What are you stitching next?

It is a great phrase. We frequently just look at each other and do the "just remember - assumption is..."

In some twisted way, we're closet - or not so closet - Steven Segal fans - and this movie is the perfect good/bad, slightly exaggerated characters, etc. Plus, the stuff having to do with DoD - and the CIA - given our jobs - is great amusement. However, we do have to watch it with a full MST 3000 attitude (meaning commentary - hopefully witty).

Ellice

For the most part, I'm relishing my solitude. I had 3 sisters and the first time I had a room to myself was after my divorce. I was a 'soccer mom' before it was capitalized; I worked and hauled my kids and their friends all over the southeast. When they left and my son took the dog with him, I loved being responsible for no one but myself

It's a good skill to have. I'm fine by myself, as is DH - and even though he's played on tons of sports teams. He is a one of those "want to have him on your team" kind of guys - for sports. But, I've been astonished earlier on to realize that he really doesn't have a bunch of close male friends. I'm definitely his closest friend - as he is mine. But, I have other friends that I'll see to "play" or have coffee, etc - and he loves them, will ask me "why haven't you seen .... Lately" or tell her hi, sometimes meet us for a quick lunch or the like. Yet, on his own, is quite content "puttering" .

I was a be in my room reading kid - or out at the barn - or playing football kid - so I'm okay either way. I have an extended family aunt - who sadly is one of those women that cannot be alone - and consequently - has been driving her family, myself, my parents - crazy for at least the last 28 years (I can date it). Poor thing - at nearly 80 - but looking fabulous - she is still always calling down her list to find activity or someone to be with her - worse, she and her husband have been seriously bickering/miserable for about a good 10-13 years - and are just sort of stuck. Oh, well. Takes all kinds. My aunt in FL is always asking "have you spoken with Aunt L" - and then filling me in. I'm a bad psuedo-niece - after 3 times when she either ditched me, didn't show-up, or changed a plan leaving me partway thru our activity I just said "no more" . Let me know when you'll be able to follow thru -(the worst - leaving me in a Nordstrom (20mi from home) at about 6:45 on a week night, when I'd rushed to meet her for shopping and dinner - and she decides after about 45 min to go see her grandson (that she'd just seen) for something - and leaves me. Just like that. Very annoying. But I do feel for her.

Ellice

snip

"> It's good to be prepared. Seems a bit sad, and makes you hope these people

An important part of my job when I worked for a fund raising organization was to look at the NYTimes obits every morning. I hate to admit it but there were two reasons for doing this.

1. To see if we needed to send a condolence and 2. to make sure they weren't potential donors who hadn't yet fulfilled their pledge.

Lucille

I think my family Thanksgiving celebration is truly unique - rarely are there less than 35 and 50 isn't unheard of....everyone brings something and there is a special joy in watching my kids play with Cousin Duck much the same way we herded around his Dad

Cheryl

But it'd be fun to watch....

Cheryl

Questioning is an art my dear! It's called checking up making certain where you get information from. The Internet is a wonderful tool, but in this age people think because it says so on the Internet, it must be so. I find the younger people are some of the dumbest, unworldly, unknowing, stuck up people I've encountered. This whole "shy" thing doesn't fly with me. Get over it! Shy, Shmy. When you walk into somones house you can say hello. My nieces are so stuck up that when they come here not only don't they say hello, they sit or lay on the couch without wondering where we sit. It's widespread, not just liimited to these two brats.

I simply hate to admit this to anyone, but when my step-father of 37 years died my mother went a little crazy. She is very good at her job, but not very worldly (street smart). She met a man at work twenty years younger than her, African American, AIDS, Hep C, very sick, and he lied to her about being IN Alcoholics Anonymous.

At the time I was in a year of chemo treatment so not very strong in any direction. She told me she was so in love with him and how "wonderful" he is, yadda, yadda, yadda. Meanwhile my friends (my Gays) told me he looked like a homeless man.

Anyhoo, I never met him and he was in a big rush to marry my motherr and she was swept up in his mash. I wanted to be happy for her, but I begged her to just live with him, she had way too much to lose.

Long story short, he was a crack cocaine user, started a fire in her kitchen with his stupid pipe when she was at work. He made many trips into the city to buy his drugs, she bought him a new car, etc. Suddenly, he fell ill and would never be able to leave the hospital or nursing home at the age of 54. Since she was married to him, her assets would have to be spent down before Medicare kicked in. WOT!!!!!

I flew up to NY to immediately get her a divorce and was able to procure an annulment beause fortunately they never consumated. Still that cost her over 5 thousand dollars. He died a few months later. PEOPLE, get a pre-nup! No pre-nup, no marriage. Especially if you have large assets. In my mother's case she lives ON the water ON Long Island. The beach is her backyard. Do the math.

Phew.

Amen to that. We spent nearly 2 1/2 years fighting over stuff he had no legal right to. I didn't have much when we got married, but I had more than he had, and when he got kicked out with little more than his car and computer, he wanted more. It was his word against mine that I had owned X, Y & Z before we got married and therefore those items were not community property. His self-serving memory was that anything he wanted was bought after we got married.

Even if all you own is a couch and stereo, it helps to put it in writing that the couch and stereo are yours, and the bed and TV are his.

The primary concern is for high dollar items; like CASH, securities, homes, investments, and anything of value. When I divorced my husband (the first one) I did so because of his general disinterest in anything. I was losing my mind, literally! So when it was time for ME to leave I asked him what he wanted. He said nothing. That weekend I had a moving sale and sold everything down to the towels. When he came home from work he said, "Where's everything?" I said here, and handed him half what I made. About a thousand dollars.

So, the point is, if women have money as my mother does it goes rather quickly on nursing facilities and rehab care, etc. Everyone should get a pre-nup if they have real money and real estate. To go further, about half the people who get married, shouldn't! That would greatly reduce the divorce rates, LOL.

Absolutely. There are men who are never going to be mature enough to be married, because they'll never get beyond "me me me" to "for the good of the marriage". Unfortunately, most of them realize that they have to say that they will do what they're supposed to, or the minister who's giving the pre-marital counseling will refuse to perform the wedding. But talking a good game and actually following through on it when "the good of the marriage" requires you to sublimnate yourself, are two different things.

I can say the same for women. I know many women who are all about me, me, me. They know the man before they marry and many times see only what they want to see while ignoring the potential for a very poor husband. Guilty! I do agree with you, but wanted to say just as many women are guilty of the same thing.

In the movie, "The Breai-Up" Jennifer Aniston's character tells her boyfriend never to send her flowers, they are a waste of money and die anyway. Down the line in an argument she complains he never sends her flowers and he quotes her back to herself and she then says, "All women love flowers." How is a man supposed to know that? We say things, but expect them to do the opposite. One last bit, people should wait at least until their late twenties, early thirties to marry and make absolutely SURE children are wanted by both. Break the marriage before the kids come.

This is only my two cents. I'm not trying to gang up on you with my opinions. As a woman who has a divine husband, but once divorced to another husband who I thought would change after we got married (HUGE mistake) I can speak from experience. And, I think giving all men, some men, most men, a few or several or whatever measure of men a bad wrap is not fair all the time.

I have noted this before, and it is something I, luckily, learned in the early years of my marriage. A loving, trusting wife is a prize so valuable that ANY cost that a man pays to achieve such a wonderful thing is far and away less than the benefits he recieves. Any man who does not work his butt off to make his wife loving and caring is the most stupid idiot in the world. Whether the same applies when the sexes are reversed, I have no idea.

And even if there's no "nup"!! When my kids were considering buying real estate with their SOs, I gave them each the same lecture: See a lawyer first and write up a contract - basically a pre-nup, even if they weren't getting married. CYAs, folks!

And this goes for both males and females - advice given to my son was no different than advice given to my daughter. In the event of a dissolution of the relationship, I didn't want either party - my child

sue

Here (in NS) even if you live without benefit of marriage, you are considered as a married couple by the law after a period of one year. So if you split it's 50/50 unless kids are involved.

Oh, absolutely. But every divorce lawyer has stories about couples who spent $5000 in attorney's fees fighting over a $200 TV. A liquored-up friend of mine nearly got arrested (thank God the sheriff who showed up was a friend of hers) for breaking into her ex's house to retrieve a couple LPs and videos that she wanted.

In our case, it went to the extreme, because some of the things he was fighting for would have been covered by a pre-nup and it would've been very easy to prove that this or that piece of furniture pre-dated the marriage. But when you're in a cheap apartment with cheap furniture (i.e., not priceless antiques), who thinks they need a pre-nup? ... unless you're marrying someone who, when he realizes he has no TV and no furniture, will fight to the death to take half your stuff for his new apartment.

You should have done what my friend's daughter just did a few days ago. They had a very messy separation and he put her so much in debt that she had to declare bankruptcy. It was a strictly legit action so much so that one of the major financial magazines (I can't remember which one but it was national) asked to interview her.

Their divorce hasn't yet been finalized, but he's already engaged to the next one on his list. She got a phone call from a creditor of his the other day who was screaming and threatening for his money so she happily gave them his new girlfriends parent's address, which is where he is living now.

Lucille

Similar laws in NL - and some couples get quite a shock when they split up, one partner thinks 'we're just living together, what's mine is mine and those family law rules only apply to people who had a marriage ceremony' and the other wants the TV, the house, custody of the children etc; and hires a lawyer.

Easier dissolution of a common-law marriage only works if both partners agree on who owns what (and sometimes people break up because they

There are a lot of good reasons for getting all arrangements put in binding legal form *before* trouble arises.

Cheryl P.

Professional courtesy: the whole 2+ years cost me 2 birthday bouquets, 2 boxes of Christmas chocolates, and a couple hundred in filing fees/copies/postage.

On his side (ROFLMAOWTIMEWPIMP), we figure it cost him about ten grand to get not one cent more than originally offered. His first attorney had told him that the offer was "more than fair", and he just kept getting new attorneys looking for the one who wouldn't believe me that the stuff he wanted was not community property and would fight to the death to get what wasn't his in the first place.

Since his last attorney admitted Dumbo was paying him $100 a month, I figure he's just making the last installment payment on the legal fees about now. A very expensive lesson in Thou Shalt Not F*** With a Paralegal. :)

Oh, yes, and it also cost him the girlfriend he had during the divorce. Bwahahahaha.