green

I have to disagree with your comments concerning China. China is a totalitarian country and is ruthless towards those citizens who disagree with governmental policy. The workers are paid little and work long, long hours in unsafe conditions because they have no choice. Those Chinese who are internet savvy cannot access controversial foreign websites for these are blocked by the government. The governmental policies towards their own minority populations, the Tibetans, Mongolians, and the ethnic Muslims eg, have been and continue to be Draconian. Rural Chinese still live in woeful ignorance and because of the one-child policy and their insistance on having boy children these villages are now largely devoid of young marriagable women. What they do have is gangs of aimless young men who know that they will never have families and who pass their days drinking, gambling and brawling. Of course the country has no problem with illegals; no one wishes to immigrate but there are plenty of Chinese who are anxious to leave. Make no mistake: there are Chinese illegals living in Great Britain, Canada, and the United States. They are smuggled in by people whom they call 'snakeheads,' penned in cargo holds of ships and sometimes they don't make it to where they hope to go. As for the environment, China is an environmental disaster. During the 1970s, when the Hippies over here were crazy about Mao, China was suffering through a terrible famine and millions of her people were starving. This disaster was covered up from the foreign press at the time. And now that China is converting from bicycles to gas-driven vehicles the environment is going to become much worse. And of course her factories are small, old, and inefficient with no quality or environmental controls. Yes, her economy is booming but at a cost which many of her citizens must bear. As for my sources for the above statements these are various newspaper articles which I have read as well as memoirs written by Chinese writers.

I've just read that there is going to be stem cell research going on at one of the universities in my Province. One donor alone has given 15 million to the research fund. This is good, I think.

I am going for a facelift this fall. And I am going to shave my legs today.

Green sez go for good perfume. It is much less work and you won't have problems with scratching the itch..........

HahaHollywood, home of the shallowest values on earth. Life must be stressful for the people who live there. How could it not be? In a certain sense these folks have made a pact with the devil, have they not? They are rich and famous but they must conform to certain standards of perfection from which we are free.

This is interesting and it makes sense. I would love to learn more.

Thank you, L8, and the rest of the folks on this site, too, for making me feel welcome here. I love this site and as is plainly evident I am particularly fond of R&R. This is where we have a chance to swap information and discuss/debate ideas. I continue to learn a lot about your country and I have never, ever been made to feel unwelcome here as a foreigner. This particular thread has, as I have said, so stimulated my interest in this issue that I have gone on to learn that the issues are considerably more complicated than they may seem to the average liberal Canadian. I am also fascinated by your above quoted reference to the 14th Amendment; this would indicate that your Constitution is, let us say, less flexible, perhaps, than our set of laws in many respects. Our system has been styled on and driven by the British parliamentary and legal tradition. This tradition insists upon democracy and upon both Parliamentary and legal debate and so is in the way of a safeguard against totalitarianism. It is my understanding that your Constitution was constructed as a bulwark against any attempts to destroy the democratic rights of the citizens of your young Republic. At the time of the birth of your nation the parliamentary style of governance had little control over the caprices of the king. Of course by the time Canada came into existance the actual power of the monarchy had been pretty well smashed and parliament did hold all practical power. It is for this reason that we follow this system and we find that it works well for us. And, as I was saying, the system does permit a certain flexibility. Legislation which no longer works can be rewritten. This is not intended to be a criticism of your system so much as an examination of the differences. I guess that I am learning something new and that I am working through this on this post.... Well, if the anchor baby bizness is written into the Constitution then it seems to me that the most logical approach to dealing with this flood of illegals would be to insist that the penalties for aiding and abetting illegals be severe and that manpower be devoted to penalizing the businessmen who hire them and the landlords who house them. I am thinking large financial penalties and possible slammer time.

Ah, the power of magical thinking. This is such a human trait and we are all equally prone to it.

Marjon, you da man!:clap2::clap2::clap2::clap2::clap2:

Hahaha It's a good thing that I am a reasonably good lookin' woman because I sure am one of the laziest ones when it comes to personal maintenance. When those heavy-browed women, Brook Shields (in The Blue Lagoon and that movie was made a long, long time ago), Margot and Mariel Hemingway became fashionable I immediately stopped grooming my own caterpillars and I have never, ever touched them since. I have also never, ever had a professional manicure or pedicure, something that caused my niece to fall off her chair when she heard it. :faint: I do shave my pits and my legs and I do sometimes use an electric tweezers on my legs. During the Canadian winter the legs do get kinda hairy and because I am a blonde it looks like I am wearing golden angora knee socks. Ugh! And my feet look a little like Fred Flintstone's, I suspect. Double Ugh!! :omg: My one experience with crotch grooming was a true disaster. I shaved myself as bald as a billiard ball for erotic reasons and then spent the following week tormented by severe itching. I became obsessed with finding out of the way places in order to scratch myself and spent plenty of time at work trying to unobtrusively hump the corner of my desk. And of course all stores have anti-theft mirrors. No chance to scratch the itch there. :girl_hug: My mother laughed herself sick when I told her. :heh: Many, many years later I happened to be working with a guy who had worked as a male stripper. I told him the story. He told me that you are supposed to shave with the growth of the hair, not against, as I had done. He said: shaving against irritates the skin and gives you spots and if you have spots nobody gives you tips. Then he said: betcha never thought you'd never be discussing pubic grooming with a man, eh. Other than the above, my grooming extends to bathing, wrinkle creme, mascara, home hair dye jobs, and the daily use of really good quality=expensive perfume. I am a serious fan of fine perfume. It not only makes you feel like more of a woman it also announces to everyone around you that you are a woman. Most of the best perfumes are French but Armani has a couple of good ones, I have found. I figure that those skipped manicures and pedicures have probably paid many times over for the perfumes. I get my hair trimmed from time to time and I visit my dental hygienist 4 times a year because I have those kind of teeth. :tired

Yes, if the laws against hiring illegals were applied with due diligence and the penalties were severe enough this would, I believe, make a difference. It would also make life easier for those Hispanics who are legals and whom, I am sure, are often victims of the anger and the frustration which so many Americans now feel. As for the situation re babies born to foreign nationals up here in Canada: the baby will be given Canadian citizenship and thus may stay in the country. His parents, however, cannot. This leaves them with the option of taking the child with them when they leave or finding a Canadian guardian for it. Families caught in this bind will apply to be allowed to stay on compassionate grounds and there was a recent case where this was granted. A single woman who came from an African country where all girl children are circumsized, that is to say that their external genitals are removed, applied to remain with her infant daughter who had been born on Canadian soil. She argued that her child would most certainly undergo sexual mutilation. Her reprieve from deportation came through at the last minute. Another interesting case is that of a middle eastern Muslim family who have a young Canadian son. They were attempting to return to Canada in order to reapply for refugee status and were flying here via Mexico. Though the flight was supposed to be direct it made a stop on U.S. soil and the family was seized and interned in a prison in Texas which had been converted to house undesirable foreigners. Because the boy is a Canadian national the Department of Foreign Affairs is now involved but I have no idea about the latest developments in this story. You may wish to ask your representatives to push to change the anchor baby rule and to demand that the laws against hiring illegals be stringently enforced and that the punishments be severe. From my readings on the subject the infrastructure of the southern states, both economic and social, are gravely damaged by this influx of people and I think that you are right to alert your fellow citizens to this fact. This thread is a good one. It caused me to start paying attention to this issue.

I likes a grrl who talks about her surgeries. It shows that she is willing to share the credit for who she is.

What I need is a machine which makes single malt scotch. That would save me quite a few bucks. It is would probably ruin my liver and destroy my few remaining brain cells, though.... Alas. :cry

Your news has made my day, Purpose. Congratulations to you! It sounds like you are making real progress.

What has his new appointee been saying? I know his Attorney General has been in the news quite a bit....!

The lapband is great. I am eating healthier and I can wear a size 10 pant now. I think everyone should get banded.

Thanks for answering, LadyHR. It's funny but I had more mood swings when I was getting my period. I spent the week before getting in touch with my psycho side and then I would be flattened with the worst cramps for about 24 hours. Unfortunately for me I was on a short cycle and so it seemed that I was always getting my period! This was I was so resistant to HRT when I first went into menopause. haha

And Jenin is absolutely right, the influx of this illegal labour has had a very direct and very negative impact upon your own labour force. It has driven down both the price of labour and the safety standards. It is more difficult for your working class to find jobs, these are less well paid than they were, and the health benefits and safety standards are crumbling. What you might save on cheaper foreign labour you lose in paying out in welfare for the unemployed. This is a tragic situation.

It is human nature to migrate when the living situation becomes untenable. This has been the case throughout history. This is what the Okies did in the 30s when the land upon which they where living became a dust bowl. And when the Irish were dying of starvation during the terrible potato famine in the 18th century many of them migrated to America. There are also many economic migrants in the modern European Economic Union; these are workers who are moving from the poorer member states to the wealthier ones. And of course our forefathers were migrants. The Mexicans who come to the States are only doing what is human. Nevertheless, the sheer numbers of the new arrivals are straining the social fabric and the infrastructure of your communities. This is the fault of governmental policies the way I see it. The way I figure it, the current laws which you have in place are not being used effectively against the folks who hire illegals and this may also mean that businesses in general are not being monitored about their employment practices the way they should. Another thing: Mexico is the third party of the North American Trade Federation Association - NAFTA - which is a kind of European Common Market lite. Very lite. It strikes me that through this connection your president and the Mexican president should be having ongoing talks concerning ways to solve this problem. Obviously these talks should not be about building bigger and higher fences but about upgrading the economic health of the country and this is done by providing jobs and education for people in Mexico. You must remember that most people prefer to live close to their friends and family and all that they know and love. They only leave when they feel that they must. I also believe that it will be crucial in the upcoming century that North America have a healthy, well-educated, and prosperous workforce. We will need this in order to survive the global challenges. Both India and China are emerging as powerful economies. And of course the Middle East will continue to be a bloody mess. :confused: To return to Mexico for a minute: my husband and I have done a little travelling in Mexico and we are nuts about the country. It has deep colonial roots as well having had some of the most advanced Aboriginal cultures. We find the country rich in history, culture, and in natural beauty. And we have always been treated well by the local folk even though we don't speak a word of Spanish. :cry (Up here in Canada we learn high school French instead, eh! :phanvan )

I think that I already mentioned that I went through a really early menopause. I was 41 and this seems to be a family thing because my mum was 39 when she went through hers. I used to have very, very bad menstrual problems and so I resisted going onto HRT until I was close to 50. Soon after that the results of that big study came out and my doc took me off estrogen immediately. My skin tone is really good, especially for someone who drinks and smokes. :faint:This is probably a combination of the fact that I have spent my entire life avoiding the sun and the luck of the genetic deck. I do have osteopenia which isn't osteoporosis but is in the neighbourhood and so I opted - it was my choice - to take an osteoporosis drug along with bumping up my consumption of vita D and calcium. (It was probably my lack of vita D which messed up my bones in the first place since I live in the north and I don't spend much time in the sun in the summer due to my very white skin and my over sensitivity to heat. :rolleyes ) Anyhow, I sleep with a fan on and I use Zopiclone, a prescription drug, when I am having problems with falling asleep. I have been doing this for years. I don't know whether HRT makes it more difficult for us to lose weight or not. This would be a good question to ask an endocrinologist, I guess. I do know that I was banded last Sept and I am pretty much at the target they set for me at the time. Now they have dropped the target by another 5 lbs or so. I am curious to know why so many of you are on HRT. Is this for strictly medical reasons or is it because you feel that you will be suddenly thrust into old age should you quit HRT? I guess I am asking you because we are all over 50 here and we are all dealing with another shared set of issues apart from our problems with weight.

Take a good book or a magazine with you and try to relax. The appts are a pain in the a$$ but these physical tests are in order to insure that the surgeon won't run into any trouble with you while you are on the operating table. The operating team wants to make sure that you will have a safe and uneventful operation. Soon you will be banded and you will be free of all these appts and entering into the next phase of your life.

I spent some of my inheritance money on mine. It was money well spent. I'm gonna spend some more on a face lift this fall. I figure I am gonna enjoy my rusting years.:heh:

Sounds like the beautiful comments were code for "you have been losing weight and you look great!" That is a nice compliment and an excellent NSV. Enjoy.

Welcome, LadyHR. This is a good thread for us older bandsters, and I am sure that you will find the band a positive experience.

When you were 6 years old your parents knew better than you but now you are 35 and you are the one who is best equipped to make your own decisions. You have been reading over the posts on this site and I imagine that you have a very good idea of the good, the bad, and the ugly. The majority of us who post here have had/are having positive experiences with the band. I am real happy with my band. I am eating more carefully and the band has helped me with my big problem which was portion control. I have gone from wearing an 18W pant to wearing a 12P. My BMI is now 24.9 and my cholesterol results finally look good after years of looking kinda bad. The surgery is relatively easy. Where I was banded the surgery is day surgery and I was back home the same night. I spent the next three days in bed and, apart from the gas pains, really enjoyed myself. I enjoyed the pain meds, reading, napping, and feeling like I had a license to do nothing much. The cat kept me company and that was cosy. By the 4th day I was bored and so I got up, washed, got dressed, and started goofing on the computer. What I like about the lapband is that it is adjustable. If you do become sick and need to eat more, well, they can defill your band. There are other forms of weight loss surgery but they are much more invasive surgeries and thus are more dangerous and these surgeries are not adjustable or reversible. Of course, as you probably already know, the band is a tool, a fabulous tool. :biggrin1: It physically stops you from eating as much but it is up to you to make sure that you eat the right foods. This is important, too. You need to make sure that you get enough protein and other nutrients. I am crazee about my band.