Thank you so much for following up with what must be the gazillionth time you've had to tell someone to follow the recipes .. :) my brother has a star fruit tree which is way too productive for one person to keep up with!.. I had been using a dehydrator most of last year and finally made some chutney, i followed the recipe because i did not know what chutney was.. its a strange sweet pickle thing.. I've since found out.. This year I decided to try the jam.. I mixed some other fruit in with the star fruit and boiled it down, i did not add pectin, i likely used extra sugar. The recipe i was "going by" called for too much cinnamon because when i shared some with friends the next day they were polite but "eh" .. I had the same reaction and have had the case of BWB jars on the counter for 2 or 3 weeks to use as a base for the next jam adventure, figuring that if i didn't put in any cinnamon then it would turn out better. Can I still do that? It would mean everything would get boiled for the day; I'm not quick and it somehow takes me that long to make a batch. The only other things I have tried are the fruit leather, again with the recipe because I didn't know what it was, and it is living in the fridge; and I have found out fruit is preserved in jars with booze as long as the alcohol content is over 85 proof.. I have a LOT of that in jars in the garage, its a fast way to do something with the fruit. My idea was to strain them in May (star fruit brother's birthday) because it's supposed to give you yummy vodka after about 4 months, and then I could use the fruit to make chutney or jam at that time. Maybe I should stick to dehydrate and alcohol preserving? Maybe I should take up drinking fruity alcohol instead of canning? I had gotten a pressure canner, I had hoped to can soups. I have a chicken soup started, so far its just boiled chicken and water. I put soups in the fridge so the fat jells at the top and is easy to skim off, but I will to look into some recipes before I start any meat canning.. I have always been able to eat most anything, however I recently poisoned myself for the first time. I make yogurt with one of the home machines, I had a batch in the fridge, which I keep at just under freezing, and I lost track of when I made it because the house flooded which took all of my time for weeks. I when i was mixing the yogurt with some whip cream & jam, (which i put in to the little gram-cracker crumb pie's you get at the store, and I freeze) i tasted it with my pinky finger, like you do, and a few hours later I was the sickest I've ever been in my life.Threw out all the little frozen pies. and got cautious.. so the only question now is: can i use the cinnamon jam in another batch? And are you all going to try the yogurt/ whip cream / jam pies, which work with store yogurt?

I think you are doing excellent and exactly what needs doing. This is not a normal case of a dog not eating as you know, I would ask the vet if he has a good formula food you can give her with a syringe, I have had to do this with one of mine and it worked well. Dehydration is a huge concern, I was able to give my cat with kidney disease IV fluids at home, it's relatively painless and helps so much. I know it's difficult but you will know that you did everything possible for her. Keep up the good work and I will say a little prayer for her.

raek, I understand you sooooooooo much and I really,really know where you are coming from. You say : "I said something like...Thanks for giving us that time together, it really meant alot to me." I don't really want to spend to much time on this point because it has happened in the past,....but ......i still think (please don't take it personnaly) that it was a little bit mean to do that. I mean who cares if she allowed your father or not to go and visit you. That was between them. If anything, it should have been your father who thanked her for letting him do something alone not you. Disengage, disengage, disengage. It's not with her you want to make a new start. It's with your dad. You don't need to be disrespectful towards your father's wife however. Did you notice how I am using less and less the words "" your SM'' or ""my oldest SD'' ( i did in an early post this morning, but I'm doing it less and less. Even when i talk about her to whoever. I know say : my DH's oldest daughter. Perhaps you could always refer now to your SM as your dad's wife, spouse, partner, lover, whatever but not ''My SM''. It's a little way of disengaging that I read about on this Web site. It helps. I agree with you also on another point you made. Why would someone travel somewhere when the people they will see aren't his or her friends. DH's oldest daughter just moved back in our city but for a few years she lived five hours from us with her DH and two young kids. You would not believe the number of times DH has asked me to go with him and visit them, the number of times his oldest daughter has begged me to go and visit her, the number of times her then husband asked me to go and see their place!!! Every single time I said NO, i found an excuse...anything, i couldn't leave the dog alone for so many days, I didn't want to put him in a kennel cuz it was too expensive and I didn't want to have to put him through a five hour car drive, etc.etc. I swear to god this went on for about three years and all the time I kept telling Dear hubby why do you keep on insisting on this issue. I will not go visit your daughter. One day he did it again. I said ok you want to push it well here is my answer why I won't even bother a single minute to put myself throught such a trip. I said '' Remember the day your daughter got married. He said yes. I said do you remember how she celebrated everybody she loved and wanted near her on that day by offering them a beautiful corsage to wear. He said yes i remember that. Well, I said, was I amongnst these people. Did your daughter offer me a corsage considering I had been in her life for 14 years at that point? DH said no. So, i said. why in the world would I want to go in your daughter's house when on the most important day of her life she ignored me like you ignore a dog and she has never, never to this day thanked me for the money we (DH and I) gave them as a wedding day!!!!!!! Since then DH has never bothered me or asked me again to go to her house and i don't intend to ever go to the new place she will eventually have once she leaves her mom's place. Finally, raek you say : "I start to remember that he didn't really reach out to me a whole lot even when she wasn't in the picture, but my dislike for her and her's for me has driven an even bigger wedge between the 2 of us." It is so true. I too for a long time really disliked DH's oldest daughter. I blamed everything on her but now i know that DH is just as guilty. He always put her needs first to the detriment of our relationship but things are starting to change. When i see he acts likes this, i don't take it all out on his daughter anymore. I tell DH how i feel about his behaviour towards me and how it affects me or us as a couple. Example : he got a 500 dollar bonus from work. He gave it all to his daughter so she could buy a second hand car. I didn't mind that he gave her money but I didn't want him to give it all to her considering we had bills to play. But oh non. DH had to look good so he gave it all to her. Of course, she never thought i might have some right on that money or that I might deserved to be also told thank you considering her father and I have been together for 18 years and share everything. So you know what I did. For the first time in 18 years, i got a big cheque and I put every single penny of it in my banking account. In the past, when I got some extra money, i was the first one to pay our bills or whatever bill there was around, i would buy him clothes, pay fines, whatever. First thing i knew, i had no money left! DH is not really happy with what I did with this last cheque but ask me if i care!!!! So far out of that whole cheque I spent a big 35 $ on him for a pair of jeans!!!! Enough is enough. I spent over 600 $ on an operation for puppy, i spent a bit on me and i will use the rest to buy some patio furniture! So whenever he complains about this cheque, i remind him I didn't spend it all on me. He will enjoy the furniture and the dog is as much mine as his. So there you go! Next time he has extra money, perhaps he will think a little bit before giving it away and disregarding our/my needs.!!! I keep telling my friends or anybody I know who meets a man who has children and it doesn't matter how old the children are, to run away as fast as they can from that relationship or at least not to get emotionnaly involved with the kids and to keep a distance from the children for a long, long time before they all become buddy-buddy. Knowing what you know today, you must thank the Lord that you are not in that relationship with that man you met who had a child. My alcoholic father left my mother alone with four children. She raised us alone and we lived on welfare all our lives. At one point, my mom met a very nice man. In fact they went out together for 14 years. I really, really loved him. He didn't treat me like he was my father. He was always our friend. Everybody kept asking my mom she wasn't living with this man. She also said. these are my children and i will raised them on my own. I will not force them upon another person. I think my mom was very avant-gardist just like when she decided to register all her kids in an English school when we were living a totally french environment, didn't have english speaking friends, didn't have a cousin or uncle who spoke english, (not even my mom spoke English. She always said she did that so her children could have another culture, be independent and be able to travel. I love her! Sorry for such the long post. I don't know whats happening to me this morning but it sure feels good to be able to vent all my feelings like this. Thanks for reading me. Keep posting.

colleenoz, i don't know what to say. But i kinda don't want break up before seeing what's happening. I gave him a warning and told him what i think and he said he agrees with me and he should grow a pair. But i did think what you have just said. Weak character is not a good thing for anything and he is rather weak when it comes to standing up to people. And as you said, sex with an ex is not my concern exactly, but these other things you mention and him saying he doesn't have a control when he does. And i did tell him that and as i said he answered he needs to grow a pair. And he said himself he feels exhausted and fear that he is gonna loose me and his daughter again in a period of few months. I will be honest, for someone for who i am rather sure that loves me...he is not thinking of what he is saying. Talk of 2 and a half hour is an alarm and he called me after that and told me he feels bad about he talked for so long with her. And when it old him not to give out that much of information he told me "as you said...i can't help but talk with her when she talks". That tells me he is either scared of her or didn't get over it. His ex did a lot of crap to him. They had 5 years of on-off relationship which ended up pretty badly. She broke off their engagement over text on Valentines day, she was texting him after break up to let him know she slept with someone else, and later when he would find someone else she would show up at his door to try and win him back. Later on they got a child, she accused him of domestic violence that never happened and put him 5000 pounds into debt cuz he had to go court to see his kid again. So with saying that kind of amount of bad things happen to him caused by her...you are right, he is maybe emotional about her but more in a negative way maybe. But tell me your opinion - you think he is emotionally into his ex? In what way?