I think it's OK or not OK to take hubby. I've done both, but found it a special hoot to spend reunion time just with old girlfriends who are still friends, sans hubbies.

What's really annoying about a lot of these posts is the obsession with fat and weight. I know that was a big deal in high school, as were all things about our bodies, but now it's just boring, boring, boring.

The measure of a woman (or man) isn't weight. It's character and energy and vitality, none of which depend on your weight or your baldness or even (that much) on your clothes.

I can't imagine why anyone cares what a bunch of semi-strangers think, really. Especially about weight. About hair styles and clothes, maybe, since those are choices. About education and careers, sure, because those are genuine achievements. But not weight.

But you know there are people who will diet themselves sick for the reunion. One of them fainted at my reunion, from hunger.

So--WHAT YOU CAN DO TO GIVE PLEASURE TO EVERYONE AT YOUR REUNION?

GO AS YOUR FAT SELF. The compulsive dieters will feel superior to you and will feel thrilled. You'll make them so happy. And meanwhile you'll be happy, because you've risen above it all. You can laugh and be happy, because you're not starving for food or love.

I agree with psycprof, and I think most of the other posters are just guilt-tripping the good older brother.

I had years of a belligerent younger brother and his nasty wife. Fueled with alcohol and disdain, they were distant when they weren't rude, and they were chronically critical. I could give details, but so what?

The breaking point happened one Xmas when we hadn't seen each other for a few years (our parents are gone) and brother decided to attack me for something I'd said in a political argument/discussion we'd had in 1978. (It was 2001 when we were speaking.) He blustered and blustered, and then went into an alcohol-fueled sobbing fit: "You're my only sibling . . ." blah blah.

I completely lost interest. I send cards on holidays and birthdays, and that's it. I don't need the aggravation.

A blood tie is not enough reason to submit to a lifetime of unpleasantness. What for? I have many, many friends I enjoy spending time with. I don't need to draft myself to be slimed, and neither does the original questioner.

Shame on the posters who don't take his feelings into account. He is a good person. Let him off the hook and let him have a happy life.

I can't get over the LW's feeling that his wife's body somehow belongs to him. He gets to control what happens to it, to check up on it, to confront her if it's not working to his satisfaction.

As another poster said, that was exactly the attitude of Andrea Yates' husband. She had serious post-partum depression; they were told another pregnancy would destroy her mind; and he refused to use condoms or give up sex. They had another child, and she took the children's lives.

I'm troubled that the wife in this case would even marry a man who's apparently unsympathetic to her anxiety and depression, but I don't mean to blame her.

I hope she gets out right away. This kind of controlling "I'm right, and I'll make sure you know it" man is not healthy for women, children, or other living things.

Re previous postings: I think the boyfriend probably has someone else, since so often, women mourn and men replace. I also don't care for Cary's advice, which seems to be a lot of thrashing about with the gods instead of answering the question with concrete ideas and plans.

I want to contribute one plan that helped me at a point when I was feeling really wounded, and it's a plan that works well for women: If you can afford it, see a wise woman nearly every day. That means--see a therapist, but also see a pedicurist (find one who speaks English), a manicurist, a hairdresser, a beauty waxer, a facialist, a massager (woman) . . . in short, talk every day with a woman who knows a lot about women and women's problems.

This is a solution I first saw in (of all places), the movie "Legally Blonde," in which Reese Witherspoon's character is really put upon and decides to find herself a manicurist. It becomes immediately clear that she's much less concerned about her hands and much more about her psyche, and the manicurist is a great help as a listener and supporter.

Also, the women in the beauty industry, a women's helping profession, are dedicated to making you feel good as well as look good. If you don't feel good, you won't go back to their salons.

So that's my suggestion. Let the world of women be good to you, and be good to yourself. And don't go on a diet, which is often a women's way of handling stress. It just makes you feel cranky and deprived. As someone else said, have ice cream. Give yourself feasts. You're worth it.

I never knew how much I cared about Pluto until s/he was lost, stripped of its dignity and its standard in the interplanetary universe.

I grieve for the loss of Pluto, and his/her undignified relegation to being a "dwarf planet."

Who gives those astronomers the right to stomp on my heart that way?

Horses' heads to all of them.

It's interesting that no one, here or anywhere, ever suggests that Bush and Condi have a sexual relationship.

Is it that she seems asexual, or he does, or both?

Or no one wants to suggest an interracial relationship?

Personally I don't think they have any hanky panky together, just because I don't think they're up for it, but I do wonder why no one suggests it. Are people being tactful or self-protective?

She oughta leave him. Yesterday. I don't know why that's so hard to see.