We usually have a huge Fat Tuesday party. This year a couple of us were gifted tickets to Phantom of the Opera, so we are doing that instead.

I've known 6 people who have had gastric bypass. All of them gained back all of their weight by 10 years out and one of them is dying slowly from vitamin deficiency. As you get older your body naturally no longer absorbs vitamins efficiently, added with the malabsorption rate of the surgery has left her with little hope. Once she hit 55 she became ill. She takes 30 vitamin pills 3x a day and vitamin b shots daily. She had her surgery 30 years ago.

Thanks to Lady Florida mentioning the Cadfael books, I picked up the first one last week and finished it. I wish I had read the book before I had seen the series. The book was good but all the suspense it was trying to build was lost on me. I did really like the deeper story that the book gave.

I have a child like this. We spent years trying every medicine on and off formulary searching for something that not only worked well, but didn't have a bunch of side effects with it. After we exhausted all possibilities our pediatrician told us that medicine will not work well without side effects for about 20% of ADHD children. He said we can choose between a combination of meds for ADHD and the side effects or no medication. I hope you find a med that works well for him. I just thought you should know that it may take a combination of meds.

Bad pencil grip can cause hand pain. The best way to tell if it's dysgraphia is to try to teach them cursive. Everyone (including specialists) thought my dd was dysgraphic until she learned cursive. It's more artistic so it appealed to her and all the letter sizes and spacing were built in instead of arbitrary spaces between letters and bigger spaces between words. I taught her using cursive first. They have the kids master pencil grip before anything (which cured my dd's hand pain). It also teaches numbers. I hope you find the answers you need. The questioning is always so hard. :grouphug: Editing to clarify: My dd was undiagnosed as dysgraphic because she was able to learn cursive.

I just finished Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz. This book was recommended by a friend and didn't disappoint. I liked the way you could guess what was going to happen at the end, then you find out you were wrong, and then you find out you were right. Quote: "The dead don't talk. I don't know why." But they do try to communicate, with a short-order cook in a small desert town serving as their reluctant confidant. Odd Thomas thinks of himself as an ordinary guy, if possessed of a certain measure of talent at the Pico Mundo Grill and rapturously in love with the most beautiful girl in the world, Stormy Llewellyn. Maybe he has a gift, maybe it's a curse, Odd has never been sure, but he tries to do his best by the silent souls who seek him out. Sometimes they want justice, and Odd's otherworldly tips to Pico Mundo's sympathetic police chief, Wyatt Porter, can solve a crime. Occasionally they can prevent one. But this time it's different. A mysterious man comes to town with a voracious appetite, a filing cabinet stuffed with information on the world's worst killers, and a pack of hyena-like shades following him wherever he goes. Who the man is and what he wants, not even Odd's deceased informants can tell him. His most ominous clue is a page ripped from a day-by-day calendar for August 15. Today is August 14. In less than twenty-four hours, Pico Mundo will awaken to a day of catastrophe. As evil coils under the searing desert sun, Odd travels through the shifting prisms of his world, struggling to avert a looming cataclysm with the aid of his soul mate and an unlikely community of allies that includes the King of Rock 'n' Roll. His account of two shattering days when past and present, fate and destiny converge is the stuff of our worst nightmares, and a testament by which to live: sanely if not safely, with courage, humor, and a full heart that even in the darkness must persevere.

That character wasn't in this book but from what I understand every book has completely different characters except for the main one. The sad part is that I can't even remember the main character's name anymore and when I grabbed the book to look all I could find was his nickname "The Gourmet Detective".

It's really normal. http://www.albany.edu/crsc/pdfs/Q19.pdf

I just finished Roux the Day (Gourmet Detective Mystery, Book 7) by Peter King. It was another title I picked by the cover. The book is a murder mystery about people looking for a chef's book that belonged to a successful restaurant family. I thought the food descriptions were great but the story and characters were boring. The only character that came across as well thought out was the main one, so when it came time to name the culprit you were asking yourself who that person was again. I don't think I will be reading anymore from this series.

The Citadel could also be an option.

This happened to my daughter. Our dentist said using toothpaste with whitening ingredients all the time can make adult teeth sensitive. We switched to a plain old toothpaste (surprisingly hard to find) and everything was fine within a couple weeks. Hope it is something that easy for y'all.

:grouphug: Butter and Mom Ninja, I pray that everyone gets better soon.

There is a new book by Rosalee de la Forêt that looks interesting.

I received mine last week. I requested it the day the thread about the recall started here.

Thank you! That is the cover.