green

Wise Derick, one of the many reasons why I like you. Well,.......one of the few; but I do I like your sense of humour, I like trade unionists, I like young men, and I like intelligent trouble makers. :heh::heh::heh:

I guess I posted the above because I want some of you all to explain to me what the big boobs thang is all about. Colour Green curious is all.

I must confess that one thing which I really don't get is the North American obsession with gigantic tits. I lived for some years in France, the home of haute couture, and certainly France is not a tit-obsessed country. In fact, big tits are a problem when you are wearing elegant clothes. They ruin the line of the clothing, that is to say, the way the clothes fall. Another problem is that big tits make you look fatter than you are. This is because they push the material out from your body, this makes you look even bulkier, and this is why during those years while I was fat I always wore jog bras. I wanted to smash my breasts as close to my body as possible in order to minimize my size. I have read that designers now have to rejig their haute couture in order to fit American women because so many of them have had tits installed. I have got to confess that the giant tit thing seems much more Hugh Hefner, strip joint and trailor park than Audrey Hepburne elegant, upscale classy, or even Sex in The City. With giant jugs you simply cannot wear funky or elegant clothes without risking looking men's magazine material or worse. And then you've got to think about them implants when you are 80, incompetent and incontinent. Those boob mountains are still going to be out there and endlessly perky. I never got the big boobs thing and I still don't. Mine are now hovering between a B and a C and, I have been pleased to note, haven't been much affected by either age (I have never had children) or weight loss. This is a real relief to me. The reason I was most anxious to lose weight was vanity. I wanted to have the fun of wearing funky or chic clothes again before I died and during those fatty years this was a challenge. I certainly have never had the desire to buy gigantic tits and ultimately find myself looking like sex dolly who is long past her sell-by date. I am aware that my comments sound awful harsh but these are a reflection of my true feelings. I just don't get it. Never have.

Hey, very cool comments. Thanks, folks. I don't think that I would have waded into this discussion at this time had I not read Apple's post and then noted that she was 19. I just wanted to explained to her that this whole biz of relationships and sexuality does become a lot more complicated. Certainly when I was a horny 19 year old I could never have imagined any of the complications that spring up between up between couples after they have spent some years together. At the same time I certainly did not want to disrespect your input, Smith. (Again, I gotta say that I love your name.)

Science grrl, Green has got to tell you that the snoop dawg dance was not your finest hour. You have been gifted with a superb intellect, and your specialty is mammalian behaviour. I submit that this outbreak of crazy behaviour might just be viewed under this lens: on one level this might be viewed as alpha issues within the big head hairless tribe. The paint bawl thang was definitely not LizRbit's finest hour. Wasa and sweethazel have not performed at their very best and, yes, sweethazel did indulge in some entirely uncalled for bitcherie on the Alla thread. All of this is very, very true.... But now comes the time for everyone to move on, ignore each other, and keep silent. By the way, you may be amused to hear that Green has serious anger issues of her own. I still see a psychologist in order to talk about this stuff. I really do understand where you all are coming from. I am not being a sanctimonious goody-goody for I am a cynic by temperament and one of those who only believe in the I Don't Care Bears. This means that I have no intention of preaching to you. I just figure that all of you intelligent and, yes, amusing colleagues will be better off if you are not engaged in sad, sour, and sub-intellectual snarks. (Please note that I have worked hard to toss a lot of words begining with S in that last sentence.) Remember that living well is the best revenge. This could arguably extended to enjoying oneself by engaging in interesting discussions on the internet. Avoid letting the bell troll for thee.

Oh, rrod, I believe that all of us who are posting on this site are here because we either have or still are wearing the T-shirt of marital dysfunction. My response to Apple was prompted after reading her post and then noting that she was 19 years old. When I was 19 I could not imagine how men and women could end up in, well, these sort of situations. My take on the sexuality of couples was that normo couples were up for endless boning and always would be until they died if given the opportunity. Man, was I shocked to learn after I was first married, and this was after 2 years of fabulous furtive pre-marital boning, that I was so bored by the activity that I would rather read the telephone book than bone. I do have the attention span of that gnat. What I was hoping to convey to Apple was that men's sexuality is not always a sure-fire thing. Men can find themselves unable or unwilling to bone for all sorts of reasons. They are stuck with a problem which women do not have. They have this reputation of being horndogs to uphold and this adds to additional stress on a man. A woman is always free to say no without her motives being questioned. But as you can see from Apple's post this is not the case for men. When a man just does not want to bone it is assumed that he is either gay or unfaithful. In fact we are short-changing men when we view them as just bone-machines. Men have feelings, too.

It's best for you and Wasa to completely ignore the snipes and barbs contained in such posts. Whenever bitterness and mean spiritness is apparent it ends up speaking for itself and does finally alienate other folk. Most of our LBT barroom brawls are so much fun because, however flamboyant these may be, these are all about ideas, not about each other. This is how the smokers and non-smokers, the left wing-nuts and the right wing-nuts, the believers and the atheists - you know what I mean - can be duking it out on one thread and be the best of friends on another. This is part of the value and the charm of LBT in my opinion. When you personally engage in these spite matches you, too, risk alienating folk. This is in part because most readers don't know what these fights are all about, they don't know any of the background history, and so the posts make for boring and pointless reading for the outsiders. It also means, and now I am going to sound like Mummy, that you are stooping to a baser level, and that you, too, will sound like spite merchants. Now, LizRbit, I have no idea as to who started what but I do know that you and your Aunt have been the ones to toss in the latest posts, the ones which have served to stir all this crap up again. And I know that you, grrl, can do better. You and I got into a flaming brawl about smoking sometime ago - an idea-driven brawl - and parted as friends, I trust. Indeed you made painful personal revelations at that time for which I respect you very, very much. LBT is a big and very interesting site for although we have all come here because we have weight issues apart from this we are very different. This is, in my opinion, a real strength. In RL we tend to meet people like ourselves; here we get to meet all sorts of folks. There is lots of room here for all of us. Put down your personal guns, suggests Green, and let's get back to arguing ideologies, talking about ideas, and problems associated with personal lard, relationships, and anything else which might interest or amuse us. Sorry for having gone all Dr. Phil on you all, eh.

I think noses are really tricky. A friend of mine had a friend who was very attractive but who wanted her nose redone. My friend said that she ended up looking like Dick Tracy. My mum had a big schnozz and once visited a plastic surgeon. He looked at her and said to her that she looked like a confident woman and then suggested to her that she really didn't need to have her nose redone. And so she didn't. As for me, I like, I mean really, really like, interesting noses. I very much like the AmerInd noses which I have seen. My own schnozz is not all that small and looks Greco-Roman. My eyes are large but when I lived in France I had men swooning over my nose! Go figure.... lol And I do agree with you. I think noses are tricky. If you have strong features a bland little nose will look pretty damn silly. If you are going to have it modified you need to have a surgeon who has an artistic eye do this for you. In fact this holds true for all face work: there must be a marriage of technical mastery and the artist. Face work ain't like TTs and Tit Jobs.

In fact you raise an interesting issue. I smoke, I had to give it up 3 weeks before the F/L, and I have always, even when I was a child, had serious problems whenever I get a cold or the flu. I come from the Mucus family and I would inevitably be left with ear or lung infections. This has continued to be a Very Bad Thing for me as an adult. I had surgery on my ear drum when I was in my late 30s because of an ear infection. When I was going through my battery of tests to clear me for plastic surgery I had a lung X-ray and this was okay. But 6 weeks before I was due for the surgery I caught a summer cold and the end result of this was bronchitis, confirmed by another X-ray. My doc commented that she suspected that I was in fact an undiagnosed asthmatic. And it is true that we do have asthmatics in our family. By the time I arrived for the surgery I was off antibiotics but still on two different inhalers and my lungs were kind of off norm. I mentioned this to both my surgeon and to the anaesthetist. They judged that it was safe to go ahead (and remember that no doctor, especially a high-profile plastic surgeon, wants a patient to croak on his watch) and I trusted in their judgement. The morning following the surgery I was kind of lung-y and they did have me use an inhalator and sent me home with a prescription for one. To tell you the truth, my problems lasted a day or two and then were gone. Now I have problems again. You see, I caught another damn cold and as a result I am Lung-y. And I am still blowing my nose. This has been going on for 3 weeks now. I caught it when I went to vote in the provincial election. Ugh! The only way you will be able to know whether your asthma will mess you up is to consult with a good surgeon. A friend of mine who only has one kidney and as a result can't tolerate long operations had fat introduced into her face and then the surgeon sculpted this so that her face looked fuller, younger, and more childlike. It certainly plumped out the wrinkles and the scrawny bits. In fact it was much cheaper, way less invasive, the recovery time was short, and she looks good. She had it done in 2 sessions and each session cost her 2Gs. But I gather that face work is complicated: it depends on how you age (saggy or scrawny/sunken), what your health is like, and how deep your pockets are. My suggestion would be that when you are close to your goal you go visit someone good and discuss your personal situation over with him.

Well, as one who was always anxious to keep control over her own life in oh so many ways, I have always advised women to look after their birthcontrol needs and men to always wear a wellie on their willie. (I have also dished out fiscal advice in much the same spirit.)

I am with BJean! :clap2::clap2::clap2: In fact I have just given her the clap but in a good way!!! from Green, eh, for your wise post.

Couples stop boning each other for many reasons. The reasons which you cite are two of these. But sometimes they stop because of boredom, stress, or unresolved issues which lead to resentment. You are only 19 and so I realise that it may be difficult for you to believe but, trust me, both men and women can grow sexually bored with each other and yet still love each other enough that they have no desire to cheat. Ongoing job, financial and family stresses will also suck the sexual energy out of both men and women, as will the depression that these anxieties may cause. Issues which cause feelings of anger and resentment which are then buried can cause a man to no longer want to bone his wife. I have heard of men who become jealous of the attention that their wives lavish on their new-born children. Of course a jealousy of this kind is difficult to for him to acknowledge because it leaves the man, the father of the kid, looking not so good in both his own eyes and the eyes of his wife, and so he broods about this instead and withholds sex. This is just one example, of course, of how unspoken anger or resentment can lead to sexual dysfunction in a marriage. Even in the very best of marriages couples bone a lot less often later on than they do during the first year or so. This is due to lack of time, lack of privacy (children), exhaustion (children, jobs, etc), and a certain level of familiarity which, yep, does lead to boredom. And sometimes men stop boning because they are having actual physical difficulties. They should seek help by seeing a doctor but you know that men are often too macho to be able to deal with this. Anyhow, AppleSmith (love your name, by the way), I hope my explanation makes some sense to you.

There is a website called the Neighbor From Hell but I don't have the URL anymore. People write in with their stories of obnoxious neighbours and it makes for fascinating reading. It seems that most fights are about unruly children, noisy dogs, and welfare types who sleep all day and party all night. Then there are the types who bring down the property values by building really strange constructions on their property.

I am Canadian and live in Toronto and so I went to one who is here. I did choose one who has a big name and and an excellent reputation. He is one of the surgeons to whom our media go for quotes whenever they are doing articles on cosmetic surgery, and he has also been profiled often. I paid about $25,000 for the work and it still isn't quite finished. Now I am involved in a series of treatments to get rid the rosacea on my cheeks and generally improve the quality of my skin. I went to my first session yesterday. It hurt more than I expected, by the way. I chose my surgeon very, very carefully. This is because your face is out there 24/7 and a grrl doesn't want to live with any mistakes. :omg: None of us want to spend the rest of our years wearing a burqa, eh? :phanvan I was on the operating table for 9 hours and I remained at the clinic overnight. I could have returned for a second night but I wanted to be at home. Because the operation is such a long one the surgeon required that I undertake a number of medical tests beforehand in order to assure that I was healthy enough to handle this. A stress test is one of these and a visit to an eye doc is another. The eye doc gave me a test to see if my eyes were 'wet' enough to withstand an eyelift. Unlike with the op for the lap band, after this surgery you can't immediately leave town. You will require some aftercare. I was operated on a Monday, sent home on Tuesday, and had to make return visits to the clinic Wed, Thurs, Fri, and the following Monday. They want to keep an eye on you and towards the end of the week they begin to remove your stitches and staples. The pain is, I found, seriously bad but I don't handle pain well. Never have. I do believe that you must find an excellent surgeon and really, really trust him. The reason for this is that you will go through a week of looking like a monster, and then a week of looking like a very ugly human. I spent a week looking like Michael Caine, the Brit actor, after he had been badly beaten and this really freaked me out. I figured that if I had to look like a British actor why couldn't it have been Jude Law???? As for my eyes, I looked like I had Down's Syndrome and had been in a car crash. Now, though, I do look great, thanks to the lap band and the face work. Yesterday my pharmacist who is just a kid went nuts over face lift. (I told him when I was cashing in the script for all the heavy narcotics and other exotic meds. ) There are, however, large portions of my face and neck which feel funny (this is because it takes time for the nerves to reconnect) and which will continue to do so for a long time yet and my cheeks and eyes are still somewhat swollen - mostly my cheeks. It used to be that a lot of Americans would cross the border to have cosmetic work done up here. This was when our dollar was really cheap. Now Canada is no longer such a bargain. I hope I have answered all your questions. If you have any more, feel free to ask. Do get yourselves the best face surgeon in the biz, is my one most important piece of advice. :ranger:

I've just had a full face lift: eyes, brow, neck, jaw. My surgeon told me that it is unwise to get one until you are at goal and your weight is stable within 10 lbs +/- max. I had my face lift on Sept 24 and it already looks great!!! I have been getting lots of compliments. Still feels kind of weird though....

In the months immediately post banding I did spend considerable time relearning my food habits and, yes, this did consist of examining prepared foods for their calorie count as well as the nutrition info. I am still in the habit of checking this info while grocery shopping. A lot of what I learned during this time really shocked me. I never became meticulous or obsessive about calorie counting, though. I was simply eating much, much less and I was anxious that the foods I ate were loaded with nutrition and relatively devoid of sat and trans fats. I don't think that a post-banding obsession with calories is necessarily a bad thing. Working with the band is a technique; the band cuts your physical capacity to guzzle but you in turn must learn which foods are calorie-laden and you must also learn which foods are nutritious. As an example: I got into quite a groove of eating avocado with a home-made vinaigrette: an avocado is a fatty veg but it is rich in nutrients and I figured I could handle the calories if I wasn't eating too much more during the day. You say that you have a short attention span, Nina, so enjoy your current obsession with calories, use it in order to learn about 'em, and then you will know this stuff and won't have to obsess about it.

We always got money when we were kids and possibly as a result of this my two brothers and I grew up to be financially responsible adults. On the other hand, and this will sound stupid, I am completely neurotic when it comes to buying personal gifts for people. And our Christmas mornings were kind of sad, a small stack of envelopes under the artificial Xmas tree.... Even the amounts tended to remain the same from year to year.

If any of your colleagues decides to help themselves to your "T" they are going to get quite a surprise! :faint:

Opera is good.

LOL I have a lot of gay friends of both sexes who break those stereotypes but my best friend is a man who is a total pig. I have hosted nature walks in this cat's apartment! He is a great cook. You just don't want to look too closely at the plates and the cutlery is all.

Haha. Pukage is permitted. :bounce:

Oh, ugh! This is one of the dirty areas, isn't it? We have heard so many stories of men who were tricked into fatherhood by women who claimed that they were on the pill or had the I.U.D. installed or whatever. We must admit that there can be a serious split between male and female interests when the pair of them settle down to engage in a sexual relationship. The guy figures that they are indulging in some sort of light-hearted exploratory fun and the chick is ready to settle down and be a family already. This can become much messier when there is a status split; this is to say that if the girl sees that her male comes with superior qualities - social status, education, finances, etc - she will be more inclined to capture him by presenting him with an unexpected and unwanted pregnancy. Now, I am one of those who doesn't view this kind of activity as being altogether heinous: I view it as being as an altogether logical outcome when viewed within the framework of our mammalian hardwiring. It is normal that when a female seeks to pass on her DNA she will seek out the best of her species and, moreover, that she will be anxious that she and her offspring be sheltered while the kiddiwinks are young and she is still raising them. Of course you must understand all of the above signifies that Green has bought into the argument that humans are part of the continuum of nature and as such we are equally subject to the laws of nature. If you believe, as I do, that we - the big head mammals of this planet - share a great deal of our hardwiring with our primitive ancestors and with our less intellectual friends then you will understand that all creatures are driven by 2 directives: 1) to stay alive as long as possible, and 2) to ensure that their genetic inheritance is passed on. You will, as big heads, obviously quickly figure out that this task, that of ensuring that your genetic material is successfully passed on to future generations, will be substantially different depending on whether you are male or female. Males can easily spray their genetic material out over just about everything. They figure that sooner or later someone is going to get knock up with their DNA. Females, on the other hand, will always find themselves handicapped for the duration of their pregnancies and it is for this reason, particularly in the case of mammals, that we will see that females will tend to be both fussier and trickier when it comes to this business of choosing the male genetic contribution. Sadly, the story becomes a little slimier than this. Females will often choose to mate with the cat whom they perceive to be the most powerful, the most macho guy; and if this same guy is not perceived to be a warm, loving and nurturing mate, females will involve themselves with much nicer males and will pass off their babies as being the result of these kind and loving unions. Research in DNA technology is interesting, even for a vacant, artsy, ageing blonde such as myself. This research indicates that this split in breeding/parental activities take place with any number of us mammals, including us big-head mammals. Once again I have found myself drifting far afield. I suspect that this is because I truly do believe in choice and the corrollary of this is that both men and women must be fully engaged in this issue of an unwanted pregnancy. It is certainly true that some women will use an unexpected pregnancy as a tool in order to snare a mate. It is equally true that a woman can find herself trapped by an unwanted pregnancy for no good reason and if her ethics do not permit her to abort there should be no reason why she must find herself hung up all alone. The ideal is that everyone who engages in sexual bizness takes care of him or herself but this doesn't always work, alas. To tell you the truth, Gadget, we have 2 stories which you might find of interest in my own family. One of my 2 nieces suffers from depression issues. This is a genetic issue and gallops in the Green family. Unfortunately, this kid was sufficiently disorganised and self-loathing that she did not take care of birth control issues. She did have an abortion and then when she found herself pregnant from a one time and inconclusive - ejaculation took place at the mouth of the vagina she claims - sexual experience she opted to keep the child. The father, a guy who according to my niece didn't have any fun from his one off sexual experience, found himself lumbered with a daughter. He was a guy who came from a traditional Italian family. He couldn't bring himself to tell any of them about the child. Financially speaking he has been paying for his premature ejaculation for more than 7 years now. And then there was my cousin. He went down on one of those Club Med vacations, and briefly hooked up with a Latina who is living in Canada with her family. He figured that this was all a holiday fling until she contacted him in order to say that she was pregnant. His initial offer was to pay for her abortion. This was rejected. He then clumsily made a mess of his relationship with her and her family when he went to visit her family. But finally the guy figured that he was a fool. And this is when he went to see her and her family. He told them that he wanted to be part of it all. And so for a decade and a half now my cousin has been engaged in his son's life both in a financial and a hands-on way. The weird thing is that although the rest of our small family loves this kid we really do suspect that our cousin may have been sold a bill of genetic goods. We ain't talking, however. Love is love. And of course while I am adamant, as I have always been, about this business of pregnancy and birth and child rearing being a burden which is inevitably hung around the woman's neck, I do admit that I believe that men do find themselves trapped by women. I guess that is why I find this question pig-awful.

Thanks, Wheets, for telling me this. I found your story fascinating, again because it describes a situation which is so stunningly different from mine and yet so similar to the stories which I have heard from those other atheists who live in the BB. In truth I am tempted to think that the difference of persecution for being different when you live in certain areas of the new world as contrasted to when you live in those infamous Islamic countries may well be one of degree. I will tell you that when my parents, a mixed marriage of a British mum and a Polish Jew father, immigrated to Toronto, Canada in 1947, life up here was much as it still is down there. People were Christians, did attend church, and did make your beliefs their business. In fact, employment forms asked what your faith was and this was legal at the time. Now, my mother was a baptised Christian although she did not trouble herself to become confirmed in the Anglican (Episcopalian) faith until after she arrived in Canada which was when she was in her late 20s. The Canadian upper crusties were Anglican, a bland, conservative, and safe faith - no speaking in tongues, testifying, or harrassing folks in their homes - and thus my parents had us done up as Anglicans. My father was an atheist. My mother was a spiritual person but her spirituality was not specifically anchored in Christian belief though this was incorporated, I guess one could say. When I was in grade four, my last grade spent in public school, I used to dread going to school each Monday because our teacher would ask all of us who had gone to church on Sunday to put up our hands. I almost never did put up mine but for some reason it never occurred to me to lie. And thus the humiliation. And a free-floating childish fear. My mum would get dressed up to go to church on Sunday mornings leaving the rest of us Greens lolling around the breakfast table in our pajamas. We would beg her not to go and occasionally she would drag me, the only girl, along with her. The truth is that she didn't want to go either but there was that awful 1950s standard to uphold and she was the one who was stuck with the job. When I was 10 my parents shipped me off to a boarding school run by Anglo-Catholic nuns. I briefly got religion, just long enough to spend 6 months or so harrassing them with hellfire whenever I was allowed home. But life up here has changed since those days. The city is a multi-cultural one and both the legislation and the local attitudes have changed. We have become accustomed to diversity and diversity is protected under our legislation. And our state has become rigorously secular, a good thing, I think, but one with a downside. Let me explain: the forces of Canadian political correctness work hard these days to banish all mention, let alone celebrate such traditional holidays as Christmas in the public school system. The Christmas break is now referred to as the Winter Break or Winter Holidays. This practice is the norm throughout all public institutions. This is really most offensive, I think, for our Christian history forms a significant part of our folkways regardless of our own beliefs and thus should not be edited out. I am awfully relieved that my neighbourhood and my city have moved such a long way from the conditions under which we lived when I was in the under 10 group. At the foot of my street there is a Catholic church which serves the local Portuguese community. From time to time throughout the year this church will conduct religious parades which pass up our street. The church hires cops who will temporarily block traffic from entering the street and these parades do not last for more than an hour max. I really love watching these and the only complaints I have heard have come from a Marxist friend. And nobody pays him much attention for he is still stuck in the 1960s. Around the corner is a store front mosque. On my street there is a car which has a bumper sticker which reads I (heart) Islam. I find it very cool that this car has never been vandalised. My tenant and close friend is a dyke. Although she works in the world o banking she has never taken any trouble to grrlify herself. We, my mate and I, have a number of friends who are gay, some of which stay with us when they are in town, and none of us have ever received any grief from the street. I guess that I will conclude this memoire by noting that my mum, a woman who was born in 1918, had always been accustomed to the company of gay men and women. And as for my macho pop (a guy who was born in 1914), he, too, was cool about homosexuality. The truth is that he did believe that sexual orientation was like race - something which he, as a Jew and a Holocaust survivor, figured he knew something about; he knew that no sane person would voluntarily choose to marginalise themselves by opting to thrust themselves into these dreadful perilous zones. Ahh, once again I have drifted off topic.

This is very, very bad! I am curious to know which province you are in. I live in downtown Toronto, Ontario, and my experience of the medical establishment has been great. But it seems that I made a serious error in judging the Canadian system by the experiences of myself and my friends who live either here or in Montreal, Quebec. I have one friend who lives in Montreal who is HIV positive and he is receiving superb supervisory care for his condition. I hope that you are making a stink about your lousy treatment. Universal health care isn't universal when you are not getting proper health care.

Before I retired I used to work with men, lots of men, building aircraft. They did pay a lot of attention to girls with great bodies even when the faces were not so hot. But they were not the ones that they married.