green

Dude, it is so much better in Canada. Everyone up here has medical coverage. It is folded into our taxes. The rich pay a little more

Remember, boys and grrls, etc, neutering is a very kind activity which you can do after you do your part by adopting a very nice stray cat or dog. Kudos to Bitter to housing her new gang of puppies. This must be especially difficult given that you are living under Noah Ark-like conditions at the moment. More water, more humidity and this means more bugs and more general smelliness. Many of us have had the experience of smelling a wet dog, eh? Not so nice. Keep on sending us dispatches from the swamps, Bitter. (The sad thing is that it is awful dry where I live.)

Good thing PETA wasn't lurking in the shadows, eh, grrls? *green snickers*

I read a novel written by Lewis (Scooter) Libby. It was called The Apprentice and it was, it seems, a first novel. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed it and I am kind of snobbish. Snobbish enough to wonder why an adult male would agree to allow himself to be known as Scooter(????)! Sh!t, I wouldn't even call one of my animals Scooter. I wouldn't even call a handicapped person in a turbo-charged wheelchair Scooter! The man is literate and he has written a fine first novel but I still don't get this Scooter-biz. What's with the pre-adolescent nick-name, eh? Can someone out there enlighten me?? Perspiring minds wanna know.......

But these are big companies!!! Indeed Cosco has penetrated Canada and can therefore be considered to be a multi-national corporation. As for Tyson Chicken, although I am not personally acquainted with the name, I have no doubt that you are right when you say that this is a big player. This would indicate that you have wealthy corporations who are choosing to by-pass both federal and state legislation in order to hire illegal foreign labour. Why would they do this? Because these people will work for less? Because these companies will not be on the hook for their health benefits and safety costs? The illegals are desperate and will work under conditions which are entirely unsatisfactory and often illegal. This has the effect of destroying the work standards for those Americans who constitute the working class. The end result is that you will find a lot of Americans who are on the dole (on welfare) and a lot of illegals who are working under crappy conditions. And a lot of tax revenue which goes missing due to illegal labour. Of course this is a complicated problem: either our jobs have gone to the third world or the third world has come to us via this biz of illegal labour. It seems that much of our food (agricultural and manufactured) production has been shifted off shore and now, in the case of the huge amount of imports from China, this reliance on cheap stuff is proving to be a fairly toxic treat. We have, of course, read about the pet food scandal. You may not be aware that there is a brand name toothpaste clone which is currently being sold in some discount stores where I live; this stuff has antifreeze materiel as part of its make-up. I also don't know whether you are aware of some of the latest and saddest reportage to come out of mainland China. This is all about a small number of people, maybe less than 15, who have either died or who have been left in a more or less vegetable-like state as the result of an antibiotic which had been manufactured under faulty conditions. According to the report which I read, the government was not especially quick about recalling the bad medicine and the manufacturer, though comfortable with admitting fault, is not willing to either apologise to these families nor pay reparations. The family who was profiled in this article has lost their only child, a 6 year old. They were, it seems, utterly smashed up by this loss. The mother has been unable to work or even to leave the house since her loss and the child's father has quit his job in order to devote his time to fighting for justice for his dead child. I suppose I find myself telling you all this story because I believe that it indicates that those average folks in the emerging economies are certainly not our enemies. And certainly it is not the illegal immigrant, either. These are ordinary people who find themselves being ground up, in one way or another, in larger events. My hunch is that your average individual, when placed under stress, tends to react to events and to, with greater or less success, attempt to survive. This may mean that some of us behave like cockroaches at times.... However, in democratic countries we do rely upon our governments to behave in a more ethical and a more dispassionate manner. It is for this reason that I can understand a family harbouring an illegal member of the family but cannot understand why corporations such as Costco or Tyson Chicken receive nothing more than a little smack when caught employing illegals. These companies should experience the loss of their fiscal gonads :whoo:as well as having a bunch of their execs spend a little time in the slammer. :eyebrows: With or without gonads, eh. :faint::) um, er, ovaries, or, erm, whatever...........

As for those chicks who are eating too much, sounds like you all are in need of a visit to the Fill Doctor.

Yahoo, Dynamo, you da grrl! Congrats on your arrival in wonderland. :D:D You must continue to send us postcards from your new address, you know. As for this biz of the handsome older man, well, I don't know whether that is really true. I remember an incident which occurred some years ago. My brother's kids were called to my city because my father was about to undergo emergency life-threatening surgery. While they were here they saw a middle-aged grey-haired guy driving a flashy sports car. The youngest of the three kids was both enthralled and horrified. "That old man is driving a sports car!" she gasped. "Look! He's driving a sports car!!" Sometimes the handsome older man only looks handsome to himself and to those who have had a peek at the size of his wallet. :heh:

Woohoo, you lucky Canucki! Big congrats from another Canadian, eh.

Well argued, Marjon.

@BJean: yep, I am nervous about the face surgery. This is why I am paying lotsa money in order to go to one of Toronto's high profile cosmetic surgeons. I figure that you wear your face wherever you go - unless you live in one of those Muslim countries - and you don't want to risk something weird a la Michael Jackson happening to it. :help: Afterall, I've been an atheist pretty much all my life and I doubt that I could convert to Islam at the age of 58 just to be able to hide a botched face job under a burqa! :eyebrows: So the facework is going to cost me the price of a car but then I have never bought a car; I don't drive, you see, and I figure that I am kinda shallow enough to want to go for it. I am terribly afraid of the pain which I will experience during the recovery time. And I have been told that the recovery time will be much longer than it was for the lapband. (3 weeks after the lift before I can leave the house without looking like the victim of spousal abuse.) :heh: I guess I also have the feeling that I am cheating in some fashion, a feeling I have never, ever experienced with the lapband although some of the members who post on this site have mentioned that they have/do feel this way.:phanvan I did, though, have a mini-lift which was done by this guy when I turned 50 and the results were splendid. I am still ahead of the game thanks to the work he did then. I recovered very quickly from that surgery, as I did from the lapband. (It seems to be rhinoviruses which leave me sick as a dog for 5-6 weeks. :sick blehhh!) It is a good thing that I have never watched the surgery, eh. :rolleyes

Mrspruett, I cannot understand why the companies in your state who were hiring the illegals to work on the factory floor were not severely penalized for this. The owners should have been slapped with crushing fines/jail time. It is this which would do more to help to stop the illegal problem than merely rounding up the illegals, firing 'em, and then reporting 'em to immigration. It seems to me that as long as Americans can hire cheaper illegal workers and get away with this, they will do so. And as long as the work is available the illegals will come. You cannot blame them for wanting a better life and for wishing to pursue the American dream. You can, however, blame the system in place for not so severely punishing those employers who hire illegals that other employers will be deterred from this practice. That gonad-talking dude of yours is right; there is some testicular lack, it seems.

Pete is good if you're in heat.

I don't mind telling people if they seem genuinely amazed by and interested in my weight loss. I figure that they may have a friend or relative who could benefit by hearing about the band and who would be left feeling lousy about their struggles with weight loss upon hearing that Green is only "half a woman." And my decision as to who to tell is made much easier by the fact that I took early retirement and so I don't have to deal with work colleagues. I don't know what I would do if I was still working. People can be real mean about other people's good fortune.

Yep, my ma-in-law is pretty talented at finding the clouds around the silver lining. haha Sometimes I am entertained by this and sometimes this drives me nuts. It all depends upon my own frame of mind and how much exposure I am receiving from the in-laws. I always require a lot of downtime and they are labour intensive. This means that spending time at the cottage with them can spell trouble for me. Though she can be truly kind she is also very vain and entirely self-absorbed, a narcissistic personality type. She was a great beauty and a gifted athlete when she was younger. She was used to being the centre of attention for most of her life and she also places great value on physical perfection. I have never, ever been remotely athletic; I was an artsy, klutzy kid. And as for my looks, although I have had tons of fun, my looks are more in the way of an acquired taste, eh. On the other hand I am much brighter than she is and she is in the way of being a brains groupie, and so she is awfully fond of me for that. In fact she went through a period of being most anxious that I provide her with a brainy grandchild! This strange attitude results in all our contacts containing a weird mixture of love and poison. Her comments concerning my weight loss are characteristic of her way of relating to me. She can be quite nasty at times. Of course the fact that I am 9 years older than my husband doesn't help. Nor does the fact that I am a divorcee and that we are living common-law. But to give her credit she is inclined to treat everyone the same.

And, BJean, you are right. And here I am thinking about your comments regarding your sister. Such handicaps as extreme homeliness, obesity, poverty, being a member of an unwanted minority, chronic pain, emotional disease, and physical handicaps rarely have an ennobling effect upon our natures but instead can often tend to turn us into sour, jealous, depressed, cranky, and bitter people. This is because these people have a harder time with living their lives. And of course we avoid their company because they are, well, unpleasant to be around.:phanvan

So much of what we are is due to the luck of the genetic deck. I have always felt that was true but now I am reading a book on genetics and it is even more apparent that nature really does trump nurture. This is why I for one am quite happy to avail myself of anything modern medicine can hand out: anti-depressants to treat the depression which runs in my family; prescription glasses to correct my lousy ageing vision; a lap-band to fix the post-menopausal weight gain which mirrors that of my mum; and plastic surgery to repair some of the damage done by ageing. Green is a practical grrl.

The couple who live in the cottage next to my in-laws' cottage saw me this past weekend for the first time in a year. They came rushing over to examine the "half-woman" as they put it. As they were so amazed by my weight loss I told them about the lapband and then the wife said that she knew of someone who had had the operation and had regained all the weight within 2 years. Ugh! Exactly the kind of negative comment that no bandster wants to hear.:eek: You have really got to watch out for people. They can so quickly begin raining on your little parade.:phanvan

Yah, some of those single malts really taste of smoke and peat.

I liked your post, Eva. I thought that it was much more nuanced than that other one by that guy who kept talking about his gonads. By the way, have a wonderful weekend enjoying Champagne and smokes, BJean.

Ghost, maybe you could write your mum a letter, one similar to the one which you have just posted, explaining everything to her in much the same way that you have explained everything to us. Just a thought....

LOL Devana, that is some kind of bizarre accident! As for me, I bathed in scotch on the eve of my 58th birthday in order to leave myself feeling numb for the day. The day of my birthday I saw my psychotherapist. She had suggested changing the appt in order to leave the day free but I said that I couldn't think of a more appropriate day to spend complaining about my childhood, yadda, yadda.... She wished me Happy B'day and I told her I was going to go shopping and drown my sorrows in fabric. And this is what I did. Shopping these days is quite a strange experience for me. I am officially normoloid size, thinnish even, but I still feel like a big grrl. This means I have a very hard time figuring out what to try on and I often freak out the saleshelp with my requests for very large sizes. And I still do like baggy clothes; they are more comfortable, eh. As for looking my age, I don't have any loose skin, a good thing, but what has happened is that I now look kinda stringy and tendony,...you know, like one those skinny old gals. Ugh! One last comment concerning my weight loss: everyone has been giving me huge compliments on it except my ma-in-law who told me that I could stand to lose another 10 to 15 lbs. Jeez! If I lose much more I will be looking like an old crack whore. Double ugh! The ma-in-law also told me that I should be wearing much tighter clothes in order to show off my new figure. Whatever....

This is a very sad post for me to think about, Boo. My heart goes out to you. You see, I think everyone of us deserves much, much better than many of us who post on this thread are currently getting. We all merit love, affection, daily expressions of kindness, good humour, and respect from those around us. Of course to get them we have got to give them but when we do and we get nothing in return this makes for a terribly bleak emotional environment. There is no way a person can feel contentment, joy, or have the ability to grow when they are living inside such an environment. I am a person who tends to take drastic steps when things really aren't working. I figure that there is no use in beating a dead horse and then I leave. There are a lot of very nice and loving individuals out there. And being alone can be very, very relaxing.

During my life I have been in a number of relationships and I have lived alone and I can say that I would rather live alone than live in an unsatisfying relationship. I have always found living alone to be a very positive experience whereas living in an unhappy relationship is very destructive to your sense of self. It erodes your sense of self-esteem, causes you to view yourself in a negative light, tires you out, and leaves you feeling joyless and depressed. It is like living in a room without sunlight and oxygen. Sometimes the best way to fix something bad is to leave it....even if it is only on a trial basis.

I lost 41 lbs since last Sept and now fit into size 10 pants (down from size 18W) and my BMI is now normal but my face now looks like that of a woman getting close to 60. It used to be that when I mentioned my age people would utter little noises of surprise and then tell me that I look ten years younger; now they just nod and don't say anything. I don't know if this will happen to other older women, though.

There is a downside to losing a lot of weight which I have been recently discovering. Now I look my age, not years younger. blehhh! This really hurts. It seems what the French say about the older woman is true: it is either your ass or your face. :help: I've kinda got my ass back but I've lost my youthful face, eh.:phanvan I figure that this means that whether we get to goal or get stuck in a plateau, either way we are winners. :cool: