I work for a company that makes a natural herbal based menopause relief formula. It's got ashwagandha (sensoril), HMRlignan, vitamins, and minerals. I'm around a 30 year old male so I haven't tried it, but what I'm reading makes it seem pretty good because it's non-hormone based and ashwagandha seems like a pretty good adaptogen to use overall. My personal feeling, again as a man, is that menopause should not be painful and difficult and my mother said that she didn't have a bad time other than night sweats but she doesn't really associate that with menopause. She was a very healthy eater though and always had a rich garden of greens she'd eat from and was active and not overweight. As a nutritionist, I believe that most problems people are facing are from general lifestyle mis-steps such as not eating enough fruits and vegetables, not sleeping enough, not exercising enough, and being stressed. I would look at those areas before self-diagnosing myself as suffering from any malady because those are much more impactful than anything else. I hope that helps, David

I'm so glad to hear that the seeds I sent out are making it to their new homes and two more cards with fantastic goodies have arrived to my home. Alana (poisondartfrog), thank you so much for the Argemone! I've really been wanting to try some of these but have been having a heck of a time finding seed. And the Pentapetes phoenicia, oh my goodness - this is the first I've heard of this species but as soon as I received the seeds I started reading everything I could find on it and this is most certainly my kind of plant. How absolutely gorgeous and I'm obsessed with the Monticello gardens and Jefferson's work as a gardener so it's so perfect. And last, but most certainly not least, the Ipomoea nil 'Sunrise Serenade' - this looks like an absolutely stunning variety. I'm doing a fence of Ipomoeas next season and this will look gorgeous there. Maria (elf7), thank you so much for the gorgeous card and the round carrots are absolutely perfect! They grow fantastically in the rocky soil here and I also love to grow them in containers and hanging pots. They're incredibly amusing. And I'm putting in a cutting garden and very much look forward to growing the dahlia zinnias there. ~Amanda

Coming into this late, but I feel your pain. I'm currently a SAHM with two kids (three and seven) and I'm drowning. But this is what I've learned in the past 8 years with two kids and a DH who didn't know the right end of a vacuum when I married him... Decrease your clutter. I know that this is terribly hard to do, but decrease it. Get what you can, OUT of your house. Bags, boxes, you name it...pack and it and dump it. Goodwill, friends, wherever. As long as it's OUT! Now is the perfect time to weed toys before Christmas. Get a couple of big boxes and have the kids at the same time, put in there things that they do not want. Do not watch them do this. AFTER they go to bed, then YOU go through it, bagging the truly unwanted stuff, and salvaging the precious "I'm saving this for you when you're grown" stuff. Put the latter in a box and stick it in an attic or garage, LABELED. Do not wait or it will turn into another annoying pile. Be tough with yourself about that part. Something from each kid, if ykwim? The rest GOES! Load it into the back of the car, van or truck. Get it immediately out of your house. The next time you pass Goodwill, dump it. Better yet, stick it in your DH's car and make him dump it on his way home from work. He's more likely to do it to get that annoying stuff out of his vehicle. Do this in each room of your house. The kitchen pans you never use. The crap in the garage that has been there for years. Keep dumping. If you are like me, you can fill a box yourself in about 20 minutes. The point of it is, the less you have in your home, the less that you hvae to clean, pick up, wash, dust, clean or pick up. Get large and small stackable plastic bins from Home Depot or wherever. Big ones for the trains...medium ones for the Barbies...are you with me? For frequently used toys used by preschoolers and younger, Home Depot has these big round rubbermaid buckets with white rope handles stick at least one in every room of your home. This is for the little people dumping. A three year old cannot put things away in bins...But a three year old can follow the dirction "grab all of your little trucks and throw them into the big blue bucket in the corner". It's also good for big items like that play weedwhacker, the stick pony, balls, dressup crap that never has a home (unless you have an estate). I can dejunk a floor in that matter (exluding things like board games and other stuff that actualy have to be put back together) in about 10 minutes. Even if it's a large room and trashed. I have a big home. I have three of them near my kitchen, two in the living room, four in the upstiars loft and one in every bedroom, even mine. (Their crap gets in my room too). If you get the kids to dump stuff into the buckets, you can follow behind with the vacuum. Once I figured this out, I had a lot less crap sticking to my feet. When it takes you all day to pick up, you run out of time to do the floors. And then you call Merry Maids or some other service and have them do a ONE TIME deep cleaning. Yes, spend the money. Have them knock the cobwebs, scrub your toilets, strip your beds. Kill the soap scum. While they do this, bang the dirty sheets in the laundry. In about 2 hours YOUR ENTIRE HOUSE WILL BE CLEAN! A clean house is easier to keep relatively clean then the depressing sight of a completely trashed home where you don't know where to start and you don't want to think about how long it's going to take for you to do it. If you really fall in love with this, have them do it every two weeks and maintain it yourself. And get your DH involved. One of the best presents that my DH can do for me at the end of a terrible day is wash my kitchen floor. I hate floors with a total passion. If he does it after I go to bed, I don't even have to watch! LOL And there is nothing better than to wake up to a clean floor...c'mon, you know how cool that would be? Forget roses, scrub something baby! If you really can't swing the Merry Maids, then do the decluttering and have it timed to be finished by Friday. Have your DH take ALL of the kids out for most of the day. I'm talking out to breakfast..then to a discovery museum..then out to lunch...then on errands. Keep them gone as long as possible. The pour the coffee and start banging. This is what I do, because I can't swing the MMs right now. But as soon as our budget will allow it again, I'm going for it. I, too, was raised by one of those 'do it all mothers', but the truth be told, we didn't have a third of the crap back then as our kids and families have now. We used to run the neighborhood because it was safe to do so. Spend most of the day toodling around town on bikes or at the public pool. We didn't have playdates or classes or whatever. We were out having a blast and Mom was ALONE banging the house all day. I had a Barbie and a Ken and a few items of clothing that fit in one tiny box. She drove a Kleenex box, not a covertible. My dd's BarbieS (all zillion of them) has a bus, a car, and a dreamhouse. Are you wtih me? So cut yourself some slack here. She was also powered on two pots of coffee, two packs of cigarettes and hardly slept. She got it done, but beat the everloving out of herself. Hardly a personal goal, if ykwim? So dump the stuff, enlist some help. Get the older kids to take out the garbage, pick up the nitpicky toys or entertain the little ones. Start dumping, and I will tell you a secret....dumping becomes addictive. Eventually you will get frustrated when there is nothing left to dump. And keep up with the Flylady. I'm doing it myslef with varying degress of success. Start from where you are, kwim? And don't have perfect be your everyday goal. You can be perfect or spend time with your children. You can't do both. Better some toys on teh floor and a Mommy that just played dressup, then a Mommy that never has the time. JMO, but words I live by.

lydia -- the 100+ food Elisa test sounds very interesting. I may give that a try, eventually. I'm convinced that I have quite a few food allergies. I used to throw up when I was given white milk as a child. Never drank any once my mother figured out the cause. Except in elementary school when I was forced by a teacher and I threw up. Funny how I was able to drink chocolate milk, though. I read later (as an adult) that in fact the chocolate in chocolate milk reduces the allergic reaction. Anyway, regarding food allergies, I know I'm sensitive to wheat though I'm not a celiac. I am also sensitive to dairy. (Ask me why I can't give up my goatsmilk yoghurt, this is the last frontier for me, hope to give it up eventually.) I subscribed to the test at http://www.enterolab.com/ which is where I got the results about wheat and dairly. The test was expensive. I think over $300.00. Glad I did it though. Sounds like the Elisa test may give you the same results plus some. This food allergy thing is tricky, I think. One of our dogs now it seems has food allergies. I asked the vet to test and she said that testing for food allergies is not very reliable (for dogs). I wonder if this is true for humans? A food elimination diet was the only thing she could recommend plus eating only a particular type of dog food that was "engineered to have a small enough molecule size so it doesn't trigger the allergic reactions" (her words). I was amazed and am wondering if raw food has "smaller molecules" than cooked food, HA, HA. Perhaps moite's methods that she got from her doctor about measuring her pulse rate may be the best way. I'm going the simple route with this raw food diet (for now) because it meets many other needs also. I had a great day yesterday. I went the whole day without the "wave of tiredness" that comes over me every day after lunch. I hope it wasn't an anomaly. Bad news is that with the raw food diet, there is a "detox phase" initially where some claim that you are ridding your system of toxins. The detox phase can produce acne which is what I just got yesterday. I haven't had a pimple on my face for many years but I have two now. Oh well. If my energy level stays good, I'll have to add that as one more reason why I'm glad I found this diet. I was craving cooked food day before yesterday but managed to get by without it. Hopefully those days will get less in number. This was kind of like craving a cigarette after quitting, as I remember it many years ago. Keep us posted about your food allergies. I'm becoming more and more convinced that for some of us, they are literally killing us or are reducing our quality of life (for some of us) to a very very large extent producing chronic problems and diseases that mainstream medicine doesn't have a clue. In my case, I definitely feel like I've become a guinea pig for trying out different "cures". I'm hoping that raw food will by my answer. I realize that because there is no definite proof, I could be wrong on this but as my DH says, it's gotta be better than being so overweight and hungry all the time. We were killing ourselves eating cooked food so how could this be any worse.