We don't actually eat very much processed food, it's just that our portion sizes are "all outta whack!" :o ~Julie~

Several of my kids are overweight. They are watching me do Sparkpeople, which is working for me. I'm willing to go slowly with myself, and my goal is to lose 1 lb. per week. It's working, and I've been amazed at how easy it's been. I've lost almost 8 pounds. Back to my kids, I need a menu of suggested lunches for kids with portion sizes. I understand the idea of just offering healthier foods and encouraging exercise, but we're looking for clearer guidelines about what the average healthy kid is eating each day. I think we've been overeating for so long that we (all) just don't know what the right amount of calories/portion sizes to aim for. Free info. from the Internet would be the best, because I'm looking for "immediate dietary reform", lol! I'm also willing to pay for a book, if you have any suggestions. Thanks, Julie p.s. Please excuse grammatical problems in this post--I'm on strike from proofreading for today!

My dh always trims his fingernails while he's watching tv in bed. (grrr) He doesn't seem to care where they fly.:mad: It's a good thing he's such a great guy in every other way! ~Julie~

I make lists. 1.) What I need to do the next day 2.) What household repairs/maintenance need to be done 3.) Which areas I still need to declutter 4.) What I need to do next to help each person in my household grow If I'm still having a problem, I make a list of all the big and small things that are bothering me, or that I'm worried about. Sometimes I do this list first if I know that I'm *worrying* a lot. After all that, if I'm still not sleepy, I read. Housecleaning is a very last resort :D

I just wanted to mention that I've done really really well when I've searched for recipes at allrecipes.com. If you can find a recipe there that sounds like what you're looking for, with many 5 star ratings, you'll probably have a winner! ~Julie~

My bp was consistently about 160/75. I don't necessarily think it was really that high all of the time, I just think I have a little of the "white coat syndrome" going on. It was at least that high every time it was tested. I've been taking Benazepril with a diuretic, and now my bp is pretty consistently around 130/85. I've also started watching my diet with Sparkpeople, because I certainly need to lose a lot of weight. Because I don't really add a lot of salt to my cooking, and because I don't eat a lot of snack foods, I had the impression that my sodium intake was probably ok. Boy was I wrong! Using SparkPeople to track my food has shown me that my sodium consumption is *totally* out of control, so I'm slowly working on improving that also. ~Julie~

I sure didn't mean to make it sound as though we had lovely, lively repartee before we were "married with children"! We've pretty much always been what we are now, I just think when our relationship was younger it all seemed so new. I think you can still have a lot of hope that the time you spend together will morph into something a lot more enjoyable as the years go by and your kids grow up. Not only have we become more appreciative of the time we spend together, but we've come to value the time we spend apart as well. I feel much more free to take independent challenges now than ever before. If I had to describe our relationship, I'd (laughingly) say that our marriage has been an "ugly duckling" that I confess I never thought would turn into the incredibly wonderful thing we have now. We had no huge problems before, it was just white toast with no butter, jam, or marmalade. Things are a lot more tasty now! I apologize if I've read a bigger question into what was a basic question about coping with dh around all the time, but I hope some tiny bit could be helpful and/or encouraging. ~Julie again~

I have allergies and was taking Sudafed often. Not every day, but probably about 4x per week. Oh, it made me feel so much better!! (you can tell how much better because I used TWO exclamation points!! :D) I'm not sure if the Sudafed caused my high blood pressure, but now I'm taking meds for the blood pressure, and no longer taking the Sudafed. I'm so sad. :( I am using the sinus wash, and yes, it's helping. I no longer get the sinus infections that linger for weeks and weeks. -BUT....I never feel as well as I did when I was taking the decongestant. To answer the question I think you were really asking, I'll just say that I quit the Sudafed and a month or two later when I saw the doc my blood pressure was still high. At that point, my doc prescribed meds for the hypertension, and my blood pressure has gone down. I can't say if the bp would have gone down on it's own after more time had passed, because my doc felt that we shouldn't wait any longer for the bp to go down on it's own. I share your pain about the no Sudafed thing. ~Julie~

At the end of the day, my dairy farmer dh pretty much knows all about my day already, as I pretty much know about his. We don't have a lot to talk about, and I find that we hash over the same subjects *way* too often. There are a couple of things that I've found helpful, though I'm not at all sure they'd work for everyone. My dh is also not likely to "branch out" into new things, either on his own or with me. About every two years or so, I take a couple of classes from our local community college. I truly have all of the education that I need for my life's work, so I have great freedom to choose whatever sounds interesting or new to me. When I have a little bit of time with a new intrest of my own, it seems to help make conversations a bit less mundane and predictable with my dh. I try to keep my own spiritual life alive and growing, so that I often have new "big thoughts" to share with my dh. Also, I try to encourage my dh to take a little time off once in a while to pursue things he thinks sound fun, and then I try to find something about his interests that we can discuss. Since my oldest is almost 17, driving on his own, and doing all of his schoolwork independently and at the community college, we've reached the stage where we can (pretty much on a whim) go out for the evening and rely on the kids to take care of themselves. We actually sometimes see movies now, and even if they're not very good we always find something about the movie to talk about. I'm finally seeing what the future might be like for my relationship with my husband. It looks good! :) At least for our family, the middle years were chock full of mundane daily life. We had time together, but we didn't necessarily enjoy our time together. I hope you find, as I have, that as your boys mature, your conversations with Hans will regain a little "sparkle" from when life was less...well....routine. Blessings, Julie

I really don't like the taste of most alcoholic beverages, and I can only drink them if the alcohol is totally masked by other flavors--I can handle berry wine coolers and that's about it! Would I enjoy Mike's? :D

I know that your parenting style and mine differ a bit, but I thought I'd still go ahead and offer another perspective (mine :)). While I understand your feelings about going out with the new dh, it seems possible that your kids need a bit more time to adjust to all of the changes in their lives. Even if your new husband is wonderful to them, it may seem to your dc that you're choosing time with him instead of time with them, even if your kids don't consciously identify their feelings as jealousy. You've done a lot of sacrificing, but your kids may not be quite as ready as you are to move on yet. Even if you feel that I'm way off-base about that, my other thought is that two nights a week is more than most married-with-kids folks take for themselves. Your kids still seem a bit young for you to be away that much in the evening. Many families would not leave kids your kids' ages quite that often. In short, I think you just have to hold out a bit longer. This (in my mind) falls under the "seasons of life" thing. Before you know it, your kids will be full-on teens, and it'll be them leaving too often, and you calling them "just because." Wishing you all the best, especially on those nights you do get out! :) ~Julie~

So Tracey, are you saying that your eyesight for distance has always been fine? -Or are you saying that using the reading glasses helped your vision overall for a while? On good days I see just fine up close and at a distance. On bad days that eye is blurry both close and far away. I'm trying to determine whether not using the reading glasses could have contributed to the problem. If so, bad me :(

You're not the only one--my teenage son asked me to buy him a g-string too! Took me a moment to "get it"! :D

I can't say the mammogram didn't hurt at all. During the mammogram it was merely "uncomfortable", but the next day I did have a little of what I'd actually consider pain. I had quite a bit of bruising under my arms for a couple of days. Perhaps I just ran into an over-enthusiastic technician, or something. It was totally endurable, and I just took a bit of Tylenol. It sounds (from the other responses) like my experience was a bit of a fluke. I'm sure you will be just fine! (But if I were you I'd still treat myself to an ice cream or something afterwards, just for being such a good girl! :D) ~Julie~

I will make an appointment with an opthalmologist. I'm hoping that when I end up going, they will take my concern seriously enough to follow through, even if my sight is just fine on that particular day. Now to find an opthalmologist! I'm not eager to go back and see the same one I saw last time, even though he has a great reputation. I didn't really feel taken seriously, and the doc was hard of hearing and *very* hard for me to communicate with. Would you all just pick one out of the phone book? It's a relatively small town, and not a lot of selection.

I'm having intermittent blurry vision in one eye. It took me a while to realize that it was just one eye, since on bad days I squint with both eyes in an effort to see. It doesn't seem to be a matter of close-up or far-away, but just that some days I can see, and some days everything is blurry. I've had this for...oh....about 2 years now, but it seems worse lately. About two years ago I had my eyes checked and was told that my vision is actually fine, that it was probably "eyestrain" and that I should go to the drugstore and buy the reading glasses with the weakest magnification and use them for reading only. It just feels like the problem has nothing to do with reading, so I didn't use the reading glasses. I have been tested for diabetes, and that's ok. I have high blood pressure--could that affect my eyesight? And finally, do I need to see an opthalmologist, or could I just go to the eye doc at Costco (which is only $45). Anything else will cost quite a bit more. WWYD? WSID?(what should I do) Thanks, Julie

I worked as an independent contractor (pastry chef, but that's beside the point!) for a local restaurant. The situation degenerated slowly, and although I liked the people I was working for/with, eventually it just couldn't go on. Eventually I had a face-to-face conference with the manager/owner of the restaurant, and basically said the following: I've loved my time working with you and have found the work extremely rewarding, but I'm finding that somehow we are just not on the same track right now. I'd like to continue creating specialty desserts for you, but I'd like to have a clearer idea of what your needs are, and how I can meet those needs more effectively. If you'd like to have me continue working with you, I'd like to propose that we (and then I filled in the things that would make the job work for me). This way, I was expressing how much I really liked the work, but I was still giving them an out in case they just really wanted to discontinue the work relationship. It is probably just time for you both to assess moving from a less-formal way of doing business to a model more befitting the growing business they appear to be. If (by some slim chance) the problem is that they've been less satisfied by your work, or are finding that they no longer really need your services, it gives them an opening to just say so. Hope it all works out, Julie

When my kids were little I carried a few pipe cleaners and a teeny bottle of bubbles (like the wedding favor size). I didn't necessarily feel the need to "entertain them" as others have mentioned, but I think it pays to be prepared for those occasional times when the dc need to be quietly occupied for an extended period of time. I can think of times when the littles waited for 2 hours in a waiting room to see a doc, and those little pipe cleaners kept them busy for a very long time!

I feel like I spend a TON of money on groceries! $900 per month, appx. We are a family of 7, and right now 3 of my dc are teenage boys. They are absolutely insatiable! The legs must be hollow...:rolleyes: ~Julie~

Did anybody here like it? I really thought How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days was pretty funny, and the idea of another movie starring the same actor/actress is appealing. If you've seen it, did you like it at all? A review I read wasn't good...... ~Julie~

Just kidding!:D

I'm supposed to be planning a spring break trip to Sequoia/Kings Canyon. In spite of Googling, I can't seem to figure out what we'll do during our time there. It will probably be about 3 days in/near the park(s). What would you plan for each day? Thanks, Julie

Two of my dc have the same symptoms right now. I took one of them to the doc, and the strep test was negative (I was surprised, so was the nurse). The same bug seems to be going around, and the doc said the body aches and sore throat would probably go away within about 5 days, but to expect it to morph into a dry, raspy cough that would last about 3 weeks. Bummer.:( Also was told that it's pretty contagious, and to expect that all 5 of my dc would eventually come down with it, and probably me and dh too. Double Bummer. :eek: Hope your crew improves soon, Julie

I lost my cell phone about a week ago. I waited a week to do anything because I was sure mine would turn up, but finally went to Verizon and got a replacement phone. When I checked the voice mail I had a few messages of my own, but I had roughly a dozen messages from American Express asking me to call because my account needs IMMEDIATE ATTENTION! :eek: I've never had an AmEx account. When I called them, they wouldn't give me any information about the account they're referring to, because I didn't have the account number. When I told them I never had an account, they said that I would still receive the (daily) collection calls because the phone number is listed on the account. I checked my credit report online, and didn't find any unusual activity in my name. Today, I just received another call, but from Washington Mutual. Told them that they had the wrong number, and wrote down the name of the person they're asking for. I've never heard of the person, but now I'm becoming increasingly concerned. I could change my cell phone #, and probably end the collection-type calls, but is there something else I'm supposed to do? Thanks, Julie

Jane, thanks so much for clarifying! Is that the only thing that would be hard to duplicate if the process goes wrong? Thanks, Julie