Well, that was dramatic. Good info and a keeper

Chinacat..."it's not the smoke, it's the slacker who's abusing it. the prayer goes 'blessed art thou who has sanctified us by thy commandments, and given us the herb of the fields' by the way... and 'treat your body as a temple' applies just as much to things like white sugar and Pringles as it does to anything else..." You said it. I do know productive members of society who smoke, and I know others who abuse their bodies with food, abuse their minds with television. It's not the guns killing people, it's the people killing people. That said, perhaps that is his one vice? If he works as hard as she says he does, he must need some time to relax. Also, is he a homeowner? I thought it was the OP's house. If it is, then expecting him to contribute and feel equal may be difficult. Have you tried interesting him in exercise? That gives a great natural high. Does he have hobbies you could share? If you're really not interested in being with him because he smokes, yet you knew he smoked, did not ever own a home, etc... prior to getting married, you set yourself up for failure. Don't blame him for your inability to change him. You married a bachelor who has the social and homemaking skills of a college student (no offense to college students!) He doesn't want to grow up. You already have. Invite him to grow up with you, or get out. You deserve more, and your kids deserve more. By the way, don't ever assume kids don't know what's going on. They will find out sooner or later, and you will have to reconcile the "don't do as I do (or DH does) but do as I say" and we know that never works. I'm sorry, but you said to be frank. I mean no judgement. Best of luck to you.

I think maybe I'd come up with one good response, plain but politically correct, and use it every time she starts. Something like: If you're here and not at home or the doctor, we need you to do your share of the work. If you cannot do that, you should go home or to the doctor. And I just would walk away, not give her my audience. She'd learn that I am not the right person to complain to. My MIL is like that, too. However, I only see her a couple times a year and talk on the phone to her only a few times a year. I can tolerate it for a short time. Even when we visit for a few days, I just listen and offer superficial sympathy. She feels the only way to get attention is to be sick. However, as soon as she has anyone's attention for a minute she consumes it with health complaints. She will even go into explicit detail to her grandchildren about her bowel movements. (Nothing brings generations closer. LOL) So people avoid giving her their attention to avoid the health complaints. It's a cycle. When I do talk to her, I try to ask more specific questions that "How are you?" If she's tried any good recipes; been anywhere fun; what she's watching on TV these days. Granted, she can even turn that around to foods she cannot eat anymore; how hard it is to walk or ride in car; and the medical report on CNN. But it doesn't open the door quite so wide as "How are you?" I sort of hold her husband a little bit responsible b/c he does ignore her unless she is sick. But when she is sick, he fawns all over her and tells everyone else to give her a break. She grew up the oldest of 6 kids on a farm, I'm sure she had to be very sick to get much notice.

Ted Danson Quotes American - Actor Born: December 29, 1947 I am forever grateful for 'Cheers.' Ted Danson Looking out at the ocean, it's easy to feel small - and to imagine all your troubles, suddenly insignificant, slipping away. Earth's seven oceans seem vast and impenetrable, but a closer look tells another story. Ted Danson Everything I am, everything I've been allowed to do, career-wise, has come out of the opportunity I had with 'Cheers'. I think it's one of the funniest shows ever. They are some of my best friends. Ted Danson My most annoying habit is complaining about my aches and pains. It's the new ones that I haven't identified yet that make me nervous. According to my wife, I complain way too much. I may be a borderline hypochondriac, or you could say I am fascinated by the body - at least by mine. Ted Danson The industrial way we fish for seafood is harming the marine habitats that all ocean life depends upon. Indiscriminate commercial fishing practices that include miles of driftnets, long lines with thousands of lethal hooks and bottom trawls are ruining ocean ecosystems by killing non-seafood species, including sea turtles and marine mammals. Ted Danson Many people continue to think of sharks as man-eating beasts. Sharks are enormously powerful and wild creatures, but you're more likely to be killed by your kitchen toaster than a shark! Ted Danson Usually if you're the center of a show, part of your job is to host its energy. Ted Danson I became interested in ocean issues in the 1980s when I couldn't take my daughters swimming because of pollution at our local beach. Twenty-five years later, I'm a board member of Oceana, the world's largest international organization dedicated to ocean conservation. Ted Danson I am a bit of a Pollyanna - I spend most of my day happy. Ted Danson I was at our beautiful home in Martha's Vineyard, near Boston, sitting on the porch looking at the ocean when I got a phone called and was asked, 'Would I like to do 'CSI'?' A week later, I'm at a coroner's office in Las Vegas, participating in a quadruple autopsy. Ted Danson If you actively do something, it will stop making you feel like a victim and you'll start feeling like part of the solution, which is just a huge benefit to your body and your psyche. Ted Danson To be successful, you have to be willing to be successful. You have to believe in the law of attraction - that you create your own life. Ted Danson You use and lose a lot of energy being grumpy. Ted Danson Years ago, we all talked about recycling and not dumping things down your drain and all of that, but talking doesn't help much. Basically, it's going to have to be legislation because the impact is so huge and diversified. Ted Danson A friend is someone who will allow me to be a really bad friend and not hold it against me. Ted Danson The planet will survive. Whether we get to be here and enjoy it, or enjoy life as we've known it, is what's questionable. Ted Danson My lessons didn't come at my father's knee. Like all good lessons, they were learned from example. Ted Danson Sharks are in real trouble, and they need all the help they can get. Ted Danson Address these environmental issues and you will address every issue known to man. And we keep dabbling in things that aren't really that important in the long term. Ted Danson To grow up knowing you're loved is astounding. It's a huge gift to a child. Ted Danson Humor can bring people under the tent. And a good joke can deflect some of the intensity surrounding a serious subject. Ted Danson If you take one rivet out of an airplane, it will be all right, it'll keep flying. You take another rivet out of the airplane and it still flies. So what the heck, let's take more rivets out of the airplane, and sooner or later, the airplane drops from the sky. Ted Danson When people are in the midst of really heavy stuff and still have a sense of humor, I admire that. Ted Danson We have a project with Unocal here in Los Angeles, where we as an environmental organization, the oil company, and the state all get together to promote the recycling of used motor oil. Ted Danson 'Cheers' was great. They paired me up with Shelley Long on this tiny bar set for the final audition. That was my first really big one, and we just clicked instantly - I still think I got the part because of Shelley. Ted Danson We need to start looking at having a way of managing the whole ecosystem, because you can't pick away at it piece by piece, you have to truly start being coordinated and managing our resources as a system. We haven't gotten to that point yet. Ted Danson I feel very strongly that you can't just beat people up anymore; you have to work hand in hand and find ways to compromise, and get big business involved, because it won't happen otherwise. Ted Danson We're not trying to reinvent the wheel; for any environmental organization to claim sole responsibility for any kind of victory is insane, because everybody attacks these problems as a group. Ted Danson The environmental movement, like all political processes, reacts best to disasters. But these are very slow, very gradual disasters in the making. Ted Danson You have to work with the auto industry, the oil companies, you have to work to develop renewable fuel, whether it's solar or different kinds of fuel or whatever. Ted Danson We are all in this together. We will all make it or none of us will make it. If everyone cleans up their act except one big ole country, it isn't going to work. Ted Danson We are so arrogant, we forget that we are not the reason for evolution, we are not the point of evolution. We are part of evolution. Unfortunately, we believe that we've been created to dominate the planet, to dominate nature. Ain't true. Ted Danson I don't think it's a matter of, do you win the game or not, it's how gracefully do you play it. Ted Danson How much do you engage yourself in what's truly real and important in life? That's the individual question. Ted Danson I tell you, the difference for me is between being victimized, terrorized, numbed by reading about different disasters, or reducing the anxiety by getting up and doing something about it, at whatever level. Ted Danson One of the ingredients that made Cheers work so well was the great ensemble of actors we had. That's the case with any good series. Ted Danson One person goes off and works in Houston the other person goes off to London and you're on the phone to each other and somebody is paying you to kiss somebody else. It's very bizarre being an actor. Ted Danson The pressure isn't on my brain, but on my mouth. I realized Sam Malone said very little, he spoke in little sentences. Which is much more comfortable for me for some reason. Ted Danson Cloning, wow. Who would have thought? There should be a list of people who can and cannot clone themselves. Ted Danson I got my first television at Stanford when I was 20, and I used to watch 'The Dick Van Dyke Show'. He played my father on 'Becker,' and he's still one of my heroes. Along with John Cleese, he's my favourite physical comedian. Ted Danson I've never been that guy who says, 'Ooh, I have to play King Lear'. First off, that'd be a disaster anyway. I tend to read something and see who's involved, and then know I want to be part of it. But I don't think I'm through with comedy. I still love to make people laugh. Ted Danson I'm at the right age to work with dead people, but you have to be smart to be a CSI. Ted Danson I'm basically a know-it-all, and I'm writing a book about it. I want it to be called 'Danson on Water' and have me on the cover in this Christlike pose, standing on the water. Ted Danson My joints hurt. I'm slower. But I remember what it was like to run and play with the boys. I want to be one of the boys. Ted Danson I think there are probably a handful of real character actors in this business. The rest of us are recycling. So now I'm Sam Malone the editor. I'm Sam Malone the billionaire. Ted Danson You have to be an optimist, right? You have to be critical, then you have to be an optimist. Or else you're really stupid. Ted Danson Most of us can now record a whole series with the click of a button. We all have DVD players, and the rise of the DVD box-set means we watch this stuff in two, three-hour sessions. So there is this real appetite out there for lengthy, pretty intricate drama. All that is great news for writers. Ted Danson You reach a certain age, and you realize, 'Wow: there are younger people doing this better than I can, and don't leave me out - I don't want to be left behind. I want to do it, too. Where are you going? I want to be part of it.' Ted Danson To do something funny, you have to have experienced it in real life and digested it in a way that amuses you. Ted Danson I think it's the actor's job - when you think of being typecast or getting out of the shadow of whatever you've had success in - it's up to you as an actor. The industry will always want to hire you for what you were successful in last and what made money. But you can say no to that and look for other parts. Ted Danson When you have brothers, you learn to be fiercely competitive with someone you love so they won't kill you and you won't kill them. Ted Danson My temperament is not the adventuresome sort that enjoys starting new projects every six months. I love ensemble, nine-to-five stability. There's a family dynamic in making a television show that you don't get on a movie, where you're a hired gun for a few months. Ted Danson My reward in life for growing up a little bit was that Mary Steenburgen came into my life, and we have been together for 19 years. Ted Danson I'm an actor, so I am always scared. You never know if you are on vacation or that you have been retired and they just didn't tell you. Ted Danson I am so grateful that I accepted the offer to do 'CSI,' but it was like being shot out of a cannon, and it was so different from anything that I have ever done. Ted Danson I try not to see Woody Harrelson because he has become this big movie star, and it grates, so I try and stay away from him. Ted Danson I eat less, stretch, and work out. Ted Danson I think the struggle, whenever you make a film or television movie based on a real person's life, is finding a dramatic arc that will hold an audience's attention. Ted Danson I'm almost tempted, when I'm playing a real person, not to meet them. Afterwards, maybe. But, the job is the same. You still have to show up on screen and be alive and real and all that stuff. Ted Danson I moved into this neighborhood, and I was walking on this beach with my kids, and we came across a sign that said, 'Water's polluted, no swimming.' And I didn't have any answers. Ted Danson California is responsible for selling, trading and distributing large amounts of shark fins that come from all over the world. Ted Danson One of the hardest things for me to do is watch myself. The first time I see it, I am obsessed with my left ear or my right ear or some other physical attribute, or the fact that I'm 60 or whatever shallow ego thought is running through my head. I'm just destroyed that I'm not Cary Grant or whatever. Ted Danson I used to have a little silent prayer: 'Dear God, let my ability to get work be the same as my celebrity.' That would be a hard burden: to be a household name and not be able to get work. Ted Danson I'm from L.A. I'm an actor. I'm a flake. Ted Danson My job playing Sam Malone was to let the audience in, to love my bar full of people. And that informed my life. Ted Danson Centuries-old habitats such as coral gardens are destroyed in an instant by bottom trawls, pulverized by weighted nets into barren plains. And global carbon dioxide emissions from human activity affect the ocean, changing the pH balance of the waters in a phenomenon known as ocean acidification. Ted Danson My day goes from one embarrassing moment to the next. Ted Danson I was three. My father in jest said that he'd tell the doctor to give me a shot if I didn't behave. Good heavens, I have a mental picture of the living room and the doctor approaching the door. I was terrified. Ted Danson I feel like I enjoy the company of Whoopi deeply, and my private life is my private life. Ted Danson I don't think I'm as educated as Whoopi, so I'm lifting myself to her level. But you know, our view of the world, our view of what we can do, our sense of what it means to be here, are similar. Ted Danson My father went to work every day, and it's my job to go to work, too. Some days will be good, some won't be so good, but I have to go to work. Ted Danson You should always carry string, according to my archaeologist father, because then you could at least make a trap to catch animals to survive. According to my grandmother, it was clean underwear. Ted Danson I first saw the ocean as a kid. We would drive from Arizona in the summer and arrive as the sun was starting to come down over the hill near Laguna in southern California. We would always sing a song, and it was a big joyous family moment when we came over the hill. Ted Danson