I agree; cut her a break. She may just have meant what I mean when I say my first grandson, who is not my biological grandson, is 100% mine, and always has been in my heart and mind.

She’s a beautiful, world-famous model. She’s not an astrophysicist, or even a school psychologist. She’s a young woman in love.

Thank you. I’ve volunteered to take part in the Johns Hopkins study of families with pancreatic cancer in them. Oddly, my mother had none of the usual risk factors.

No one gets out of here alive, I guess the message of my mother’s story would be.

Thanks for your note.

Why is the beginning of 60 Minutes like an Irish mother?

They both go, "tch, tch, tch, tch!"

Yay! My mother died of pancreatic cancer just 20 years ago, a month after being diagnosed. Progress is being made!

I think Liz has a good point; I wonder why we read articles about the "glamourous" aspects of the current economic crisis; AIG, Toxic Banks, Madoff, etc. But I have yet to read an article about the rising costs of food.

Cheese, which used to be "the poor man’s meat," is seven dollars a pound; not for imports, but for regular cheddar or colby jack! Even Spam, when not on special, hovers around three dollars a can.

Eggs, when you can get them on sale, can be a bargain at $1.49 a dozen (I thank God for my nutty "farmer" son and his wife, who have been providing me with eggs from their city chickens — delicious and guaranteed fresh!). Even frozen vegetables will set you back a couple of dollars a bag. Not everyone has a freezer they can stock when items come on sale; some people have to make their purchases daily, or week-to-week.

If I see tuna on one of those "ten cans for $10" specials, I stock up.

Cauliflower— $1.49 a head, and not at Whole Foods; I’m talking regular old Albertson’s!

I am a working woman, and a published author, receiving royalties twice a year, and freelancing when I can get the work; even at that, I’ve had to take on a paying roommate to fill my son’s old room and help me make ends meet, and I struggle more and more lately. What do other people do?

It puzzles me that I have not seen more coverage of the rising costs of food. I understand that when gas prices started to go up, the costs of food went up as well. But does anyone else get the same feeling of despair that I do when I’m in the supermarket lately? I am a widow living alone (my roommate is responsible for her own expenses, like feeding herself), so I can "splurge" on a nice hunk of cheese or piece of steak (and the cheap, "tenderized" cuts we used to call "cubed" or "minute" steaks can be had for under $2 for a pack, which will make a meal for me.) But what do families do?

The dollar menu at Mickey Ds must be a very inviting option at a time like this. As others have pointed out, cheap food tends to be fatty, oversalted, and unhealthy. But what can one do? Hunger is a killer. In many ways.

And one last note; many, many young women of my acquaintance used to brag about not knowing how to cook. What are they doing to make their food dollars stretch? I know I’m looking forward to two dinner dates this week, not so much because I find the men involved fascinating, but because that means two meals I don’t have to pay for myself when I can barely afford my mortgage. Have I come to this faint imitation of prostitution, after living my life according to feminist principles? I guess I have.

Please, someone smarter and better-informed than I (and by that I mean just about any woman here on wowowow) write something about food prices in this economy. Why are they the way they are? What do they mean for our lives? What are the far-reaching impacts, for women, for families, for men?

Helen

I think that whatever she does, Dazed will be unhappy. So will her children.

I’ve also come to believe that there is no such thing as "working on" one’s marriage. There is only working on oneself.

Affairs are vacations, and marriages are real life. What will happen when affair guy becomes married guy? Probably Dazed will "fall out" of love with him as well. Then the children will all have suffered for nothing, and there may be a few more children as well.

But your response to the cousin of the cousin was spot-on.

And gay people want to get married.

Isn’t "bubble" a great word? The South Sea Bubble was a very bad thing, but what an evocative term!

My dog is named Bubble. Just one bubble.

Read the book, people! Fifty dollars from "gentlemen" for the powder room?

When Sharon Stone asked Robert DeNiro for the same fee for the same reason, we all knew who and what she was!

Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

My sex life; as in getting one.

Four years is enough time to mourn even the formidable Mr. O’Reilly.

Good thing they say it’s like riding a bike.