I get on my nerves Shrug. Nobody worries about it, so don't let it bother you. Re the above, I've heard of Shiksa Appeal, but that kind of takes the cake. I think the only bad experience I had was with a cardiologist who wouldn't explain what the heck was going on with me, wouldn't tell me what medications he was putting in my IV (illegal under state law here), and deflected every question with "you don't need to know that." The last straw was when he refused to believe I was having a medication reaction. "But nobody's allergic to that!" Yeah, well, meet Mr. Nobody. Since I was having an atricular arrhythmia at the time, I wasn't exactly in any danger since I was being monitored. There was time to answer questions (more than ample since the only thing they can do is medicate it back to a normal rhythm, and that took 14 hours in my case). Millions of people wander through life with an AA and never know it (up until then, I did). The only thing it did was tick me off badly and raise my heart rate. Since the top chamber was already beating 180 times a minute, that's not real good. He got his butt fired off my case as soon as I was out of the hospital and I found a wonderful doctor who sat down, showed me the nerve channels on his model plastic heart, explained what happened, and what we can do to keep it from ever happening again. And so it hasn't and I feel fine.

I don't know about up in Cullman, but down here I know the cannas and eleph. ears can make it in the ground all winter. I think callas are hardy to z7. I don't think you'll feel the need to have your own mimosa. At least down here, they are everywhere, an invasive nuisance. I've been trying to kill one for 4 years and am finally about ready to say "mission accomplished." I don't think I've seen any smoke bush down here. Hmm, they were almost a clich� in central OH. Must investigate... I can understand not wanting to go crazy gardening at a rental but I always end up making at least 2 flower beds, front & back. Don't be hard on yourself if you end up doing it, or maybe you'll get lucky and find a spot already there. It's just too fun to grow things. Digging up grass is harder but cheaper than pots. A trade-off. Moving really far south is super fun, in regard to gardening. You'll miss a few things but probably just love it. One of my favorite surprises was discovering my spider plants could go outside for good.

Interesting discussion! I've had a ringside seat for 15 years at the marrying-for-money, trophy-wife circus. My kids attend a very exclusive, very pricey private school. Our joke is we're the token middle class family there :). Anyway, this place is a marvelous venue for observing the phenom of women marrying men who are often older and always wealthy. Within this general group there are divisions: -There is what I call the 'original wives' club. These women are first wives, who married the doctor/lawyer/indian chief when they were both starting out, with good earning potential but long before the money appeared. Many are nurses who married doctors, legal secretaries who married attorneys etc. A good smattering of college romances in there. Original wives are generally close(r) in age to the husband. They look their age, but VERY well maintained. -Trophy wives. These are always a lot younger and a lot more good looking than their partner. They are second, or sometimes third, wives. Their children often have half-siblings who are decades older. They are seriously into high maintenance mode. They are arm candy...when they appear with their spouse at any event they are dressed, made up and toned to the nines. Funny aside: I learned long, long ago to NEVER ask or assume that an elderly guy at a PTA event or back to school night is a grandfather. No,he is the dad on his second (or third or...) go round at fatherhood. Both sets tend to be SAH; it is also common that the husbands are minimally involved in the life of the family. They are way too busy working to afford the best house, the luxury car and of course the pricey prep school. The wives tend to complain that they have all the responsibility and that the husbands drop in occasionally to bask in the fatherly glow, then they are off again. OTOH the domestic responsibility is eased by a lot of help-household workers, hired out jobs and so on. If they're not working, the dads are often indulging in their own expensive pasttimes without the family. Lots of golf, deep sea fishing, private plane excursions. Travel usually consists of lavish trip several times annually. But, those trips are the only extended family time rich dad spends with the kids. Otherwise, it is original/trophy mom, the kids and the household help who hang out together. Wait, I forgot--a lot of the trophy wives get carted off at least once annually for a couples' only vacay with hubby. The wives like to sigh as they 'complain' that their money honey just has to have his week alone with her every year in Jamaica/Paris/Italy/Fiji. Such a burden. Sound cynical? Who, me???? I will say that these families and marriages do work in many cases. I will also say that the downside can be brutal. I've seen many divorces over the years and they tend to be nasty and prolonged. Wives who have been pampered housewives for a decade or more have to fight hard to get money out of the divorcing spouse. They worry a LOT about living because almost none of them have financial resources or job skills. Usually they end up leaving the MacMansion and moving into comfortable but much more modest houses. OTOH, most of them seem a lot happier once they are single and finished with the divorce. So, who knows? I'm married to a guy who is roughly equal to me in education, earning power and work ethic. My last raise brought my income a tiny bit higher than his and when I asked him how he felt about that he crowed "I feel like I can see early retirement coming closer...yippee." He also likes to call himself my trophy husband :). I think I've got a pretty good deal. Ann

My take, 15 years ago. . . to the present. Some things have slightly changed for SMs, and some things have not, and some things have a long way to go. What is a potential SM supposed to look for nowadays? There really is no one set of answers. There are just too many extenuating factors to take into consideration, and still much of the advice out there for SMs is based on long-held presumptions and assumptions, and much of it is based on what largely non-SMs think should work vs. what actually may. Very few, even amongst professionals, take into consideration SM’s main role as dad’s wife or SO and instead seem to only want to focus on the “mom” part of SM. Because of this, for years and years SMs have been looked at almost solely as competitors to mom or competitors to SKs for dad’s attention, and SMs have traditionally been treated abrasively and judged harshly because of it. The reality is, most SMs just want to be dad’s wife or SO, and welcoming to the children. I’ve been a SM for over 15 years now, and I still can’t really help much with the “How do you make it work?,” question. What I can tell you is that as a SM, or even potential SM, you need to do what works for you, because there is so much bad or contradictory advise out there, it is unbelievable. What works in one step-situation might not work in another, because there may be a huge difference in the many factors that go into making a step-situation work. I often even refer to SP’ing as a crazy backwards world, because things that no woman or wife would be expected to take in a typical family situation, for some reason a SM is expected to take and with no questions asked. In the year 2018, everyone knows spouses and even SOs are to be seated together at events. This is just a given, isn’t it? Not with SMs, that’s for sure.! You can be married to your husband for years and years and it can still be a crap shoot whom someone will try to pair with your husband at a family event, no permission needed. You’ll both just attend an event, and, surprise!, everything will be arranged like your husband and his ex- are still a ‘joined at the hip twosome’ and you (SM) simply do not exist. This is just one example. Follow your instincts. If something doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t. Look out for yourself. Most people will probably tell you something like, “Just be nice to the kids, and it will all work out,” or something similarly sappy. It sounds like common sense, and I would have thought the same before I became a SP, but that’s another thing. . . a lot of what sounds like common sense doesn’t work in step-world. There are studies that show that the nicer a SM is, the more the kids may start to despise her, because their loyalties are to mom, and they’ll just automatically look at SM as competition for mom. This is especially true if BM encourages them to think such, which certainly can occur. There is no way you can change anyone’s mind in this situation. You can’t control BM; nor should you be expected to. This is where you need a STRONG husband/ DH. He needs to put his foot down from day one that you are his SO and his children are to treat you as dad’s wife, and not as mom’s competition. Sounds simple enough, but so many divorced men with children fail on this one it is unbelievable. Too many of these men wind up treating their wife or SO like a child and their child more like a spouse. Even little things like letting his son or daughter sit in the front seat next to him ALL the time while you’re in the back, could send the message to the kids that they are dad’s significant other and not you. Children deserve to have all the love in the world, but they are not SOs and they are not wives. You combine a lot of these SM in the back type situations, along with guilty dad syndrome and BM’s PAS’ing, and next thing you know, you start to feel like the servant they are treating you as, and then when you go to one of your married friends to complain, she tells you that you need to understand more and give them space and not put your DH in the middle. In reality, not only are YOU the one being put in the middle, but you are also being put in the middle of someone else’s divorce/ fallout. There is no way you should be put in the middle of this and no way you can correct this. Only your DH can. Not trying to sound sour, but trying to get all to see that there is no way a SM should have to settle for being sloppy seconds just because her husband has children from a previous relationship. If as a SM, you feel like you are being the family servant or scapegoat or can never do anything right, or everyone is telling you you need to suck it up for the “family,” these are all signs that your DH is letting you take the fall, among other things. One might expect that of BM or even SKs, but very few women ever expect that once they get heavily involved with or marry, that their DH could so easily shrug his shoulders and let his wife or SO take the fall in reference to his family pretty much every time. In the end, the only advice I can really give any SM, is make sure you have a strong and true and tried DH before you ever marry him. You’ll need at least that. There is really no way to guarantee your success as a SM, as success largely depends on bio-mom and bio-dad, and less on SM or the SKs. And, remember: Manipulative, controlling BM and weak, enabling DH almost surely means Step Hell for life.