green

Hahahaha Though I got a good laugh out of this statement I can also see that there is a certain amount of truth in Derick's proposal. The truth is that Canada is not only underpopulated, but also that, demographically speaking, our behaviour is much more similar to that of the western industrialized European countries than it is to that of our southern neighbour. Canadians, like Europeans, are not having children. Yep, our birthrate is declining and in this we are following the trend of all the affluent, industrialized European countries. The United States has been an anomaly in that its birthrate is 2.0 and this means that America is maintaining its population. The decline in birthrate is something which is of serious concern for those nations which are affected. This is because, in the case of the Europeans, the cultural definition of national identity is complex and a loss in population cannot be solved by importing new folk and asking them to take up the slack. Japan is another highly successfull nation which is suffering from a collapse in its birthrate. Of course its national identity not only reposes on a complicated set of cultural issues but there is also the racial business, as well. Japan has been attempting to solve its decline in births by hunting down the children and the grandchildren of its emigrants with a campaign in order to convince them to move back to the ancestral homeland. Up here in Canada we do have it kind of easy in so far that - apart from the Quebecois - there is no such thing as a real Canadian. Canada is a very young country and one with a lousy climate and thus most Canadians are one, two, or three generations at best from being away from living somewhere else. This is why I was so amused by Derick's solution. Indeed, the city where I live, one of the largest cities in North America, is now mostly comprised of first or second generation immigrants. Toronto is considered to be the most multi-cultural city in the world at this point and this is an environment which is very successful. The city is much safer than most and we Torontonians are accustomed to dealing with folks from all over the world as part of our daily lives. The truth is that I am accustomed to buying my fruits and vegetables from the Portuguese greengrocer down the street and I am comfortable that he has hired the local imam, a guy who lives two doors down from us. I am used to dealing with the Jamaican kid who likes to complain about her Barbadian (Bajan) boyfriend when I rent movies from the local Blockbuster. One of my two physiotherapists is from Nicaragua. He calls me little Green in Spanish. The secretary is from Peru and speaks Spanish and English but her racial roots are Japanese. She doesn't speak a word of the language, however. I cannot say how life might be for new comers in any of the small villages which are also part of Canada but here in Toronto we have become so habituated over the years to sharing space that we have grown to believe that this is the norm. And one of the best things about all of this is all the great ethnic restaurants, eh.

And if talking about cats isn't the perfect thread killer then I don't know what is!!!!!!!!!!

Ooh, that kitty litter cake!!! :rolleyes I don't think I could have eaten it, not after years of dealing with cats and the used litter which is the inevitable result of dealing with cats. But the concept is absolutely brilliant! As for the question of kittens and pregnancy, we once took in a stray kitten who was small enough that she could sit on my husband's foot and, yep, she was pregnant. The animal was probably about 7 months old at the time. She more than doubled her size after she started living with us. Of course we had her spayed and she ended up being one of the sweetest animals we have ever had. She was, however, a little flakey and this leads me to one of my theories about cats: the dumb ones are usually the nicest ones.

I was banded in September of last year. My doctors put me on one week of clear fluids, two weeks of full fluids, and two weeks of mushies in the weeks following my operation. The clinic did suggest that I eat a lot of cottage cheese prior to the operation but I was very bad and went on a blonde ambition food court dining tour instead! This was my way of saying farewell to all those foods which I knew and loved. During this time I ate a lot of steak cooked very rare which is the way I love it. I also ate a lot of pasta and cheese. Now I am banded and am so very happy about this. I have gone from wearing a size 18W pant to fitting into a size 12P. I never could have done this on my own.

I was done last Sept by the TLBC gang but I have heard that Dr. Cobourn is the cutest surgeon on the lapband block. Lucky you! Do get that photograph, eh. *wink*

You will start to have less appetite once you start getting fills, I suspect. I was kinda lucky in that I didn't suffer too much from hunger during the recovery period but some people do suffer during this period of time. The fills really help although you may find that it takes time and some tweaking until you hit the sweet spot. And you have already lost 25 lbs, a significant chunk of weight! You are doing very well and shouldn't beat yourself up. Actually I myself have not been doing well lately. I have been sick with a cold and a bowel infection for weeks now and I am feeling very sorry for myself. This means eating the kind of cosy stuff which is also bad for the a$$! If I don't gain weight it is only because food isn't sticking around long enough to do any damage. The earliest appt I could make with my doc is for next Monday. I think I am going to get another fill once I get well again. Sorry for this paragraph of whining in your thread but I guess I needed to complain........ When do you go for your first fill? And LeslieLee, where are you getting banded?

When I first went on my quest to have my tubes tied I was living in Canada, in the heart of Toronto, a large city. My pregnancy and subsequent abortion occurred while I was living in the south of France. You must remember that I am quite a bit older than you are. It would be interesting to find out how I would be treated today by Canadian doctors if I were to make the same request. I must try to remember to ask my doc the next time I see her. I should also ask my brother what he would do. He is a doctor who is practising medicine in Virginia.

Yes, it struck me as being very weird, too. I first learned that sterilization was illegal in the systeme juridique course which I was taking at the local university and I was flabberghasted. It appeared that French law regarded sterilization as mutilation and that is an illegal practice. Or was when I was living there in the early 1980s. Later on I met a woman at a party who had some sort of medical condition which meant that pregnancy was dangerous for her. She was married, loved kids, and had had two with great difficulty. Her two children were followed by two abortions, abortions which she had because of this medical condition. My French was not fluent enough to understand all the details, I regret to say, and thus I cannot pass these on to you. I found it strange that she could not simply have her tubes tied and forget about dealing with pregnancy altogether. On another note altogether: the other thing I remember about this woman was that she taught English as a Second Language at a highschool. I was speaking English with my friend, Louise, who was English. This woman spent time listening in on our conversation and then finally announced that she had no trouble understanding Louise but found my Canadian accent incomprehensible. :paranoid

Yah, I figure that Jordin will take the prize whatever it is.......?

And yes, it was condescending of doctors to deny me the right to have my tubes tied. I have always known that I never wanted children and as I have just mentioned I found the idea of pregnancy and childbirth utterly terrifying as well. The argument which was always used was that I was too young - I was in my 20s when I first started asking about tubal ligation - and that I might well change my mind. I suspect that the notion that there are women who do not wish to participate in this aspect of life was incomprehensible to them. Anyhow, this is why I was rigorous about using birth control. My feelings of horror and panic when I found myself pregnant were intense.

No, the decision to abort was not a difficult one for me. I knew I didn't want to be pregnant, I was terrified of pregnancy and childbirth in fact almost to the point of this being a phobia, and so I made the arrangements to abort ASAP. Because the abortion was being performed in a hospital under a general anaesthetic I asked (once again) if the doctor would tie my tubes seeing as she was going to be in the general area so to speak. She was shocked. A year later I found out why. Sterilization procedures are illegal in France which is where I had my abortion.

Green agrees with Carlene on this one. Boys should wear condoms if they don't want to pay child support.

Green was so secure in her desire to never, ever have a child that she woulda been quite content to be sterilized. The trouble she encountered was finding anyone who would do the necessary work prior to her having had a couple of kidlets and reaching a certain age. Indeed had she found a friendly doc she never would have been stuck having to have an abortion in the first place. This is how she found herself knocked up while she living in France in her early 30s.

Though your - above quoted - post seems to be utterly incoherent the argument which I figure that you are attempting to make is that women cannot opt for the right to have access to the mechanisms of choice (birth control and abortion) and yet claim to also have the right to have as many children as they choose. If I have read your above post right it seems that your complaint, a justifiable one, is you feel that women want the pie to be sliced in their favour regardless of whether they choose to follow through with their pregnancies or not. If my reading of your above and entirely incoherent post is correct you have introduced an interesting point. Just as I have always viewed that the woman might, due to either a sentimental or a mechanical mistep, find herself suddenly hamstrung by an unwanted pregancy, you seem to see her as the Ur-mamma. I believe that many men do find women frightening for just this reason and it is true that if I were a man I would be very nervous about my sexual contacts with women. I have spent the last 20 years of my life working with men for I have been building aircraft and working on the floor. The men with whom I worked cannot be considered as highly intellectual guys and I have no problem with this. What I have noticed with the younger kids is that they have a tendency to get knotted up with young women who will present them with unwanted pregnancies. These young guys are seriously freaked. They claim that their girl friends have assured them that they were on the pill. They feel that they were suckered into something very scary and very serious. Most of these young guys already have a kid or two left over from an early marriage and these boys are already paying child support for these kids. Now they find themselves in the situation of being held hostage to their young girlfriends. Of course the end result for these kids is that they find themselves on the hook. These are a bunch o kids which have found themselves liable for their careless behaviour. Where the waters have become muddied is here: some of these kids will opt for abortion as a solution and others will not. Some of those grrls who chose to opt out of abortion are the same grrls who will expect to corner their new mates/baby daddies into something in the way of a relationship. We must be prepared to acknowledge that young men may behave badly. We must also be prepared that young women are also prone to behaving badly. I suspect that 396 power's latest communique may have had something to do with this very issue.

Marjon has expressed the concerns of the pro choice gang very well. It is this total lack of concern or sense of compassion for the woman who finds hereself in this position which is appalling to us who sit on the other side of the street with respect to this debate. You see we live in an era which is very confusing for women. On one hand we are told that women have the same value as men and thus have the right to all the same freedoms, rights, and responsibilities. At the same time, by denying women full control over their own bodies you may as well be telling this entire segment of the population that they must wear the niqab for to force women to remain controlled by their own bodies is to insure that this entire group of individuals will remain handicapped by the vagaries of biology. Women will never be regarded as the equals of men but will be viewed as little more than incubation equipment, hatcheries...or whatever.

Actually, there are cases of babies who are gravely deformed who do go on to live. These children would be individuals who are born with little more than the brain stem, that is to say the part of the brain which controls the automatic functions of the body; they are usually blind, crippled, and remain in fact little more than machines which process food. These babies will grow larger but they will never grow up. Children like this require much hands-on care. Their limbs must be massaged and worked in order that the muscles don't atrophy. They must be fed by hand, they must be bathed, and their diapers must be changed. Such children do exist, you know.

I am so happy with the results of my band. Yesterday I tried on two pairs of pants which I had grown too fat to wear and I found that I could pull them off without undoing them!

Sounds yummy! Thanks for giving us your recipes.

Ooh, I can't deal with heat and humidity, either. Let's go to the mountains and trout us a fish. I'll bring chocolate and wine. And yes, it is too bad you didn't save your drugs! A grrl never knows when she might enjoy a rest from the rat race. Haha *wink*

I want to thank you all for sharing your advice with me. This really is a great community we have here. :love:

Hmmm, very interesting. Maybe the reason I want linear reality is because I am an old fart and grew up on the linear stuff! :tired

Yep, this seems to be an advantage of living in one of the minor countries. You do get more exposure to global news.

Thanks for the compliment, eh! :what: It seems to me that there are some interesting men, men with actual signs of intelligence, in the race for the chance to run for a Republican presidency this time around. Rudy Giuliani is one. Certainly for America to win back its standing in the eyes of the international community it will have to elect an intelligent president this time around, one who doesn't talk about gittin' his orders from God. In international diplomatic circles this sounds just plain weird. And of course the war in Iraq has badly damaged America's reputation as well as ruining the current British Prime Minister's, Tony Blair, political future. You might recall that he supported the war in Iraq and now he is being forced to resign because he is the single most hated politician in Britain as a result of this action. At the moment I am not starving but I am sick.:sick I have had a cold for four weeks now and I caught some kind of intestinal bug when I was down in Mexico.:help: I am living on cough syrup with codiene and Immodium! Ugh!

While I have sympathy for people who are economic and political refugees - Toronto, Canada which is where I live is one of the most multi-cultural cities in the world - I still believe that these people must, like everyone else for that matter, respect their home and their neighbours. This means learning the folkways of the new country in order to integrate, being respectful of your neighbours and of the laws, and getting a job.

Our kitten showed up at our house as a stray. After she spent two nights knocking on our front door we took her in. She was really nice to us when she first arrived but beat up on the resident cat, a large and very sweet cat, all the time. Then we discovered that tiny as she was she was pregnant. We paid for her shots, her abortion, and for her to be spayed. The big cat died from kidney failure. :cry And we were left with the kitten from hell! :tired Her good point is that she is not a picky eater. Maybe she will ditch us someday.........:straight