My hair is layered with bangs and falls just below my ears so I can tuck it back if I want. I wash it every 3 or 4 days. Takes 10 minutes to blow dry and curl under. Other days I just dry set it in velcro rollers before I climb in the shower to make it curl under and by the time I'm dressed it's ready to go. I've tried putting it in hot rollers and all kinds of different things but my hair has always been straight, lays flat and limp and won't hold curl so it might look done up for 30 minutes but that's it and it's back to flat and straight. I can't stand hair spray & other poofy products. judith I understand your hair concerns. I'm 56 and a few years ago mine became extremely thin. I stopped coloring, stopped drinking diet soda, started using nioxin shampoo and rogaine, eating protein bars and drinking more water. Went to the doc and tests came back fine. I wish I could say my efforts solved my problems but my hair is still thin up front and I have a lot of daily loss. I gave up on using the rogaine because it's something to be used for life and I'm not that dedicated. I'll never go back to coloring simply due to the freedom of appointments and cost savings. My hair never was shiny and ful and my nails have always been horrible. I can't tell you how many things I've tried there (biotin, lotions, polishes, etc). I can't change what I've been given. Mines not horrible. I've accepted it and moved on.

I am reading this and just thinking, 'that's me!' - meaning, I'm the sentimental DD. Yikes. I still have trouble, but I'll tell you what: when we moved into our new house (which we designed and built and finished), and there was not enough *room* for everything? Well, it was a lot easier to part with stuff! I also made a pact with myself, which I admittedly have not yet been able to fulfill, but it will be this fall... I have a good sized trunk from when I was at summer camp (it was my dad's, before me). I have vowed that I will keep as mementos *only* what will fit in the trunk. And that means over the course of my whole life. So I have crates and boxes and bags of stuff to go through finally in my parents' attic, and toss anything that won't fit in the trunk. Hopefully I will be able to leave some space for any new stuff. So anything that does not have a present practical or aesthetic use needs to go or fit in the trunk. Wish me luck! But it really helps that I decided this myself. I feel hopeful about being able to accomplish it. Why am I a pack-rat/slob, though? It seems to come naturally. I'm sure it is partly from my personality, but I think there was also some experience as a very small child - we moved when I was one and a half, and as much as that was traumatic, we didn't go straight to our destination but travelled for a couple of months. I had a tough time, and I subsequently was extremely attached to ideas of "home" (although I had no trouble with sleep-aways), and was always into making little 'nests' for myself. Maybe I keep/scatter my stuff around as evidence that I live here? I wish I could get over it a bit.

I only made one mistake this year. I gave all the kids a digital frame. I bought a 2 gig memory stick for each frame. I have all their pictures and their kids pictures on the computer so for each frame I put all the pictures of them as kids for each one and a few group pictures of their kids and their cousins. I also put all the pictures that I have of just their own kids. I labeled each memory stick so I could keep them straight. After I wrapped each gift I put the appropriate stick in the box and put a tag on each gift as it was being wrapped. When I wrapped the last box I took the stick to put in the box and saw it had Robert and Shannon's name on it. Well, that could't be, because I already wrapped their gift. I didn't want to unwrap the gifts I had already wrapped so I put that stick in the gift and put the name tag on it that I thought it was supposed to go to. They all opened their gifts last Saturday anyway while they were together, so it was an easy mistake to fix. They have all called since getting the gifts to let us know how much they like the digital frames with all those family memories in them. That's quite a compliment. They have never thanked us twice for anything previously. Linda

Unless it's a dwarf version, China doll can get much taller than 8 feet. Let's get rid of the silly old wives' tale about any plant liking to be root bound. No plant likes to be rootbound. What is necessary for plants to stay alive is for their roots to not rot, which can happen so easily in a pot with dense soils, like ground dirt, or bagged mixes of predominantly tiny particles of peat, (or to simply shrivel from simply never getting any water.) Having very little soil around the roots would make the soil dry more quickly, and for even the most dedicated plant-overwaterers to not rot the roots of their plants. This is not ideal, since most non-cactus plants are stressed by dry conditions, it's just a way of coping with soil that has little air in it when moist. A more porous, chunky soil (like cactus/palm, if one is buying bagged,) can have more air in it even when it is moist because there is space between the particles. Roots need oxygen and moisture at the same time to function. When there are tiny particles of any kind in a pot, such as peat, sand, silt, clay, they filter into all of the tiny spaces in a pot, eliminating the air. "Overwatering" is the label and manifestation when roots have suffocated and/or rotted, combo of both. Over time, organic bits decompose into smaller bits, so even the "best" soil, if it has organic components, will need to be replaced when this happens. The speed at which this happens depends on many variables, but on average, about 1-3 years. Mine kept getting root bound so fast, I couldn't keep it moist enough. This is the fastest growing woody plant I've ever had.