Dear LW,

With all due respect to your feelings of loneliness and regret, perhaps it would help to consider another perspective.

Many, many people arrive at their 40th birthday wishing they could be in your position. We all have regrets and dreams that have gone unfulfilled. However, by the time we reach 40, plenty of folks (although not me) are looking for a way to start over or at least make a big change in their lives. Unfortunately, they've got to consider their obligations. These can include the spouse, the children, the ex-spouse, the child and ex-spouse visitation issue, child support, alimony, their spouse's ex-spouses, their parents, their in-laws, their job, their spouse's job, etc. These things make changing your life in middle age difficult if not impossible.

You are in the enviable situation to do whatever you are capable of. You can move anywhere and take any job you can get. You have so many possibilities available to you!

Also, 40 isn't that old. There is plenty of time to find a "significant other." Children are also still a real possibility, even if you have or want to adopt. However, I wouldn't jump into a serious relationship right away. I'd figure out what I want to do with my life first.

Be practical. If you could have any job in the world, what would it be? What would it take to get that job? For example, do you need to go back to school? Where in the world would you most like to live? Make a list, make a plan, get started!

Good luck!

I don't see any signs that the wife and husband have actually talked about this issue in any depth. Arguments are not a substitute for conversation. In any case, who says the husband's feelings about his life aren't valid? How about this:

Sit down with the husband. Make him tell you where he'd rather live. Make him pick a city and even a neighborhood within that city (since that seems to be ever so important).

Have the husband explain what he would do in that city that is different than where he lives now. How would his life change, and how would that make him happier? Make him be specific as possible. Why does location matter to him?

If the husband can discuss these things in a convincing manner, the wife should agree to move when (and only when) she can find a job that pays as much or more than her current job and is not a step down in her career. That might take months or even years.

Small dogs, like Yorkies, have long life spans. 11 years just isn't that old. It might be incontinent, however its probably just stopped being trained. The obesity can be cured quickly. Blindness isn't really a problem for dogs. I know a dog with no eyes that gets along just fine (as long as you don't move the furniture).

Cary is right. Its your job to see that the dog gets good care. Take it to the vet and get it a check up. See about the incontinence. Put it on a diet. Take a dog training class with it, that'll help with the peeing indoors and begging. Bring it to visit your aunt.

Professional football stopped being a sport in 1995 when the NFL allowed Art Modell to move the Cleveland Browns, one the NFL's oldest teams, to Baltimore. Only when Clevelanders threw an absolute fit, did the NFL promise a new expansion Browns team to Cleveland.

Anyone who thinks that the NFL is a sport or that the NFL thinks it owes anything to its fans is mistaken. The NFL word for "fan" is "customer." Anyone who watches or attends these games is just a rube, being taken for all of the money that the NFL can get out of him or her by any means necessary.

Please, please bring back Atom Age Vampire!

Teams moving from city to city is not a characteristic of a sport. When has this happened, except with for-profit major league sports?

Teams moving from place to place means that the NFL is a business, not a sport. Those moves are always profit driven, not by the sport itself. (Baltimore paid Modell to move and that allowed him to dig himself out of the financial hole he'd dug for himself by losing season after season.) Other examples simply prove this point, not refute it.