1) Next door neighbors thowing their cigarette butts on my lawn, or letting their pets poop RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME... on MY LAWN! 2) Covinents!!! 3) Burmuda grass and its way of going everywhere!! 4) Verbena... and its reseeding abilities....Grrr! 5) TOO LITTLE RAIN! 6) This horrible clay (Though, I have been amending EVERYTHING... and now I have an abundance of worms... and better soil.) 7) The way my poppies die in the heat 8) The way I want to die in the heat... and that I do nothing but burn when I'm outside. 9) Weeds, weeds, and more weeds! plus many many more, I'm sure!

Bmore. - It's been over a year since you lost your dear brother, but I just saw your plaintive comment "We used to be 7, now we are six," and it resonated with me. Did you ever read the Wordsworth poem "We Are Seven"? It's about a man who meets a little girl and asks about the children in her family. She proceeds to tell him "Sir, We are seven..." and she tells where all the children are, and two are in the graveyard. He says that that means there are only five, but she insists that they are seven. He goes on his way, and then he realizes that this young child was wiser than he, because she understood that her siblings being dead did not truly remove them from her family. So yes, it was a tremendous loss for your family, for which you have my sincere sympathy, but still, you are seven. Your brother, after all, lives in your hearts.

Here's some suggestions from today's Baltimore Sun, from Elizabeth Large, some more realistic than others. Top 10 Alternatives to a Traditional Thanksgiving Roast Turkey Obviously anything could be an alternative to a traditional roast turkey for Thanksgiving, from a ribeye steak to a deep fried turkey. But I wanted to pick foods you know would work (because of their association with native Americans, for instance) or that I've actually served or had served to me. By the way, I'm cooking this year and I'm having a traditional roast turkey dinner. I was just talking to my brother, who's coming from the West Coast, and he says he's bringing some interesting recipes he got from Sunset magazine. He's talking about adding Swiss chard to the stuffing. Sorry. No way. Here's my list: ... * Wild duck with sauerkraut (particularly appropriate because Baltimoreans eat sauerkraut with Thanksgiving dinner anyway, which I've never understood) * Goose with fruit stuffing. Unfortunately the one time I cooked a wild goose (a hunter friend had brought it to my in-laws), it also contained buckshot. * Native American foods like beans, squash and corn for vegetarians and vegans * Turducken (partially deboned turkey stuffed with deboned chicken stuffed with deboned duck) * Small roast chicken with cornbread-pecan stuffing for a couple or people eating alone * I make a very good stuffed ham (with a bread stuffing where the bone would be). I haven't tried it for Thanksgiving, but I think it would be an easy make-in-advance choice that would taste good with traditional sides. * An old college friend invited us to Thanksgiving once and served each of us a whole lobster. Lobster didn't go very well with the side dishes the rest of us had brought, but it was so wonderfully extravagant no one was complaining. * My sister-in-law, using recipes from Gourmet magazine, served curried turkey breast with cranberry chutney one Thanksgiving. Her family was outraged, but it sounded kind of good to me for a change. * In some places on the West Coast, Dungeness crab is a common alternative to turkey because the season starts in November. * Crown roast of pork with wild rice stuffing. Pork has a autumn feeling to it (I would never serve it for Christmas dinner even though I know it can be traditional), and the fact that it's a crown roast makes it seem grand enough for an important meal.

That's her, drama queen. The other thing about her is she acts almost bi-polar. I don't mean to make light of a real issue, but she goes from bubbly to vicious. She can be verbally abusive to people. I guess that isn't bi-polar more like emotionally unstable. Gayle - a few of us tried the sit-down last year and in the middle of it realized we were getting nowhere. She instantly puts everything off onto other people. She has for years been the person that we all said "Yea she drives you crazy, but you can't help but like her." I don't really know how to describe it, but she started to do and say things to me and a few of our other friends that made some of us take a step back. Susan - That's really how it's been for a while now, but it sure isn't easy to maintain that smile. I can honestly say that I haven't once played into her hand by stooping to her level, but it hasn't been easy. That is why I wrote today. I really need to vent and say a few things that weren't nice. I can't talk about her to people I know because they all know her. If I do that then I am just talking behind her back the same way she is. UGH! All of a sudden I feel like I am back in Jr. High. Thanks for your support and allowing me to blow off some steam. :o)