GeezerSue

I just got here and I'm still stuck on the "what's-wrong-with-the-Jim-Bob's" issue. That Wiki article tells us that Mr. Jim-Bob is a follower of Gothard (I love to mispronounce that name), a guy with a store-bought Ph.D. who thinks that all single people should live home with Mommy and Daddy LIKE HE DID, forever, and that owning a Cabbage patch Kid will make your daughter weird, mostly because CPK's have Satanic middle names. (Run-on sentence much?) And then the Jim-Bob's, using books authored by this genius, expose their children to each other and NO ONE ELSE. Is this a recipe for creating normal people? (Uh...no.) The good Reverend Got-hard, used to sell out the tents, but what with the sexual corruption charges he's admitted to...need I continue?...SSDD. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gothard

I was at Disneyland many years ago, when some obviously out-of-control mom started POUNDING her son. As I was figuring out what to do, a group of kids...maybe junior high age...started yelling, "Child Abuse! Child Abuse!" and park security (which blends in so well they appear to simply "materialize") was all over the woman who was immediately escorted out of the area. I'd like to think she was arrested on the spot...maybe she would be now...

Indeed. I just wanted to bitch about the airline seat thing. LOL

Discrimination against the obese--or at least a preference for the non-obese--exists, and we're pre-programmed to engage in it. Some of it is part of our genetic makeup (I know, you're going to make me find the references) but most of it is cultural. HOWEVER, all the whining and moaning about "they made me buy two airline seat and that's discrimination" just gets on my last nerve. I have a sister who has a jinormous ass. Last time we checked, she could not close a hospital gown which measured 74" around. She has to choose her restaurants based on which ones have chairs without arms. We all "get" most of that and have had our own troubles fitting in places like that. But she and her husband went on a cruise a while back and they "got away with" buying only two seats on the plane. That ain't right for whoever is stuck in seat three. If, for whatever reason, your ass got too big for you to sit in an airline seat without using up your neighbors' "airspace," you need to buy another ticket or rent a car and drive yourself wherever you're going. When I was concerned that I was too big, we bit the bullet and went in business class. There were times I even went part of the way by train, to avoid the whole airline thing for short hauls on small planes...the train has really big seats. There's a lot of discrimination out there...most of it about stuff over which we have NO control. White people have many better chances at success than people of color do; tall people generally win debates; men have advantages in business that women wouldn't get. Weight is a little bit different. We DO have a chance to change. I wouldn't choose to lose weight so that someone else--about whom I don't give a rat's ass--thinks more positively about me. But the reality is that the assumptions strangers make about me are probably more positive than the assumptions they made when I weighed 113 pounds more than I do now. (Although--and this needs its own thread--there are many obese people who think the world will be perfect as soon as they lose x-pounds...because, they think, the ONE reason they have problems with others is their weight. And then they lose weight and find out that they were harboring a faulty assumption...and some people don't like them for entirely DIFFERENT reasons. LOL) But back to "fat discrimination." This is a "solvable" problem...while some of the OTHER reasons people suffer discrimination are not. IT ISN'T FAIR. IT ISN'T RIGHT. But most of us have the ability to make it go away.

By making her home into a business twenty years ago, she subjected herself to the laws in place at the time and any to come. There is no law about what she can do in or around her home, right? I mean her NEIGHBORS can smoke on their porches or in their living rooms, can't they? The law is not about her home; it's about her business. There are TREMENDOUS tax breaks for home day care providers...and there is a trade-off for being able to deduct parts of your mortgage and property tax and house cleaning and toilet paper and every trip to the grocery store that the rest of us can't take. And the trade-off is that she is subject to business-related laws. If smoking at home is that important to her, she can rent a business place or close down her day care business. BTW, here, she wouldn't be able to smoke within 50 feet of the entrance to a business...whether she owns it or not.

Good law...OLD law here on the left coast. I recently called the corporate office of the Assisted Living where my mom lives because a sfew of the old codgers were gathered on benches at the front doors--the automatic opeining front doors that open ALL the way anytime anyone passes near them inside or out--and GUESS where their smoke was going? They moved the people away from the door. (It isn't a nursing home, they aren't--most of them--at death's door...so they are well enough to perpetrate their suicides away from those who do NOT want to breathe that stuff. They moved the smoking area. My husband works for a municipality. The smokers used to be able to go outside. Now they must be 50' from a door or window. The lady who turned her home into a business made herself subject to those laws...her choice. Sue Formerly Ms. Camels and then Ms. Marlboro...currently not smoking.

Thanks, again, Peeps...

Thanks...and we used to live in Kitzingen...not far from you, I guess. We visited a couple of years ago, but our whole street was gone and new develpoment had taken over.

Thanks, Ladies. Yes, Mr. Sue likes that I feel like I used to feel...except it scares him, too. He keeps waking up thinking he went to bed with someone other than his wife and that he's about to be in BIG trouble. About the weight. My BMI is just under 33. I really am a big-boned girl--size 8 wedding ring right after Basic Training--not a lot of fat at that time in my life, but still BIG. I am currently about 45 pounds over my weight at the end of Basic Training. I'm older and probably a little shorter. Losing 30 more would put me at the middle of the overweight category. I think that's an ideal place for me at this stage of my life. And besides, that sweater is hiding a lot of tummy!! LOL But, thanks for the kind words.

(Headless, because I'm waiting for my stalker dude to DIE before I put my photos anywhere he can see them. He's even older than I am. This may not take forever. LOL) Also, remember that revision patients usually have a slower rate of loss and even a lesser total loss than first-time patients...so I'm still "a ways" from where I want to be. Photo on the left is three years AFTER banding and the day before my band removal and revision to the DS. Photo on the right is one year AFTER the DS. Let's see if I can do this:

I once tried to do a poll something like this one. Mine was a mess and I finally figured that I'd need three or more. One reason is that the band has few short-term complications. The REAL band problems begin two-and-a-half or three years out. AND, there are more and more banding doctors and patients...so there are more newbies with few problems. So, if 50% of the respondents have been banded less than a year, pretty much half the poll will respond "No Problems." But if you had a pool for people who had been banded three years or more, the stats would probably be quite different. For example, erosion takes a while to happen. A newly banded person with erosion would be rare. OTOH, someone banded three years, with NO problems is also rather rare. On another board where I hang out, MOST of the "senior" banded people have problems--some minor, some minor but recurrent and some major with a few band removals thrown in for good measure. They mostly seem to have adjusted to life with their problems, btw. I could not live with some of those routines, YMMV. (I can't remember to get an unfill before I get on a plane or not eat after 6:00 p.m., or raise the head of my bed, or remember to drink an esophagus-cleansing beverage at a certain time every night, or live totally dependant upon Prilosec and Maalox, and so on. Other people can, but that's just not me.) But, thanks for looking for the numbers. It takes patience to do all that!

Esophageal dilatation (I don't know why they couldn't just say "dilation," but they had to throw in an extra syllable) is, in my experience, pretty much as described above. But, be careful when you "interpret" the words "overeating" or "pouch packing," or the like. It is difficult to blame overeating when not much is bieng eaten and the weight keeps coming off, as it did early on in my case. I wasn't eating more than my doctor recommended or more than I needed to eat to lose weight, I was just eating more than my esophagus could process, once its function was hampered by the presence of the band. And that "more than my esophagus could process" amount might be as little as two spoons of Soup. So, we would go out to an early dinner (we do that on a VERY regular basis because I'm a lazy woman), order off the lunch menu, have two or three spoons of soup, and then decide to "save room" for the fish entree. When it arrived, I'd take one bite and get that deer-in-the-headlights look. More often than not, I was off to the restroom to bring UP what wouldn't go DOWN. Turns out, I wasn't "packing" food into the esophagus as a result of eating more than my stomach could handle...what I was doing was eating food that never made it to my stomach, but bounced around--down the esophagus and then back up--because the band was keeping the esophagus from doing its job. Finally, three weeks before my band was removed, this was captured on video with two MD's witnessing it, but that was LATER.) Then I'd get an unfill. And then a fill. And for two years this went on, until I decided I needed to do SOMETHING. And I had one band doctor who wanted me to join his support group so I could learn how life with the band was supposed to work. (I already knew...just like it HAD worked for me for eight months or so, until the band did its damage.) After over two years of HORRID restrictions--and the weight gain that went with an emptied band and the infamous "soup and ice cream diet"--with the band, I finally decided to have a revision to the Duodenal Switch (aka Biliopancreatic Diversion with Duodenal Switch) because I wanted a stomach, not a "pouch," and I didn't want Dumping Syndrome like some of my girlfriends have, and I wanted to eat a more normal diet. I had that revision surgery a year ago. The surgery--band out and DS performed took less than two hours--and I was in the hospital four days. It took TEN weeks before I lost all of those band-related symptoms, but once I did, my life began. (And during those ten weeks, I lost about 55 pounds, so it wasn't ALL misery.) For some people, the dilated esophagus (picture a funnel, upsidedown) goes away once they learn to eat smaller amounts and to eat slower. For others, it may be a signal that this is not going to be an easy ride. I hope you find the cause of your problem and are able to reverse it. It would not hurt, however, to have a Plan B in the back of your mind, because taking over two years to figure out what to do next was not my most brilliant move. Sue

Gee, Sunta...and I was feeling like some of that love was for me....oh, well.

I was always glad my mom didn't know about St. Scholastica.

Halloween next...all Saints' Day/All Souls Day just in time for when the days started getting shorter? How about Easter...what the hell do they think the bunny and the eggs are all about?

Missy, I'm not trying to be a smart ass...some say it comes naturally. Anyway, if no one taught you that CHRISTMAS was based on the ancient celebration of the Winter Solstice, you have been cheated. Short version--Wheetsin is far more spiritual and far less skeptical than I am--days kept getting shorter, people got scared, smart guy who noticed this happening last year told everyone not to worry, just fork over some dough and it would all go away..and guess what! Right around December 21st, it did. Every year, as the sun started to "die out" and the people got together and made sacrifices to keep the world from coming to an end, suddenly, the days got longer. Okay, about 1700 years ago, a pope decided that since the pagans were all having a big party right then anyway, there should maybe be a good CHRISTIAN reason to have a big party (there is as I recall a long tradition of saints' days and miracles happening when the locals were already geared up for a party anyway...politics? miracles? Eye of the beholder)...and the Winter Solstice birthday of Jesus was announced. But then another pope changed calendars and a few days were lost in the translation and Christmas moved to December 25th. Anyway, a festival at the Winter Solstice has been celebrated probably since before recorded history. The December 25th birthday of Christ, was slid right in to a waiting yule party about 200-300 years after his birth. AND, there are still some large religious groups which insist that, since there is norecord of a census having been taken ANYWHERE in the area in December, the actualy birth date was probably in or around March or April.

You may choose to believe that the earth is flat...only it ain't. Here is the text of Article 11 or the Treaty of Tripoli, unanimously approved by the Senate of the United States on June 17, 1797 and signed by John Adams. Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries. Here is the treaty in its entirety: http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/treaty_tripoli.html Again, no one is picking on your RELIGIOUS beliefs. You are entitled to YOUR OPINIONS, you are NOT entitled to your own FACTS.

If you get a chance to check out the ersatz Statue of Liberty with the list in her hand, you might want to check out Commandment Number Nine.

Oopsie you can rant and rave, but when you go here... ...demeaning, if you werent so damn smart-alecky ...you are speaking of me and not my beliefs and inviting me to express MY opinion of YOU. If I were to do that, I'd then have to endure a ditribe about modern-day persecution of the poor oppressed Christians in our country...and how those of us who HAPPENED to read the books in question are elitists, when all we are is possessors of curiosity.

I have a lot of VERY religious friends of VARIOUS religious persuasions. They are mostly Catholics, Mormons and Jews...although I know a Wiccan or two, as well. My daughter has a small group of close friends from her high school days. One is the daughter of Presbyterian minister one is the daughter of a Foursquare minister. Another is (was?) the daughter of a gay and now-dead-from-AIDS church activist. The guys in the group include a very Mormon Mormon, Evangelical Christian twins and a now-out-of-the-closet flaming hairdresser/make-up artist. I used to go to Homemaking Meetings (I forget the name) at my local LDS church to teach a craft or two and to learn a few. I just bought our daughter a cute little Channukah bear and dreidel at Helen Grace. We get along well, and occasionally discuss our differences. Usually, each of the ministers teases me about the fact that if my kid ever gets married it will be in their church...and that's a pretty extreme way to rope in "new customers," but they'll do what they have to do. But, I know that THEY have read the entire bible--a few times at that--and that they tend not to have a lot of patience for people who pick a random passage and go off on a tangent. And I know that they know that for every passage in the bible telling you not to kill, for example, there's another one giving the go-ahead...in the right circumstances. And, that in the bible, women are chattel...which doesn't fly in THEIR homes beause they have daughters who would not stand for that. There are, I believe, an awful lot of people who consider themselves to be devout Christians and who haven't read the owners' manual. Those people tend to quote the bits and pieces of what they've read, as though they had a clue. But they have neglected to read the next book, the next chapter, the next verse. If THEY can find it in the bible, they buy into the passage they have found without even considering that there may be other views in other places. Education doesn't have to be formal...but before people quote SOME lines from a text...they should educate themselves as to what the NEXT lines have to say...or they themselves are subjecting their own line of reasoning to ridicule.

You're right...our daughter uses it now. It could be spoken by future generations if she ever "gifts" me with grandkids, like she SHOULD....oh...wait...that's her choice, huh? It's times like this that I really disagree with myself. I think I should be able to ORDER her to have grandbabies for me!!

SEE? We CAN agree on some things. (I'm not even sure what YOUR panties are in a bunch about. But if lashing out at yourself helps...)

First, family size, no matter how I may disagree with the choice being made, is just something that has to be left to the family. In fact, I want ALL reproductive issues to be left to the family. Then, while it may have been the Happiest Place on Earth in your youth, you just can't generalize what happened in that one home to large families in general. My dad was one of ten kids born to his parents and there was almost nothing that resembled love going on in that home. It wasn't about what God wanted, it was about what my grandfather wanted...and he wanted sex. My grandmother (theirs was an "arranged marriage") had no choices, ergo, there were kids. Eight of them survived childhood. Three of the eight had NO children. One had four children, and the other four had two kids each. In other words, nobody in THAT famliy thought it was such a good idea they wanted to recreate the scene as adults. There are five still living (ages 73-87) and they can barely tolerate each other. My mom had one aunt who had six kids, was widowed, remarried and had three more. Husband #2 found a way to not only molest, but actually impregnate one of the kids from the first marriage...even in that house full of people. (And, BTW, everyone blamed the daughter because "he was a good man." You had to say stuff like that about the breadwinner back then. So she and her baby were sent off to find their way in the world. She was, of course, a psychological basket case and NOTHING there turned out okay.) There are good and bad small families and large ones. But while the part about the older ones serving as surrogate parents can be true in small families it is far more common in mega-famiies. We just had a laugh over this issue at a family gathering. I am--55 years after the fact--still catching hell because I wouldn't stop playing something (hey...I'd waited a long time for it to be my turn) and help my sister (my only sibling) cross the street. So she stood there crying until our Mom heard her. Unfortunately, while doing so, she wet her pants. She was upset and was saying, "Susie wouldn't cross me." (Of course, I got busted for not being a good big sister.) But I finally mentioned--last Sunday--that she was "probably four years old and I was probably five and who the hell leaves a five-year-old in charge of ANYTHING?" And, now that my little sister is the grandmother of a six year old, she looked at our mother and said, "Yeah! Why was Sue in charge?" But wherever it fits in, my sister STILL says, "Susie wouldn't cross me." LOL

This is ridiculous. It's a little quiz for the people with room temperature IQ's? If you don't mention names, you can attack others? So, how many atheists have disagreed with something you've written here? Big mystery, eh? You wouldn't like how that nameless attacking works in reverse, so maybe it's not a good idea to go there. Personal religious (and political) beliefs--once posted in this forum--are not exempt from being examined and challenged. If you cannot tell the difference between your being ridiculed and your beliefs being challenged, perhaps posting about them in a somewhat public place isn't a great idea. "Feeling the love?" On the Rants and Raves Board? Well, it's possible, but less likely than anywhere else here. Sincerely, (One of the Potential) Self-Proclaimed Educated Person(s)

Well, Wheetsin, you'd might as well ask for an IQ test. Wait...that might not be such a bad...NO!!! No! What am I thinking?!? Tempting as it is I don't want my government to be involved in ANYONE's reproductives issues WITH THE EXCEPTION of the reproductive activities of those who are unable to care for themselves and, probably, in the case of incarcerated folks with conjugal visit (if those things still happen) rights...I'm thinkin' no babies there, either. I have a couple of relatives with Down Syndrome. Tear-jerker movies on the topic to the contrary, neither of them should ever become parents because neither of them will ever be capable of caring for or protecting a child. Laws about reproductive rights and those relatives would not, IMHO, be out of line.