Liz Peek, your headline equating President Obama with the current questioning of timing for mamograms is clearly meant to incite those who are against any kind of health reform.  And I have to believe all those against health reform must be in the increasingly small minority.  I’ll bet there are a lot of women who would bless the day they got coverage for ANY mamogram, because currently they have no ability to get insurance at all and they certainly cannot afford to pay out of their own pocket.

This study is injecting factual analysis of real results.  That is something our current health system has too little of and as a result our health outcomes are much lower than many other countries in the world.  I do not understand why there is such an emotional over reaction to the thought of some level of basic health coverage given to any US citizen.  Talk about the haves and have nots.  I am certain that if we do not pass reform there will be many more have nots.  And whatever happens, it is not because of Obama.  It is congress that has to pass it, however I only observe Senators and Representatives willing to play politics rather than watch out for the good of their country as a whole.

LW2 - Get over it!  It’s just one day and it’s not your wedding.  You just can’t get everyone who wants to be in the wedding in there.  This is not a big deal.  I agree with other responders that maybe the bride just does not want children in her wedding. Maybe she wants just a few attendants.  Maybe she wanted someone who would look cute in the bridesmaid dresses.  Who knows.  Whatever, it’s not your wedding so it’s not your decision.  If you want to create a rift in the family forever, you’ll harbor those bad feelings and never let it go.  And you will be a bitter, unhappy person.  Let it go.  Be happy for the couple.  Wish them a long and happy life together and dance joyfully at their reception.

All these immensely rich folks probably have their secret tax havens and people helping them skirt the laws.  Martha Stewart and Leona Helmsley were just more heavy-handed about it and got caught.  I admire Martha because she built her company from scratch.  She has tons of people behind the scenes but she is a master at coming up with new creative ideas, figuring out how to make them appealing to the masses and making money from them.  I don’t particularly like the format of her current show, with the live audience and ditsy celebrity guests.  I loved her former show which was really about instruction.  You could watch a segment and come away really knowing how to create a recipe or a craft.  She made even the most complex things understandable (as the viewer you knew she had lots of back scene help making it look so easy) and she introduced so many interesting people in the food world to a larger audience.  That’s where I first heard of Ina Garten, Rick Bayless, many, many others.  I miss that old show but I keep tabs on what’s going on with MSO because she has her well-manicured finger on the pulse of what’s hot in America.

The Little House series was my absolute favorite through childhood.  I must have read each book ten times.  I still have my childhood set and read them to my girls as they grew up.  We’re now getting ready to read them to the grandchildren.  Those books so clearly depicted life in a different time period, I was fascinated.

I had the same book and, in fact, still have mine.  Tall and skinny with fantastic illustrations.  I loved those stories.  It’s one of those books that I loved so much as a child, shared with my kids and now with my grandchildren.  I never realized how much my own girls loved it until one of them asked about one of the stories when she was a teen.  We pulled out the book and reread the story of the everlasting lollipop.  What great memories.  Hearing that out of print copies are going for so much, I’m glad I held onto mine!

LW #1: She is 30.  Old enough to make her own decisions.  Perhaps she makes bad decisions because everyone thinks she is too immature and so have made decisions for her in life.  She now has a chance to do something on her own that she knows no one is telling her to do.

If they are good friends and she doesn’t have another relationship, it may feel like a way to deepen and make permanent that friendship.  I would just caution her about safe sex because if he has other sexual interests, it could come back to haunt her in a big way.

I really enjoyed the clips.  I was in college when Sesame Street started on TV so I wasn’t really aware of it until one day listening to the radio they played Rubber Ducky and said it was sung by Ernie.  All my friends asked, "Who’s Ernie???"  It took us a while to figure out he was a puppet!  Still makes me laugh to this day.

We had a milk man when I was growing up.  We had the little milk chute in the side of our house next to the door.  A door on the outside for the milk man to put the milk, eggs, bread in and one on the inside for us to take it out.  We had to remember to get the milk before we left for school in the winter, otherwise it would freeze and crack the glass bottles.  The bottles had little cardboard stoppers in them, covered with a pleated paper cap.  If we wanted something different (their absolutely yummy chocolate milk for a rare treat, perhaps) we left a note in the neck of one of the bottles we were returning.

When we were little, if my parents went out and thought they wouldn’t be home before we got home from school, they would lock the doors and leave a key for us kids in the milk chute.  Very safe :)

My dad still lives in the same house and the milk chute is still there.  Of course, the neighbors are all aghast he has not taken out the milk chute because they think it is a security exposure. 

I don’t think we are immune to this, but the average American just does not understand the mentality.  Really, what is the point of blowing yourself up in a marketplace and taking innocent people with you?  Is it just the destabilization of government?  Just to prove you can scare people?  Is life so cheap to these people?  I do refer to them as "these people" because I don’t believe I know anyone who is so fanatical that they think blowing themselves or others up for political purpose is at all helpful.

it’s no one’s business except mine and my husband.  can’t imagine wanting to share with anyone else.

Facinating.  I came of age at the same time period as you two, graduating college in the early 70’s.  Young women today have no idea what it was like then.  No boys allowed in my dorm above the ground floor and even there the rule was four feet on the floor, only hand holding.  Not even kissing!  Women had to wear dresses to dinner in the cafeteria and be in by 11:00.  The males were allowed to dress as they liked in their dorms and had open hours.  No curfew at all.

When I graduated, I went to an employment agency.  They had pink application forms for women and blue for men.  Every woman had to take a typing test (the men didn’t have to).  I told them I wasn’t much of a typist and I was asked what kind of a job did I think I could get without typing skills.  I guess my math and economics degree weren’t really what they were looking for.

 I got a job with a Fortune 100 company.  Women had to wear dresses.  Absolutely no pants.  I had worked there for about four years and was due my first big promotion.  I had exceeded every goal given me, was recognized as a leader, all the men hired when I was had already been promoted.  And then I got pregnant.  I told my husband I was going to hide it until I got my promotion.  I actually waited until I was six months pregnant, got the promotion and then told my boss.  He took back the promotion.  Said I would have to wait until I came back and worked at least another year to "prove" I was serious about staying because women just wanted to make a few extra bucks to support their kids and then quit to stay at home.  And this was very legal at the time.

I shake my head now at young women with their tight skirts, spike heels and spanks (they were called girdles in my day.)  I fought long and hard to be able to come to work without all those confining garments.

We have certainly come a long way.

Joan, It sounds like you have a great marriage.  I feel fortunate that I do, too.  My relationship doesn’t sound at all like Carin’s.  I married fairly young.  We have two children.  I’ve always worked.  From the start, we pooled our money.  There was no mine or yours.  It was all ours.  And we always made decisions together (sometimes maddeningly…since when did you care that much about the color of the bathroom towels?)  But perhaps I was lucky, or perhaps very smart, when I chose my mate.  He does all the grocery shopping and most of the cooking.  We share the fretting over who will pick up the kids, who will stay home when one is sick.  He’s taken them to the doctor when they are sick as often as I have.  He vacuums more often than I do (although I clean the kitchen more often than he does because somehow he just does not see all the crumbs I do.)  I’ve always done the laundry because I have more things that I want hand washed or hung to dry or whatever.  We both love being outside so we very much share the yard duties.  I pay the day-to-day bills but he does most of the banking, making sure I have money in my wallet.  He usually puts gas in the cars; I usually get them washed.

We haven’t done this by counting up who does what.  It just felt right to us and we both always considered each other equals.  We’ve had shared goals and found our path toward them in a way that feels really good to us both.

I agree that, sadly, there is a lot more infidelity going on than anyone might realize.  And women are entering into these relationships just as often and willingly as men.

But I do not agree that all of this consensual sex is so harmless.  Too often I still see young women having affairs with older married colleagues, whether they are in a position of power over them or not, and the young women have this delusional fantasy that the affair has more meaning to the man than it does.  "He says his wife doesn’t understand him."  "As soon as the kids are older he is going to leave her for me."  "He says he has never loved anyone the way he loves me."  Sadly, they do not see that sexual mores may have changed, "hookups" may have become more common.  But the basic reality has not changed.  The man rarely leaves his wife.  If the wife finds out, there is usually a tearful remorse on the part of the wayward husband and the commitment to work harder on their relationship.  When the wayward husband does split, it is rarely to stay with the girlfriend.  Even if he leaves his original wife and marries the girlfriend, how often does that marriage last?  If he cheated on Wife #1, will he also cheat on Wife #2?  If the young woman thinks it was just fine for him to find comfort outside his marriage, will she do the same in her marriage?  The grass always seems greener somewhere else.  We’ve made commitments seem so trivial.  "Starter marriages" are discussed so casually.  The expectation is that everyone cheats.  It’s no big deal to sleep around.  Let’s have 50 or 100 sexual partners (can you even remember any of their names?)

Love and sex don’t seem to have much importance any more in such a throw away society.

So a 13 year old is lured into drugs and sex (from what I have read, she was drugged first, then had "consensual" sex).  And we then should give a pass to the adult who took advantage of her?  I don’t buy it.  As a reasonable and responsible adult, it is on the adult to not do the wrong thing.  There is just no scenario I can conjure up that makes it OK for a middle aged man to be having sex with a 13 year old girl, whether she "Wants" it or not.

Ladywood - four years of misery and listening to nuns tell me how stupid I was.  It took me years to realize just how wrong they were.