Whoa, I’m really feeling the love in this room. Happy to be back; the waiting up for the teenage daughter on Friday nights hasn’t been the same without the SDMB to hold my hand and say, “Don’t WORRY, she’ll be FINE, look, come over here and talk to us about nipple piercing…”
Woohoo! DDG, the only poster whose sig I enjoy reading almost every time.
Glad you are back.
::waves::
Yay! Welcome back, DDG! You have indeed been sorely missed.
Conversations with your children? Eek! Did they actually converse with you as well, or did they just roll their eyes and say “yeah right, uphill both ways in neck-deep snow, Mom,” like my brother and I like to do to our own mother? 
Oh my 
Hey, DDG, welcome back. I joined only a little while before your dissapearing act, so I can’t really say that I knew ya, but from the reception, I’m guessing the board’s a better place now that you’re back.
I have a question for ya, but you have no email addy listed. How’s a gal supposed to contact you?
Like, groovy, Dudette.
Hey DDG, glad your back!! You were missed!
WB, DDG. GTSY! HHYB? WTHDTAM?
AGSA
[sub]Acronym Girl Strikes Again[/sib]
[cruising slowly down Fifth Avenue, perched demurely next to Mayor on back of white convertible, while tickertape rains down and crowd cheers wildly]
[waving to Tig]
[pausing for a moment, realizing Tig is not waving money]
[/waving]
“Neck-deep in snow uphill both ways”?? Huh? Is it a Zen thing?
Aenea: sorry, sweetie, nothing personal but after last spring’s soap opera slugfest, I am even more paranoid than ever about my e-mail address. I watch too much TV, I know. If you really, really have to know something, the mods have my addy; you might ask Arnold or Tuba to pass a message along.
But hey, as long as you’re here, whaddaya want?
DDG: You know how older people are always talking about how tough things were when they were kids (“I had to walk 287 miles to school, uphill both ways in neck deep snow, and I was grateful for it!”). That’s what I was talking about.
It was Conan O’Brian who quoted a headline “Young People Having More Sex”
and Bill Clinton’s reaction:
“They have it so easy these days!
When I was young we had to do it in the snow and uphill both ways!”
I heard that you could inform and commiserate with me on the subject of Crohn’s, a wonderful thing to which I have recently been introduced.
Tell ya what Duckie, my email addy is listed here, and I’ll just include it below for convenience.
Aenea
aenea01@yahoo.com
Good to see ya Duckie!
Eek, Aenea, I am the totally wrong person to advise you on Crohn’s. Yeah, I have it, have had it since 1976, but I am, like, totally in denial. My mother keeps giving me brochures with the latest updates (“you know, they’ve found that…”) and I just can’t stand it. I went through it hot and heavy in 1985 (hospital, surgery, etc.) and I just don’t wanna think about it, you know? Sorry. 
I said at the time, and I still maintain today, to my mother and the Better Half, and others, “They’re not giving me another barium enema again without heavy sedation”, and I’m not joking.
I CAN tell you, though, that it’s basically something you just learn to live with. I eat a low-fat, non-dairy (Lact-Aid is fabulous stuff), low-residue diet (lots of plain boiled chicken and rice, how exciting :rolleyes: ), no fruits or vegetables, because they just shoot right through in about 45 minutes and what’s the point, and I resign myself to having to go to the bathroom a lot. It’s a standing joke in my family that I’m the only one who knows where all the bathrooms are at the mall, even the secret ones that are in the back of the J.C. Penney’s.
With the diet, and the lowered lifestyle expectations (no pizza, no fried chicken, no junk food, etc.) I can manage without medication.
Basically, you go through the tests (barium enema, colonoscopy, whatever) to make sure it is in fact Crohn’s and not cancer, and then–you just carry on. :: shrug ::
But that’s such a gloomy Dickensian, sort of Russian novel note to close on. There is an Upside, and it’s a doozy.
I have a whole family of in-laws who ADORE eating in restaurants, especially “all-you-can-eat for $10.95” places. (They are all big eaters, if you know what I mean.) It’s perfectly marvelous to be able to say, with perfect truth, “No, I can’t go, because there won’t be anything I can eat there”. It has released me from innumerable dull evenings. (Did you know it’s possible to like and respect someone as a human being, but to shrink from the prospect of spending any time at all in his company?) I sit home with my boiled chicken and a good book while the Better Half and the kids go pig out with Auntie and Uncle, and I’m sure we’re all a lot happier with it that way.
I have definately missed your sense of humor!
Learning to live with it…ah, yes. That I am in the process of. Keeps life interesting, I guess.
Chicken, mhm. Lots of that, and new and varied way to eat it bland. I hope to be off of the heavier meds soon, and to stay that way also.
Hey, do you know some of my relatives, by chance?
[sub]a few days late, and a few dollars short, but…[/sub]
I wanted to tell you how very glad I am that you have returned~~I missed you!
Scotti