Will I get to stitch today???

I just meant that even with daycare, the parents are still the ones rearing the children, and the children know it.

I would disagree. I wouldn't choose that situation personally, but even with that amount of time in daycare there are plenty of ways to get in good family times, especially with infants who will often gravitate towards moving more of their sleeping during the day to be awake more with parents on weekends and evenings.

Well, that doesn't have much to do with daycare. The parent could have chosen to spend the weekends differently, and could have chosen to run the kids ragged even if an at-home parent.

I rather suspect it is quite extreme. It's certainly not representative of what I see. That's not to say that I agree with all the parenting choices I see, but I don't know a soul *personally* who doesn't value their time with their children and doesn't work to find the best balance they can. I actually see the opposite much more frequently--the parents who overindulges the child to "make up" for the guilt they feel at using daycare, even when on the whole they're achieving a fairly good balance.

Best wishes, Ericka

(...)

Thank you, we did in Texas. Did not one single thing, but after watching all the gymnastics I decided I would do a world class dismount from the couch and I hurt myself! What was I thinking? I normally have to go through several interesting pushes and twists to get up normally, let alone trying to win the gold off the couch.

LOL

Eh, you and me just got off on the wrong foot and it was a snowball effect. We are a lot alike. I also think we've both done some calming the F down! At least I have.

I don't have an answering machine or voice mail. Not home? Call me back. We use the mobile phone for vacations as it is normally easier on the road.

We had to go the court the other day for my speeding ticket and this one woman's phone rang no less than ten times, very loud, some dumb country song and she had loud discussions about absolutely nothing. So annoying. I'm such a GOW, I don't remember what a GOW is. What does it mean again?

Very true. These days especially people do what they have to do. I couldn't imagine a mother would do anything intentionally to harm their children. They are out there, but usually they're so wonky that it is seen by friends and family and it takes care somehow.

I cannot imagine what it's like to have children in this day and age. It's so hard and like you said, it's a lottery. I believe we come pre-programmed, but I believe in rebirth and our consciousness moves along the mental continuum or mind stream.

Either way, as usualy I hope I didn't make anyone uncomfortable with my big mouth opinions. I'm just a work in progress and I have no chidlren so what I have to say about them is not from experience. I WAS a kid who was left alone all the time and it was way before the days of daycare. I was a very lonely kid. V

Do they have a way to measure the copies of virus? It's very interesting. When I was about 9 I had what was called "pig virus.' It ran around Brooklyn like the plague. I had a very high fever for a week with such a horrible headache I had to keep my eyes closed and my eyes actually produced this stuff which kept them shut! It wasn't measles, those I got at 13, which was another terrible illness and too old to weather it. I almost lost my eye sight. I remember how old I was because I had to watch the lunar walk with sun glasses on. 1969.

I wonder if that wasn't the beginning of my FMS and MPS and possibly CFS. I never addressed the CFS because all the doctors know I have chronic fatigue. The drugs I take do keep me asleep so I get restorative REM, most of the time. Not always. When I'm in a flare I'm useless. Brain dead, no muscle strength, sometimes no secondary muscle use. They too thought I may have MS (I don't) and Lupus (tested negative). So for me it is hard to say, having Hep C. It may mask the CFS virus because it may have a similar receptor shape. Who knows. I have learned to live within my limits and when I do that I can deal with it. Every now and then I go a little stir crazy with no drive to do anything because I am just simply too exhausted.

Let's drink to research!

If you have an IKEA near you, pick up a set of bedrisers. They're like $10 for the set. I have not yet gotten the bed deconstructed to put them underneath, but DBF got them under his couch and it makes all the difference to the aging (his) and decrepit (mine) knees.

They don't have a commercially-available test for the suspected virus yet, which is why they do the C-Reactive Protein. It measures your level of infection/inflammation when they aren't sure what virus is causing the problem. Mine was "off the charts", so although they couldn't pinpoint *what* the problem was, they were able to quantitate it as "majorly sick".

And that was when I was well enough to take 3 buses/2 hours to get to the research center! I don't want to know what it would have been at the point that I was even sicker.

I already have them! When I bought my chaise for after the surgery on my knee I also purchased two packages of those risers. One for the chaise and one set for the couch. I was just trying an attempt at being funny!

It's so funny how we all, the in pain all the time people, know what to do,

I will be seeing my hemotological oncologist tomorrow and I am going to ask him to do this test on me. He looks at the slides right there while in the office. There is usually no waiting unless he has to grow a culture. I am interested if I have CFS, officially based on this C-Reactive Protein. Stay tuned. Look at the time and I am up. Tonight was not a sleeing night.

I was a latch key kid and I was left alone most of the time when I was growing up so I understand that.

One big difference now is these kids aren't left alone. They are with an adult and often with other kids to interact with.

I'm not saying that's the best way to raise a kid, but it's not the same as when I came home to an empty house after school.

Lucille

Hugs and a fluffy towel to you, Lucille. But are you getting a lot of stitching done?

I had jury duty yesterday, so had a few hours to stitch appeared to be a *very* unpleasant case.

Sue

I'm getting out today. Most likely we'll just go to Friendly's and have ice cream, or TGIF and eat something unhealthy, but it will be out of this house.

Good luck with your jury duty. The last time I was on a jury I was stuck for two whole weeks and by the time it was over I was ready to pull my hair out. They didn't even allow me to bring knitting needles into the waiting room, no less the court room. It was very high security in Brooklyn criminal court. I swore that if there was any way to get out of doing my civic duty again I would use it. Then I moved to Florida and happily I wasn't ever called here.

Lucille

Here in Maryland, we're revisiting the "Slots or no slots" question on a November referendum, and being promised that having slots will bring in millions of dollars for education. Our kids will benefit and never want again (yeah, right....) Isn't this the same argument they used for instituting state lotteries in the 60s and 70s, and all the money generated will go to education? And look at the educational systems now, compared to then. Our school supplies meant notebooks and pens for personal use, and some forward-thinking teachers had each kid bring in a box of tissues in September to stockpile for classroom use all year. My kids had much longer and more specific lists.

Sue

That's right. I did make note of that. Times were different in the

Certainly no daycare back then. I do believe it was the beginning of latch key, but my mother was also a latch key with her little sister. My grandmother was an executive at G.H. Walker, or the G. H. Walker Bush's family. Actually, it was his parents who owned the Wall St. firm.

We all find our way, hopefully. Some take the long road, some the better road.

Relative only to the bit about tickets for adults I remember a neighbours little girl when I was pregnant. This was fifty years ago and mothers did not often want to discuss sex or birth with kids. So with her daughter taking a great interest in my pregnancy as she was the youngest of a brood she thought the worst when the girl asked how old you had to be to get a hole for the baby. She played for time and said 'whatever do you mean' when said child impatiently said "You know mum, a whole, a whole instead of a half fare on the bus for the baby"

And here's an FYI, the last time my parents were called (one for state, one for federal), they were told they could ask to be excused due to their age.

For me it wasn't the 60's. It was the late 40's and it wasn't because my mother was an exec. It was because my father's truck driver job paid little and they needed the money. I'm not sure if they called it a latch key situation, but I did wear the house key on a chain around my neck.

We all need to make choices.

I think you said your parent's were in their 80's and that would make them older then me.

There's more to the CFS diagnosis than this test. This just shows if you have "a" virus, and then they should test further to see if they can identify which one. In your case, it might just indicate that you've got Hep, which you already know. But Hep is Hep, it's not CFS.

In my case, the test does prove to the unbelievers that the problem is not depression, there is an infectious cause. Then again, the experts who diagnosed (1988) and re-diagnosed (2000) and re-re-diagnosed (2001,

Check the DFWCFIDS website (I think it's an org, but it may be a com) -- they have a lot of information, and can probably point you toward an expert in your area who can sort out once and for all if you have the symptom of "chronic fatigue" caused by all your other health problems or if you have the particular constellation of symptoms that are Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (which is not the same thing).

Under the initial diagnostic criteria, they were supposed to rule out any other possible cause for the fatigue. If you tested positive for something else, say thyroid, they had to treat that sufficiently to get that under control, so they could definitively say that something other than thyroid for was the cause of the fatigue. Too many doctors have gotten sloppy about that and just tell anyone with fatigue that they have CFS, regardless of whether they have the other symptoms in addition to the fatigue.

And then these misdiagnosed people show up in our support group and we're talking about neurological problems, paralytic muscle weakness, fainting, cardiac issues, sore throat, swollen glands, fevers, rashes, major digestive problems, new allergies, etc., and they have no clue why we think they should have those symptoms, all they have is fatigue.