Well I guess you can tell I never visit that forum. I got excited when I saw it, thinking maybe it will mean a change in policy about submitted content. I love GW, but I am not at all happy about iVillage claiming ownership of any picture I might post. I don't post them anymore because of that policy.

I'm so sorry. Yes, I think it's normal to feel like you've been hit with a sledgehammer/run over by a truck/body-slammed by a sumo wrestler. & especially when you've lost your parents; this changes your very identity, & it doesn't matter how young or old you are. My 86-year-old friend told me one day, after we went Christmas shopping, that her parents always gave her a doll for Christmas; seeing people buying dolls for their children made her realize all over again that she was nobody's little girl any more. I do urge you, though, based on some of my own experience, to make some actual, face-to-face contact with more than one person. It's so easy to become isolated, & isolation does make things worse, & it prolongs the grieving time. One key to making contact is to set yourself the task of getting out of the house & doing one specific thing every day, & make is flexible so that you can do it even on a bad day. (One of my 'daily requirements' was to initiate contact with a real-life person every day. Some days I would drop by a friend's home or office to say hello or to bring her a grocery coupon or a paperback book or some such, & some days all I could manage was to tell the grocery check-out person that her nails looked nice. so even on a bad day, I accomplished my task). Please take care of yourself, & be good to yourself. I wish you the very best.

It definitely works as far as applying heat to food, but it is just impractical and tedious for me. The getting food out is a nightmare because the top rack uses three legs... if you take out some of the food, it will be heavier one side and that causes the rack to upturn and dump all the food in the grease below. If you're using both racks, to manipulate the food on the bottom rack, you have to remove every piece of food from the top rack, then remove the rack, then do whatever you have to and put the whole mess back together again. The surface of the glass is easy to clean as far as that goes, but the bowl is just so heavy and big that it is cumbersome. Not to mention the racks, I hate cleaning racks of any kind. And then there's the glass rim in the lid.... it gets dirty too, and can't be submerged. If you wash it with soap, how do you rinse it? Putting it in the dishwasher is impractical too... the racks don't come clean in there, and it the bowl only fits on the top rack (which it consumes entirely almost... I might be able to fit 2 water glasses behind it, but that's it). It does make a really crispy crust on breaded chicken. I've never attempted to melt shredded cheese in it, but I can understand how that would be a problem. Any time I've ever made anything with dried herb/spices, they are blown off of the food and swirl around the oven cavity like there's a tornado in there. Another thing I don't like is that the racks are awful... the slats are too large and things like fries fall through. You can solve that by using the bottom of a springform pan as a cookie sheet, but then the air doesn't circulate underneath very well. Johnliu, it heats with the halogen bulb (which it power cycles to maintain the temperature), and with infrared... they say the infrared cooks the inside while the halogen makes everything crispy. It also has a fan for convection. It does have a timer (which based on reviews I've read, breaks easily, you can't turn it down if you pass the time you want or it will break). It does cook pretty quickly and the nice thing is that you can see the food cooking right before your eyes. It is hotter in the center than on the outsides, and sometimes food needs to be rotated, despite the convection fan. However, flipping is almost unnecessary unless you want to brown the other side. The burgers were completely done when I flipped them, and I only did it to brown the other side just a bit. Here's a short commercial of the oven I have (it was 2 minutes long)... the same thing is the Flavorwave (which has Mr. T as the celebrity, not Mike Tyson... I was confused about that!) Here is a link that might be useful: Video of the oven I have

Hecalls and Cawfe are correct, oh my, she didn't have full custody, they had 50/50 but she spent six months fighting for full custody just before she left. I think cawfe summed it up best. She won't take or return SD's calls, except when it's convenient for 'her'. She has called after SD is asleep, then says we're 'keeping her baby from her' because DH won't wake up SD to talk. Whenever she has SD with her, all she talks about is her 'butterfly' wedding that she's planning with BF and they are all lovey dovey so SD ends up feeling like she's not so important to her mom. Mom left and forgot about me. SD has told DH that she feels BF stole her mom. It was the way in which it was done. She sent SD on her regular week to DH and moved during the week while we had SD. Then, the day she was supposed to get SD back, she tells DH 'I can't take her, I've moved. I met Mr. Wonderful and we're getting married. Can you tell DD?' He said 'you tell her yourself' so they agreed that BM would tell her and DH would be there. BM sits down both her girls and tells them, not only is she moving three hours away and leaving SD with dad, but she also tells them that she's marrying this guy (whom they have known for two weeks) and another significant thing to note here, she had a different BF just a month earlier that she told SD she was getting married to, but she went on a trip out of state and she broke up with him while she was gone, came back and met this new potential husband. I think any 8 & 12 year old would be confused, upset and feel abandoned. That is the word her counselor has used many times. FD, you may feel that because she see's her mom, she isn't abandoned and apparently you won't see things through the eyes of a child that was left for a BF. That's YOUR problem but I think everyone else understands how heartbreaking it must be for this child.