Patch and Kayla are back?!!! Dang it! I wish I had never ventured over to this section. Now I'm gonna get addicted to Days of Our Lives again!! ;-) I started watching when I was seven. I'll be 34 in two days. My mother and sister (seventeen years older than I) had babies within 4 months of one another. My sister was divorcing at the time, so she lived with us. We had three televisions. One upstairs. Color. One in the den. Color. One in the basement. Black and white. All I wanted to do was watch my cartoons, but my mother and sister hogged the two color sets. Well, what kid do you know who will watch cartoons on a black and white set? So I started off with Guiding Light. Pretty soon I was watching Search for Tomorrow, Young and the Restles and As the World Turns too. When school started back up, I was just on The Guiding Light. As the years went by, I discovered All my Children, Days of Our Lives, One Life to Live, Another World, Santa Barbara, The Bold and the Beautiful and, I'm embarrassed to say, Passions (lasted two months). Today I'm down to just The Young and the Restless (the writing is starting to suffer big time) and The Bold and the Beautiful. I read the updates daily and watch both shows on the occasional off day.

I feel sorry for my Mom too but she's not asking anymore. My sister has the run of this place and it IS HURTING my marriage. Try 2 years of the same conversation over and over and over again with respect to DH & I asking if she would let us know if my sister wants to send the kids over. The asking stopped. The 'want' stopped. The 'by the way the kids are coming this afternoon, is that alright' or 'they're on their way for a visit' became the norm. Mom stopped letting us know and believe me - she mentally has all her faculties and is manipulating things to suit her need/want to have her grandchildren here whenever my sister wanted / needed to get them out of her hair. If you owned your home, and asked for over 2 years to have your homelife/marriage life respected and just got ignored and put a revolving door at the front so kids, sisters extra family not invited to stay just got dropped off for you to feed clean up after disrupt a movie/tv show your watching and enjoying disrupt a home renovation disrupt any planned activity hurt your marriage Cheeryfizz, unfortunately you really don't have the full picture. This is my home, my husband's home. My mother is a guest here. This is not the old family home - it's MY home and I'm PISSED. Don't feel sorry for my Mother - she's brought this on herself. I've quit my job over a year ago to look after her 24/7. I take sleeping pills because I lay awake at night to listen when she might go to the toilet and may fall. I got a medic alert alarm for her in case she falls and I actually do go into a normal level of sleep. My mother has been taking advantage of me since DH and I moved home from a very happy life in Scotland to look after her 24/7. Don't feel sorry for my Mom, she knows what she's doing. She left home at 16 to get away from her family and live her own life and never looked back. I'm 45 years old and still getting walked all over by my family. I wanted to put her in a care home with 24/7 care but she doesn't want it until now because she's not sure if she can handle living with my sister. Ever read the story - Cry Wolf? Cherryfizz I like you, and appreciate your feeling towards my Mom. Please believe me when I tell you my marriage is being hurt and my health has suffered enough. There aren't enough pills in the bottle to take to fix family problems. And it's not fair that I should need to take them to get through my day and sleep at night. If there is anything I haven't explained well, please let me know, I'll do my best to respond. I hope none if this is taken personally - after almost no sleep, 2 different pills to sleep each night, 2 prozac each morning - i'm not always writing clearly. I don't mean any offence to you Cherryfizz at all. I'm just hurting inside. I wish my Mom could stay but as long as she does, my sister will be interfering. I can't take it anymore. I have another sister and brother who have done NOTHING to help but sure know how to appear at meal time or holidays. Door's closed. Don't come back ya'll. The diner is closed. Cleaning services are gone and no more free meals or take out being served here. The maid is tired. I am the dishwasher and floor cleaner, laundry queen. I want to go back to work again - this has cost me over a year's income. My mother REFUSED to let me get her doctor to sign her as a dependant so I could claim back some lost wages.... do you still feel sorry for my Mom?

Kathi, I swear by Olympus. I had an Olympus Camedia C740 with 10x zoom when I went to Antarctica and not a bad photo in the bunch, so when I accidentally dropped that camera on Thanksgiving, I needed to buy another one quickly because we were beginning a home remodel the day after Christmas. After some research, I decided to stick with Olympus and this time got the SP-550UZ with 18x zoom for about $280. Same great color and clarity. And the 18x zoom is awesome. We'll see how it does in Japan, Russia, Alaska and Canada when I leave on my cruise next weekend. Keep in mind, these are not small pocket cameras by any stretch of the imagination, but to me, so worth the hassle of carrying it around. Jodi- Here is a link that might be useful: Olympus SP-550UZ

Zolushkin Son (Cinderella Dream) in description is of white and orchid color with strawberry veining. So the photo from a Russian site Samarafialki.ru is correct in a pattern - but the colors are off - orchid is a reddish tint of purple - not blue, We all know that blue and purple practically never gets photographed right. MIdnight Radiation blossoms are about half of the size of Feather flowers. But they are sure bright. Corinne - you are correct - it is not a big problem when you get two of the same type of blossoms - usually AVs from different hybridizers and different "hometown" have a lot of differences in how they look and grow. Rosette is a very important part of the AV beauty. You need to see them both size by side growing in your home conditions to decide which one will stay - and which needs a new home.