While pregnant with my son, my then 17 month old daughter went through this phase of kicking everyone who tried to change her diaper. HARD! We kept telling her gently to stop, restraining her legs, giving her time outs, growing impatient, losing our cool- nothing worked.

Finally it dawned on me that I was in the habit of announcing happily whenever the baby kicked me (or my bladder). THe baby kicked! The baby kicked!

Finally I told my belly, in front of my daughter, "Baby, kicking is wrong and it hurts you are not allowed to kick Mommy anymore."

From that point forward, the baby never kicked (we announced that it was "wriggling" or "moving" in Mommy's tummy) -- and my daughter magically stopped kicking everyone.

Well, the only remedy for this situation is to have your brother bed down your most attractive (and hopefully willing) single girlfriend.

I would wrap her up in a nice bow and Santa hat and give her to him as a present.

CNN sponsored medical treatment for that little boy from Iraq who was randomly and maliciously burned by acid. I donated a little bit to the fund.

Can't we bring this 31 year old woman to the US for plastic surgery?

Societies are all f'd up in their own way everywhere.

This man is criminally insane and should be institutionalized. Not blinded.

And the moderate peace-loving majority of Islam, which we are told repeatedly exists-- MUST vocally and actively reject the medieval teachings of the mullahs who preach hatred and give supernaturalistic support and sanction to a culture of misogyny and repression.

Are Be-Boppo and Good Celery related or something? If not, I would like to set them up on a blind date at a nice independent coffee house located adjacent to a robust farmer's market.

I was breastfeeding postpartum (so pain management options were limited) and was able to manage pain via OTC tylenol and ibroprofin. Tylenol every 6 hours with food. Ibruprofin 3 hours after the Tylenol (you don't want to take too much tylenol it is bad for your liver or something).

I would recommend that for pain management starting now. There is no law saying you have to finish off your pain scripts.

Weaning yourself from OTC drugs is much easier than from opiates.

Don't be a sucker.

Will your administration persecute Christians in 2009 by issuing a White House Christmas Card that says "Happy Holidays"?

Long distance relationships are hard for people who grew up their whole lives in the same hometown and who are expert at maintaining familiar bonds.

Maybe you would have grown apart even if you hadn't had a nomadic childhood. Maybe this growing apart is part of the natural course of this relationship and maybe this relationship has run its course.

I have really really strong hometown ties and I absolutely suck at long distance relationships. I wasted two-- no wait, four, years of my life trying to salvage something with two different relationships that started out in the same hometown but then moved toward indefinite long distance (finishing school, trying to determine career pathways, etc.).

They do work for some but they didn't for me. When my husband and I spent 5 months apart, our relationship barely hung on and it only did with constant assurances and a steady stream of hard evidence that he was wrapping things up in his hometown and following through on his promise of moving to where I was.

Just consider leveling with him that you cheated. Let him get on with his life and you get on with yours. He should have never encouraged you to go if he wanted you to stay. You can always try again when geography permits.

Quick-- there is a Salon letter thread about female pubic hair just getting started. You must all go post there, right now! Hurry!

The Bill Maher quip made me laugh, though.

I may have missed the point.

Funny though, to read your public conversation with Lifelike about your shared love of opera grow so animated. I see both of you as very different people now (compared to your earlier fairly negative self-descriptions). Both of you seem very cultured, knowledgable, and passionate. If that kind of elevated energy and passion is apparent in your written words when you hit on a topic you clearly love than it must be part of your physical persona, too. It can't not be.

Walter-- all I can say is, WOW.

@AKA, Map.

Map I want to say you might have whatever touch of sociopathy the that was portrayed by Angelina Jolie's character in "Girl Interrupted." That character got off (entertained herself) on trying to nail peoples weaknesses and demoralizing people by finding whatever truth they were most afraid of facing and calling them on it and in doing so, she was completely amorally destructive (i.e., driving depressed people to suicide).

I don't think your targets are actually feeling your cruelty though (I think they are clearly mature enough to shrug it off AS THEY SHOULD ALL THE OTHER INSULTS BOTH REAL AND PERCEIVED) but neither are you successfully communicating your positive ideas.

You are being far far too cruel and the essentially innocent kernel of truth that you were trying to communicate-- the one about false external projection of internal feelings and a loop of negative self-deception-- is lost in the noise and harshness of your subsequent posts.

Who needs to have the last word?

We all get to have our own epiphanies in our own time and it is certainly frustrating to watch others go through the same suffering we once did (before we finally realized that we could look at, interpret, make sense of and respond to any given situation in a different and better way).

It is everyone's privilege to learn things the hard way.