There is a company that makes a product called E T Air Ride. www.ztpuffer.com You mount this air ride system on your mower then mount your current seat on top of it. If you have a seat that slides you can still slide your seat. It raises your seat a few inches so you need to build some wood platform to support your body, no big deal. You hook the power side to the ignition switch so it shuts off when you shut mower off. John Deere dealer was helping me get the correct wire. I'm looking forward to using it as my tailbone is sore. Age has nothing to do with it. Lawnmower manufacturers don't want to spend the extra money to build this into their mowers.

Yes, I will be the first one to admit my husband and I both need a break. Usually I handle what comes with no problem, but I think the holiday stess is getting to me. I'm a wife, mother, grandmother and caregiver, but recently it's been hard to balance all that. Throw in Christmas shopping and planning and I think I've felt overwelmed. Two weeks before Thanksgiving, 2 of my grandkids (ages 5 and 12) and my son-in law came to visit. An overnight visit wound up lasting 3 days. I love my grandkids but the extra everything exhausted me. (and my husband) Not to mention it threw my MIL into a confused exhausted state for almost a week. I usually "do" Thanksgiving at my house, but I cancelled the big family thing and chose to have a quiet small dinner with just the 3 of us. I think I pissed the family off, but I don't regret doing it. I don't think they realize the amount of work it puts on us. Or how it stresses her to have her routine changed. So...now I'm planning Christmas--it's tradition to have it at "Grammy's" (me) house and I always look forward to it--but not so much this year. With my MIL's declining health things are much different for us. One daughter lives close and is wonderful to give me a break, she visits regularly enough to know the meds and the care MIL requires. The other daughter ( the one with 4 children) rarely calls and doesn't realize how things have changed for my MIL. She just shows up with the children ( who will be charged up on christmas) and thinks things are the same as always. So..having said all that I've deceided to simplify things around here. Insted of a lot of gifts, there will be gift cards and I'm going to play up the fact that the after chrismas sales will be great when they go to use them. The huge amount of food will be cut in half with just the favorites. I've enlisted both daughters with what they will cook and bring--pies and such. The youngest daughter has offered to come early and do a lot of the cooking for me. Her husband has offered to come and sit with my MIL and keep her intertained ( she loves that boy and so do I). There will be paper plates, not the good china,and what I can get already prepared will be bought, not made here ( the restuarant down the road makes a mean smoked turkey). I'm not gonna worry about how messy the house looks cause it's gonna look like a mad house once they all show up anyway. I think I just might survive this after all.

Since there doesn't appear to be an abuse pattern, I wouldn't think your friend is yet suffering from the low self esteem or even the 'I must have started it' syndrome that many abused woman feel. That's a chronic problem and almost becomes inbreed in chronically abused woman. What it sounds like your friend is dealing with is more of a "crime of passion" type of abuse which can sometimes be even more dangerous than a chronic abuser. The violent outbursts can often act up for the first time during divorces proceedings too. Obviously, she probably did something wrong by carrying on with another man (and some could say she has even been emotionally abusing her husband by having this 'affair'), so she probably does feel some real guilt. Obviously nothing she could have done would ever give him the right to physically hurt her. But her guilt is real and NOT the same thing as a typical chronic abused woman who really doesn't do 'anything' wrong, but blames herself anyway. Your friend just has misplaced REAL guilt that needs to be directed and understood better. In other words, she needs to understand that two wrongs don't make a right.... Not think that her wrong caused his (which it probably did) so that his is jusitified. It doesn't make it justified no matter how wrong what she did was. And this isn't about your friend's case.. but I would like to point out one thing that I don't think some here may realize, but there are abuse cases where women themselves do start the physical abuse. I know a girl who got very violent when she got drunk and would go at boyfriend's with knives and such. The guys were always the one's that got in trouble. I do understand that women should never be hit for any reason, but please understand that women are not always the only victim in abuse cases. They are capable of starting physical fights too; I think that may be what some mean when they say you may not know the whole story, or that there are always two sides. Of course there's no reason to ever hit anyone... but have you ever had to get away from someone trying to kill you? Abuse can go both ways -- and sometimes there really is another side.

I think the big problem is that the jury needs to be their peers, meaning "as dumb as they are!" I "personally" think anyone who sits on a jury should at least demonstrate the fact that they have a working brain! Besides all that, Those were "pants wetting funny!"