I am not responsible for what others may or may not do on her blog. I honestly never imagined anyone would post there when I made the OP. And I have to say I have no sympathy for her criticism when she publically blogged about converting my daughter.

Well, I've been raped and I'm the OP and it was MY daughter and no, I don't think so. :) But I'm not the most objective apple in the bunch.

Thank you for being patient also Aubrey. Reading a lot of the responses has been helpful for me to try and understand her zeal and POV but I cannot allow her to use my daughter for her own means. My daughter told me a little while ago that she felt like a "tester". I think she means "used" but I didn't want to put words in her mouth. It is not a pleasant sensation though. Also, I found out the mom has been working on my daughter since last November. I don't know if she's said anything about hell. I'm not so upset about the prothelitizing - I mean I understand that she needs to spread her word. It is the targeting and ignoring my daughter's expressed, clear boundaries (plugging her ears!) to convince her that she was wrong and the mom was right about a belief system.

My Mormon neighbor told me about it this morning. I'm sorry I keep calling her my "Mormon" neighbor - it just seems somewhat important to point out that even she found the behaviour wrong (missionaries they are and all).

Well, I can't tell you all how much your posts have meant to me. I missed all the snark so I have no idea what happened over the deleted posts. I've been mulling all day. I've been talking to my Mormon neighbor (4 kids, NEVER pushes her views on us) and she TOTALLY got my anger and "victimization" when I asked her how she'd feel if I pushed our non-believing views on her kids, day after day, after day after day. Her youngest is 9 and a very strong personality but she started to "get" it then. What I really wanted my daughter to understand is that she did NOTHING wrong, that this woman proved herself to be an unsafe adult and how she proved herself to be unsafe and why this woman was unsafe and what an adult who was safe would have done. I also verified many of the details of the blog - just to make sure the events did happen - without leading questions. Well, mostly without asking leading questions. That's hard. :) My daughter did feel defensive and bad at first but eventually came around to talking and throughout the evening (I tried talking to her while we were doing activities; laundry and dinner) she would come up to me with other things she had identified as crossing boundary lines. So, I really have to look at this as a learning experience and be thankful that this was "just" a brainwash attempt and not a sexual molestation. Because the signals and signs and methods are exactly the same to me. Someone crosses your boundaries and doesn't respect them and tries to use their position of power to get you to do what they want. My 12yo is LIVID and wants to confront the woman. I will definitely confront her but need to get to a calm place where she can hear that I'm pissed because she did not respect my daughter's boundaries - NOT that she believes in God. I honestly don't care what my kids believe and we've had many conversations about that. We're even doing a World Religion study this year. :) My daughter has been giving me signals for a while. Scared at night, bad dreams and acting "weird" at times. I am trying not to beat myself up for allowing this to happen but instead use this as a learning experience for the both of us. We'll allow the girls to come over here but my daughter is very much in agreement that she does not even WANT to go over to this woman's place without her brother. Again, thanks everyone for your opinions, even the evangelicals - it helps me to know she is coming from a place of love and while I do understand that, she cannot be allowed to railroad my child to achieve her goals.

I've been talking to my Mormon neighbor, my 12yo and my daughter all evening. Among other things, the reason this woman's actions are so repugnant to me is that she proved herself to be an unsafe adult. And this is what I told my child. When my daughter plugged her ears because she was DONE with the sermons, the woman continued to push her views. Over and over, my daughter gave a boundary and this woman ignored that boundary and pushed her views on my daughter until my daughter relented and gave in. This was over the course of weeks. I'm not sure if you got that Aubrey (hope I spelled that correctly). It wasn't a one-time thing. She targeted my daughter, the youngest and most impressionable and kept at her and at her and at her until she finally relented and "believed in God'. In my view, that makes her equal to a sexual predator without the molestion. She just mind-**cked her.

Both my daughters go over and play with her daughters. Normally they are outside, but just recently, like the last month, I've allowed my girls to go inside. Mine are down there every few days for an hour or two, but playing here and there. Much of the time it is the 12yo, 9yo and 7yo, but a few times the 7yo (the one she is preying upon) has gone down alone. She has two girls my same girls' ages and they love playing together. I think this is very much her mission. She has never said a word to ME though. So it seems to me very underhanded and sneaky. Thank you SO much for sharing your perspective. I was talking with my friend (Mormon) and she was shocked but didn't really understand why I was so upset until I posed to her the question, "how would you feel if I managed to get one of your kids to admit to me that they didn't believe in God?" and then she got it. :) Thank you for helping me feel not crazy.

A mom I don't know very very well, but have talked to on ocassion is apparently trying to convert my 7yo. She first decided we heathens (we are atheists) might be influenced by a dog http://neufelds.blogspot.com/2009/02/puppy-love.html And I came to find out today that she has grand plans for my daughter. http://neufelds.blogspot.com/2009/02...ure-found.html I am ****ing LIVID! Help me understand how this preying upon my daughter is ok in her mind. How it is right and good to manipulate a child.

When we lived in a stick house we had that same situation. Our only south facing garden area was our front yard. I was able to intersperse flower and herb plants with the veggies such that everyone complemented me highly on my garden. It was quite nice looking and not an obvious "farm".

Here, we put them on popsicle sticks and also sprinkile lime or chili on them. Course, we put lime and chili on EVERYTHING. :) mango season started early this year - February. April is prime mango season and they've already dropped greatly in price (season is upon us). We can easily go through a couple kilos a day.

We don't have a choice. We can't get a landline here.

yup. :)

Yes! What a beautiful post! Consider yourself with a greenie. :)

We use HughesNet (as we were moving quite a bit, and there is nothing like being the middle of the Sierra Madres with not a rancho within walking distance, hauling your water from a stream, but having internet access (via genset that travels with us). :) It is not as fast as DSL, but varies from around 256K to 512K+ (depending on how much you pay). You can get a used system off Ebay or checkout the datastorm users group (google is your friend) marketplace.

Oh, I'm sure you're definitely in the ball park, but I always thought peanuts were #1 (which is why we always ask people to mule us organic PB). I'm sure most coffee is highly chemicalized, but the stuff I buy is not.

Here in Mexico it does (back in sync with the US with the new administration - we were 2 weeks to a month (or so it seemed) off from the US time changes under Bush). At least, I think so. I'll see what XP decides to do. :)

https://www.galileoscope.org/gs/ I'm thinking about getting one of these for us - we have no light pollution and skies are full of stars and planets. Has anyone tried one? It won't be as easy as ordering in hte US - we will have to pay customs and wait 2-3 weeks for it to arrive (if it even gets here) so I'm wondering if anyone else has tried this before we do.

Oh! Well, that is certainly MUCH easier then! I would definitely be up for the task but I'll still need some prepared foods (cream cheese? yogurt? not sure what that would entail). Maybe a list of ingredients - if it has more than x foods as ingredients and they aren't whole foods, it is prepared? I dunno. Thinking about my canned rajas... :) I can't even eat a hot dog without rajas.

Well, I have actually visited the actual BUSHES my coffee beans come from :) so I know they aren't sprayed. I have even picked my own coffee beans. Coffee beans are picked when red, cherries (the red coffee berry is called a cherry in Spanish) are husked, beans are washed twice, laid out to dry (usually the road will do), driven from Veracruz state to QRoo state, roasted (I buy my beans from an old Italian guy who roasts only in the mornings during the week) and then ground just before I brew. So lots of processing.

Well, I"ll be the lone voice of "I really don't see what was so terribly wrong" other than the fact that she didn't wash the sponge out. I'd be more tweaked about blood than snot. And to the question posed, I try to figure out where they're coming from and if they are dangerous and act accordingly. If they aren't dangerous or potentially harmful to my kids I just shrug it off. Really, there is so much more in this world to get worked up about. My story - my SIL invited us to stay with her one time that we visited my husbandito's family. We had visited his family just once before so it wasn't a regular visit. A very special time (as she termed it) for our kids to get to know her. After a few nights she yelled at husbandito that she hated my cooking - that I cooked dinner for her every night and she hated that (??) and told us to leave. She was drunk at the time, but won't admit to that. :) But hey, family is weird. My kids will never be alone with her but I won't discourage any relationship. We quickly found a motel and stayed the rest of our visit there.

My 12yo is reading What's Going on Down There and enjoys it, my 14yo is reading S.E.X., and I got my 9yo The Care and Feeding of You by the AG folks, but it is still too mature for her. She does take it out from time to time and peruse it though. Nothing yet for the 7yo.

THose of us living in poorer nations sometimes consider household help a socially responsible thing to do.

Looking in the fridge and pantry, I'd love to join, but I can't do without: Coffee, spices, canned and pickled rajas (jalapenos with carrots and onions), tomato sauce, baking powder, baking soda, coffee, flour, sugar (mascabado - like turbinado, but still), Maseca, corn husks (but once the rainy season starts I'll use my own banana leaves), mayo (here with get it either with chipolte or limon), ranch dressing (for the rest of the family), frozen veggies (corn, broccoli and spinach), coffee, soy milk, cheese, dry pasta, olive oil, jarred or boxed pasta sauce (you can't get tomatos in a can here to make your own and we eat way too much for me to make it from tomatoes), Cytomax, Gatorade (for summer season, the kids loose too many electrolytes in our heat), coconut milk (yeah, we actually have coconut trees in the backyard so I'm totally without an excuse there - I might be able to get rid of that one but I'm not all that motivated since the list is so long) coffee, boxed milk (we don't get fresh milk here), chipoltes (canned), rum, wine, (did I mention coffee?), water (we purchase all our drinking water from 2 different sources; the $10MN/garrafon for the cooking water and the $23MN/garrafon for the drinking water), vitamins, sardines, Fish Oil supplements, dog food, and did I happen to mention the cawfee? :)

I don't have trouble slicing mine if I refrigerate it before cutting. Otherwise we get very thick slices. :)

CONUS = Continental US (I take it you don't live on Dr. Master's blog during the hurricane season? :)) Here are some more... GOM (Gulf of Mexico), BOC (Bay of Campeche), SST (Sea Surface Temperatures), ABC's (string of islands on the eastern entrance to the Caribbean). That should give you a start. :)