I'm still hanging around! (thought you got rid of me, didn't ya? Bwah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ahhhhhhh!) Brief Summary: I am the lucky Mother of 4 children and Grannie of 6 grandchildren. All gorgeous and exceptionally bright. The four youngest are very precocious, but well-behaved. The two oldest are adorable, but not so well-behaved. We are a multi-cultural and racial family. A beautiful rainbow of children from various cultural backgrounds. I was born and raised in southern California - 6th generation Californian on my Mom's side. My Dad was born here in central Oklahoma - 4th Generation Okie - he retired back here. I moved here to Okie from Louisiana with my kids in 1980. Now married to the most handsome, loving, gentle man in the whole world. My kids and grands claim him as "Dad" and "Grampa". My Dad says he's the best thing that ever happened to this family. Yes, indeed-y! :) We live in rural, Central Oklahoma on a southwest-facing high ridge, of sandy, worthless, alkaline soil over layers of sandstone bedrock. We have our own water well. Weeds and Bermuda grass are my best crops. This is ranch and farm country. Cattle, horses, wheat and various kinds of hay are the main crops in this area. The locals think I'm strange. I know they are! We have chickens, dogs, cats, and a green water turtle. No cows or horses. Our neighbors all do tho'. I'm an artist and gardener - jack of all trades, master of none. Disabled. I take care of the "ranch" and herd the cats. DH is originally from West Virginia, but was raised in Holland and Scotland. Hi dad is from Illinois, and his mom from Scotland. His family moved back to the states to Tulsa when he was 13 yrs. old. He is the Environmental Quality Manager for a young & small aerospace company up in Tulsa. We rescue animals and love wildlife of all kinds. DH does not care for snakes, however. I grow flowers, trees, veggies, herbs, and work too hard at trying to recreate a Country Cottage Garden on this high & dry rock of a place. ----------------------------------------------------------- Eduarda and I are good friends. We keep in contact year round. She is just fine, but work is keeping her hopping. They just took a break from it all - a holiday to the beach. I got a beautiful postcard. Timmy, her adorable, loveable pooch, is doing great too. hey are having severe heat and dry weather too. They even had a tornado there in her town - I think it was last fall. Did some damage to the elementary school, during school hours, but not to their home. Very freaky for Portugal! Anyone hear from Lorna in NM lately? I haven't heard form her in ages. Haven't heard from Rose in a long time either. Hope they are both okay. ~Annie

Well, the rain has put a halt to any additional planting today so I'm catching up on all the fast flying posts. Jay, I'm disappointed that you won't be attending the spring fling next weekend. I was looking forward to meeting you in person and listening to your gardening experiences. I've learned quite a lot from you already so since I won't be able to thank you in person, I'll just say thank you here. Carol, forgive me but I didn't respond to your earlier question about the Jimmy Nardello sweet pepper. Everything I've ever read about it indicates this is a "must grow" variety for its sweetness. I've never grown it before but I believe a few on the forum have so maybe we'll get their first hand account of how it did for them. I was at Horn Seed in OKC about a month ago and saw they had some beautiful Giant Marconi plants and I thought to myself "I'll have some of those soon" and smiled as I past them by. Well, after two failed seed attempts, yesterday I decided to just break down and purchase a plant. After a terribly disappointing trip to Atwoods in Norman, I stopped by Horn on the way home and there were three miserable looking marconi plants left. Needless to say, I left them right where they sat. This elusive pepper is quickly becoming a pain in my posterior. I should just give up the fight but I'm hard-headed and determined to grow these two varieties this year. If by some miracle there are any signs of life before next weekend from my last seed attempt, I'll bring you some baby seedlings of both! Paula, blackberries....? Hmm, that sounds interesting. However, they would have to come with a "blackberries for dummies" tutorial before I could even consider your offer. lol I'm looking forward to meeting everyone! Lynn

Interesting thread. Lots of people got generators after the 1998 Ice Storm, but without being maintained, most were useless after a couple of years. I don't know about the bigger ones being discussed in this thread. Many city homes (ours included) have a gas fireplace, so that would handle the heat issue of being without electric power. And we have several power boxes that can be used off-grid that are handle for short power failures (to plug in some lights). I wouldn't bother with a generator, myself. During the big power failure in August (2004?), we just did without power for a day, but a few people in our urban neighbourhood had generators - it just made the rest of us irritated, because they ran their AC and had all their lights on, and made a racket. Not impressed.

I used to think "family" was so important. As I aged I soon found out that "family" means nothing - it's your friends that count. Ideally, your family will be your best friends but often they can be your worst enemies (as I found out the hard way). This gives two choices, agonize over it and destroy yourself, or as I did, gather yourself together and realize "family" is a term of little or no intrinsic importance, concentrate on your friends including family friends and take deep breaths often. Coach yourself. How to deal with it? Well, have you coped with a death of close friend or family member? It's virtually the same thing. It's the death of a relationship. Accept that it's dead, remember the good times and you'll be able to move on. I accepted that someone else killed (murdered) my relationship with my father. I did not do it. By putting it in proper perspective helps coping with the situation. Not unlike a death, there's times it'll bother you, but it gets better and you move on unless you choose to keep it on yourself, drag yourself down and abuse yourself. Don't do that. It's not worth it. Sometimes you need to lose friends when they're bad for you. Sometimes our pretty skin becomes a festering boil. Do you continue to keep it because you've always had it or do you lance it, accept the short-term pain and move on. Why should ones who are technically "family" be treated differently than friends? A song lyric that means a lot to me is from Caledonia: I have moved and I kept on moving Proved the points that I needed proving Lost the friends that I needed losing Found others on the way Since the debacle I endured, I've found myself closer to some family members than ever before and I value that. Life is too short for toxic relationships. Nobody has the right to poison my life - only I have that right and I choose to not so do. There's enough others who want to make me feel bad, I don't need to help them do it. Now, there's some other things else that should be said. There's no perfect parent. Anyone who thinks they are have probably got their own problems. Accept that you could have made some mistakes but did those mistakes damage her that badly? I think not. For the sake of argument, let's say feeding her junk food, poor upbringing and depriving her of things hurt her. OK, she can throw a tantrum but by the time you hit 18-22 there's a thing called "personal responsibility"! By then, the parents obligations decrease dramatically. Even if she was fed poorly, raised poorly beforehand (and I'm not saying she way, again, in arguendo) it's time for HER to eat healthy, live a better lifestyle, grow up and be an adult. Adults need to accept their responsibility - not blame everyone else. Assign responsibility if appropriate then deal with it like an adult! She's long past the point where she can blame junk food as a kid or a perceived poor parent for her current life. My biggest concern is not for her, but for her kids. I don't know if she's got a husband or not but there's some responsibility there too if so, and shows yet another lack of maturity and responsibility. Lastly, this business of it's a dirty little family secret. BALONEY! It's a situation in life. Period. Don't try to hide it. Let it be known. I'm not saying attack her, but if someone asks who cares about you, why shouldn't they know that someone is trying to hurt you? I state facts, as unbiased and documented as possible and let people make up their minds. I tell them I have phone calls recorded if they don't believe me they can hear them and everything is stated calmly. I refuse to let them get me excited. Nope you're not going to raise my blood pressure (that much anyway). Someone who cares about you should know what's being done to you. I refuse to cover up the source of my family issue and when someone brings it up, yes I'll tell them my side of it. It's amazing how many people don't get both versions and what *should* they then think? I have stories on this too but this is long enough. My point is that if you try to hide this, cover up for her and think it's a "secret" you're only going to hurt yourself even more. I made that mistake for years. I learned my lesson. I hope you learn from my past mistakes. Now one other suggestion. Go out and do something special for yourself today. I don't care whether you and hubby go out for an enjoyable meal, take a walk by yourself, buy or pick yourself a flower, read a book you've been wanting to read, go to the library, a museum or call an old friend and rekindle a past relationship. Just reward yourself and do something kind for yourself for doing what is right and taking this like you have. Don't be afraid to do something nice for yourself on occasion. You deserve it.