Thank you for the kind words ROB33, but I guess our views on this are just different. To me health and wellness (mentally and physically) are the responsibly of the parent and are of equal importance to all other parental care. You can set them up for a lifetime with good eating habits and exercise. It’s really not all that difficult. If you do not have the money for a trainer simply have small areas set up in a basement or extra bedroom or whatever and carefully choose age appropriate exercise cd’s. All you need is a matt and hand weights (weights after a certain age). If it is a young pre-teen they seem to enjoy martial arts type cardio workouts. Keep a variety as what one likes the other may not. My kids are adults now but you know what? They still use workout cd’s, one has added a gym to his room for cross train and the other alternates home workout cd’s with periodic health club visits. And, I never told them they were fat and ugly to get them to use the cd’s either. I simply told them I was ordering some workouts and asked if there was any type of workout they might be interested in. Then, I also did the workouts to set an example. Edited to add… I had times frames I gave the kids for my workouts so there were no run-ins on the space. I did not set their workout times. I gave them time to play around a bit with sampling different workouts. After a time I just came out and asked what their favorite was. After being told I sought out other similar type cd’s so they wouldn’t get bored…and, I was encouraging but not pushy. This post was edited by jterrilynn on Wed, Aug 13, 14 at 10:28

There are times I am not miserable but those times are fewer and fewer. Tari was his first love, he tried to find her before we started dating and did not. I had always like him and although I dated someone else; I ended it to date him Tari was married a few months before we were. They reconnected at an event the oldest daughter was at and they had lunches and so on but never told either spouse. It all ended up with them getting together one night and him not getting home until 1am; she has meetings one night a week for where she is employeed and her husband works two jobs and probably did not notice she was not home unless he was home alone. I am not to talk to him about it for after he lied the first time the therapist said I would never know the truth. It is just so hard not to think about things when the nights I have to be somewhere with the daughter he has a "work meeting" and then the date changes and so does the time. I just wish I could believe him but that is not going to happen; how do you forget the lies and the pain? If I could forget all the things he has said to me that were mean and so on; I could be happy but how to you rebuild trust when each time he lies again. I know he cannot afford the divorce right now but it is too miserable staying here and hurting. How can he hug me and say he loves me when he does not. I mean why tell someone if this was the case I would have divorced you; I wish we were not together. There are times he says he loves me but again how do you trust? Is there anyone out there who was or is in this same condition and made it through stronger than ever? Is there any hope.

Very interesting!

I think you do get it, innately, not because of something I said. I don't think stoicism or rigidity precludes color. The counter or a block of the cabinets could be purple...the minimalists worked in color, after all . But I think what you don't want is extraneous ornament. To go back to the Pop Art idea, ...I think if it was really Pop Art, the Dishwasher would look like a box of Brillo Pads or something. To me, words like "Just Chill" --I think this is extraneous ornament, and it also reminds me too much of "Friends Gather Here" on a plaque or something. Bob Venturi would probably love the idea of wrapping a film around everything, but Venturi isn't a modernist. This thread has really made me think about the Concetto countertops and why I don't quite like them...because I want to like them on some level. But I think it is because they aren't quite real. If you did a purple Pyrolave countertop, the color would be the shape and the object, and the shape and the object would be the color. All of a piece. But the Concetto material is kind of aspic of sorts with bits and pieces of real semiprecious stone kinda blobbed together in resin . It's like expensive head cheese. If it were all one piece, like a big slab of marble that is a solid object in and of itself, that would be different.