To Cary-- I think this is one of your best responses. Insightful, helpful, spot-on and concise. Very well written with a couple of dramatic punches.

I hope the letter writer follows your advice and breaks up with this woman in the matter-of-fact, dignified, non-accusatory manner that you suggest. It is an appropriate resolution to the impasse that exists in this relationship.

Also, brilliant to move beyond the breakup to the self-help work. A list of who is trustworthy and why should be very enlightening for the LW.

LW-- you don't love this woman. You like her, but you're ambivalent. She doesn't love you. She's moving to Mexico. She may not have a set plan to sleep with her ex-boyfriend when she visits her friend who lives with him. But that is not to say she wouldn't be open to the possibilties if the wine flows just a little too freely one fateful night.

You can do better.

In my lottery fantasy, I win the lottery, but I have to win enough to buy off all my relatives with lump sum payments in equal measure, and still have enough left over to put my kids through college and live in a nice home and maybe stop working so hard for awhile.

In my fantasy, the lump sum payments are not motivated by so much generosity toward my loved ones, more a sense that I just know which ones will come looking for a handout, and who will blow through it at the casino, who will blow through it on travel,who will blow through it paying off old debts and who will blow through it on well, blow...

Some of my relatives will no doubt invest wisely and save for a rainy day. But that is the beauty of the lump sum for everyone-- it's really not my problem who is good with money and who is not-- who I am helping and whose bad habits I am enabling.

My fantasy never contemplates that someone else in my extended family might be the one to hit the jackpot. Cripes, how annoying it would be to watch one of my relatives fall into wealth and not me.

I wouldn't ascribe too much meaning to a high school reunion. It is fun to come together and check out the changes, be glad that you're still alive to have come this far.

I had a great time at my 10 year, was on the planning committee and ran the web page. I am looking forward to the 20 year.

I wasn't popular or anything in high school, but it wasn't a miserable existence. It just is what it is and a reunion is what it is too.

It is entertaining to go to a reunion for the same reasons it is entertaining to go to an occassional wedding. Something different to do on a Saturday night.

It is entertaining to see how people have changed and among the unattached, who is going to hook up with whom.

There really is no intrinsic meaning to the event. Time and death are great equalizers.

You are debt free-- that is amazing.

You can start all over again! I am so envious of you. You can be anything you want.

DO NOT squander this opportunity on law school or take on any student debt for a graduate degree.

Savor this moment. Be a full-time personal trainer and downsize your expenses while you wait out this recession. You are like a surfer surfing the big waves of market trends. You are just waiting for the next big wave to emerge and you can jump on it then.

You are going to be just fine.

I am a grey flannel suited attorney. My mother runs an elementary school. My mother in law, a physician, ran a well-regarded health policy organization and received numerous professional awards. The men in our family are similarly accomplished, and they know how to cook and help out with the laundry. I am lucky.

My daughter, 2.5, calls herself "a pink lady" and she refuses to wear anything but pink. When she grows up, she wants to be a princess mermaid.

I think I was rebelling against my non-smoking dad who hated how his own mother smoked (she died a long slow suffrocating death from lung cancer at the age of 87).

while I smoked, I briefly dated a guy who wrote "cancer sticks 4 losers" on all of my cigarettes.

A few years later, around graduation, I got a bad case of bronchitis, and smoking became unpalatable and I quit.

I would follow Cary's advice. Realize you can't control the sitaution. Set some firm ground rules-- no smoking EVER around the kids, inside the house, in the cars, and he has to change into clean clothes if the stench becomes too much. He follows those rules -- and the goal is still that he will eventually quit-- and you drop the nagging and the ultimatums. For a time, his smoking will become less a daily habit and more an occasional leisure activity that he enjoys, alone.

If he exercises regularly, that endorphin hit may start to supplant the need for nicotine. So encourage that.

And write "cancer sticks 4 losers" on his cigarette packages. It is much more effective then that surgeon general warning.

however a friend of mine last week was verbally threatened while wearing a barack obama t-shirt. another woman said to her, "I should kick your @$$ for wearing that shirt." and my brave friend calmly said, "Sorry, Obama's poll numbers are up, he's going to win and McCain's going to lose."

And that was the end of that confrontation.

"Either way, the McCain cry-machine is all that is left. Classic GOP victim mentality, too bad they can't whine about manger scenes and the War on Christmas as part of their campaign since it is too early."

LOL-- good quip.

I sense a "War on Liberal Satan's Halloween" in the offing.