you want to write a book? and you want our help? with what? if you are going to write about your own life, you better be famous because nobody would want to read it otherwise. If it is a fictional story based on your experiences then I don't know how we can help with fiction? if you wnat to write a self-help book on a topic of marriage, you better be a psycholigist, psychiatrist, marriage counselor with expereince etc otherwise your book will not hold any value. saying that... you have rights to write whatever you want, plenty of people write stuff and publish wiht their own money but it never gets sold. I knew someone who wrote poetry and kept publishing books paying out of his pocket, nobody ever bought any. he gave them away for free. it was bad, very bad, terribly bad. I felt embrassed for him. His every poem was either about his cat or him wanting to commit suicide (because 15 years ago this woman left him) and now all he has is his cat. and it was a poem after poem and at least 3 books full of that. Poor guy. I don't know why remembered him...But I guess he had rights to write all that. i am an artist, sometimes I sell sometimes i can't, sometimes I get my art into major competetions and sometimes don't get into any. some pople like my art some don't. If i need help i ask in art forums, go to my fellow artists or read art books. I don't tell anonymous people on the internet that i want paint somehting but want people to tell me difference between oil and acrylic. I don't think we can help you. maybe taking writer's workshop could help better than asking us here.

Buyers who look at homes for 6 months are not motivated buyers in my book, I would establish a different preview regimen to save the buyers and my own time. We looked not-seriously from March until June. We looked SERIOUSLY after that until we signed a contract to buld about 10 days ago. A few things happened. One is that we learned we couldn't have what we wanted and changed what we would have accepted. The other is that with the current market, people who don't have to sell yet are waiting--nothing new has come on the market in the last few months here. I was looking daily on-line and our agent was looking for us--we were hoping to have purchased and moved before school started. Nothing new was coming up--even up to another $200k over our price limit. We had some non-negotiables that made it hard to find a house. We need 5 functioning bedrooms (one could be in the basement), a kitchen at least as nice as the one I was leaving, a basement, at least a 3 car garage and we didn't want to change middle school districts. DH wanted a newer house since he didn't want to spend every spare moment doing home improvement. We increased our price range. We increased it again. I was looking at houses that were *double* our initial plan--still didn't find something 'perfect'--and at double our price range, we didn't want to have to finish the basement, replace the floors, re-do the kitchen, add on a garage or anything else in the $10k plus range. Out of curiosity, after we raised our budget and relaxed some of our earlier wants, I went back and looked at the flyers of houses we'd looked at earlier--and still wouldn't have bought them. We might have done better if we'd been seriously looking May and June, but we were too busy planning our wedding to househunt :-) But 6 months didn't mean we weren't serious--it meant we were *particular* (or fussy, if you prefer). Up until the day we signed the contract to build, we'd have bought a pre-existing one if we could have found one. --Beth

I have a very alternative view to public VS. private school. I am currently 18 and have attended both forms of schooling, and am currently in Home/Online Schooling. For me, Public School was not an option. I found that bullies were slapped on the wrist and pushed back out on the playing field where they could do it again and again, and the cycle was never broken...many a times there were "anti-bully" movements at our school, but very few were actually effective in treating the issue...if they stopped in school, it'd pick back up out of school... Many children in class were unwilling to pay attention and participate, and a long time was spent listening to them get lectured, instead of focusing on the curriculum. Not a lot was accomplished in class so we were expected to use a great amount of out-of-school time to focus on school projects and get them completed... I just wasn't happy. I also started hanging out with "the wrong crowd" and doing drugs and drinking under age, etc. Not every kid will do this, and if you stay on top of things and maintain good lines of communication and a FRIENDSHIP as well as a parent-child relationship with your children, you probably won't have an issue with this. My mom refused to see on an eye-to-eye level with me, and we had a very poor time getting along at home...my dad was always away at work so our relationship didn't account for much during my high school years. The upside, however, was that I was able to socialize and engage in extracurricular activities such as volley ball and track and field. Since joining online school, I have noticed that my grades are much higher...they make the courses so that anyone and everyone can understand them (so that they don't get a flood of questions every 10 minutes about different topics that are difficult to comprehend.) They provide online real-time tutoring, free of charge. There are still field trips for many of the distance education schools that help everyone get together and develop/enhance their social skills. You work at your own pace (I finished a single grade in half the time it takes public school to finish...this is excellent since I am a 2x drop out it means I have the ability to catch up with my peers more quickly.) you set your own schedule...as long as you are doing 4hrs of work per day you will be on par with the public system. I do 6+ hours which means I am surpassing them...since I should've graduated last year I will not graduate before my peers at this point, but I will definitely not be too far behind...a year at most. It really depends on the situation. I would say online schooling takes a lot of dedication, and if you are unable to supervise and ensure that work is getting done, public school would probably be a better bet. It is super easy for a student to say they are completing the work, when they in fact aren't. (Hence my second "drop out"....got kicked out of online school for not completing work in a timely manner...did nothing to re-enroll until recently.) I think if you are home daily and have enough time to contribute and make sure that the work is being completed and they are grasping concepts, online/home schooling is excellent. I like that I can decide who I interact with and who I don't, I have time to manage a work life as well as my school life...I get the social skills I need out of my work life, as many of us know we often interact with people we both like and dislike throughout our work days. Sorry this is so all over the place LOL, I'd edit through it but I am off to apply for a new job and need to get going . . . Hopefully I got my point across about the pros & cons of both! Both are extremely beneficial It just hugely depends on your situation at hand. OH another key point - if the kids are younger I think public school is definitely a good idea - it gives them a chance to establish a circle of friends and to learn how to interact in various positive and negative social situations, if they are too young to extract those experiences from a work life. :)

Bless you, Stephanie in Ga, for your concern for these recently-arrived neighbours in their sorrow and for how best to express your concern. How about just going over, ringing the doorbell, and when they answer, to express your concern and empathy for them in their sorrow? If you feel so drawn to, especially if it's the mother and she seems to be accepting your kindness in a certain way, maybe to open your arms to offer a hug. After the initial discussion, how about saying that you'd considered taking up a neighbourhood collection, or offering food on a rotating basis, assuring them that your desire was to offer whichever service would be most meaningful/helpful to them? Greetings Sue VA, I feel distressed that you were so troubled by the generous gift from your neighbours/friends on the death of your husband. Sometimes the huge pain of death of a loved one causes us to react to events in unusual ways, and I regret that you laid this extra suffering on yourself at that time: you had enough to contend with as it was. Almost certainly their gift indicated their desire to express their sincere concern at your time of sorrow and pain, not to judge that you were needy. Sometimes, it seems to me, we are more willing to offer a gift to others than to accept one graciously when it is sincerely offered to us. Is it a function of our desire to be independent, to pick up our own marbles, to not need to depend on others for anything, I wonder? You spoke of the difficulty of forgiving them ... and I am wondering ... what was there to forgive? They had expressed their concern, in what they felt to be an appropriate way, a tangible one, in a good, generous spirit. Whatever the reason ... I am sorry that it has caused so much hurt and trouble for you ... and for so long! Is it still troubling your heart? Have you talked it over/out with a counsellor? If it is, I hope that you will consider doing that ... please get this painful boil on your back lanced, so that it can heal and the pain be gone! Life is too short to carry around a load of pain like that ... especially when quite a few would consider it largely unnecessary, I think. I hope that you will not consider what I have said as criticism of you ... it is intended only as regret at the way that you chose to react to this event in your life and the resultant pain that it has caused. Good wishes to you during the coming days. ole joyful