HI Everybody!! SO happy to see this forum. I hope to learn a lot from everyone. I'm in LA on the Northshore, so not as close to the coast but close enough. I have some input on hurricane protection plantings. We live in a 100+ year old house and whoever planned the plantings here really knew what they were doing. Along both sides of our house we have Camellia trees and all over the yard are Live Oaks and Pecan trees. When Katrina came through we only lost one Live Oak and it was leaning a little already from a tropical storm. Luckily the lean was towards the woods! Anyway our house had very little damage while most homes in the area had a lot of damage. I really think the camellias helped keep much of the debris from hitting our house (they were rather beat up afterwards). After Katrina I am anti-pine tree. We saw too many of them snapped in half afterwards. I'm mostly a bulb and vegetable gardener myself but haven't been doing either for very long.

Hi Kimmie, I hope you don't take offense when not many people answer your posts. It isn't a very busy place. I guess we're all freaking out in the corner somewhere, with our migraines, bleeding, backaches, toothaches, irritable moods.......hahaha....or with our thinking problems, we sometimes forget how to get back here! ;) How did your doctor visit go? I know when my uterus is full, my back, lower abdomen and legs hurt. Sometimes, in perimenopause, our uteruses get too thick, but don't shed, and that can lead to lots of spotting, heavy bleeding, and a heavy lower abdomen. I always would get sciatica in my leg, when my uterus was full! Perimenopause can be quite a challenge for some of us. I'm 56 and haven't had a period for about 2 years. YAY! My life has settled down tremendously, now that those hormones aren't fluctuating all over the place. But.....my ovaries are still tormenting me. I even spent Christmas day in the ER! ......had really bad ovary pain. Anyhow.....don't be shy to come here and talk. Just give everyone a while to find your posts. Let us know how the doctor visit went!

I just snapped a picture of the lights (sorry if they're too big). We needed all the light we could get in the kitchen, so I wanted the light to go out, not just down. We hung them about 38in. above the surface of the island. I'm not sure if this is standard, we just held them up until it felt right. I was hesitant of pendant lights, because I didn't want to visually break up the room, plus we needed all the light we could get. These sort of serve both purposes. We hung them above our eye level, so you're not looking into them. Our ceilings are 9ft, if that matters. Choosing a pendant can really halt progress :)

My DH was 34 years a Peace Officer, through the years when kids came to play with our kids. A few very few parents asked if his gun was locked up~~which it was always with out fail. My kids never saw it~~ When I was growing up a GF of mines father keep a gun under his tv watching chair in plain view~~~I never thought anything about it til I became an adult and thought how unsafe that was. I will say as a parent I never asked folks if they had guns, I guess just thinking people kept them locked up like we did, I think if I had a child I would ask now. But some epople would just lie and not tell you thinking it is none of your bsuiness. I am very aniti-gun~not to be politcal JMHO