I love NFL Network! Couldn't see the Tuesday night game with out it (How about those 49er's!!!!) semper_fi ~ Bryant Gumble's whiney voice is just wayyyy too much. ~ You took the words right out of my mouth! And he doesn't know *#@% about football! He is always saying something total out of text and the other guy is alway correcting him on names, then rolling his eyes as if to say "could they have teamed me up with anyone flakier?" I am pretty good at tuning out irritating sounds but he ALWAYS come though loud and clear. Hopefully this will be the only year and he doesn't have a 10 year contract! Maybe if enough of us write and complain, they will take the hint? LOL Marie

snookums, I've been following your thread with some interest. My dh is a senior exec, was in the telecomm area, has been laid off numerous times due to the nature of the business, and we live in an expensive area. I'm sorry your situation is causing you such great anxiety. I do understand your almost "desparate" feelings. You do, however, have a lot of choices - even though you might not see them. I might suggest that you and your husband see someone, a neutral third party, to help you sort out your situation and the decisions your need to make. A good fee for service financial planner/advisor? A career counselor? A couples psychologist? I'm not sure, really. I do know this -- it's hard to get a senior level job, these are not 9-5 jobs, they take months to find and often months to make a decision. Good thing is, you husband has a job now. Granted, he may need a different job, but it will do no good hoping for a substantial raise in his current situation, it's just not there. Meantime, what do you do to alleviate some financial stress? Got to get to work, girl!!!! Take some deep breaths and stop wringing your hands!!! That will get you nowhere. I agree with some of the above posters, no shame in working...I know you want to be a SAHM, but that dream may need to be put aside for now if you want your family to remain at your current level of need in terms of cash flow (not to mention savings). I am a mom, I stayed at home for 5 years, my dh has a vp level position and if we lived in a low cost area, I could do what I wanted -- I know where you are at!! I've been able to find an excellent part time job that accomadates my family. Fact of the matter is, your pet sitting business could bring in lots of income for you if you went about promoting your business and working daily...one of my neighbors does this (in my area of million dollar homes) and is so successful, her dh wants to quit his job to help her run her business...so could tutoring, aren't you a teacher? You could charge $60-75 an hour to teach reading, or whatever it is that you do. Start thinking positively, about what you do have -- including about $650K worth of equity in your house...you have talents and skills as well. Take advantage of what you do have!! No amount of wishing will get your husband a job that pays the tens of thousands a year more that it appears you need to stay in your current situation. Eventually, he will probably land that dream job, but it's not there now. You will get an ulcer and become depressed worrying about it. Now, I don't know you, and I feel funny telling you to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, but honestly, I've wanted to write this for a while now and am just doing it today. I certainly don't mean to be rude, it's just that I've been in your situation in a way. You and your dh need to make decisions and choices to elevate your family out of where you are. Good luck! Stay upbeat and determined. Anything is possible...jump in feet first and work like mad to make it all work! The thing about it is, if you don't like what you are doing, you have the power to change it. You really do.

As far as I can tell, the vast majority of "robber sues homeowner and wins" stories seem to be urban myths. I did study one case in law school where a homeowner was successfully sued, but in that case, he had set up a gun on some sort of automatic trigger connected to the front door of an unoccupied cabin. The court said that this was going too far, taking the chance of killing someone to protect property, rather than life. The basic rule on self-defense is that you have to try to run away rather than use force, if you can do it safely. That basic rule does *not* hold true in your own home. There is no "duty to retreat" in your own home. The other basic rule on self-defense is that you can use only enough force to repel the attack. However, what amount of force is reasonable depends on your duty to retreat. Since you have no duty to retreat inside your home, you can use more force than you would outside your home. As to whether you can use wasp spray as a weapon, I don't know the answer. My best guess would be that if you used it during an attack on the street, the courts would treat it as any other dangerous weapon. If you used it in your home (or car, at least in some states), even if you planned to use it as a weapon, I doubt there would be an issue. The law varies by state. If you want to see what your state thinks about these matters, look up the "castle doctrine," as in "my home is my castle." As a practical matter, I think most people are okay using whatever force they need to protect themselves inside their own homes. And that's even more so for women. Where I could see it getting dicey is if some teenaged kid broke into a house for drug money, having no weapon and thinking the house was unoccupied, tried to run away when he saw someone was home, and the man of the house grabbed him and beat the living s*^t out of the kid. Even then, I'll bet most police officers would tell the kid that he shouldn't have been in the house in the first place. As to whether the man of the house could then be sued, well, of course he could. Some of the castle laws protect people from being sued in these situations, but for the most part, anyone can sue anyone. Can't necessarily win, but can start the suit.

I'm not staying at my house this week so I took a look at what Amazon reviewers have to say. The book does not use canned soups. Though the attached review may not sound all that positive, it does answer the question of ingredients, etc. "I usually rave about Cooks Illustrated books because they are the best all-around cookbooks out there, but I have to rant a little about this one. The idea behind Cover and Bake is to improve on classic casseroles by getting rid of sub-par ingredients like cream of mushroom soup and pre-packaged bread crumbs, and simplifying cooking procedures so as to allow as much one-pot cooking as possible. The people at Cooks Illustrated make a lot of references to "Tuesday night dishes," i.e., main courses that can be prepared, cooked and served quickly and don't result in a lot of clean-up. This, however, isn't that book. The dishes that look so quick and easy when you watch them on America's Test Kitchen aren't so quick and easy at home because they have someone else to pull the leaves off of enough fresh tarragon that they have 3 tablespoons ready and waiting when they start cooking their Chicken with Spring Vegetables. When at home you have to trim and cut the chicken, pull the leaves off of the tarragon and chop them, wash and cut leeks, carrots, and asparagus and measure out cream (rather a lot of it) and chicken broth as well as various spices, and make home-made bread crumbs in the food processor, it all adds up to several hours of preparation before the casserole even makes it into the oven, and along with the casserole dish itself, you end up with a dutch oven, food processor, cutting board, knife and several prep bowls to clean. You can make the basic dish in advance, but you still have to wait for the mixture to chill down before you can put it in the refrigerator, and you have to leave it out at room temperature for an hour before you can put it in the oven. Yes, it tastes much better than the chicken casserole you would make with precut pieces of chicken and cream of mushroom soup, but unless you make it on a weekened and have someone to take it out of the refrigerator for you before you get home from work, it's not a quick and easy weeknight dinner. As mentioned by someone else, this also isn't healthy eating. Most of the dishes have cream or cheese, and vegetarian isn't a word the folks at Cooks Illustrated seem to have learned, although the dishes seem to have a lot of mushrooms. Even the side dishes aren't truly vegetarian as a lot of the recipes in the book use one form or another of pork for seasoning, or otherwise rely on cheese or cream. For a book called Cover and Bake, I certainly expected at least some recipes which make star use of grains, rice, beans and vegetables, which are nice to have even for meat eaters. Those also aren't here. These are basic beef, pork, chicken and fish with rice and/or potatoes and they are hearty dishes. The side dishes are basically rice dishes to serve with the meat. Don't get me wrong -- the resulting food tastes good. But their "paella," for instance, bears no resemblence to paella. It's shrimp with tomatoes and rice and while it's quite tasty, for an expensive dish, it just isn't the star it ought to be. When you make a dish that calls for 1 1/2 pounds of extra large shrimp, which is going to run you at least $25, plus the costs of the other ingredients, the dish should be more than tasty -- it should be spectacular. No one is going to complain about this dish, but it's doubtful they are going to rave about it either. On the plus side, everything is extremely easy to prepare, especially if you like making food that serves 4-6 people and makes use of 9"X13" baking dishes, dutch ovens, and large skillets. There are, as always, plenty of useful illustrations, and the instructions are easy to follow. I'll use this cookbook since I still like the idea of dishes I can make over the weekend and keep in the refrigerator for several weekday uses, but it's not going to replace Cooks Illustrated's New Best Recipe or The New Basics or other recipe collections I own. This is really for people who like chicken and rice, beef and potatoes and other combinations that classically go into casserole dishes with thick and creamy sauces. If that describes you, this book is probably a 5-star book for you. Otherwise, you may search hard for recipes that sound worth the trouble." I tried to link and for some reason it keeps being rejected.