Yes, Ginny, that's a good point. My DH keeps suggesting that I get a greenhouse so I can "garden all year" - and I keep saying No way! My fall gardening season is coming to an abrupt halt after tomorrow, as I'm leaving for a 5-week trip on Saturday. There are lots of volunteer tomatoes about to ripen, the crape myrtle has just started to really bloom fully, the huge Salvia leucanthemum is peaking, and most of the old mums have not really started showing color but are full of buds. The Franklinia altamaha is looking perfect ... at least a couple of them (I have 5, I think) are loaded with flowers and buds. My newly planted border still needs constant attention to keep ahead of the weeds and volunteers and to add mulch here and there and check the soil moisture, and the newer trees and shrubs need to be checked every few days to be sure they're getting their water etc needs met. When I get home, it will all be frosty and brown. DH is not going to be able to keep track of anything, and I'm just hoping we start getting some regular rain, soon. It will be spring before I know what survives this kind of neglect. So, if you can keep gardening this month, count your blessings, and enjoy these last few weeks of the season. It's going to be a long winter!

Loved the "counter that cooked" which we installed in our house when building in about 1967 or '68 - it came with plain white square smooth bottomed "pans", but recently the large square "pot" cracked while I was cooking soup. Anyone willing to sell such a pot? I am so used to it - now 81, too old to learn new tricks. When kids bought my house, they tore out & threw away the Corningware Counter and installed gas. In my new house, I put in a stove with a glass top so I have been continuously using Corningware for about 42 years.

Lorraine, I hope these are of some use to you. The first one I used at the top of each page of my sentiments album - I copied a Lucida Calligraphy font with my CM pens. The second one I used on the last page with a photo of my aunt/uncle and her parents (deceased) whose anniversary was the same day. Enjoy your album - I guarantee it will be well received! Jane in Australia On Our Special Day I love looking back to where we began seeing us as we were at the beginning, then slowly leafing through the memories we've made together to bring us to where we are today... I love anticipating the days ahead of us, wondering what we'll find in each other, in ourselves, before another year has slipped away... But, best of all, I love being with you where we are today, together writing the pages we'll remember tomorrow. A Lifetime Together A lifetime together is the sharing of time It is the giving of songs and silences And the holding of memories... Only the heart can see. Anniversary Our lives are woven tapestries, Of love's enduring years. It weaves a picture, memories Of life's joys and its tears. So once a year we celebrate The love that keeps us true, Remembering the vows we took The day we said I do. To all the years we'll share together. To all the months we'll storm the weather. To all the weeks we'll care for each other. To all the days we'll love forever! ---G. Scott

Trish, it was mentioned that the father should be the one caring for the son. I wonder about the background in this situation. If you've been with the mother for five years, he's been with you for three, and that leaves two years. That means he was 11 when you got together? What happened for those 11 years? How was his academic set-up prior? What was his mother's relationship with him? How long prior to five years ago did his parents divorce/split up? It sounds to me that he started failing his fifth year right around the time you two got together. (this is not blaming you) Yes. You nailed the timeframe. She and his father divorced when the boy was 2. When we met, it was revealed to me that he had just failed 5th grade and he was living with his father. He had moved in with him, at age 8 mid way through 3rd grade. From what I was told, though I wasn't in his life to witness to any of it, he had issues with school right from the very beginning and they only proceeded to get worse. In third grade he really began showing signs of defiant behavior; throwing books at his mother, knocking over a dresser, hitting her and running away. At that point she took him to see a doctor who diagnosed him with ADHD. The boy apparently begged her to go live with his father and given her frustration level of not being able to control him, she discussed it with the father, who at the time had just remarried and the new wife, who both thought couldn't get pregnant thought it was a grand idea to "have a son" come live with them. Now, they live in a rural area of South Carolina; mostly woods and not much to do. His behavior calmed down for about 6 months. Then, the wife got pregnant and at the same time, this boys behavior began to reveal itself at his father's, the same way it had at his mothers. Someone else here mentioned ODD. I think that's entirely possible too, though when I mentioned it to his mother, she reminded me that his behaviors had only been toward her at the time. Now these behaviors have "evolved" to include all adults, most of the time. I understand the separation you are trying to make re: woman/mother. Good, because that's all I meant by saying that I hope one day she'll realize that she should have done more to remind me less that she's a mom and more like a woman. I don't think that was too much to expect. Children are by nature self-centered. Boys mature much later than girls. I try to stress to my dd that I have feelings, hopes, needs as well as she does. I point out those needs pretty consistently. Last night it was "Mom, come play with me". I had made her dinner while she showered, then she ate while I cleaned up, then I ate (a grilled cheese, and pretty much standing up-one of those crazy get home late days) I had just finished, and I was ready for a shower. I asked her what we had just done. Well, she said, you drove me to activity, got home, made dinner, cleaned up... and I looked at her and said, yes, and I love doing things for you and with you, and now I need some "Mommy time". When I get out of the shower we can play. She understood, and we continued. Same with bedtime. She has a set bedtime so that "mommy can go to bed" at a certain time, and it's set up that way so that DH and I have time alone in the evenings.My point is that I understand. A mother has to have "personal time" as well as "spouse/lover time" and has to balance those times with "mommy time". A mother wears many hats and it is really difficult (for me, anyway) to know where to draw the line between me as an individual woman, me as a love interest and me as a provider. Ideally they would merge, but more often than not it's robbing Peter to pay Paul. Every time I take "me time" is time I could spend with one or another of my loved ones. Every time I relax with my spouse as a lover is time I could be with my child, and v.v. This conflict is painful at times, and the mother is the monkey in the middle. It's nice to be popular but sometimes I feel everyone wants a piece of me. Our therapist kept trying to tell my partner from the beginning that our relationship needed "adult time" and that it was encumbent upon her to provide it. Her daughter was 8 when we met and she didn't do a whole lot to get a babysitter just so we could go out once a week. I should have known then that this was an issue but I tried to ignore it. My partner's personality is very introverted and isolated. She has no friends to speak of. I'm it. She does'nt like being around people and she has extreme body image issues. I don't understand it because she's a very attractive, very pretty woman. She looks like Julia Roberts with blond hair. She's gained weight since we met, but that's never bothered me and I've tried to tell her that it's not a big deal. It bothers her tremendously but rather than do something about it ( I bought her a gym membership) she doesn't do anything. It was revealed in therapy that she has Adult Attention Deficit, inattentive type. If any of you have this, it reveals itself in ways that are frustrating to normal adults. There's an inconsistency that is enormously overwhelming. There's no organization to people who have this and they tend to be incredibly forgetful. I remember when we met and she burned dinner a few times, and paid a bill to the wrong account, but I didn't really think twice about it. These people get really overwhelmed by things we don't. This is why her son runs circles around her and gets his way. Because she can't deal with it. When the police brought him home another time, he went to the refrigerator and rather than tell him to get his @ss to bed at 1AM, she told him what she cooked earlier; "I cooked porkchops earlier". I found that to be an absolutely absurd response to the situation, and she knew it; but she told me that she has placed a wall up to him so that what he does, doesn't effect her. She can't do the same with me, so when he acts out, I have a visceral response to it, and she can't put an emotional wall up to me and she's told me that she feels pulled between the two of us. On an airplane, the instructions are to place the mask on your face before helping your loved ones. If you have no oxygen, you will be of no help to others. I get the feeling that's what's going on right now. Your lover/wife/girlfriend/mate/partner has placed the mask on her son first and asphyxiated the relationship. This is a fantastic metaphor. I think we both asphysixated the relationship, but I kept telling her that she was neglecting it with her inconsistent attempts. We could never get the time we needed and all conversations evolved around children. She doesn't have any friends or hobbies nor does she do anything other than work so she really doesn't have a whole lot to talk about. She loves techno gadgets though. I like politics and discuss current events quite a bit. I also worked on and completed my Master's degree while we were together despite the escalating problems in order to try to shield myself from the behavior but eventually nothing could help this. So now I'm sitting here in a rather empty house. Where do you want to go from here? Do you foresee a future with this woman once her son is no longer in the house? She does, but I'm not sure. She told me over and over, that she wanted to save the relationship and the only thing she could do was to remove him from my house and that this was the last chance to save what we have. She simply disagreed about sending him back to his father except if he quit school; which I see coming. I'm not sure if this will help or not. Sure, I'll finally get some peace and some perspective. The problem with this is that I'm not sure it will help. It may, but you know, we never got a chance to adjust to each other after we moved in here. The boy came a year later and that was entirely too soon IMO. I'm just not sure what other problems his behaviors overwhelmed to the point where we never got to deal with anything else. We've discussed moving back in once he's gone, but now, were both so overwhelmed at what just happened. It's an amicable separation though. We're not fighting and I didn't scrutenize what she took out of here as she's told me she does intend to come back once she's done with him and is keeping a lot of her things here. Our yard is a gardner's paradise. She rented a place with no yard so that she could take care of this one. We're very much trying to heal and doing alot of talking and she and I and her daughter went to dinner last night. I am just so relieved he's out of my house though. So relieved...