Kraft Foods has stopped manufacturing it's gummi 'Road Kill' candy because it might 'encourage children to be cruel to animals'. Link Oh please.  If eating candy shaped like flattened possums, skunks and rabbits is going to encourage kids to be cruel to critters, then what kind of behaviour does eating gummi worms encourage?  Worm-icide?  How about Swedish Fish?  Have there been reported incidents of kids teasing or maiming their beta's or goldfish?  In E...

In light of a recent article I wrote about Teri Schiavo and the battleground her existence has become, I thought I'd post an article about Living Wills and Advance Medical Directives. They're really very simple documents....you don't even need an attorney to draft one for you.  I found a good one here: Link   and I've copied the form to this article so y'all can see exactly what it looks like (and maybe include a little bit of explanation as well).  You can copy and print...

No, this isn't a Buddhist wisdom blog (I'm not THAT predictable ). I'm doing things one handed for a couple of weeks.  Actually, it's one-armed. I dislocated my left shoulder (again) on Saturday.  I reached behind me to scratch my back, and it slid right on out.  It's come all the way out 3 times in the past year (this weekend was the 4th), but according to the doc all the clunking and stuff I hear when I swim and stretch is my humeral head sliding partially out.  So,...

Teri Schiavo, the Florida woman who has been in what some physicians have described as a 'persistent vegetative state' since an illness 15 years ago has been granted a 48 hour reprieve whilst a Florida court determines whether her husband is 'fit' to be her legal guardian. Link Her husband has been trying for years to have her feeding tube removed and to let her die.  Her parents have been fighting him. This woman's life has been reduced to nothing.  She can't walk, talk, feed...

Dear D, As I write this you are about 4 hours away from being home.  I'm looking forward to it, as always...but I'm also very aware that this return heralds another separation, and the next time you leave it will be for longer than 3 weeks and it'll be to a location much further afield. This sucks, D.  I don't want you to leave again.  I only just got you back.  Lately our lives seem to have been reduced to a string of tearful departures and homecomings, where we cram a...

I think I'm going to take up a new career as a spy.  I have nothing better to do.....and this seems like it might be a fun job. I'm going to use my knitting as a cover operation, and I'm going to write to people, volunteering to knit a hat for them....and then I'm going to use the information they give me to spy on them. Yes, I'm going to leave my home and my family, waste all my husband's hard earned money on gas, cheap motels and fast food, and I'm going to spy on people.  I'm ...

Last week I told you about a man who had come in to our office to sort out his wife's affairs after her death and get his own will renewed.  He had been married 49 years and he was simply devastated at her leaving him, bursting into tears at my desk.  He and I went and sat in the lobby and had a chat about her and her life, and he left me with a kiss on the cheek and a thank- you.   He came back today.  Especially to see me.  He had written me a poem of sorts&n...

Despite my ability to mentally compartmentalize, I used to find myself taking things that happen here with me when I got up and walked away from the computer. Good things, and bad things.  Things that made me laugh and smile, and things that made my heart pound and my stomch knot itself up in ire and angst.  I used to wake in the middle of the night sometimes with my pulse racing, the event that had caused me such sorrow in the forefront of my mind. I've had to stop doing that.&n...

My honey's coming home tomorrow.  Whilst normally such an event would cause a person to be happy, I'm in a mixed mood about it.  I'm happy to have him back, yes...but I know that his return means that we're only 3 weeks away from another 6 month separation. It seems like just yesterday that he was coming back from a year long tour (and it wasn't that long ago; it was only mid August), and now I have to let him go again.   This sucks.  I don't want to send him off ...

My cousin buried her child this morning.  My mother, father, brother and sister-in-law attended the funeral...the casket was no bigger than a couple of shoe boxes. Sleep gently, little Jacob. The Weight Of The Butterfly Flower by Martie The flowering peach, a daughter's bloom, each February she lived in tiny pink bud. Her tree fed my memory, flitted across my vision with nectar so sweet with sorrow that the sky wept. Oh, such weight the delicate pink butterf...

I have been moved to tears more than a few times in the past few days. The first time was when I saw film and pictures of women on the streets of Iraq, their fingers stained purple from having just cast their vote.  Women who, just last year, were sometimes prohibited from being alone in public, let alone from having a say in the future of their country.  To me, that is freedom in action...and that moves me. The second time was when I saw the purple fingers and suits, the lavende...

So, I had to get another MRI done over last weekend.  The hospital that had the films from my last MRI had 'lost' them, so I had to get a repeat. It was a good thing my doctor decided to order it. Not only do I have a herniated L2 disc and arthritis in L1 and L2 (which we already knew about), I also have a disc at L5 that's bulging more than 50% out on either side and I've torn ligaments that didn't heal properly.  It explains a lot of the pain and symptoms I've been having...in ...

In my last article I talked about 'Cosmopolitan' magazine being nothing better than soft core pornography because of all of it's sexual content. That article and the subsequent responses got me thinking about what it used to mean to be an 'independent' woman - and what it seems to mean today. When I was in my teens and early twenties, being an independent or career woman was still a big deal.  Women were still facing the 'glass ceiling' in the corporate world - they would get so far u...

I've read Cosmo on and off since I was a teenager (for those of you who don't know, that's over 20 years).  I used to enjoy it; there were some good articles about (then) current events as well as beauty and fashion hints and ideas. In the past few years though, Cosmopolitan seems to be all about sex.  From suggested sexual positions to naked men to reader's confessions about the best sex they ever had......it's verging on becoming nothing better than soft porn.  Take this m...