you get to my letter, because I have plenty of experience with this, from both the parent side and the step-parent side, and I know what I am talking about.

1. You don't have to love the kids, but you have to treat them with friendliness and courtesy. This actually isn't hard--don't focus on what they are doing wrong or complain about it, do focus on trying to see their side of things. Empathy is the key, here. Often when a step-parent hasn't had kids, he or she has an idea about how kids should behave based on his or her own childhood--THIS DOES NOT WORK.

2. DOn't criticize the kids to their Dad, especially in front of them. If you have an issue, bring it up later, when everything (including you) has calmed down, and you can talk about it reasonably. Hackles rise if you criticize!

3. Indulge them. YOU be the indulgent one. You can buy love (or friendship) from step-kids, and there's nothing wrong with that. Let the parents do the discipline, and if they aren't doing any of it, be patient--the kids are driving them crazy, too. If you indulge them from time to time, they'll feel more positive about you. THink of yourself as a grandmother or an aunt--you get indulgence privileges, just the way they do. THis especially is important for girls--boys don't care as much.

4. Watch how the girls relate to one another--this is how they will relate to you. Then try and remember junior high,and use strategies you learned then to get through it.

5. You only have about ten years until they leave the home. It goes by more quickly than you will ever believe!

needs to read all these comments and address them, not dismiss them. There are lots of people commenting here who have experienced xenophobia and hatred from their southern neighbors and relatives. So the question is, why respect those relatives and neighbors? In my experience, the only reason is that they demand respect, and they armed, so you better conform, boy! (or girl!) The South needs to earn our respect, not demand it, by getting educated and allowing free discourse about things like race and patriotism (good luck with that). Liberals are "insane", as Lind woud put it, for only one reason--southern whites are so well armed and so angry that they might hurt us if we keep demeaning them. Well, that's not respect, that's fear. Oh, yeah, a lot about life in the south is based on fear. Lets talk the number of lynchings that have taken place over the years.

The Taconic is ver confusing, and once you get on, it's very hard to get off.

very

she is Sacha Baron Cohen in a new disguise. Look at her--so much like Bruno it's uncanny. And then with the Borat accent. Everyone wondered what SBC was going to do after Bruno, well, here it is. And this is not only my idea--I saw it first on Salon. He is brilliant, isn't he?

But then I read that idiot jc etc, and didn't have the heart.

to demonstrate the aggressive ignorance that we are up against here? (I'm sure he's carrying a loaded gun and has a few more in the trunk of his car) One of Obama's problems is that he is by temperament a reasoning and dispassionate sort of person and he's too young, really, to see that reason doesn't work with a lot of people. He needs to twist some arms--I thought that was what Rahm was for--but it doesn't seem like it is getting done. So I'm with your friend Sally--there are only two possible explanations for Obama's behavior--he really is as corrupt as he appears, or he really doesn't get what his job is. And I am not saying that any other candidate would have been any better. Palin and that guy she was running with had only one advantage--they were so ignorant, stupid, and crazy that they would have driven the country so far into the hole that secession and national fragmentation would have been inevitable. Biden--also a wimp. Clinton, Richardson, and Edwards--corrupt. Obama was and remaines the only hope, but hope is fading fast.

I knew a woman who had 21 kids because she "liked babies." She didn't like the kids so much when they grew up, because they ran wild, but hey, no one cared about that then.

Never underestimate the intelligence of a horse. Many horses come to understand that they can act a certain way and avoid doing things they don't want to do. There are plenty of horses who gallop down to a jump looking and acting as though they are going to jump the jump, and they they duck out at the last moment, dropping the rider on his or her a**. Horses who do what they are asked in a straight-forward way are quite often called "honest". This is because they contrast with the sneaky ones. I have also had a horse who was irritated with me pretend to shy and then bolt. As soon as he had me off, he stopped and walked around, not afraid at all. This has nothing to do with the lying Republicans, of course. Even bad horses are way better than Republicans. Good luck with Rusty.

but the people I was living with were too purely Marxist to do such a silly thing. We tut-tutted and stayed away, and then were sorry we'd missed the party. Our friends who went were a little scared though--it was really a mob scene.

that the only good thing about people who have lots of guns is that it's usually them and their relatives who get shot.

at one of those rallies, the gun owners are going to blame the victim for getting him or herself shot.