Dear 40+ women...

Please quit dressing like a teenager if you aren't in shape. You now have muffin top and flabby arms.

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Please stop calling me 2 and 3 times when I don't answer the phone. Please stop immediately calling my cell phone when you don't get me at home. I'm 34 years old. I work, I'm married, and I have 3 kids, so I might be kind of busy some days. When I do answer, please don't scream at me -- "Where have you been? I've been calling you for an hour!" I might be working or I might be at the school or I might be working out -- anyway you look at it, I'm 34 years old and have a right to make my own decisions.

When you do talk to me, please don't lay the guilt trip on me because "no one will help you hang your wallpaper." Did you ask my brother, who lives 2 hours away to help? Did you ask my sister who lives 2 hours away to help? Did you ask my other brother who lives an hour away but comes home every weekend to hang out with his friends to help? Probably not. You called me because I'm only 5 minutes away and you know I "don't really work". Perhaps I would be willing to help with you these things if you'd call ahead and ask me when I'm available, instead of waiting till you get up one day and just feel like getting the wallpaper hung.

BTW, why can't you just hire someone to hang it? That's what I did this summer when I needed a babysitter and you weren't available.

Yes I know you care. I know you spent your life raising me and my siblings. I realize you may be lonely, but part of that is your own fault. I would call more often if you were more pleasant to talk to instead of always complaining about someone or something that didn't go your way. I would enjoy spending more time with you if you made it pleasant, instead of complaining to the waitress that the coffee tastes bad and that they put too much mayo on your sandwich and that you don't like the restaurant because they don't let you seat yourself. When I ask you to pick, you always say it doesn't matter when obviously it does.

You're married. You should ask Dad to help you hang the wallpaper. He doesn't like spending time with you either because you constantly pick fights. Anything that goes wrong is always his fault. Why can't you just laugh it off once in a while? Have you forgotten how to have fun? Where is that woman I used to know when I was a teenager? We had such good times together then and laughed more than ever. What has happened to make you so bitter? I've tried to talk to you about it, but you just won't listen to reason. You always say it was someone else's fault. When do you accept the blame?

The next time you come over to my house and something comes up missing we are going to have a serious problem on our hands. I am really tired of seeing your daughters wearing my kids missing clothing and when asked you say you bought them. NOT TRUE. I cannot believe that you would steal something like an apple corer or my neat little pill cutter that I bought. I cannot believe that you have stolen so much from me that your children are starting to do it now too. Your daughter stole my daughter's stuffed whale and you KNOW THIS yet stick up for her when questioned. AMAZING. I mean what.... doesn't welfare give you enough help? Also, I am tired of you calling me during my well-known work hours just to talk about absolutely nothing so that I can listen to you yell and scream at your kids and your husband. And when I say I have to go, I am working, you say that really sucks to have to work. Yeah, it kinda does.... but I dont want to have to resort to stealing instead. My suggestion to you would be to GET A JOB and BUY YOUR OWN THINGS.

Thank you for being a wonderful, loving, kind, and caring mother and grandmother.

Thank you for respecting the fact that I do work at home and have a husband and 3 children.

Thank you for, on the occasions you must call during my work hours, making it short and sweet, getting down to business, and letting me go so I can get back to work!

I love our hour-long phone conversations when I'm not busy and Dad's in the garage working. I love having lunch with you on Fridays when I can. I love walking around the mall with you and window shopping...cause we're both too broke to buy anything!

You are my best friend and I cherish every moment we spend together, not only as mother and daughter, but as friends.

Thank you for being so "terrible" that your ex decided she had enough of you and tossed you to the side. Wow, you are terrible; same job for 25 years, respectable, handsome, has a good relationship with his family, honest, moral, respects my work in and around the house, you were not a deadbeat dad, you always compliment me, you make me laugh daily, you know the freedom of living debt free and saving for the future, you take me on the best vacations and most importantly, you love me for who I am, flaws and all.

Oh, and to the ex...you blew it honey...no wonder you called a couple of years ago and tried to get him back; it didn't work. Thanks, things have only gotten better!

I agree with the OP concerning professionalism. I believe it comes from anything that jobs that (primarily) women perform having the perception of not being serious work. If she is working at home, that perception is doubled. I also agree with having a schedule and sticking to it; plus if you have help to do your primary work, do it and don't feel guilty. Generally doing many things at once means you cannot do anything well in my opinion. But I do have to admit what works for one person doesn't work for others.

We know we have historically multi-tasked. I remember my daddy telling about my grandmother helping my grandfather with plowing at times, guiding the mule's head and leaving her baby under a shade tree, with a brick holding down the child's gown and the family dog keeping watch. She wasn't thought of as neglectful--just doing what had to be done. Unfortunately, women have to work harder and be smarter than men to be competitive and we just have to know in our hearts we contribute significantly to society. What's that old joke--luckily that's not too hard!

If things were so good with the OP with her current marriage, do ya think she'd be online reconnecting with anybody?!?!?!?!

So many women appear desperate to me in their 50s...and I don't know why because I'm in my late 50s and am never desperate sounding, appearing, etc......I just don't get it. And no, I have chosen not to be married any longer for the past 16 years......

you know that old sayin? want a man in my life, not in my house full time?!?!??!!

It's a beautiful day today, and a co-worker was saying she'd love to go home and take her dog for a walk. But her husband is home sick and he won't let her go without him.

She does stuff like that all the time. I think the only place she's allowed to go by herself is work. She can't go to the grocery or get gas or to the drugstore without him. She has no friends other than their joint friends.

Drives me nuts. What kind of a life is that? I guess it's OK for her, but I would hate to always have to be chaperoned by my husband.

Women will never run Africa (who is Oprah kidding?!) as long as Arab terrorists known as Janjaweed are still controlling at least 80% of Africa.........

Women running Africa - Don't I wish!!! But it's more backwards there than here - and we know how most feel about having a woman run THIS country.............

and for Africa it certainly isn't going to happen in our time or Oprah's time either........unfortunately.

We started to "bud" in our blouses at 9 or 10 years old only to find that anything that came in contact with those tender, blooming buds hurt so bad it brought us to tears. So came the ridiculously uncomfortable training bra contraption that the boys in school would snap until we had calluses on our backs.
Next, we get our periods in our early to mid-teens (or sooner). Along with those budding boobs, we bloated, we cramped, we got the hormone crankies, had to wear little mattresses between our legs or insert tubular, packed cotton rods in places we didn't even know we had.
Our next little rite of passage was having sex for the first time which was about as much fun as having a ramrod push your uterus through your nostrils (IF he did it right and didn't end up with his little cart before his horse), leaving us to wonder what all the fuss was about.
Then it was off to Motherhood where we learned to live on dry crackers and water for a few months so we didn't spend the entire day leaning over Brother John . Of course, amazing creatures that we are (and we are), we learned to live with the growing little angels inside us steadily kicking our innards night and day making us wonder if we were preparing to have Rosemary's Baby.
Our once flat bellies looked like we swallowed a whole watermelon and we pee'd our pants every time we sneezed. When the big moment arrived, the dam in our blessed Nether Regions invariably burst right in the middle of the mall and we had to waddle, with our big cartoon feet, moaning in pain all the way to the ER.
Then it was huff and puff and beg to die while theOB says, "Please stop screaming, Mrs. Hearmeroar . Calm down and push. "Just one more good push" (more like 10), warranting a strong, well-deserved impulse to punch the %$#*@*#!* hubby and doctor square in the nose for making us cram a wiggling, mushroom-headed 10 pound bowling ball through a keyhole.
After that, it was time to raise those angels only to find that when all that "cute" wears off, the beautiful little darlings morphed into walking, jabbering, wet, gooey, snot-blowing, life-sucking little poop machines.
Then come their "Teen Years." Need I say more?
When the kids are almost grown, we women hit our voracious sexual prime in our early 40's - while hubby had his somewhere around his 18th birthday.
So we progress into the grand finale: "The Menopause," the Grandmother of all womanhood. It's either take HRT and chance cancer in those now seasoned "buds" or the aforementioned Nether Regions, or, sweat like a hog in July, wash your sheets and pillowcases daily and bite the head off anything that moves.
Now, you ask WHY women seem to be more spiteful than men, when men get off so easy, INCLUDING the icing on life's cake: Being able to pee in the woods without soaking their socks...

I think this pretty much covers the issue.
So, while I love being a woman, "Womanhood" would make the Great Gandhi a tad crabby. You think women are the "weaker sex?" Yeah right. Bite me.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Scientists think they have figured out why pregnant women don't lose their balance and topple over despite ever-growing weight up front.

Slight differences in the spine allow women to carry the growing load of pregnancy without toppling over.

Evolution provided slight differences from men in women's lower backs and hip joints, allowing them to adjust their center of gravity, new research shows.

This elegant engineering is seen only in female humans and our immediate ancestors who walked on two feet, but not in chimps and apes, according to a study published in Thursday's journal Nature.

"That's a big load that's pulling you forward," said Liza Shapiro, an anthropology professor at the University of Texas and the only one of the study's three authors who has actually been pregnant. "You experience discomfort. Maybe it would be a lot worse if (the design changes) were not there."

Harvard anthropology researcher Katherine Whitcomb found two physical differences in male and female backs that until now had gone unnoticed: One lower lumbar vertebra is wedged-shaped in women and more square in men; and a key hip joint is 14 percent larger in women than men when body size is taken into account.

The researchers did engineering tests that show how those slight changes allow women to carry the additional and growing load without toppling over -- and typically without disabling back pain.

"When you think about it, women make it look so very easy," Whitcomb said. "They are experiencing a pretty impressive challenge. Evolution has tinkered ... to the point where they can deal with the challenge.
"It's absolutely beautiful," she said. "A little bit of tinkering can have a profound effect."

Walking on two feet separates humans from most other animals. And while anthropologists still debate the evolutionary benefit of walking on two feet, there are notable costs, such as pain for pregnant females. Animals on all fours can better handle the extra belly weight.

The back changes appear to have evolved to overcome the cost of walking on two feet, said Harvard anthropology professor Daniel Lieberman.

When the researchers looked back at fossil records of human ancestors, including the oldest spines that go back 2 million years to our predecessor, Australopithecus, they found a male without the lower-back changes and a female with them.

But what about men with stomachs the size of babies or bigger? What keeps them from toppling over?

Their back muscles are used to compensate, but that probably means more back pain, theorized Shapiro, who added: "It would be a fun study to do to look at men with beer bellies to see if they shift their loads."