BJean

nume130: Yes, that definitely sums it up very nicely. My first husband did a similar thing to me when we were just married and in college. I was working, on my feet, from 8 AM until at least 8 PM, Tues. thru Sat.. I was the sole breadwinner. I was only able to take a couple of classes that met on Mondays. I didn't get to go to any football games or participate in the usual college fun stuff. He did. He was in the school of architecture. They stayed up all night lots of nights working on projects. Many other nights he "had" to study with a group. He was offered a job with the city, because he won a competition. He would have the opportunity to design things like parks and playgrounds. He turned it down because "he didn't have enough time." Although they said he could work whatever hours he chose, whenever it was convenient. The last straw for me happened the last semester we were together at that school. The government put the word out that male students had to be enrolled in a minimum of 15 hours per semester in order to qualify for a deferment, which would keep him from being drafted and away from Viet Nam. Yeah, you guessed it, he enrolled in 14. I was taking a one hour interior design class on Monday nights that he could have picked up - it was a no brainer. He refused. Just after that semester ended, in June, he got his "Greetings" as we used to call the letter commanding you to report for your physical for the draft - which meant that you were going! It took me a long time to sort out all the things like that, that he did to damage me and our marriage during the four years we were married. He had an uncanny ability (who knows where he got it) to turn everything around and make any bad occurrence, all my fault. My family and friends knew the score, but his family and our joint friends, and our church kept telling me that I had to make it work. You can imagine the guilt when I finally had enough and got a divorce. Throughout the whole thing I was the bad guy. We had a beautiful little boy - not even one year old - and I hadn't finished college and had no really good means to support us. I had sustained an eye problem and could no longer work 12 hour days on my feet. Let me tell you for sure and for certain, the divorce was the best decision I have ever made in my life - bar none! My only regret is that I didn't get the divorce 6 months after we got married. Four years doesn't seem like a long time to you and in comparison to your investment in your life, your children and your marriage, it is small. But my life would have been so much different if I hadn't tried so hard to be the perfect, supporting wife and mother. If I had just once looked at the big picture and realized that it was MY life too and that I needed to take care of myself. By the time we got divorced, he had manipulated me so much, for so long, that I felt like I had 2 kids, not one. I totally supported us during our whole marriage, except for the measly pay that the Army provided while he was training and in Viet Nam. He paid child support occasionally - $85 per month! Such a small amount because he told the court that was all he could afford. It didn't even cover day care, which didn't matter anyway, since he didn't pay it very often (only when I called him and demanded it.) My advice is: cut your losses. Get on with your life. Stop blaming yourself!

Mark, you little rascal, you may not be happy but you sure can be funny!! Miss reading your posts. I know there's something cool going on somewhere that I don't know about...maybe I need to go alurking.

serious: Good for you!!! Great post. We appreciate you sharing some of your wisdom and experiences. Sure there are people of every race who are bad people. That's why you just cannot prejudge people and write them off before you really know them. It's already been said here that Lee's remarks remind many of us of a former poster who claimed to be the best and most knowledgeable Christian you could ever meet. After weeks of following his posts and interacting with him at LBT, many of us realized that his heart was not as pure as he claimed. He could be brutal when trying to make a point. Bad people come in all shapes (even fat) and sizes and colors. Good people do too.

Green you made some outstanding observations in your previous post. How in the world can a white Amercian woman, who was raised in an white community with practically no exposure to African Americans, have a clue about what it's like to be a black man in America? The only way I know how to understand, at least a little, is by observation and research. But neither of those two things really allow us to FEEL what it is like. I know even less about what it is like to be Jewish and experience anti-semitism because I have been around even fewer Jewish people than blacks. However even though I can't really know what it feels like, I know how ridiculous it is for people to be so bigoted. I think people who are racist are ignorant as hell and consequently they are afraid of what they don't know. There is absolutely no way that the color of a person's skin can tell you what kind of person they are. As with the plight of American Indians, I doubt if we will ever be able to make up for all the horrible wrongs that have been done to them as well as black and Jewish people in America. Sure, to lose a job to someone because of reverse discrimination seriously sucks. But when you experience it, you just begin to have a tiny clue as to the reason for the governmental policies that endorse reverse discrimination in America.

It sounds great except for the tomato. You mention tomatoes pretty often. They are just not all that easy for me to eat. I can do the center pretty easily, but the skin is a problem. Otherwise I might just try your recipe. I'll give you my report when I get time to try it~ Blueberries are nutritionally fantastic. I can eat one or two by themselves, but then I tend to want something around them or under them, like a cheesecake. So I don't have blueberries very often. You are doing so well, Green. I am very proud of you. Do you think that you've just reached the "sweet spot" everyone talks about with your fills? I don't hear you mention fills. I've been getting them pretty often and that just doesn't seem right to me. I wish I could get to a place where I wasn't so hungry and didn't obsess about food so much. Every single day I say I'm going to do better and most days I still struggle. :phanvan

cris35: Bravo! Well said. Good job. I agree with you! If God can forgive a rapist, then he certainly can forgive a woman in anguish who has made the decision, whatever her reasons are, to have an abortion. My question is, who appointed us God here on earth? cris35: I'm wondering, do you believe in capital punishment? Lapdancer: Fetuses cannot vote. They can't breathe outside their mothers' womb. They are little, tiny globs of tissue, with or without a beating heart. Therefore they can't tell you whether or not they want to be brought into this world by a woman who cannot, either physically or mentally, be responsible for them. You assume that all babies would want to be born under any circumstances. That may or may not be true. But it only makes sense that they do not have all the same rights that a fully developed baby has. But all that is beside the point and believing it or not has nothing to do with my belief that it should never be a politically driven question. It should never be possible for the government to make the decision about abortion for women.

When I was a child, we used to go camping a lot. Mom loved to cook out over an open campfire. Her breakfast sounds similar to your mom's. Krispy Kremes should be outlawed! Or at least they should come with a warning, like cigarettes do. I saw all the Tim Hortons and I did notice that they were very popular, but I confess I never partook. I went crazy this morning and had a Starbucks Decaf Tall Latte with a slice of their Zuchinni loaf. Cloud nine time! I imagine the combination straps me with at least 450 - 500 calories or more. I'd be much better off with a couple of poached eggs and a half a piece of nearly burnt toast. As far as I'm concerned they make the best toast in England. It's thin and nearly crisp. I even bought a Dualit toaster so that I can duplicate their toast. Some time ago I read a post that Jack made and he said that he and his wife have one egg each for breakfast. Made me recall memories when one egg was all I ever wanted. Boy how times change!!! High five for Starbucks :clap2:

Nope. No rare chicken fried steak. It is pan fried. Unless you get it in a restaurant. They usually deep fry theirs. Yuk. That's another thing I was shocked about when I lived in Montreal, everyone has a deep fryer in their kitchen. The natives are pretty obsessed with weight and fashion yet they have more donut places and deep fryers than I knew existed.

Love is blind, period! Love the photo of your pets! Is a troll someone who goes around from post to post just trying to stir up trouble? I've been here for a long time, but I am embarrassed to say I am not clear on the definition.

Julie: It's a shame that you and your guy can't be together. Are you actually broken up, or just separated by the miles? There's a difference.

serious: Yup. I'm getting the drift! I know people couldn't understand back then why that guy could push my buttons so quickly. He was always right (in his own mind) and refused to ever take responsibility for his own words. I guess he and Lee probably have a lot in common... even as different as they might seem to be on the surface.

Well chicken fried steak is something you just have to experience. Kentucky Fried Rat (as we call it) is probably the closest thing you have to it. But there is a big difference between commercially prepared fried chicken and home made chicken fried steak. As for those who have grown up on chicken fried steak, many refuse to touch commercially made ones. You can count me in that bunch. I know I'm beating a dead horse here so I'll drop it, especially since the facinating story about your Jewish lineage has become the topic. I thoroughly enjoy hopping around to different subjects on the same thread. I figure soon though we'll be getting back to food... probably a discussion of CHEESE! I used to think it would be unbelievably cool to be a Jew and to be able to know so much about your roots. Naive I know, and growing up I did not know of any Jewish families in our town and only knew of one Synagogue in the neighboring big city. I did not go to school with any African Americans either. I was completely ignorant of the social bias against people of either background, except for what we learned in school. Can you imagine? I grew up thinking that just about everyone in America had Indian blood. Until I lived in one of the Eastern/Southern states, I had no idea that there were people who thought all American Indians lived on reservations and were dirt poor.

I sure don't blame you for not wanting to break up the family. But life spins by so quickly, how can you give up on happiness for yourself for the years you have left? I don't know how old you are but from your children's ages I'd guess you are in your early to mid forties. Are you going to spend the rest of your 40 or so years living a lie? Don't you think you are being a bit of a martyr? A martyr as defined as a person who suffers a great deal of pain for a long time. Do you really think that your family wants you to live without the love of a good mate? Are you planning on nursing this man on his death bed (assuming you out live him, which you probably won't because you'll get sick from having a lousy immune system from living with this pain) after he has treated you with such indifference? Why must you pay with your unhappiness to achieve happiness for your children? I really think you need someone good talk to about this. You need to be able to tell it all and have them play it back to you so that you can understand the futility of your position on this. You know your husband can't change his spots, don't you? I think you said that he is in denial about his "secret" and that no one knows. I don't mean to be mean, but I would be shocked if he really hasn't explored those feelings and been with someone else sexually. How would you feel if you learned for certain that he does have a secret relationship - on the "down low" as they say? Would you be angry? Would it take away some of the guilt you feel? Of course I could be wrong about all this. I only know what you've chosen to tell us. But in my experience I have to tell you that when someone is in as much pain in a marriage as you are, with the conflicted feelings that you have, there is usually a third person involved. I don't want to be right about this, but I would bet that I am.

Kat: good one!

Long yes, but so filled with wonderous content. I had very good friends since college that were best friends of my first husband and I. They were incredibly hot to trot for each other before they were married and for many years afterwards until they started their family. (They had a difficult time getting preggers) Anyway, he confided to me once that he just couldn't bring himself to be interested in her sexually after she became a mother. No matter what. He said it would be like doing his mother or something. Just not happening. We also discovered that he spent many of his lunch hours at the boobie bars. Interestingly and sadly I might add, they stayed together for over 30 years. She finally found her brass ovaries and divorced him. They are both remarried and have very active sex lives with their new mates. She is having sex for the first time in an extremely long time and is absolutely delighted. Her new husband thinks she's the hottest chick he's ever been with. I mean afterall she has enormous hooters - all natural too. I just cannot imagine living with a man that long and not having sex. I'm afraid I'd wind up doing a Lorena Bobbitt. :omg:

kity and kat (like birds of a feather?) I agree with you both. Good post, kity! Did ya'll hear that Lohan got busted again for DUI and had drugs in her car? Although I haven't heard a whole report, just some talk radio thugs making jokes about her. You know the truly embarrassing thing about Dubya is not so much his lousy grammar and his bumbling delivery of a sentence, but it is his arrogance and his aggressive war mongering political decisions! He has some nerve speaking to the families of fallen victims of this war, acting all sympathetic. He should hang his head in shame and beg them for forgiveness over the entire horrible war fiasco. He keeps playing it like our military is saving us from something and that they're "fighting for our freedom" - what a CROCK! I did hear last night that once they finished with his colonoscopy over the weekend, the doctors put his head back where it was. I also heard that besides the 5 polyups they discovered, they found 4 oil barrons' heads up there. Bada-boom.

Lucy: I'm afraid I don't understand your sentence "Please don't conflate clarity with snobbery." I haven't heard conflate used in quite that context before. Bring me up to date, will you? Anyway, I believe you're spot on when you say that spelling and syntax are not what some people were taking issue with when they were attacking Lee. But that is what some people were complaining about. It seems that sometimes when we find a person to be interesting and nice even though their posts are difficult to read, we cut them some slack. But when we disagree with their politics, and their communication reflects poor grammar and syntax, those things are particularly annoying.* I believe that is what Green may have been speaking to. *George Bush for instance is a prime example. He drives up up a farking wall. :tired

Thanks Kat for taking the time to explain. I was not privy to that other thread so I was completey taken by surprise when I accidentally bumped onto this one and saw it get so feisty so fast. I had a big problem with a guy a while back whose spelling was atrocious and punctuation non-existent, but what really made me do a fast burn was how he thought he was the only one who was right - and I DO mean right! All the way right and beyond. He was also very insulting to others. To make matters worse, the people who agreed with him were oblivious to the fact that he used such hateful language toward some of us and they became indignant when some of us took him to task. This sounds like a very similar scenario. That thread went on forever and occasionally a poster would stumble onto the scene and wonder what the heck was going on. It was very entertaining stuff, and there actually was a lot of information exchanged in the process, but it was extremely heated and things got out of hand a time or two. I've been trying to not take things so personally ever since. I do not always succeed, but I do try. Anyway, thanks again for setting the record straight.

Yer dern tootin', Green!

Good point, Green.

When my DS came to visit in Montreal, he was curious and ordered Poutine. We giggled and laughed and shared a cupful. It was very strange but as the cheese curds melted it became quite tasty. It feels just as lethal as the Okie meal mentioned above. I know what Perogies are, but I've never eaten them. They must have that same addictive quality because a friend of mine from Ohio spoke of them with reverence.

White gravy that belongs on chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes is simple. You use some of the pan drippings and make a thick roux (although we never used that term years ago) with flour. Then you use milk for the liquid and lots and lots of pepper. There is a fine line between too thin and too thick. When you wind up with the glob of glop, you've made it too thick. It should be the consistency of... letsee... hmmm, I can't think of a thing like it. Thicker than cream Soup. The stuff definitely goes straight to your arteries. Our chicken fried steak dinner is preferably accompanied by the mashed potatoes (Yukon Gold) and fried okra. A perfect ending is Apple Cobbler (top and bottom crust - lots of cinnamon) and Caramel Ice Cream. The whole meal is death on a platter. But it is quite addictive and I was force fed it as a small child, therefore it is not my fault. :hungry: Nowadays we have gone healthy by substituting chicken for the steak.:heh: Except that since the band, I can't eat chicken. And I do not give in to the addiction more often than about once a year (maybe twice) on my DH's and DD's birthdays.

Uh I really dated myself using the term "climax" didn't I? I should have said "the big O." I used to be very disappointed that the DH masterbated because I knew for sure that it meant he wouldn't be as interested in investing the time and energy into making out with me. He was such an anxious and exciting partner before we both gained weight and got older. Now it seems like it is satisfactory to both of us just to do for ourselves whatever we need without bothering the other one. Honestly I do not like it. I much prefer the begging he used to do regularly. :heh:

karey: As my ole pappy used to say, "Don't take any wooden nickles" (I have no idea what it means) Have a great trip. Here's hoping you come back with more coins than you take!

Marimau: I just notice how well you're doing with the band! Were you banded in September? I'm impressed!