green

Sounds like you are having fun with your new band, Senor Yoda.

Oh, straight men and homophobia! It is a weird and powerful thing. I remember talking to this very unattractive guy while I was still in university and he started rabbitting on about how he wouldn't like to be around gay men for fear that they would hit on him.:phanvan I wanted to say to him, "look, you're ugly and you're boring. What makes you think that anyone is gonna hit on you? Of course I didn't. I explained that gay men showed the same kind of courtesy and restraint as straight men and that he was being homophobic." I have always hung with gay friends and so any men with whom I have had romantic relationships have ended up by getting over any initial homophobia which they may have had. My husband marched in a Pride parade a few years ago and then went to his macho workplace - he builds aircraft and works on the floor - and told the guys about it. The legitimacy of common-law unions have been recognised up here in Canada for a long, long time. Sometime ago a few long term gay couples challenged and won recognition for the legitimacy of their common-law unions. This meant that same-sex couples had the right to survivor benefits, and to company family benefits such as dental, insurance, and drug plans. These rights were recognised a few years before the issue of same-sex marriage was introduced into public debate. As seems to be happening in the States, some provinces legalised same-sex marriage before it became a federal initiative but once these provinces had given their approval to same-sex marriage the feds quickly devised a bill. At the time there was considerable public debate. Some folks claimed that this would "ruin" marriage for the rest of us. I never did understand the logic behind that argument. Now that the bill is law the formerly contentious issue is a non-issue for most Canadians. I don't know what our military thinks of homosexual soldiers, though.

Handsome husbands, my favourite kind of pets. I got one of 'em myself.

I am having a hard time letting some of my clothes go. :phanvan I feel comfortable in loose clothing and some of my summer clothes are made out of linen, my favorite summer fabric. The trouble is that I have to keep hitching up the bottoms. I can now pull them off without undoing them. I am thinking elastic, lots of elastic! Yep, I'm gonna sew elastic in the waistbands of all my pants and skirts just as soon as I get my act together.:biggrin1: By the way, I don't have any trouble getting rid of the big cotton stuff, just the giant linens....:tired

Gaining weight, not liking this one bit, and knowing that I was going to keep on gaining if I didn't do something drastic. :help: One girlfriend suggested work-outs with a trainer, I thought of serious lipo, another girlfriend told me about the band, and the rest is history. :biggrin1:

I would love to go on that cruise!!!!! It sounds wonderful.

Sleeping naked sounds like great advice, lizrbit. You never know what might pop up. And it can help you get back in touch with your own skin.

Attack of the plastic grrl....! All surface, no interior, and yet she lives! :faint:

I believe the coasts of Canada are more temperate. It is central Canada which is hot and humid in the summer time. Although around last August 5th I was in Halifax, Nova Scotia - the Atlantic coast - for my nephew's wedding and it was both hot and humid the entire time I was out there except for one icy and rainy day. I had left Toronto where the temperatures were in the high 90s and was awful happy, figuring that I would get away from the heat. This was not the case. :phanvan

Now that's what I would call an aggressive-aggressive (fergit the the passive part!) PB! :faint:ROFLMFAO

One of my friends has the habit of saying that while you can choose your friends your family is a curse sent to you by God.:phanvan I have always appreciated his comment. Too bad that you are not more assertive in person for you are such a fine dragon-slayer on-line! Nevertheless, you will soon be banded and this will be a fine thing indeed. And you will then be able to PB on your worst relatives. :faint: In the meantime, look forward to the experience.......:girl_hug: And start picking out which relatives you want to treat to a PB experience ASAP.:target:

This is a pretty good idea and won't be as expensive as it would be south of the border for we have universal health care and even our ivy league universities are funded, in part, provincially through the contributions of the taxpayers. Only those students who are here on foreign student visas get smacked with the full costs of university tuition. Landed immigrants and Canadian citizens pay part of the freight, and the rest is on the taxpayers' dime. But to put the numbers in proportion, the entire population of Alberta was, the last time I looked, roughly the same number of inhabitants as we have in the Greater Toronto Area and not everyone of these individuals carries a "Jesus bat," to use the colourful phrase of Fuel Man.:girl_hug:

This is a sad story, girl, and a completely understandable one. But please don't beat yourself up. You already have the hardware and you can get yourself back into the saddle and do it again. I myself am a depressive. This has been part of my genetic inheritance and I have been battling this throughout my life. You have my sympathy and my respect. As for your stepdaughter, the girl is a bitch and will destroy you if she can. Pay no attention to her.

I believe that you are right. There were the it girls and, yes, the spoiled naughty society brats of industrial barons (in America) and of nobility (in Europe). These were the young women whose activities made the society pages and the gossip columns.

Omigawd, Carlene, you are the international woman! :girl_hug: I promise you that I will take care of bizness. :phanvan By the way, welcome to virtual Canada. You ought to come up for a real visit. It is summer up here and the weather is too hot for me which means that you will feel comfortable, grrl. :biggrin1:

Audrey, Robgob, Jetlag, and babyg all speak the truth in my opinion. The girl has reached her full growth and she is carrying far too much weight. Both of her parents are big people and this indicates that this is not an issue of baby fat. We all know that sending the poor kid off into a cycle of yo-yo dieting isn't going to work and is just going to mess up her metabolism as well as ensure that she feels like even more of a loser each and every time that her attempts fail. As I had advised in my earlier post, have her see a dietitian, have her practice healthy eating habits for the following 6 months and then get the poor kid banded. Even amongst us there is still far too much of this puritanical attitude that the fatty must be punished. Obesity is a medical issue, not a moral one.

Nume, big congratulations for jumping in and posting! :clap2: It is quite a jump from being a reader to being a writer. And now I will confess that I am one of the regulars in the Rant & Raves section. It is true that this is a zone which is not for the faint of heart :girl_hug: but it is a very interesting area for some of us to spend time in. This is the area where we debate hot topics such as religion, politics, etc. As you can imagine, we do get into a number of intellectual brawls with each other and to those members who do not have a taste for this kind of debate life over there in R&R can look pretty ugly. The thing is that while members can be at each other's throats over one issue they will also be close to each other on a different thread. It is a weird and wild world over there but it ain't as bad as it looks. On to other stuff: I have got to confess that I am not a hugger, either. Neither of my parents were physically warm, we were a formal family, and while I am a warm and charming person who does care about other people, I don't like to be touched. This is why I am very uncomfortable around small children and babies for little kids are naturally touchy-feely. (I never had any kids of my own, by the way.) Your eldest daughter sounds very much like me. Now, my husband is the opposite, wouldn't you know! He loves to cuddle and so we do when we are watching TV together. This makes him very, very happy. Unfortunately the man also likes to sleep all knotted up with me and this freaks me out!:target: I end up by snarling at him and insisting that he move over to his corner of the bed. The poor guy! Opposites really do attract.:phanvan

Thanks for replying, Gadget. I found it interesting that the girls thought that she was ugly because of the make-up and that they felt that she was trying to cover up something. To tell you the truth, I myself have never "got" her looks. I think she looks vapid and squinty-eyed and, well, plastic. I was also amused by their response to her name, Paris. It might be interesting to ask them what effect they feel that her fame might have on her sense of herself, particularly as it is not anchored to actual accomplishments. You might also ask them what they feel about Paris's obvious resentment about being punished. These are just suggestions of course. Please post more about your conversation with your kids concerning this. I find it fascinating to view the sillier aspects of our culture as viewed through the sensible eyes of a couple of children. Again, thanks from Green.:girl_hug:

Thank you, thank you for your congratulations. :)I lost 45 lbs altogether and I am 5 lbs from the goal which TLBC set for me. The last 15 were kind of a cheat.:phanvan I caught a nasty bowel bug in Mexico and food doesn't stick around all that long.:girl_hug: I gotta get that fixed. I also got to get some more fill. I can eat quite a lot again. I gotta, gotta phone the fill nurse!:straight

Oh, we got some up here, but not that many of 'em and nobody much pays 'em any heed. Politicians are aware that they must downplay their own beliefs - our current (conservative) Prime Minister is a Christian - because this sort of thing tends to alienate most voters. This government is a minority government and has a number of social conservatives sitting as members of parliament who were elected in Canada's Bible Belt, the Province of Alberta. (Indeed, our current PM is an Alberta boy.) These individuals had promised their constituents that abortion and same-sex marriage rights would be repealed should their party gain power. The party has been in power for something like 18 months now and these issues have not been revisited. There was recently a pro-life demonstration in our capital city. Most of the media ignored it altogether. One of the national newspapers discussed why it was considered a non-event by our media. That is how life is up here in godless Canada where atheists roam wild in the streets.:target:

This is an interesting post, Gadget. Did your kids have any other comments about Hilton? I am interested.

As I have often commented on LBT my city is a large one, indeed the greater Toronto area numbers more than 3 million people, and more than half of these individuals are either immigrants or the children of immigrants. My parents were immigrants and most of my neighbours are immigrants. What I know about my neighbours is that their children all speak flawless Canadian style English. What my neighbours tell me is that some of their children resist even learning the language of their parents; some of these children only want to speak English. My point is that although the first generation of immigrants may never arrive at achieving any degree of competency in the language of their new home, their kids will and so will their grandchildren and their great grandchildren. It is unfair and unkind to expect new immigrants to be able to achieve fluency in the language and the folkways of their new home. Not everyone is equally as capable of adapting. And the truth is that many immigrants choose a new country for their children and their children's children as much as for themselves. They want to make sure that their kids will have a chance of having a prosperous and a safe life.

I eat hamburger patties, filet mignon, and pork tenderloin. Red meat is easier than chicken because it isn't as dry. I have PBed on chicken but never on red meat. Of course you have to remember to chew, chew, chew!

Fuel man, I appreciated your post. Thanks.

It seems to me that when we choose to employ the entire arsenal of modern medical technologal knowledge we are certainly "playing God" if we are to apply your standard to the letter. In other eras those preemies, to give one example, certainly would have been in their own little graves; it is modern medicine which saves these little creatures and surely this, too, can be considered to be playing God. You have a well defined double standard. You are happy, I am sure, to see to see people who are in distress, be it by reason of cancer, heart disease, whatever..., be saved from death through the means of modern medical knowledge - and is this not "playing God?" - but you are unwilling to allow others who are suffering from terminal diseases and who are in unendurable pain choose to exit this life when it becomes unbearable because this is "playing God." You should get your lines of logic straight. You cannot have it both ways. And by the way, the word is spelled euthanasia.