Hi Merri, thanks for checking in...you sound busy, and then some! Things here in L'burg have been pretty tense...one of our "tall ships" lost a crew member when a rogue wave swept her off the ship and so the town is very subdued. It's good to hear your enthusiasm, hope we can be forgiven for conversing on this side of our forum....M

Against my better judgement, I looked at the NWS forecast this morning, lol, and our chance for Monday precip has gone from 70% to 80%. I would love snow on any day but Monday. If we can just have the Christmas Parade in town that evening and have it safely, then it can snow every day after that and I won't complain. At the parade, we collect a lot of food and donations for our local food bank, so we need to have decent weather so we'll have a large turnout. I actually think a lighted parade, Santa's arrival and the lighting of the Christmas Tree on the courthouse lawn would be beautiful in snow (not sleet or freezing rain!) but the snow also could hurt the size of the crowd and/or make travel difficult. Jeanie, I know we all are ingrates. No matter what weather we have, we seem to want something else. I am dreading a long, cold winter like last year's and was hoping it wouldn't start up until January, but it looks like it is starting early. Actually, for the OK Panhandle and for Jay's part of Kansas, the cold weather already has brought them some snow. We're all stocked up on groceries now for winter. I keep the pantry really full because the nearest grocery store I like is 30 miles away. There's a small one in town, but I don't care much for it and won't go there if I can avoid it. I do need to start stockpiling deer corn and wild bird seed for the really cold weather because we feed a lot of 'visitors' in the cold months. Jeff, I know that early snowfall fits right in with everything else this crazy year. I was looking at the video footage of all the damage in California from the Santa Ana winds yesterday and thinking to myself "at least we don't have those here". Paula, I agree with you on the shaking and the quaking. I am sure it was felt much more strongly at your place than ours, but even though y'all have had a lot of quakes in central OK, I never, ever expected to feel one way down here and I don't like that feeling at all. My plan for the spring garden is to plant less cool season stuff because it takes up so much space for so long, and instead try to get warm-season crops in the ground as early as possible with the use of low tunnels of floating row covers. Then, if I can get the warm season crops to produce before the dreaded heat arrives, I'll be happy. I won't spend endless $$$$ watering all summer long either. I'll stop watering the big garden at the end of June, and then everything can sink or swim on its own. When we first moved here, an older gentleman I met had his own planting strategy, developed from long battles with the intense summers and late cold springs. He planted on April 1st. He stopped watering at the end of June. Then, in September, he planted spinach and other hardy winter crops. He didn't have to deal with the recurring freezes in spring. He didn't spend money on irrigation in July and August. He got pretty good harvests most years, and great ones some years when rain actually fell in adequate amounts in the summer, without letting the weather drive him crazy. The longer I live here, the more I see the genius in his plan. I know we are better gardeners for having experienced all the extremes, but I sure would like to have a nice, quiet year when the weather is mild and mellow. It's not likely to happen, is it? Dawn

We all know you can't use estrogen without progesterone if you have a uterus, because of the cancer risk. So one day I asked myself what about taking progesterone without estrogen? I typed into my search engine progesterone without estrogen and several interesting sites came up. For example go to: www.rxmixer.com/hormone3.html I'm perimenopausal so still having periods but very light. I was a good week overdue and feeling very bloated and irritable so I bought a tube of progesterone over the counter and have been using it for a couple of weeks now. It brought me period on and it was much heavier, so definitely helps promote shedding of lining. I realise it's not a good idea to buy things over the counter and play Dr but I don't think a couple of weeks of progesterone cream will do me too much harm. I live in Paris and have an appointment with my gynae to discuss the situation on 15 Jan. I tried HRT twice last year - once pills and once patches and both times I had unpleasant side effects esp weight gain and bloating - caused by the estrogen no doubt. So maybe progesterone is the answer? I had a rough patch before Xmas with migraines and heart palpitations, which started after the funeral of a dear Uncle - I found myself lying in bed thinking who's next and worrying about my ageing parents. I read up a lot on the Net - about migraines, menopause, various hormones and supplements - and decided to take some magnesium, which is a good general tonic - our GP suggested our teenage son take it last year with calcium during exams when he was a bit stressed out. Anyway I am feeling much, much better and more like my old self. Linda

nice! #5 reminds me of this house I toured years ago. It was disgusting -- stained carpet, visible decay everywhere, brown streaks all down the 1980s kitchen appliances, etc. Not shown in the listing photos: a basement room with a giant, super gross old walk-in fridge. Like the kind in a restaurant with a big thick door that could be locked from the outside. That was definitely a murder house.