids decide to blend with the host culture and to intermarry that their parents and their communities will often have terrible problems with dealing with this apparent abandonment and disrespect. (Okay, one example: I used to know a Chinese Canadian girl who was living with a black guy; this drove her parents right around the twist. They weren't too happy about any of her white boyfriends either.)

My current mate would have been far too boring for me to look at when I was young and immature. But we have been together for over 22 years now and I consider myself to be a very lucky woman. He is loving, kind, nurturing, and generous. He has nursed me through a major depression, a few operations, and the deaths of my mum, aunt, dad, and my kid brother. He helps with the housework and he knows how to fix things. And he doesn't keep me on a tight leash. (The French guy was very possessive, something I had never encountered before.) He also loves to travel to exotic parts of the globe which works out well for me because this is something I love, too. An added bonus is that he is good looking. He ain't perfect. He is the most disorganised man I have ever met and creates messes wherever he stores his things. He also loses stuff, important stuff like keys, cameras.... He only reads the newspaper headlines and then figures that he is an expert!?! Kat, I have been in some bad relationships but your second husband sounds absolutely terrifying. You are lucky to be alive and well, and luckier still to now be in such a fine relationship. That second husband could have spooked you off men forever! You sound like a very strong, intelligent, and brave person to me.

Younger men are great, sez Green.

The kittens are just too cute! I want another, nicer cat but I am afraid that the terrible Little Orange will beat the crap out of it. Congratulations on the kitties and on your weight loss!

My ex-husband, the only guy whom I actually legally married, was a chronic sexual cheater. Though I came to understand the reasons behind his neediness I also decided that I didn't love him enough to live with his ways. When I sued him for divorce he was devastated and threatened to kill himself if I proceeded. He didn't kill himself and the woman who had done the most damage to our marriage didn't last all that long. He dumped her pretty damn quick and later on became involved with a woman whom he adored and he was anxious that we meet each other and become friends. By this time enough water had flowed under that bridge that my ex and I were buddies. I met his girlfriend and thought that she was fabulous. We had a lot in common and we have remained very, very close up to this day. She also ended up having to deal with his infidelities but she had a very different reaction to them. While they hurt her badly she chose to struggle on with the relationship. We all do something in the way of a cost analysis when we make our choices; my wife-in-law felt that his love for her, a profound love, was worth the infidelities. I hadn't and so I had dumped him. Whenever she talked to me about her relationship with my ex I always made a point of avoiding imposing my viewpoint on her. I simply listened to her and I asked her questions. I wanted her to talk is all. My ex died a little over 3 years ago from cancer and his wife hung in there until the very end. She was aware of some of his infidelities before he died and after he had died she came across all sorts of distressing material. She was shattered by his death and she was shattered by these further signs of his infidelity. Over the past few years she has talked to me at great length about all of these traumas; this is because we are close friends but also because we have shared a husband and a set of in-laws. Nevertheless, this is a woman who had made her choice: she loved her mate and she has been suffering from his absence. I made a different choice. I chose to move on when I was confronted with these difficulties and my life has been interesting in a fashion which would not have been possible had I opted to stick with this marriage. I should mention that I was very young and very idealistic when I discovered that my husband was cheating on me. At the time I felt that I would never be able to survive the shock, the pain, and the humiliation. And it may be much easier to function in the aftermath of a crashed marriage when one does not have to worry about children. I indulged in some irresponsible behaviour and then arranged for an unpaid leave of absence from work in order to spend 7 months lumbering around Europe. It was thanks to those 7 months and the friendships which I made during that time that I later ended up in my 2nd disasterous domestic relationship, this time with a French guy. This time around I rented out my house, quit my job, and left home in order to live with him. On the short (2-year) term this move turned out to be absolutely disasterous. But life is life and most experiences, even those which are painful, turn out to be useful and entertaining and much, much better than nothing at all. :mad: Eh? :mad: It is always better to have a story to tell, I figure............

Bummer.... I missed the latest meeting of the band gang. I am so very disappointed but will try to get my act together in order to connect with you all on Sept 16. I really enjoyed my first lunch with everyone and I sure do believe that it is a very fine and important thing that we make a point of experiencing face time with each other. We are all members of a very special club. It is nice to connect in the real world, eh.

We continue to live with the horrible Little Orange, our stray and a most ungrateful and destructive animal. If I wasn't an atheist I would be inclined to think that this had something to do with Karma but I know that we are on the sucker end of our own kindness and of dumb bad luck. A number of people we know have taken in really nice animals. We have Little Orange. She is a special animal and she has special needs. She is not picky about her food, though, and that is a good thing, isn't it?

Ah, grrl, it ain't just Americans who are obsessed with the skinny-thing, Canadians are, too. As for the quote which you ascribed to Rose Kennedy, I have always been under the impression that it was Edward the 8th's wife, Wallis Warfield-Simpson who initially said this. He was the Brit king who, if you will recall, gave up the throne in order to marry his very, very thin and much married and divorced American mistress. They shifted to France after his abdication but continued to be an embarassment to the monarchy. They continued to flirt with Naziism after Britain had entered into war with Hitler. It seems that Warfield-Simpson may have done the world a favour by removing her husband from the monarchy. Rumours are that he was as dumb as a plant as well as being a Nazi sympathiser. She continued to be astonshingly thin up until the day she died. Debates as to the nature of her husband's sexual issues/possible dysfunctions continue. :mad:

I always appreciate your posts and enjoy hearing your voice, Kat. You are wise and kind and experienced. And you are also right: while it is true that many individuals may stray for reasons which are entirely personal and have nothing to do with their loved ones, it is also true that if this needy and perhaps emotionally fraught adulterer happens to choose to dip his d!ck in the wrong well, he will end up by smashing what he does prize the most, his wife and family. This is certainly the risk that all adulterous individuals are up against and this is why society strongly prefers that we don't fool around. All of the major world religions stress the value of chastity outside of the framework of a stable union. A few religions, most notably Islam, do allow for multiple marriages and some cultures have accepted the concept of concubinage. Though this is a crummy deal for women what is acknowledged in these set-ups is that both women and their children must belong in a secure and stable setting. They must be protected. Child support payments and alimony were originally devised in order to protect those women and children who found themselves cast off by careless and callous mates. The problem with any sexual engagement, apart from masturbation, is that it involves 2 people and these 2 people may find that they have very different emotional needs. A married man who decides to have a fling with a sexually very aggressive single woman is likely going to run into grief. This is a chick who is anxious to mate and to settle down. Her clock might be tick, tick, ticking down, you know. A married guy with a wife and kids may indicate to her on some kind of subconscious level that he will make for a stable mate and parent...and thus his allure, eh. Or she might be competitive. Or she might enjoy destroying stable relationships. When I was a single woman I would always run away from men who showed no love for their mates or ex-mates. I figured that a man who was unable to love the other women who had filled his life would be unable to love me. My plan was never to leave and then be dissed. Whether a relationship is going to last a lifetime or just a few hours it is a fine thing to understand that you will be remembered and valued. This brings me to an awfully strange place with respect to Zannie's present situation. Certainly Zannie has been horribly damaged by her mate's behaviour. She may well wish to move on. Should Zannie and her mate choose to resume their life as a couple, she might wish to take comfort from the fact that her husband has never dissed his mistress. A weird and kinda grotesque comment on my part, Zannie, but remember that such a man will never, ever diss you.

Dynamo, I know that you have been struggling with your sluggish (far too efficient) metabolism for a bunch o months now. I know that this has been a real source of frustration for you. (I must confess that I am also a serious fan of the Single Bandsters' thread.) It sure is great to hear that you are currently losing about a lb per week; doing the math this means that you might theoretically lose 52 lbs over the year. Life doesn't generally work this way as we all know: there are the gains and the, um, non-gains. Life and weight and financial investments all do seem to run on The Snakes & Ladders school of progress. I want to tell you that although I now find myself at target weight I am still in the process of psychologically sorting myself out. Certainly my initial weight loss was both easy and very much desired. Dumping enough weight that I was able to move from size 18W to a regular 16 was a joyful experience for me. I am now at the point where I easily fit into a size 10 with room to spare and this is proving to be much more of a psychological challenge than I would have expected. I have not seen this size for decades and I am simply not used to it. I also feel that I am perched in a precarious place. Any inattention to my food intake and kaboom! I will suddenly explode into my 18Ws. This will, of course, take place over night. I will go to bed wearing the 10s and wake up groping for the 18Ws. In short, I sure am not comfortable with being a normo. I suspect that it is going to take me a number of years before my inside meets up with my outside. (Size 10 Green is still a surprise to her mate. My husband is still prone to saying, "omigawd! You've lost a lot of weight!") All of this is because I want to tell you that this biz of weight loss is an exceedingly complicated one and I totally get your post. The lapband has served me brilliantly with respect to the mechanics of weight loss. But the loss of the hated lard is a complicated bit of work for interleaved with the mechanics of successful weight loss are a bunch of emotional issues, issues which have to do with the definition of our own identities. I am in the process of bouncing around with that stuff. The fact that I am presently unfilled makes all of this emotional stuff especially perilous for me.... I really am afraid that I might enter into some sort of self-fulfilling eating jag prophecy. blehhhh!

Yep, that obsession with skinny chicks seems to be largely confined to American and Canadian guys. Men in other parts of the world are far more relaxed about a woman's size and many men adore a "thick," curvy woman. I always feel a lot more comfortable about myself when watching Brit flicks and television shows. There I find thicker, and older women being portrayed as sexually viable. And I am charmed by their imperfect teeth since I, too, have European teeth. I have also heard that the frail, skinny, Calista Flockhart look is not at all prized in black culture - this seems to be a white thang. Certainly Flockhart and the rest of her gang do not look juicy, strong, and healthy. I wonder why we all managed to buy into this notion that extreme skinniness is beautiful. In our remote past this condition indicated that the female was either still a child and thus not ready to bear children or that she was ill and would likely be unable to bear and then nurture children. All representations of womanhood from these prehistoric times depict women as having wide hips, big bellies, and big breasts. In fact these characteristics were exaggerated. It is worth noting that goddess worship was prevalent at this time. Men were both respectful and mystified by the ability of women to procreate. And if you examine historical portraiture you will note that most of the beauties who were painted were obese by modern standards. You will also see that the fashions of previous eras were designed to make women look bulky. There were crinolines and bustles, etc. Watching Bollywood flicks which were made during the '60s through to the '80s is also fun. The Indian heroines are absolutely gorgeous but also quite tubby. Fat is just such a complicated issue....

People tend to describe other people by their most salient features and this is why if you happen to be a white person with a group of black people they will describe you as the white chick. Unfortunately for us normos are the majority and that is why they will describe you as the fat or big chick. Women with big chests will find themselves referred to by the size of the same. This is just what people do. I know that I have pointed out skinny chicks from time to time to my friends. As for your guy friend, he may simply have been disappointed that you didn't eat a more substantial lunch. I have read a number of times that guys really enjoy eating with a woman who eats well - i.e. like a guy - and who is not on the perennial rabbit food diet. One of these articles mentioned that many women when on dates are now ordering steak and potatoes because they feel that the guys like to see them eat. I mention these things to you as alternative explanations. It is possible that you may be a little oversensitive on this issue of your weight. Most people are far too caught up in their own lives to give more than a passing thought about ours. We are the ones who think about our weight all the time. Most other people really don't care all that much except for family. They are the ones who enjoy tormenting and humiliating us by reminding us of our weight problems. :tired I can totally relate to your complaints about clothes. These are not only more expensive, they come in ugly styles, ugly colours, and horrible synthetic fabrics. It is almost impossible to look cute or chic when you are over normo size. It is like all the manufacturers have decided that fat people have lousy taste as well. This is something which has made me mad for many years now. :mad:

Thanks, ladies.

It seems that they feel that they don't need to fix the hernia. Apparently hiatal hernias are very common amongst older folk. I did not have a hernia at the time I was banded, nor did I have reflux. These are all brand new headaches for me, ones which I developed 10 months post-band. As for the big clothes, these are made of linen and I love linen. I simply haven't had the heart to toss 'em. (Linen is just so comfortable in the summer.) In fact I often wear them even though they now give me the Rap Star Crotch look. Today, however, I am wearing a pair of size 10 capris and my crotch isn't down around my kneecaps. Of course it is a lot cooler and I do have the central A/C turned off as well. LOL

When applying an international yardstick to this business of measuring the quality of education available to all citizens of free and democratic countries there are a number of European countries which do perform better than either the United States or Canada. Japan is another democratic country which has a superb education system in place. I believe that you will discover that most individuals who wish to come to Canada and the United States wish to come here for reasons of political freedom, and for economic opportunity. While it is true that those people who come from grindingly poor backgrounds may find our educational systems to be an attractive option, certainly those highly educated families who have immigrated to Canada from such places as the former Soviet block nations are none too impressed by what passes for public school education on this side of the Atlantic. And most Europeans whom I know find our level of general knowledge to be not so hot. In my opinion knee-jerk patriotism was not an appropriate nor profitable response to the discussion on the table here. The initial discussion was about failures within the framework of the current approach to education. No one had any intention of dissing America until you introduced the issue in your above quoted post. And as you raised the issue you will see that I have provided you with my viewpoint on the topic.

I was banded last Sept and am at goal but I have had to have a complete defill due to a recent attack - my first - of acid reflux. This wasn't responding to meds and when I had a series of upper G.I. X-rays it was discovered that I also have a hiatal hernia. So I am currently running on empty until everything gastric settles down. :phanvan My challenge at the moment is not to gain back the weight which I have lost. I do think that my stomach has shrunk significantly and that my new eating habits have made a permanent difference but I sure do miss the sense of security which my band provides. I really miss my training wheels/hall monitor and am really looking forward to getting refilled. :help: I can say that I still fit my mini-clothes (I was defilled a couple of weeks ago, I guess) but I am glad that I didn't chuck out my big grrl gear. :paranoid The upside of all of this is that I have learned that my stomach has shrunk and that I really have learned how to monitor my food intake. As to how long this good behaviour will last without my band, I dunno.... I will keep you in the loop. :ranger:

And doggie bags are wonderful. They mean mo' meals with less work. :car: Love that microwave.

My husband noticed when I had lost 11 and the rest of the world started noticing when I lost about 20.

Tell them that you are on a new diet, one which seems to have worked for some women you have met. And you figure that you are going to give it a shot.:car:

My comments concerning infidelity may well be unpopular and unwanted but I feel that I may as well wade into this topic. I do believe that people are unfaithful for many, many reasons. While it is true that some individuals may be shallow, careless of the feelings of those close to them, and greedy for sexual experiences, most individuals engage in outside relationships for any number of other reasons. I have known at least two men who had chosen to fool around on their mates because they were sexually inexperienced when they first fell in love and settled down. After some number of years their sense of having missed out on a vital "masculine" part of life began to grind these men down. In one case the wife, my good friend, sent her husband over to seduce me while she was out of town. At the time I was a single woman and according to her husband, once he confessed all, they figured that my friendship was expendable. I had, while I was single, had a few sexual relationships with married men. To tell the truth, I was the perfect "other woman." This is because I was happy with my lifestyle and had no desire to steal anyone's mate. Because I was alert and interested as to what was going on with these men, I learned that these were individuals who deeply loved their wives and kids. Much of what constituted these adulterous affairs consisted of friendship and psychotherapy. Indeed, I really did feel like a sex therapist. There was only one instance where the individual wanted to jump ship in order to live with me, something which I was absolutely against. Ugh!! for me because I had no desire to settle down. In all other cases the adulterer was profoundly attached to his mate and to his family. I found this deeply touching and this is why I would be unable to cast my mate adrift if I were to learn that he had been sexually unfaithful even though I would be left feeling terribly hurt and jealous on the short term. What many people don't understand is that people are often unfaithful for reasons which have everything to do with their own private issues, pains, and insecurities: infidelities of this nature may have nothing at all to do with you. Please listen to me: I have been both the wife and the other woman. At the moment I am a wife and have been for the past 22 years. I tell you this because I would like you to know that I am not biased in either direction.

One of my closest friends is a public school teacher. She is a single woman in her 50s who has a caustic sense of humour and is very well read. She was teaching 1st graders in an inner city school for quite some years. Most of her kids came from Carribean families and all of them were the children of immigrants. She found that some of her students learned more easily than others but she was both charmed and amused by her kids. The big city stressed her out, however, and so she quit her job and left town. Since then she has been teaching small town white kids who come from economically depressed backgrounds. She has found this a much more unpleasant experience. Many of her charges not only seem to have problems with learning, they are also socially dysfunctional. She has said to me, "Green, these kids are really mean to each other. I never saw that kind of cruelty when I was teaching immigrant kids. They were sweet little kids!" She has also found dealing with their parents to be a nightmare. These are individuals who are entirely unwilling to take any responsibility for their children's problems; instead, they become abusive and blame the school and the teacher. She sees these children when they are beginning their school careers. She reckons few, if any, will complete highschool. She doesn't see any that are university bound. And yes, up here in the Province of Ontario all students are shuffled on to the next grade regardless of knowledge. This has been the case for decades. Years ago I met a woman who had to really fight hard to have her son repeat grade eight. My friend is now counting the years, months, and days until her retirement.

I am interested and want to read more!

It would never occur to me to diss you for cheating on your mate. People are unfaithful for a wide variety of reasons. Human behaviour is complicated.

Anna, I am sorry for having misread part of your post. Thank you for drawing my attention to this.

I guess I want to say is that these adultery babies are in the way of a Freudian slip. These babies are planned accidents. I sure do feel for these children but not for those individuals who carelessly, selfishly, and thoughtlessly set about with setting their little lives into motion