Have been growing all types of plants and flowers since I was a young boy. It has been my lifetime passion and profession. Flowers do not threaten my masculinity! Here is a picture of me at 9 yrs old. This picture was taken 51 years ago! I would ride my bicycle to an orchid range that wasn't too far from my home and buy plants with money saved from birthdays and Christmas. Found some old papers in my desk and in the folder were my report cards saved by my parents from elementary school - one teacher wrote in the comment section that I was extremely good at talking about plants while giving a book report, but I really needed to expand my horizons! So I did - horticulturally!!

Ciao Martin, you talk about the canning your nonna had, yes, that is something I still do and learned from Nonna and zia Assunta. I at the time have 19 quarts of homemade macaroni sauce, I have 23 small pints of Tomato paste, about 10 pints of fried peppers and garlic, and soup base with lots of carrots, onions, garlic and celery. I tried to get a quick jump on all of this as my garden (vegetable) is producing quickly all at once. This morning i canned some fresh figs that I picked around sunup, they are from my Paradiso and my Peters Honey trees. cold packing them now. I will probably get around 100 quarts of just macaroni sauce this year. Sometimes I go to the Amish around the area and have to buy more Tomatoes when my small garden is done to fill my personnal quota. You figure we eat pasta easily now only about 4 days a week, so you need alot of sauce. I also grow alot of flowers and Olive trees. I grow mainly the flowers we had alot of back in Italy,, Bougainvillea, Cappero (Capers) which I can in Pizza sauce, Oh thats what I have to do yet, geraniums, Oleander, Italian Jasmine ect. I also have 2 Carob trees growing which my nonna used to chew like it was gum or something. I do have an affinity for the Jasmine and the Bougainvillea though. Yes just about all the gardening I learned from her and her sisters. There was NEVER a weed in their gardens. They would go out and talk to everything, and Pick pick pick weeds, everything was groomed perfectly. It is funny now, me heading into middle age, I find myself doing just what she did. Funny how history repeats itself. Drying figs outside you mentioned was also a fond memory for me. All the figs drying everywhere. Even though my aunt got a dehydrator for Christmas, she hasn't used it yet!! she still drys the figs in the sun. Ciao Maggie

Oh wow! Now that *does* sound like it was a good day! That's fantastic Judith. Now go forth and empower thyself! But just one thing - if he is enjoying his job, I do hope you can work out a situation that will be mutually satisfying whereby he can *still* enjoy his job. Upon re-reading your other posts, I realized that your DH has a consultant's job or a consultant-like job. I'm so sorry, my dear, but work-fixation, being on-call and frequently being away *is* the life of a consultant. You still do NOT need to be running interference for him with his kids or stalled out/in a holding pattern until "the time is right" (euphemism for: I'll do it later which is a euphemism for: never). You've already articulated well that your personal development needs to factor in as well - obviously since your own personal goals are not being realized and that is making you chafe. But I do so hope you can manage something where he doesn't have to give up what he likes about his new job. Say, a question for you: Does his job lie in New York and does he only return to Boston for the family or does his job extend here too? If it is the former, would you consider moving to New York? It may be easier all told - for both of you. Your children are not so old that it would be difficult to move not to mention, there is something quite culturally and intellectually enriching and exciting to move to a different city, state, country ... I also liked what geogirl wrote - not just in evaluation of your scenario, Judith, but it was eye-opening for me too. Perhaps it will seem less contentious if one realizes that it is not just good advice for a marriage, but good for any relationship at all. Work relationships, friendships, as well as marriage often respond similarly to the same actuation ... no surprise there since the same people are involved, only the pairings are different. Matter of fact, geogirl's advice made a few things click for me regarding a great friendship I had once had that soured - and soured spectacularly and rapidly. Interestingly, there are shades of the same issues that Judith summarized about the path of her life with her husband that are common to me with this friend of mine. (Aside: this was a perfectly platonic friendship, no hanky-panky to cloud issues or muddy waters). We were probably both to blame that our friendship became quite cancerous (well, almost certainly, although I like to think that I was a really good friend to him and he - well, not so much) but the bottom line is that it was wrong for me to simply assume that because I'd tolerated my friend's moody, temperamental, cross-patch phase when he was going through a tough time, that at a much later point in time, when he was back on even-keel and when life-things became burdensome for me that it was alright for me not to bother to hold my own temper and irritability in check with him. And I can be quite temperamental and very quick to temper. So it isn't exactly what geogirl was talking about but metaphorically and euphemistically - I did see a parallel and it was quite clarifying for me. In the meanwhile, good for you, Judith. Good for you for taking some time for yourself. You need to put some vim and vigor back in your life! Glad you went to the gym. I'm heading out for a run myself. Say, I'm right in the Boston area myself. Maybe I'll be running past your place! :-)

Bra fitting is so much more complex than most people think! I was wearing 34DD's and pulling the back down to deal with the extra band length when I'm actually 30H/32GG. There's only so much adjusting and compensating this woman can put up with before realizing that there had to be better fitting bras out there! After I got myself properly fitted and bras in my actual size that worked for my breast shape I had my mom measure herself and give me the numbers so we could get her into a better bra too! Finally not cringing at the sight of her bra band riding up towards her shoulders knowing she couldn't possibly be comfortable and supported with her bras doing that and we got to bond over bras and boobs! ;) She had been wearing 34C's when she was a 32 (I like a tighter band but she found 30's too constricting.)!