Thanks for the sympathy everyone. Gardeners understand. The arborist is coming late this pm to at least cut down the widow-makers tho that's all he has time to do (and I can afford to have him do at the moment). The trunks will have to sit there for awhile. It *is* scary to think I might have been underneath when it happened. That area is my wildflower & fern garden, and part of my perennial border. Before the trees came down, I had just gotten home from church and headed over to that area to see the spring wildflowers coming up and some in bloom. But I had good shoes on and didn't want to muck them up so I thought, later. Close call.

The idea is that our right or perceptive brain is far more ancient than our left or logical brain, *& it knows what it's doing*. The perceptive brain is the part we share with other animals; it warns us, & other animals, of danger. You know that prickly feeling at the back of your neck when you can "feel" someone watching you? That's your perceptive brain, alerting you to what your analytical brain hasn't noticed yet. The book helps us learn to heed our perceptive brains, & it helps us "unlearn" some of the habits that work against our safety.. Unlearn the tendency to talk yourself out of getting out of an elevator when you're alone & someone else gets in. Unlearn the tendency to not protect yourself because you don't want another person to think that you think that he's a danger because then he won't like you or he'll think you don't like him. Unlearn the fear of making a fool of yourself by yelling for help when you feel threatened. excellent book

There's a lot of hairsplitting going on here. We all know what a re-gift is and what it isn't. Let's not pretend that re-gifting is anything but CONVENIENT. I'm not sure that I have ever received a re-gift and really I wouldn't care if I did. In fact, I'm happy to receive any gift at all and would never turn my nose up at a gift no matter what it might be or where it came from. But I draw the line at GIVING a re-gift because my conscience just wouldn't let me. As I said before, for me, a gift is about the process of giving but most importantly the thought. I just couldn't RE-WRAP a gift and pretend that I was thinking of that person when picking out their very special gift. It's simply DISINGENOUS. Now, if a one-in-a-million chance happens that I received a red scarf as a gift and I just knew that that red scarf was going to save the life of a colicy baby - well I might just rethink my policy on re-gifting . . . A gift is more than it's simplistic definition of "the transfer of something without the expectation of receiving something in return." and we ALL know it.

My Dad Amos passed away suddenly in 1984 just a couple of years after he retired from Chrysler where he had worked for 46 years. I never got to say goodbye and yes I would love to talk to him again. Everyone loved my Dad. Shy me was scared of him because I never knew when he would start hollering and he was very stern but at the same time was the funniest man on earth and was a great teacher. He died at the time when I was just beginning to get really close to him and he was starting to show how proud he was of his children. I miss him terribly. Anne