Hi Thanks for all of your posts. Thought I would give you an update and ask for your thoughts once more. Just a quick note. I do have a career (sort of) I work from home as a medical transcriptionist. So it is not like I do not have a job I just do not want to do it for much longer. See, I did it initially so that I could stay home with my DD and still make money while DH was in school. Now he has graduated and is working. Okay so here goes. I came clean with my dh as I mentioned and he is TOTALLy behind me bless his heart! I think what we have decided to do is go ahead and try to get pregnant. I will continue doing what I am doing now (work at home and stay at home with DD) until this summer. Hopefully by then I will be PG. I am planning on starting at the local university going part time. My daughter is already in preschool three hours a day, five days a week so she is no problem plus she never wants to leave with me anyway. The problem has been that I do want to get started on more education before the next one is 3. So I am going to go part time taking night classes, online classes, and maybe a day class if my dh can get those days off. That way I am going back to school (big goal) and we can have a baby (another big goal). The hope is that I can attend school, on a very part time basis to start with, and attend when my DH can be home with the FDB (future dear baby). There is a chance I may have to take a day class once or twice a week and my DH thinks that he will be able to ask for those days off for the semester. After the baby is older probably around a year. I will bump up to full time (about 12 hours worth of credits) and the baby would go to the university childcare center (which I hear good things about) my daughter would also move to their preschool and prek program. I think this is the best of both worlds for us. Though the baby will go to daycare it will not be until he/she is around 1 and not from 8 to 5 but more like 20 hours a week. Here is my question. At what age do you personally feel we are to old to go for serious higher education? I have this need to be highly educated (not sure why just personal goal) and to be able to make enough that I could support myself and my kids were it to happen. My DH is awesome and we have a great life, but there is always this nagging in me that says "you depend on your husband to take care of you." As I said this is not because my husband is a jerk or EVER says anything about it, but I just want to know that I can do it on my own. My point? Well, in order to make the kind of money I would like to, to get the higher education I want, and to have a job I would enjoy I am looking at around 7 years of education. I already attended six years of college (screwed around A LOT) and I am almost 30. My dh is totally behind me and even said he would get a second job so I can focus on school and family. We also realize this would mean everyone would need to help me out around the house. I would lose a lot of free time and my life would be very different. I just wonder is it too late for me to start something like this. I hope not, but there is fear inside of me that says it may be. What do you think? Sorry so long and not SF related, but I only post here and value your thoughts. Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ha! look at my screen name. Looking around the MBR: four reproduction Audubons in place of a headboard. One Japanese painting, bird on rice sheaf with roses. Two more Audubons on chest of drawers, along with life size fish crow carving. Dresser, one pottery sandpiper, one small Lizars sunbird print. Grandfather's enamelled Japanese box, sparrow and plum blossom, great aunt's Indian inlay box, bee-eaters - heirloom, not my fault. Okay, my fault, I chose them when it was my turn. That all works but I went overboard with the pillow...too contemporary, no self-discipline at all, I can't make myself get rid of it. Well, great-aunt's box doesn't quite fit either... DH has never complained, maybe because the color scheme is not too feminine, cream and rust and cafe au lait. Master bath, seven or eight more Lizars hummingbird prints on background of stencilled bamboo. I shall spare you the description of the other rooms in the house - no fabric, but antique prints and Japanese paintings, although there is the hummingbird wallpaper in the powder room and the hummingbird shower curtain in the children's bath. If you have to pee in my house, you get hummingbirds. My children sometimes do say, Mom, you have a lot of birds. Little do they know I'm waiting until they get through college and I can afford Koson prints. So fair warning, it is entirely possible to go too far. It's just that birds make me happy. I will tell you, it beats frogs. There was a while when people thought I collected frogs, because I had three small frogs and then my dear ones gave me frogs...

Kay, our local newspaper has them where on Monday the puzzle is a one star, which means it is super easy. Tuesday is 2 stars and it gets more difficult as the week progresses. The weekend puzzles are 5 star and are supposed to be more difficult. Usually they are, but sometimes they aren't. If you want to try one, it would be better to start with a one or two star til you get the hang of it, then go for the more difficult ones. They are a lot of fun.

If a plant wants water everyday, its either growing on the edge of a pond or floating on top of the water like a water lily. Here in Oklahoma I found that if you overwater you create what I now think of as spoilt brat plants. They get large, lush and leafy with all that extra water but when you shut it off or when the temperature starts hovering in the upper 90's or 100's for days on end, these bottle babies start pouting. They need their daily bottle and they wilt every day even with the daily water. They have shallow roots & all that top growth to maintain. On the other hand, plants better suited & left to grow normally will shut down during the inferno days and look much better. We are getting into the 100's now, the annual Heat Dome is in place and at that, its late this year. Plants have coping mechanisms, they don't grow or bloom much because they are temporarily dormant and some drop leaves to conserve moisture which escapes from leaves. Once the cooler weather sets back in & some September rain comes they all kick in, snap back nicely and we have a long beautiful fall with loads of bloom. Once a week is the maximum you should have to water in summer or just enough to keep the plants alive if the rains don't come. Because I live in a harsh place in summer I avoid thirsty plants. Ever since the drought in the late 1980's I've changed my approach and try to avoid wasting water.