Ideally, it would be my sister as guardian.

She has the closest relationship with my kids. But right now, she is overcoming a breakup and I have no idea what sort of guy she will wind up with in the long haul. What if the guy doesn't warm up well to kids? What if he turns out to be abusive to kids?

Same for my husband's siblings-- all single right now, casually dating at best.

My brother has been dating someone for six months and they may be heading for marriage? She seems nice, but I've only met her twice tho and they live out of state.

So we've asked my husband's aunt and uncle who seem to be doing a pretty good job raising their two kids. Not yet too old as grandparents would be, but definitely warm and loving and consistent.

You can't control the future. If god forbid your children become orphans, you cannot control what happens to them, you can only go on the best information available to you right now.

This is one of the worst thought exercises you have to go through as a parent. Hopefully it will always be just a thought exercise.

Ask your friends over for dinner with their kids. Have a great dinner, let your kids play together. Have a glass of wine to steady your nerves and as you watch your children playing, getting along, put your arm on your friends arm and say "I really need to ask you something, very personal to us and very important, and I understand it may be something you need to think about, and I understand that you may say no.

But we have thought very deeply about this, and realized that if anything should happen to us, you are the people we trust the most as far as our kids are concerned. We would like to appoint you as their guardians in our will, if you will let us. But we understand that it is a huge responsibility and don't want to pressure you."

LW-- I think that you will just have to suck it up to get through this course. Definitely speak to your administrators about substituting the course credits if you can, as a conscientious objector, but do what you have to to get your degree.

I think you will do what you can to get through vet school, but you have a real concern about your eventual career, whether you will be forced to sell out your values in order to practice your profession.

If upon graduation the only viable jobs available to you in the Midwest involve food animal positions (or participating in some other form of exploitation that offends you like circuses or horseracing) then you will have to move away or you will have to change.

As for getting through the rotation, if you can't get out of it, definitely keep a journal of what you see and what it makes you feel. Yes, it has been recorded elsewhere but every account contributes to the consensus. Let your forced participation be that of a journalist, then publish your experience in the hopes that you might convert a few more to vegetarian or veganism, or at the very least, opting for kosher meat that presumably comes from animals who were better cared for during their short lives.

Good luck.

Realize, that if you do accept a vet job within the factory farm industry, you will NOT be able to do your job while at the same time being a whistleblower to the excesses of the industry. The industry will be your employer. If you write exposes on your employer, you will get fired or at the very least, you will likely not get hired.

If you want to be a muckracker, a degree and license will make you a better, more reliable authority to the public audience. But you can't work for two masters. If you want to earn a living, you will have to find a wealthy benefactor or a sympathetic non profit to fund your work.

Move out of town and work for a small animal hospital. Earn an honest living and be happy.

Driveway basketball is one particular kind of suburban adolescent torture.

Cars with stereosystems that take up the entire trunk and back seat are another.

Revving motorcycles all night is yet another. Especially lately, some youths have taken to speed racing their minibikes in the fields behind our house at all hours. They have outfitted their minibikes with giant noisemakers, so the revving sound louder than the loudest Harley. One Saturday night at 1:30, one kid's minibike got stuck in the mud directly behind my house and woke my infant up. The apparent solution to get him out was 15 minutes of both of them revving their guns. By the time I finally calmed my (now fully alert) infant down, they had freed the bike and took off on another race. So it was too late to call the cops, but the next late night race, I am going to.

I am not cool. I want to live in the country, it's my husband that insists on living in a city or (big compromise) first-ring 1950's-era suburbs.

So, I can totally relate to the letter writer. At least this will only be a couple of summers, then he will outgrow it. Maybe then he will start a garage band? Then you can certainly call the cops and report a noise disturbance.

What is it with young men and their incessant noise-making???? Is it a collective case of adolescent blue balls or what? ; >