If you were working for a company that you could count on still being in existence by the time you retire.

The bulk of my parents retirement comes from a company that is a shadow of its former self. My dad worked for Ma Bell. In the mid-80s divestiture, he worked for one of the regional Baby Bells. Since he retired, his Baby Bell has been bought, sold, changed its name, and is in the process of a slow decline into either another sale or bankruptcy.

It keeps selling off portions of itself. It sold off its internet accounts to Microsoft. It's in the process of selling off its wireless accounts to another vendor. What's left to sell is what no one wants... a bunch of land lines and a whole raftload of retirees on pensions.

I've worked for five companies during my adult life. Of those five, I'd bet that one will still be in existence by the time I retire. Two are already defunct, with pieces sold off to the highest bidder. Two are extremely small and not likely to survive after the two founders retire some time in the future. With no one in American business interested in the long term, I don't think old-style corporate pensions are the way to go either.

I don't know what the answer is.

Yup. Take it from this former Catholic now atheist. The harder the parents push, the harder the kids push back.

... in my desk drawer at work.

Downtown.

I took the express bus 15 miles out to the park-and-ride in the suburbs. Where I discovered I had no keys.

I walked two miles home from the park-and-ride and hung out at the neighbor's house feeling like an idiot until my husband came home an hour later.

We gave a house key to the neighbors.

The mantra of the anti-abortion crowd is "adoption, not abortion." So if this makes the teen birth rate go up, that means that more babies are not being "murdered" by abortion. If those babies come up for adoption to some couple who can't have children of their own, all the better.

I'm not saying I buy the logic, just that I know the logic. A rising teen birth rate, in certain crowds, is probably a measure of success, not failure.

I have kids. I love my kids. But I also had the experience in college of babysitting for a family that had more money than sense, and I think honestly didn't want their kids. They lived off a pile of family money, he was a law student, and she spent her days going to "the club" for spa treatments and tennis. They had a nanny even though she didn't work, and I was the evening sitter so they could go to restaurants and dancing.

The kids were mixed up and messed up and lonely, and talked a lot more about their nanny than their mom or dad. Not every wealthy family with a nanny is a mess, but this one sure was. The mom actually told me once that they'd had kids because it was "the next thing to do."

People who don't want children should absolutely not have them. Kudos to Rachael Ray for knowing that about herself.

I totally understand what you're saying. Only it's happening to me right now with veterinary care, not health care for people.

My beloved family dog is nine, and was just diagnosed with bone cancer. The vet gives us one carrot after another, ending in if/then statements. If it's this cancer and not that, we could do this and she might live another two years. If we get a chest x-ray, a biopsy, we'll know more about the type of cancer, then we can decide...

Might. If. Maybe.

My heart (and my checkbook) tell me that spending thousands on radiation therapy for a nine-year-old dog, no matter how much we love her, is wasteful and selfish. Wasteful in that there are so many other things we could do with thousands of dollars, and selfish in that am I making my dog go through hell just so I don't have to say goodbye for another few months? Maybe a year? Dying is part of life. We will always outlive our pets. And yet I can feel the disapproval emanating from the vet if I go back tomorrow and say all we really want is pain medication, to make sure she has as many good days as she can.

The pressure to spend and spend to get a "might" or a "maybe" is huge. There is always one more technology, one more procedure. When I'm feeling this much pressure for my dog, how much more would it be if she were a person? And how much money could we spend to get another six months?

The truth is that we have to say goodbye. It hurts like hell. But I think I would rather be doggy hospice than doggy cancer treatment center.

I think you're right. It's been too many years since those mind-numbingly dull classes in Catholic elementary school.

Whatever the logic, I don't get it. Any kind of rational thinking that says a nine-year-old girl should bear the twin babies of her stepfather rapist is completely beyond me. On the other hand, maybe it's good that an issue like this hits the public consciousness. It might make a few rational thinking Catholics re-think their religion and walk away.

I prefer to think of myself as a recovering Catholic. But "liberated" is good too.

I won't even start in to the idiocy in this topic. Except to note that in Catholic doctrine, there is a shred of logic here. Unborn babies do not yet have the "taint" of original sin. Therefore, they are worth more than already-born children like the nine-year-old girl in question.

It's not logic I aspire to or even recognize, but I'd be willing to bet a beer that's what this doctrine is based upon.