green

The 5 year old brat will likely end up a drug addicted has-been with a reputation in the business as being impossible to work with by the time he is 15. :eek: We will all be reading about him in the Enquirer. :heh: (Psst! What's his name? LOL)

Thanks for telling me this info about Sanger. Racism and eugenics, a tool which was once viewed as being applicable to this end, are evil.

Although I am pro-choice I am also repelled by those individuals who repeatedly use abortion as a birth control method. I am a rather tidy and organized individual by temperament and thus I find it almost impossible to relate to those women who persist in getting themselves into the same difficulties, whether it be getting themselves lumbered with unwanted pregnancies or tied up with abusive men or whatever, over and over again. I am one of those individuals who tries to make a point of learning from her own disasters and I do have a tendency to be harsh towards those women who are unable to get their lives under control. Nicer and more generous women have called me up on my judgemental attitude towards these individuals, individuals whom I see as being just plain careless. Perhaps these kind women are right and I am wrong. Certainly I find it easy to imagine a girl or a woman hard up against it by virtue of one unwanted pregnancy but I do find this business of repeated unwanted pregnancies to be a messed up state of affairs, whether the woman chooses to carry them to term and then drop the babies off for adoption or have them aborted.

If you get them reduced people will be able to tell you what colour your eyes are. heh heh Good luck on your decision.

kariz, I had my lapband surgery last September. My problem was/is portion control. I love to pig out and then I always feel like a piece of sh!! afterwards. The band has changed this. I now have a healthy BMI - 23.9 - and I can wear a size 12P pant which is down from a size 18W. The band really is a wonderful tool for limiting your food intake but you must do your share of the work by paying attention to the types of food that you do eat. I am trying to stick to fresh vegies and meats, eggs, and tuna, etc. I am trying to avoid carbs and fats which are my two favourite food groups! :think The way the band works is that it doesn't allow you to eat anywhere near as much food and that helps people like us; eating the right foods and taking small bites and chew, chew, chewing is all part of the technique of working with the lapband. You will get it, I am sure, but you need the band. This is the hardware which physically stops you from pigging out and from feeling hungry in that old pre-band way. I still find it weird to leave food on my plate.... My husband was kind of weirded out when I told him that I had arranged for the lapband operation but he is a very nice and tolerant man and he is used to me doing things which he finds weird. He always puts up with my stunts and he is astonished by the amount of weight I have lost since I got banded.

Once again, I must express to you, L8, how very much I very moved I was upon reading your account of your first pregnancy. I am also moved by your story, BJean. It seems to me that we are all women who grew up in the same era, one which was transitional with respect to attitudes towards women. We started out living our junior lives in the Eisenhauer '50s, a time when women were expected to live entirely different lives from men. By the age of 20 I was already at university, had lost my virginity, had a regular boyfriend (subsequently my husband), and I was on the pill. I was very careful about birth control because I knew that I never, ever wanted to have a child but I have a hunch that an abortion was still difficult to obtain in Canada at that time. I suspect that at the time I figured that I would arrange to have an abortion in one of the European countries where it was legal should the Pill fail. This is a solution which is available only to those grrls who can afford it, of course. Even should abortion be recriminalized, grrls who can afford safe abortions will always be able to get them. When you remove the right to choose you are removing this option only from those who are strapped for cash. It might be argued that this would be legislation which penalizes the working class and the lower middle class as well as the poor. The rest of us will skip around it if we feel that an abortion is the only way we can go on with our lives. @ BJean: when Green was first married the two magazines to which the young couple had subscriptions were Ms. Magazine and Model Rail Roader. :eek:

Ah Mark, it is always such a pleasure to read your comments on these questions. You invariably say what I am still trying to sort out and you do so in such a coherent and elegant manner. Thanks, kid.

I wasn't counting at the time but I think it might have been around 14.........? 14ish or so, I'd guess.

Midnight shift is when the body really screams for carbs. I have gone through this myself. I think what your body really wants is energy. Why not have some tuna and hard-boiled eggs available to snack on. Energy from protein lasts longer than the quick fix from carbs which are really only complex sugars, I believe. There are tins of tuna which come with pop top lids - you don't need a can-opener. Eggs are rich in the vitamin Bs. And the advice to have to fresh fruit and raw vegies around is good advice.

I went through menopause when I was 41 and I was banded last September at the age of 57. I was around 200 lbs when I was banded and I now weigh 147 lbs and have a BMI of 23.9. If your weight problem is due to portion control then the band is a fabulous weight loss tool.

I have a friend who is my age who had enormous ta-tas. She has just had them reduced and feels like a new woman. No more back and shoulder pain. She was also tired of the grooves her bra straps made in her shoulders.

Good luck to you, AndreeR, and to the rest of you newbies.

Well, I went to the lapband lunch at Kelsey's yesterday and it sure was a lot of fun. :biggrin1: It is really great to meet fellow lapbandsters in the real world. I want to thank the folks who arranged this get-together and Lisa In TO who very kindly helped me out by giving me a lift. :clap2::clap2::clap2::clap2::clap2: A very big thanks from Green. :ranger:

If your problem is portion control then the band will work well for you. I don't know how to advise you with regard to your husband's attitude. Perhaps you could explain that you have been dieting and exercising for a very, very long time now and it has gotten you to your current weight, a weight which you are very unhappy with. Tell him that if diet and exercise were the answer then there would be no large people. Nobody enjoys being overweight in this looks-obsessed society. Obesity is also a medical issue and the band is a medical technique which is designed to combat obesity. Maybe telling him this stuff will help, maybe you have already told him. Good luck, grrl.

Icecream is nice cream and that is a problem..........

@BJean: Thanks, kid. Green feels the same about you, grrl.

Oh, that you would have to be a un-believer to gain access to the right to choose? Oh, fer sure. I was just being a fool, eh. But it is true that there are a number of folks like myself, folks who simply do not believe in any religion whatsoever and who thus cannot understand these arguments based on religious texts. In most European countries our numbers are sufficiently significant that our disbelief is mainstream, if not the norm, and certainly the country I live in is much more secular. It is for this reason that in many industrialised nations the expectation that a scriptual text inform governmental policies is viewed as kind of odd. Now, I am aware that what I have already said is offensive to many of my friends here on LBT and so I will plunge on and say that to many folks who live outside the U.S. the only difference between the current engagement of Islam in third world politics and the advancement Christian agenda in American politics is one of degree.

Thanks for sharing this story with us, L8.

Heh heh. I have been kinda thinking about it. I have been thinking about getting the rabbit which is a vibrator which I saw on SEX and.... You can buy them in my city and they do an all out attack on the genitals, eh.:)

I was very moved by your account of your marriage, BJean. It reminds me of my own early attempt. Young people do marry but they are unable to base their choice of partners on anything more than youthful idealism, active hormones, and possible fears of missing out on an important rite of passage into adulthood. Those active hormones are what we call love when we are young and it is the idealism and the desire to participate in adult life which prompts us to marry. Sometimes all of this works and the junior couple continue on to have a successful marriage which lasts for decades. And sometimes these early unions turn out to be absolutely disasterous. We are all so young and so immature when we are in our late teens and early 20s. And yet we are all hauling around so much personal baggage in terms of our oh so recent childhood experiences, both with respect to our expectations and our emotional damage. And of course we haven't lived long enough to have developed any kind of experience or perspective. I believe that women are particularly vulnerable to colluding in their own victimisation in order to save a relationship which has gone sour. I know that in my own early marriage I was quite content to be the sole bread winner as well as the only individual of the pair who would do housework when my husband quit teaching in order to make his (non)living as a musician. I was a real "stand by your man" kinda grrl at the time. I sure wasn't happy in my marriage but it was only when I discovered that the guy was unfaithful that I was able to dump him. That was the straw that broke this particular grrl's back. Up until this point I had felt that all the failures and all the unhappiness in our marriage had been my fault - I simply hadn't been giving enough or hadn't been giving in the right way. When I discovered that my husband had been systematically unfaithful to me, the final insult, I was so horrified and grief-stricken that I kinda freaked out. I kicked him out of the house but I was so troubled by my feelings of shock and pain that I wondered if I might not be on a trip to the rubber room. I had, you see, worked so damn hard at being a good and supportive wife, a role which does not come easily to the naturally mouthy, cynical, and outspoken Green, eh. I asked my doc to refer me to a shrink (all of this was covered by our health care plan, by the way) and he was curious to know as to why I had washed up in his office. I told him about my situation and then I said that I thought that I was nuts. He said that I wasn't nuts, that I was just going through a split-up. :rolleyes It wasn't long after this before I began to feel much happier. And this is where I must address Monk's comments: I do believe that it is far easier to be happy and at peace when living alone than when opting to settle with someone. I did, you see, find myself spending one dreadful Saturday afternoon not long after the collapse of my first marriage lying on my living room floor staring up at the ceiling and thinking to myself that I will surely die from this pain of loneliness. I was so miserable that I couldn't move. I lay there for some considerable period of time and then I began to remember all the loneliness that I felt during my marriage and I realised that you can feel just as lonely in a marriage. I really don't think that there is anything at all scary about being a single individual. I am convinced that in many respects living single can make for a more interesting life. I loved living life as a single person and I am always happy when my beloved mate has to spend time away from home.

It is true that I am absolutely nuts about tomatoes and will pay a big buck for greenhouse tomatoes in the winter. My favourite ones are the giant field tomatoes that we only see in the summer. My other weakness is cheese. :hungry: I don't know about my restriction being at the sweet spot. I can still eat all sorts of things which give problems to other bandsters, most notably fibrous vegetables, bread and pasta, but I cannot eat large amounts of food anymore and I sure cannot mix food and liquids, either. That is a surefire recipe for a PB event. And if I forget to chew, chew, chew, I will get that golfball feeling. :help: I was filled up to 7 cc but had to get .5 cc removed almost 2 weeks ago because of possible acid reflux. :sick I am still feeling like my throat is painted with acid upon waking up in the morning and I have quite a nasty little cough even though I have been on prescription reflux meds for about 3 weeks now. (I started using my husband's meds before I got my own.) This Tuesday I am going for an upper G.I. X-ray exam. My doctor had me do blood work which turned out wonky and so I see her on Wed in order to discuss this. If this problem is unrelated and quickly fixable I might get another fill.... I am feeling hungrier now that I had the defill. It does sound to me, BJean, that you have not hit the sweet spot yet and that perhaps you might have some head hunger issues as well. ? Do you have a sweet tooth or are you a volume eater? My problem is volume. I don't really have the sweet tooth issue to contend with. That would make one's fight more difficult. :phanvan

Howzabout a law that would forbid all practising Christians to involve themselves in abortions? Those of us who are not Christians will continue to have the right to choose. We do, afterall, have a right to our beliefs and our beliefs on this subject are quite different to yours.

I was the oldest of 3 kids and the only girl. I wasn't interested in girly things, however, and didn't want dolls and wasn't interested in playing house. I had a cowboy hat, a set of toy guns, Mini-Brix, and some toy cars, and those were the toys that I liked to play with. I mostly played with boys and they let me play with them because I was bigger and stronger than they were. I was a tomboy. As an adult I have never found children all that interesting to be around for any length of time, particularly very young children. This is because we don't have very much in common and I find that the younger ones are often quite chaotic in their thought processes. I also find babies entirely unnerving because they don't really don't do anything at all except make strange faces, breathe heavily, wriggle, make messes in their diapers, drool, sleep, and cry. Though I am aware that most people adore babies I fail to see their charm. They seem like nothing more than labour intensive items to me. It is obvious that I am not at all maternal and would make a lousy mother. At the same time I feel the world would be a sadder place if it were only populated by adults, especially adults like myself. It sure is fun to see the kids playing on my street or to go to a casual gathering and see a clutch of children having fun. I even enjoy talking to kids, just not for very long is all. It is for this reason that I am always pleased to hear about folks like katt's daughter and son-in-law. It is always a wonderful thing when responsible couples who do love and want children are able to have them. The parents are lucky, their children even luckier. It is sad when such folks are unable to have kids and sadder still when irresponsible and careless people do have them.

I make a very nice little eggy meal for myself these days. I crack a couple of eggs into a bowl, add a little skim milk, a diced fresh tomato, fresh ground pepper and some grated old cheddar cheese. I whisk the mixture together in a rather incompetant fashion, then nuke it between 3-4 minutes. It looks a bit like vomit but is healthy and tastes divine. Fresh herbs are a nice addition. I am going to make some in a few minutes. Then I am going to eat fresh blueberries for desert. Ahhh............:hungry:

Thanx, kat817. I love R&R. We really get a chance to trade ideas and life experiences, don't we? And yet we manage to appreciate and enjoy each other. This is the best, I think! I am probably going to ask you questions about Aboriginal issues, eh. :confused: Hope you don't mind.