Now we have ODed on all the warm and fuzzy stuff about chemistry and compatibility. There is probably enough room on this bandwidth to cover all the things that can go wrong in a relationship but I'm going to try to not hog it all.

If problems were all dumped into one box and shaken up, it would probably be difficult to tell one from another since every last one results in hurt feelings, resentments, revenge and similar emotions. If the house is on fire or a child falls in water over his head, what do we do? We ACT, immediately! Why should a crisis in a relationship be any different? Instead, one will go tattling to relatives and/or friends, another will go out and get drunk, one will run away, another will vent with destructive behavior, and on and on. Neither will take an analytical look at the situation and come up with any realistic ideas about how to fix it. One or both will clam up and refuse to communicate. Someone pretty wise said repeatedly doing something the same way will keep getting the same results or words to that effect.

Is the time and effort invested in the relationship so unimportant that it's worth throwing everything away? Why did they get together in the first place if they didn't like each other enough or know each other well enough to have some options to work with?

My first marriage ended in divorce after 13 years. My husband's parents had divorced when he was 10 years old and his mother left the 4 kids still at home with their father because, in 1934, taking them with her would have been next to impossible. Our marriage counselor said my husband was 'a very angry man.' When we married, he didn't tell me I was his 3rd wife instead of his 2nd. The 2nd wife had died when their son was 2 months old so I started with a ready-made family. Yeah, I felt sorry for the guy. I also thought that if I tried really hard, he would reciprocate, that a marital failure can be blamed on both. That didn't account for being married for the sake of gaining a baby-sitter. It never explained why he never gave a gift for any occasion -- Christmas, my birthday, or our anniversary in the whole 13 years. There was more, such as infrequency of bathing that increased over time. I acquired new fields of interest and honed new skills; he didn't care and regressed.

Yes, I was young but never did have the expectations that marriage was like a fairy tale or some romantic movie plot. I didn't see any signs of what was to come with one possible exception when he wanted to shave 2 years off his age on the marriage license application. There were no signs of stealing or shoplifting and that blew me away when he'd have one of the kids with him. More than any single thing, I think it was the whole accumulation of resentments that made me decide marriage counseling wasn't going to work long term. He made some effort to improve but started backsliding after a couple of months.

The second marriage, after 5 years of being single, was like the difference between night and day. Husband #2 was affectionate beyond the bedroom, outgoing and full of fun, and let me know how much he appreciated and respected me. Since we started out later in life, each had already acquired a list of habits and ways of doing things. One time when we disagreed about something, he said it was to be expected because our grandmothers didn't make cornbread the same way. That was one of the best parts. We communicated well and there were no subjects we couldn't talk about. Nothing was just about me or just about him; everything was about us and we made a very good team. Any time work got slow, he would find something that I was able to help with and that put us together 24/7 for weeks and months at a time. I've known couples who couldn't stand to be around each other that much, and plenty of wives complain that the husband is always under foot after retirement. We liked the same kind of music and went dancing to live music as often as possible. We both liked hunting and camping. He taught me how to do leather work. He liked poetry and wrote some. His creed was a line from Robert W. Service's "The Cremation of Sam McGee: "A promise made is a debt unpaid and the trail has its own stern code." Another of his favorites was this one:

 

The fruit and vegetable pesticide guide here on Healthkicker (March 09.2009) is what introduced me to this site a couple of months ago, after googling the subject for some research I was doing. Another site said there is no difference in nutritional value between organic food and non-organic, it's the presence or absence of pesticides that count.

As insidious as all the highly processed foods there are in stores these days, the dyes, preservatives and artificial flavorings contained in them, there are all the dirty things the FDA allows. Pasta is allowed to have 225 insect parts per 225 grams. A jar of peanut butter is allowed to have rodent hairs. In a can of corn, two or more larvae are allowed. And in orange juice, five fly eggs or one maggot per 250 milliliters is okay. I've worked in food processing plants and know it isn't possible to eliminate everything but wonder if the ceiling is as low as it can be. FDA's handbook is online.

I find the subject of genetically modified seed even more threatening to the world's food chain. Google _The World According to Monsanto_ for a video, go to Wikipedia and type in Roundup. The main ingredient (glyphosate) in Roundup is the same as was in Agent Orange used to defoliate areas of Vietnam. Worse yet is the so-called inert ingredient, polyethoxylated tallowamine, or POEA, which is more deadly to human embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells than the herbicide itself. The reason it is listed as inert is because it doesn't kill weeds or insects. What kind of reasoning is that? Cotton, soy beans, sugar beets and corn are "Roundup Ready" and being grown now. Rice, wheat, okra and several other food crops are next in line.

What effect is there going to be on wildlife, all the pollintors including bees, and aquatic life as well as our water supply and the possible cross-pollination with other plants? Our own absorption of toxins shouldn't be overlooked either. WebMD reported last May that low-level environmental toxins may partially explain the rise in liver disease in this country, that one in three of us has some form of it and that as obesity has increased, so has liver disease. Some cases are linked to pesticides and heavy metals.

I wonder how many remember a best selling book in the 1960s, _The Silent Spring_ by Rachel Carson. It was very controversial at the time and the pesticide was DDT which is no longer allowed in this country except possibly for mosquito control but I believe it is still used in some other countries. Monsanto was the manufacturer and it disturbs me. That was almost 50 years ago!

Then there is the cumulative effect of some toxins. My late husband, a painter, suffered brain damage that affected his legs and mobility because of the chemicals he breathed over the years. The main one, toluene, is what harms and/or kills glue sniffers. We didn't go anywhere without his wheelchair for the last years of his life. While I was visiting him one evening during one of his hospitalizations, there was suddenly an outburst of yelling and screaming with people running on the floor above us, the ward for liver patients. Buzzers sounded, lights flashed and 2 nurses took off like they had been shot, one grabbing her back brace as she ran out. One patient's liver had failed, the one doing the yelling and screaming. When that happens, the toxins that are supposed to be filtered go rampant through the person's system and when they reach more than the brain can handle, the person goes violently insane. That's the reason the one nurse grabbed her back brace, because she knew it would take a hurculean struggle by several to restrain the patient until sedation took effect and death came. I was there and those are my personal reasons for fear of toxins and toxic build-up.

In the current Hobby Farm magazine, Sept/Oct 2009, "Farm Science" article, Rick Gush states that the US Dept. of Agriculture's "Organic" rules say that chickens may be kept inside for all but the last 2 to 3 weeks of life, then be turned out to a small grassy area and still qualify as free-range chickens. The size of an individual cage in a factory farm is about the size of a page of printer paper. How nice that Henny Penny gets to go outside for a couple of weeks before her head gets chopped off. That isn't my perception of what the term 'free-range' is supposed to signify.

I used to enjoy going grocery shopping, secure in my belief that what was offered would be beneficial to my family's health and well being. Not any more. I can't always remember which brands of soy milk are made with Roundup Ready soy. I look at chicken and wonder if it was one that had been caged for all but 2-3 weeks of its life. Was the beef  fast-tracked on growth hormones? Which fruits and vegetables come from south of the border where fewer pesticides are banned? And then there are all the over-processed boxed items hyped to the max, many of which offer coupon incentives, and juices loaded with fructose and concentrates. I look at what is put on the checkstand conveyor by shoppers ahead of me and conclude that they either don't know what they are buying or don't care. I'm sure our new health care plan won't cover ignorance and apathy, either in Washington or out here amongst the rest of us.