As a newbie, Kevin, I bought Colocasia gigantia 'Thai Giant', 'Ruffles', 'Fontanesii', typhonium divaricata, dracunculus vulgaris (common ones, I know, but am just starting), arisaema nepenthoides, Alocasia plumbea nigra, wentii, lutea, and I bought some huge pots of 'Black Magic' and 'Illustris' at Home Depot (along with the Fontanesii) and a syngonium for under my kitchen lights. Those are just the aroids. I bought several other things, too, but one I really am fond of is Tetrapanax 'Steroidal Giant' that I got at the local herb festival for $3.00. It was a tiny little thing in a 3" pot, with about 3" leaves on it. Now, at summer's end, the leaves are about 2' wide and long - it grew like a house afire. I already had regular colocasia esculenta, and alocasia macrorhiza, and have overwintered these for several years now in the ground. Au revoir, Susan

Aunt Jen, Hope you come back here and see this reply to you! This might get a little long, but since every woman is different, I feel like you need to know MY circumstances. I always swore I would never take hormones! I was just going to tough it out. I am 47 and "think" I have been in perimenopause for almost 10 years. I was having super heavy bleeding and it had gotten to the point where I couldn't leave the house for a couple of days, and then it was 3 weeks on and one week off! ugh! My gyn had offered in the past for me to take birth control pills to help with the bleeding. Well I also had a tubal ligation 20 years ago and it just didn't settle right with me to take birth control pills. So I just kept "dealing" with it. Then last year it got bad enough that I was going to have a hysterectomy. I was all prepared, and my mother n law was diagnosed wtih Brain Cancer. My DH was the only caretaker living close by, so I knew I couldn't put him through caring for him dying mom and me trying to recuperate from a hysterectomy and still go to work everyday. So, my gyn and I decided I should try an endometrial ablation. It has been a miracle! I have not had one period in a year's time! woohoo! So I do still have my ovaries. Around Christmas last year, I started having strong heart palpitations in the middle of the night when I would get up to go potty. I couldn't believe that walking like 10 steps to and from the bathroom would cause such a thing, and I was convinced I was fixing to have a heart attack or something major! I went to a cardiologist, and convinced him to do a stres test on me, also a chemical one, and everything showed up fine. My blood pressure was up a little, so he put me on a beta blocker, but it's a low dosage. Then later in the spring, I started feeling sort of dizzy, light headed, like I might pass out...even had that feeling driving to church one morning...that really scared me! I just felt very strange and very wierd. And then at the same time, the hot flashes at night started...it felt like 20 times a night I was pushing the covers down, and then 5 minutes later pulling them back up because I was freezing. Not easy to sleep with all that going on!!! So, it got to the point, I was not getting much sleep, and then during the day, the wierd head feeling( i was convinced I had a brain tumor) was keeping me from functioning. I found myself waiting for my hubby to get home from work, and then asking him to drive me to Walmart or to the grocery store, etc...becaue I was too scared to go by myself, for fear of passing out somewhere. It was awful! Then, I had a breakthrough thanks to ThatHOmesite! There is a menopause message board on here, and I started reading threads there and OMG! There were threads about, wierd head feeling, palpitations, feeling like you are going to pass out...and most of these women were right around my age!!!! I couldn't believe it! So, I printed all those things out, and took them to my gyn at my annual checkup in June. I talked to her about it, and she knew I had never wanted to take hormones, and she was also concerned about be taking them so that they didn't start to build up the lining of my uterus that she had ablated. So she recommended I go to our compounding pharmacy and get a saliva testing kit...it was $170 out of my pocket, but I was so desperate, it was worth every penny! So I spit in a tube, and mailed it off to Oregon. A couple of weeks later, the results came back in and my hormones were WAY out of whack AND my adrenals were exhausted. So to answer your question...=), I am on a progeserone/estrogen cream that I use twice daily right now. This cream is made just for me according to my results. There is also a long questionnaire that you fill out about all your symptoms. I am also on DHEA and adrenal forte, to get my adrenals working the way they should again. I started all this about 6 weeks ago, and the difference it has made in my life has been life changing! I would say I am at least 50% better already, maybe even 75% and I feel so much stronger during the day, I have actually been able to start exercising. Couldn't even do that before! The hot flashes at night have all but gone away...there might be a couple sometime, but they are very mild and I seem to fall back asleep easier than I was. I still wake up during the night now, for what reason I don't know. I am going to try cutting out all caffeine, even though I don't consume much of it anyway. But it came down to quality vs. quantity of life for me, and I wound up choosing quality. I have seen my 91 year old mother, be miserable, with not much quality of life, and I just decided I would rather enjoy my life now, instead of just trying to go for quantity of years and be miserable later. I am still trying to take care of myself, in fact, I feel like doing that now where as before the hormones, I really didn't care! So I hope this somewhat helps you. Sorry it took so long to explain, just wanted you to know my own situation. You have to decide what's best for you!

I have gotten a lot from this forum, as well. It's funny to me that sprinkles says all people want to do is gripe and not change things. I have found the opposite, that 99% of the time people offer advice and workable solutions. Sometimes they ARE no solutions but then I have been given advice on how to cope. My situation has similarities to many other posters on here, and differences, as well. I started dating my DH in February of 2004. We moved in together after about 3 years and we got married in September last year. Even though I officially became a SM in the fall of 2008, I had lived with DH and been in the "role" of SM for 2.5 yrs, or something like that. BM has always been difficult. She is an alcoholic ( in our opinion, though she would never admit it.) and I do fault DH for not documenting things and pursuing his legal options sooner. They always excercised a 50-50 custody situation but never had anything court-ordered until about 18 months ago. DH and BM have joint legal and physical custody per the parenting plan now. Things have gotten progressively worse with BM, her drinking and her lifestyle growing more and more unstable. "In court papers, BM said "Ima is the driving force" when DH asked for child support. That is her attitude... if it weren't for me, there would be no problems" I can so relate to this. BM has always put SS in the middle of things and she does blame me for the way things are. She told him last summer in the midst of the court battle that DH and I were trying to take him away from her--not true, btw. The odd thing about BM--and this is a way I cannot relate to Ima or Pseudo---is that she would never "ditch" her son. She really does love SS and she has never been the type of mom to be absent. I think she resents DH for having SS half the time, and she really resents me for being in a parenting role to him. It's strange to me, though, because you would think she would WANT me to love him and she would WANT him to be happy with me and to have a close bond with me. NOT AT ALL. She is so threatened by me and my relationship with SS----and I think DH, too. For years, she has done so many things to sabotage my relationship with SS, from telling him that I wanted to have her arrrested to telling him he didn't have to listen to me b/c I wasn't his mom to telling him that his dad loves me and DD more, etc. Terrible things that no child should hear. All those things have colored my relationship with SS to a certain extent. I feel he has always viewed me through suspicious eyes, like one half of him believes what his mom says, but the other half doesn't. Things got really bad this last year---BM first withheld custody from DH for 3 weeks and it took an emergency court hearing for DH to get him back. (This was in July of 2008.) Then a massive court battle ensued over whose school district SS would attend. He had attended a private school for kindergarten, which my DH paid for completely. Then BM enrolled him in HER district for 1st grade, without DH's consent or even knowledge until after the fact. In December of 2008, DH won residential custody for schooling purposes and it was entered into the paretning plan that SS would attend our district starting in August of 2009---now. We were ELATED and thought the battle was over. Then BM's drinking spiraled out of control. The final straw was when she didn't get SS off the bus this past April---she called DH from a bar, drunk, at 3 pm and said she was too drunk to get him and could he or I go get him. I picked SS up from the busstop and took him home to our house. 5-6 pm BM showed up drunk at our house, wanting to "talk" to SS. Against my WAY better judgement, I let her inside. that was MY mistake. In hindsight, I should of told her no and called the police right off the bat. I didn't, ironically, for fear of causing a scene. The scene that ultimately ensued was WAY worse than I ever imagined. BM stayed for an hour to two hours---I let her sit in my kitchen and cry and I listened and offered advice and support. I finallly told her she had to leave,as it was bathtime for the kids and that was when she wanted to take SS with her. I told her NO WAY, she was too drunk---and she went to say goodbye to him. He was understandably reallu upset to see his mom in such sad shape and he went under his blanket on his bed, and started mumbling to her about how I "beat him and spank him all the time." NOT TRUE. I don't even know where he learned the word "beat" as it is certainly not a word in our vocabulary. My DD would not know that word in that context. Anyway, BM was drunk and irrational and became quite enraged at me and I told her she needed to get out NOW. She took SS with her out to her car and I told her I would call 911 if she attemepted to leave with him. Long story short, she did, I called 911 in front of her and she punched me, yelled at me, came at me---all of this in front of a hysterical SS. I tried to get him away from her and she came at me again, and I ended up having to lock myself inside the house with her trying to get in--I slammed the door in her face just as she tried to shove her way back in. She was taken to jail--not arrrested---taken to jail and her DH had to come pick her up. Back to court we went. I was given a year-long order of protection against BM. Bm had to sign documents saying she is not to consume alcohol 4 hrs prior to or during custody of her son. If she does so, it is a violation of the parenting plan, we can call the police and it gives DH grounds to modify the plan for full custody. In the middle of all this, BM called the police on me and CPS and said I abused SS and he had a bruise on his wrist from me. Well, there was NO bruise and SS himself even said to the CPS worker that I didn't do it but his mom said I did. SIGH. I feel like I am always looking over my shoulder and wondering what will happen next with this woman. We recently found out BM has another order of protection pending on her now. Her SD's mother has filed an order of protection on behalf of her daughter. BM is a volatile and sometiems scary alcoholic. I don't trust her for a second. What I have learned from this forum is that I have a right AND an obligation to protect myself and my DD from her. I unfortunately cannot change the fact that she is SS's mother and all I can do for him is protect him when he's with us and pray that DH and I can counter-act her enough. I cannot control my DH or his reactions to BM. He often deals with her in ways I don't agree with, and I have come to the conclusion, from all the advice I've gotten on here, that I have to do what feels right to me in setting boundaries and protecting my child, myself and our home. My main issues have not been with SS (although i've had some, but funny enough, all the drama has actually BETTERED our relationsip) but have been with DH. This stress has taken a HUGE toll on our marriage and there have been many times i've questioned EVERYTHING and contemplated leaving. I still do at times. I have gotten GREAT emotional support and advice regarding all that on here.

Kittiemom, I don't envy you the task of selling your childhood home. I didn't have to do that, but I did have to sell my parents' retirement home, where they lived for 30+ years. Not fun. Mary, what you accomplished must have given you a real boost in terms of confidence and self-esteem. I'm not suggesting you needed that, but it's what usually happens when someone develops a new skill or learns something about a previously unfamiliar field. Good work! Rob, yes, keep that up. Anxiety breeds anxiety, so it's important to fight back whenever you can. Taking that first step was probably the hardest, and as you discovered, it reaped rewards. When I was in my forties I started experiencing anxiety and became afraid to drive. I don't know what caused it (perimenopause?), but it was not a welcome turn of events! As I've often said, I'm a car person, and I love to drive. It felt so unnatural to have become a wimp about it. So I fought back, and got myself back to normal. Whew! Salgal, I can't relate at all. Which means I'm jealous. LOL Dedtired, good for you for giving it a shot. I bet you'll have a blast. A couple of years ago I found myself in a crammed, noisy singles bar (very young singles) with some of my family, including my granddaughter. She was the right age to fit in; I most certainly was not. But we all did a little chatting/bantering with the young clientele and had fun. With your guitarist to listen to, you'll have even more fun! (I'm guessing it's not Willie Nelson because he's 81.) :-)