green

I tend to discriminate against heavily made up women and, like BJean, against very thin, very fit women. I tend to figure that they must be shallow and sometimes I am wrong.

Thanks to both of you for the kind b-day wishes. And by the way, I took quite a bath in scotch last night in order to render myself stupid against the dawning of my birthday. Definitely excessive behaviour but how's a grrl gonna exceed without excess? And I think it may have worked! :cool: I feel fairly numb at the moment.:rolleyes

I had a strange experience happen to me this weekend. I went up north in order to spend time with my in-laws at their cottage this past holiday - Canada Day, eh - weekend. As it happens, the folks who live next door to my in-laws spotted me loitering on the family compound. It seems that the husband commented to his wife that she should view the new Green, a half a woman, he claimed.... And so he and his wife eventually came scrambling over in order to examine the newly reduced Green.

:rolleyes I saw a cat whom I adored recently die of kidney failure and I have been wondering whether I may have fed him tainted cat food. His death was a slow and sad one. In Canada all products are identified with their country of origin even if they are packaged here. This is the law and I have only recently, since the pet food scandal actually, been paying attention to food products. I have, however, been paying attention to certain other types of products which are produced in China for over a year now; this has been ever since I read a lengthy article on how they routinely slaughter dogs and cats, and then process their fur in order to pass it off as fur which we in the West find more acceptable. Now I avoid buying anything which has fur trim and which is made in China. Up here it is easy to find fur scarves, and boots and slippers which have fur trim and which are made in China. Sometimes the fur is identified as rabbit but since reading the newspaper report I am no longer sure. I also have an interesting anecdote. One of the two physiotherapists whom I see married into a Chinese family. He recently told me that his parents-in-law will not buy soya sauce which is made in China. They don't believe that it is safe. I don't know how it is south of the border but up here we have a thriving trade in Chinese counterfeit products and this has been an on-going problem for many, many years. Of course the ports of entry are strung out along the Pacific coast and we are told that the RCMP doesn't have sufficient manpower to monitor every shipment. And so every so often they try issuing warnings to us, the citizens, that buying cheap counterfeit goods is an ethically bad and also possibly a dangerous thing. The big concern at the moment in my province is that a counterfeit version of Colgate toothpaste is being sold in the discount stores and that this product contains toxic material. It seems that the products which they are choosing to counterfeit are not high-end designer goods but the items which we consume a lot of - Duracell batteries, computer peripherals, toothpaste! - stuff for which we would be happy to pay a little less. Of course this tragedy with the animal food provided by China had nothing to do with counterfeit products. This, sadly, was on the level. And of course all those dried or canned ethnic products which come from China are now likely on the products to avoid list for cooks who routinely use them. I myself am thinking of tossing my own collection of cans of water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, baby corn, black bean sauce, my array of canned and dried mushrooms, etc. All of these items have entered the country legally but as China's manufacturing system still consists of a multitude of micro-factories with out of date technology it is understandable that many of the modern requirements which we take for granted will be unreliable. The standards of production will not be uniform and there will not be sufficient qualified personnel available to inspect and to insist upon a correct standard of quality. This is because China is a very, very large country and she is still an emerging economy. Perhaps it may help you to understand China if you were to remember your own history a hundred years ago. In China there is still no big agriculture nor many big factories. China is still an aggregate of small farmers and tiny factories. The production of these small farmers and those tiny factories are then harvested by larger - usually state - business concerns which then market these products to the West. There are many Chinese folks living in my city and I have many Chinese friends. I have always had high regards for both my friends and for the Chinese culture though I know little about it but I find that I have mixed feelings about the rise of the new China. I am concerned about the environmental and cultural damage that I see as being a very real possibility in the new emerging China. I see the new China as possibly on the cusp of experiencing the same extraordinary economic, social, and cultural success as the American Republic began to experience in the late 1880s, a success which allowed America to dominate the 20th century, but, unlike the United States, this is a country which is in no way ethically prepared for this, I think. For though China has made, as we all know, extraordinary strides with respect to her economy, and must be given her props for this, this is a culture which still does not understand, let alone value, the notion of collaborative thinking. Some of us call this notion of collaborative thinking democracy. Domocracy is fine concept which we treasure. :clap2::clap2::clap2::clap2::clap2: And, ooof! It is Independence Day tomorrow and it was Canada Day on July da 1st. And by the way Green is going to be uncelebrating her birthday on Independence Day, eh. :help: Tomorrow is when Green drifts deeper into her rusting years, eh. blehhh, fer green. or whatever. :rolleyes

Yah! I am no longer being mistaken for being a decade younger either and this is quite a shock. :phanvan Good thing I am getting my face renovated/restored this fall. The downside is that it is gonna hurt a lot more than the band installation did. :omg:

If they behave like some of the other species of monkeys I've read about they have a tendency to throw their poop! :omg:

Green had lots and lots of fun with her man. :eyebrows: But I don't think he noticed the legs. He had been away for a month. I could have been covered in fur.... I could have been an orangutang and still got lucky. heh heh :heh: He is still talking about my weight loss, though. :D It's good to know that there is a plumber in the house.

Yep, I read about this study. Interesting.

My mother had been taking coumadin for some years when she had knee replacement surgery at the age of 82. She survived the operation and went on to live a further 5 years. Surgery is certainly much more complicated when you are taking an anti-coagulent and I would imagine that you will have to be off coumadin for at least a week before your surgery. Your surgeon may also want access to more machines and trained personnel if something arises during your operation. You must remember that no doctor wants anything to go wrong on his watch and so if you are approved you need not worry. I would suggest that you PM your questions concerning your medical condition and the operation to Was A Bubble Butt. She is a member of this site and she is also someone who is very knowledgable on medical procedures. She is, you see, a very experienced and knowlegable nurse as well as being a fellow lapbander. She does not post in this thread but she posts in many other threads and I cannot think of anyone more capable of answering your questions. Of course I am sending you all my wishes for your success with respect to getting yourself banded.

I had just finished my bath and some extensive shaving (drain clogging) activities when my husband arrived home from a month of working in Mexico. Sadly for me, he did not bring home any duty-free scotch, jewellery, or perfume *sob* but he did bring home himself and a great NSV. He said: Omigawd, have you ever lost weight! As for my hairy legs, I figure that they are a family curse which comes from my Scottish side, an environmental adaptation caused by centuries of wearing kilts in a cold climate. Wow! :mad: I wonder just how thick the fur on a Scotsman's sporran is; they don't wear underwear under those skirts, you know. Haha Ooooh,....Green's legs feel, oh, so smooth.....! :faint:

I have to disagree with your comments concerning China. China is a totalitarian country and is ruthless towards those citizens who disagree with governmental policy. The workers are paid little and work long, long hours in unsafe conditions because they have no choice. Those Chinese who are internet savvy cannot access controversial foreign websites for these are blocked by the government. The governmental policies towards their own minority populations, the Tibetans, Mongolians, and the ethnic Muslims eg, have been and continue to be Draconian. Rural Chinese still live in woeful ignorance and because of the one-child policy and their insistance on having boy children these villages are now largely devoid of young marriagable women. What they do have is gangs of aimless young men who know that they will never have families and who pass their days drinking, gambling and brawling. Of course the country has no problem with illegals; no one wishes to immigrate but there are plenty of Chinese who are anxious to leave. Make no mistake: there are Chinese illegals living in Great Britain, Canada, and the United States. They are smuggled in by people whom they call 'snakeheads,' penned in cargo holds of ships and sometimes they don't make it to where they hope to go. As for the environment, China is an environmental disaster. During the 1970s, when the Hippies over here were crazy about Mao, China was suffering through a terrible famine and millions of her people were starving. This disaster was covered up from the foreign press at the time. And now that China is converting from bicycles to gas-driven vehicles the environment is going to become much worse. And of course her factories are small, old, and inefficient with no quality or environmental controls. Yes, her economy is booming but at a cost which many of her citizens must bear. As for my sources for the above statements these are various newspaper articles which I have read as well as memoirs written by Chinese writers.

I've just read that there is going to be stem cell research going on at one of the universities in my Province. One donor alone has given 15 million to the research fund. This is good, I think.

I am going for a facelift this fall. And I am going to shave my legs today.

Green sez go for good perfume. It is much less work and you won't have problems with scratching the itch..........

HahaHollywood, home of the shallowest values on earth. Life must be stressful for the people who live there. How could it not be? In a certain sense these folks have made a pact with the devil, have they not? They are rich and famous but they must conform to certain standards of perfection from which we are free.

This is interesting and it makes sense. I would love to learn more.

Thank you, L8, and the rest of the folks on this site, too, for making me feel welcome here. I love this site and as is plainly evident I am particularly fond of R&R. This is where we have a chance to swap information and discuss/debate ideas. I continue to learn a lot about your country and I have never, ever been made to feel unwelcome here as a foreigner. This particular thread has, as I have said, so stimulated my interest in this issue that I have gone on to learn that the issues are considerably more complicated than they may seem to the average liberal Canadian. I am also fascinated by your above quoted reference to the 14th Amendment; this would indicate that your Constitution is, let us say, less flexible, perhaps, than our set of laws in many respects. Our system has been styled on and driven by the British parliamentary and legal tradition. This tradition insists upon democracy and upon both Parliamentary and legal debate and so is in the way of a safeguard against totalitarianism. It is my understanding that your Constitution was constructed as a bulwark against any attempts to destroy the democratic rights of the citizens of your young Republic. At the time of the birth of your nation the parliamentary style of governance had little control over the caprices of the king. Of course by the time Canada came into existance the actual power of the monarchy had been pretty well smashed and parliament did hold all practical power. It is for this reason that we follow this system and we find that it works well for us. And, as I was saying, the system does permit a certain flexibility. Legislation which no longer works can be rewritten. This is not intended to be a criticism of your system so much as an examination of the differences. I guess that I am learning something new and that I am working through this on this post.... Well, if the anchor baby bizness is written into the Constitution then it seems to me that the most logical approach to dealing with this flood of illegals would be to insist that the penalties for aiding and abetting illegals be severe and that manpower be devoted to penalizing the businessmen who hire them and the landlords who house them. I am thinking large financial penalties and possible slammer time.

Ah, the power of magical thinking. This is such a human trait and we are all equally prone to it.

Marjon, you da man!:clap2::clap2::clap2::clap2::clap2:

Hahaha It's a good thing that I am a reasonably good lookin' woman because I sure am one of the laziest ones when it comes to personal maintenance. When those heavy-browed women, Brook Shields (in The Blue Lagoon and that movie was made a long, long time ago), Margot and Mariel Hemingway became fashionable I immediately stopped grooming my own caterpillars and I have never, ever touched them since. I have also never, ever had a professional manicure or pedicure, something that caused my niece to fall off her chair when she heard it. :faint: I do shave my pits and my legs and I do sometimes use an electric tweezers on my legs. During the Canadian winter the legs do get kinda hairy and because I am a blonde it looks like I am wearing golden angora knee socks. Ugh! And my feet look a little like Fred Flintstone's, I suspect. Double Ugh!! :omg: My one experience with crotch grooming was a true disaster. I shaved myself as bald as a billiard ball for erotic reasons and then spent the following week tormented by severe itching. I became obsessed with finding out of the way places in order to scratch myself and spent plenty of time at work trying to unobtrusively hump the corner of my desk. And of course all stores have anti-theft mirrors. No chance to scratch the itch there. :girl_hug: My mother laughed herself sick when I told her. :heh: Many, many years later I happened to be working with a guy who had worked as a male stripper. I told him the story. He told me that you are supposed to shave with the growth of the hair, not against, as I had done. He said: shaving against irritates the skin and gives you spots and if you have spots nobody gives you tips. Then he said: betcha never thought you'd never be discussing pubic grooming with a man, eh. Other than the above, my grooming extends to bathing, wrinkle creme, mascara, home hair dye jobs, and the daily use of really good quality=expensive perfume. I am a serious fan of fine perfume. It not only makes you feel like more of a woman it also announces to everyone around you that you are a woman. Most of the best perfumes are French but Armani has a couple of good ones, I have found. I figure that those skipped manicures and pedicures have probably paid many times over for the perfumes. I get my hair trimmed from time to time and I visit my dental hygienist 4 times a year because I have those kind of teeth. :tired

Yes, if the laws against hiring illegals were applied with due diligence and the penalties were severe enough this would, I believe, make a difference. It would also make life easier for those Hispanics who are legals and whom, I am sure, are often victims of the anger and the frustration which so many Americans now feel. As for the situation re babies born to foreign nationals up here in Canada: the baby will be given Canadian citizenship and thus may stay in the country. His parents, however, cannot. This leaves them with the option of taking the child with them when they leave or finding a Canadian guardian for it. Families caught in this bind will apply to be allowed to stay on compassionate grounds and there was a recent case where this was granted. A single woman who came from an African country where all girl children are circumsized, that is to say that their external genitals are removed, applied to remain with her infant daughter who had been born on Canadian soil. She argued that her child would most certainly undergo sexual mutilation. Her reprieve from deportation came through at the last minute. Another interesting case is that of a middle eastern Muslim family who have a young Canadian son. They were attempting to return to Canada in order to reapply for refugee status and were flying here via Mexico. Though the flight was supposed to be direct it made a stop on U.S. soil and the family was seized and interned in a prison in Texas which had been converted to house undesirable foreigners. Because the boy is a Canadian national the Department of Foreign Affairs is now involved but I have no idea about the latest developments in this story. You may wish to ask your representatives to push to change the anchor baby rule and to demand that the laws against hiring illegals be stringently enforced and that the punishments be severe. From my readings on the subject the infrastructure of the southern states, both economic and social, are gravely damaged by this influx of people and I think that you are right to alert your fellow citizens to this fact. This thread is a good one. It caused me to start paying attention to this issue.

I likes a grrl who talks about her surgeries. It shows that she is willing to share the credit for who she is.

What I need is a machine which makes single malt scotch. That would save me quite a few bucks. It is would probably ruin my liver and destroy my few remaining brain cells, though.... Alas. :cry

Your news has made my day, Purpose. Congratulations to you! It sounds like you are making real progress.

What has his new appointee been saying? I know his Attorney General has been in the news quite a bit....!