Ditto, Marda, on the smoking of cattails... at about the same age... for reasons I still don't understand. My dad taught us to pluck petunia blossoms and suck the sweetness from the base of the flower like he used to when he was young. I liked to pick dandelions, hold the stem in my closed fist with my thumb just under the yellow flower, sing "Momma had a baby and her HEAD popped off!" and on the word "head" flick the flower as high in the air as I could make it go... but my mom was wary of me playing with dandelions after the Mother's Day Incident when I was five: I picked her a huge bouquet, she dutifully put them in a vase, and then had a severe (and terrifying) allergic reaction to them and our neighbor had to take us all to the ER. Snap dragons make lovely puppets (they open their mouths when you squeeze them), but I mostly like them for the "upside down human skull clusters" their dried seed heads make. This is the first flower I remember being fascinated by, and the skulls are the reason. I didn't see a balloon flower until I was an adult, but now that mine are blooming their fool heads off, I like to go out back everyday and pop them. Sometimes I allow small children to accompany me, but mostly I indulge in this alone. Andie, hosta buds can be popped too? I'll have to try this out tonight! Who knows, I might just have to change my opinion of this plant!

Things haven't changed much from Medieval times, have they? Women in trouble still look to a man as the answer because the man has $ and also promises emotional support. Well, it's still true. Section 8 housing waitlists can be years long, welfare is too little and too sporadic and that nursing job is way off on the horizon. Unless Prince Charming is within view, she is kinda screwed. The only other option is to be really relentless about finding good free counseling that can hook her up with some funding sources which are, sadly, few and far between these days. I would start at the financial aid office of the nursing school and the Career Center. They will try to blow you off but keep coming back until they help you.

If she hadn't actually married husband # two, that advice wouldn't be quite so putrid. But she did. And now she owes him honorable treatment. Well, she owed him that anyway, but the standard for what constitutes honorable treatment is higher when you're married. Yes, it's important to have a 'spark' in a relationship. But there's far more to a successful marriage than passion in the bedroom. Ex already proved that he's not successful relationship material, and the fact that he would come crawling around to possibly destroy Ex-wife's marriage all for his own selfish sexual conquest proves that he still doesn't have what it takes to make a marriage work. And if OP, knowing all that, decides to have a fling with Ex, then she doesn't deserve the good man she's got. I hope you do a lot more growing up before you get married Aaron.

Hey girls, I've been busy working enough overtime so that I can take a WHOLE MONTH (WooHoo!!!) off from work (1 week before and 3 weeks after...) so I'm sorry I missed this post earlier! We're trying to get everything ready at home. Gotta clean the carpets, get the guest rooms ready, clean out the fridge, etc... Wedding wise, DF and brother are working on the "privacy screen" (to make our wall taller so people can't stare at the ceremony from the street! We don't have fences, we have ~4 ft tall concrete block walls... so we are building a lattice scren that will be decorated/painted white) as well as the arches (2 for the walkway from front to back yard and 1 for the ceremony). I'm sewing the table runners, ceremony runner, and flags for the decorations (It's windy here most of the time and my fabric has this iridecense that is beautiful when it flaps in the wind, so I decided to make flags for the screen wall!) as well as maybe some curtains for the house (we don't really have any... I'll see how much time I have!) My mom is making the boutineers and mother's corsages with silk flowers that we bought when I was in TX last month (they look real!)... Still going to have fresh flowers (hot pink/orange roses) for my and MOH's bouquets as well as the centerpieces and buffet tables... She is also making kissing balls with silk roses to hang from our trees as well as one for the flower girl. That's it for this week - we sent out the newsletters on Monday and our RSVP date is next Monday (05/24). So far we've only gotten 4 back!! Oh, and we're worried because our mailbox (it's a community box) was broken into on Monday, so we don't know if anything was stolen!! The post office is supposed to be fixing/rekeying the box today!! (Scary!!) Anyway, at this point, I am just trying to get through all of these hours at work so that I can get focused! That, and waiting for everyone/everything to show up from TX (half of my stuff is there!! LOL!!) Oh, and we are going next Friday to get the license - CA doesn't require any blood tests or waiting periods... have 90 days, but we put it off (*shame on us* LOL!!) It's getting close!! Have fun these next 3 weeks!! :-) -DuckyHead