on subject of divorce reasons

• Should I? - Raquel
  • Yes, You Should - WA Clinic MT
  • Well, Raquel, it looks like you have - april
    • April --sm - noone
      • yes, I get that sm - april
        • sorry. I did not see your original post..sm - noone
  • sounds like your going to anyway. - sm
  • Please enlighten me - why do you have - sm
    • see my post below on divorce reasons - Raquel
      • I can bet those parents that left their children with the - Just an FYI
    • Please enlighten ME . . - anon
    • See my answer, Teresa, below and you will see about the Christian - Teresa
  • on subject of divorce reasons - Raquel
  • How could you not? You might miss out on your true love. - Just take it slow....NM AzMT
  • My Man - sodiepop
  • don't want to rain on your parade, but I too --sm - noone
    • I was going to say the same thing, I am also - sm
    • She is in the same boat, married and divorced twice - sm -
      • you said it better than I did, that was all I was trying to say..sm - noone
    • So, since he's divorced twice, do we assume that it - was the wives divorcing him?
      • most of the time it is the wife divorcing the man...sm - noone
  • Should you? - Teresa
  • funny thing about when you decide to give up... - april
  • Hope - working925
  • It sounds like you sure do have a lot in common. - luv2type

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My husband had to wake up an hour before me for work.  Every morning, he liked to wake me up with him and then tried to get some before getting ready.  I went to bed usually 2 to 3 hours later than him.  Needless to say, I wasn't too happy about it.  So, I decided to give him a taste of his own medicine.  One night, I came to bed about 2 hours after him and he was sleeping soundly.  I woke him up to have sex with me, which he did without complaint.  The next night, the same thing.  The third night, the same thing.  He never complained.  By the 5th night, when I woke him up, he said he was just too tired.  He needed to sleep.  I laughed a little and said, "Funny, that's how I feel every morning when you wake me up an hour early for sex."  He got the hint and apologized.  He agreed not to do that more than once or twice a week and things seemed to be fine.

That was 6 years, 9 months and about 2 weeks ago.  You see my son was born 6 years and 2 weeks ago.  The little lesson I taught him ended up teaching me a much bigger lesson.  How come we women always get the short end of the stick? But I love my little guy!

later than usual.  I usually have them up by Thanksgiving, but this year I think I'm going to wait until the first weekend in December to do the outside lights.  We don't usually light them every night.  I'm going to start my indoor decorations then, too, but holding off on the tree until a week or 2 before Christmas. 

Our current house is a little small and the tree really clutters it up.  We're moving in January and have a lot to do before then.  If I didn't have kids, I probably wouldn't put the tree up at all.  I love Christmas, but things are just too hectic and cluttered right now.

Against the Wal
A class-action lawsuit in Dakota County could strike a costly blow to the world’s largest private employer
by MARGARET NELSON BRINKHAUS

In July 2001, Nancy Braun was watching television with a friend when a commercial caught her attention. The ad was soliciting litigants for a potential lawsuit against Wal-Mart, the Arkansas-based retailing giant, for allegedly cheating employees out of wages they were rightfully owed.

A single mother of two—and grandmother of four—Braun had started working for Wal-Mart in 1997. At the time, she lived in Slidell, Louisiana, where she had previously worked for a grocery store. She considered Wal-Mart a step-up. “I liked shopping there,” she says. “I thought I’d like working there too.”

And she did enjoy it, at least for a while. She liked the people, the work, the sense of solidarity among employees. But in 2000, homesick for her family, she moved back to Minnesota and transferred to the Wal-Mart in Apple Valley, where she was assigned to run the Radio Grill, the outlet’s now-defunct in-store restaurant. There, Braun quickly became disenchanted with the company, especially after a supervisor repeatedly prohibited her from taking breaks—even after she had surgery that required frequent trips to the bathroom. She soon quit.

Braun’s friend encouraged her to call the number mentioned in the advertisement to see if she qualified for the suit, but Braun was hesitant. She didn’t relish the prospect of reliving that period in her life. Yet she remembered how her mother, a longtime switchboard operator at Carleton College, had always encouraged her to speak up, to do the right thing when confronted with an injustice, big or small. “You can’t allow yourself to be treated like an animal,” she says. “I’m sure Mr. Walton would agree with me on that.”

One morning this past October, six years after she first saw that television ad, Braun sat inside a Dakota County courtroom in Hastings, her striped shirt and beige pants—bought from Wal-Mart—in marked contrast to dark suits, leather briefcases, BlackBerrys, and laptops sported by the army of attorneys in the room. “I’m a Plain Jane kind of gal, nothing fancy,” she said. “But I know what’s right. What Wal-Mart did to me wasn’t right.”

That sense of determination is one of the reasons why Braun found herself in Hastings, taking on the country’s largest corporation. She’s one of four lead plaintiffs in a massive, class-action lawsuit filed against Wal-Mart, a case that could affect 56,000 people who worked at Wal-Mart in Minnesota between 1998 and 2004. The suit alleges that over that period, the discount retailer systematically avoided paying wages earned by employees for overtime work and missed or shortened meal and break periods. And though the case is not the first of its kind—workers have won victories in similar cases in California and Pennsylvania—it may end up being one of the most significant. If Judge Robert King Jr. rules against Wal-Mart in this phase of the trial, the company would likely have to pay up to $500 for each employee, which could mean a payout in the tens of millions. More significantly, a ruling against Wal-Mart in this first part of the trial would also mean that the case would move to a jury to assess whether punitive damages are in order. If that happens, Wal-Mart could be on the hook for not only millions, but billions.

Braun’s troubles began after she returned to Minnesota. At the Apple Valley Wal-Mart, she worked in several different departments before running the Radio Grill. At first, she enjoyed the work. “I treated that place like my own kitchen,” she says. “I did it all willingly. I’m not afraid of work…never have been.” Not long after she started in Apple Valley, Braun had learned she needed to have gallbladder surgery. After the procedure, Braun suffered some relatively common side effects that required her to take frequent bathroom breaks. Braun’s supervisors initially said they would accommodate her needs, but that’s not what happened. “I’d get in a pinch, be there all alone, and soil myself, ruin my clothes,” Braun recalled. “I’d feel so degraded. Sometimes I wouldn’t have clothes with me, and the manager would say ‘We have clothes here for sale. Get your purse and go buy yourself some.’ They didn’t care.”

Putting up with an insufferable boss is, of course, an unavoidable part of a job for many people. Yet Braun’s treatment, argue the plaintiffs’ attorneys, wasn’t unique among Wal-Mart employees. Another lead plaintiff, Debbie Simonson, 59, started working as a cashier at the Wal-Mart in Brooklyn Park in April 2000. As a single mother of two children, she needed the money. And, like Braun, Simonson was often told by her supervisor not to take bathroom breaks. “He’d say ‘Skip the bathroom and get your butt out here,’ and I’d do it,” she explained in court. “It was an order. Your boss tells you to do something, you do it.” She quit after 13 months.

According to Justin Perl, the plaintiffs’ lead attorney, the denial of breaks was standard operating procedure at Wal-Mart. As part of the case, he and his colleagues combed through Wal-Mart’s own records to find workplace violations. They identified millions of missed bathroom and rest breaks, as well as millions of shortened rest breaks, along with thousands of missed meal breaks. “It’s the Wal-Mart way,” says Perl. “They nickel-and-dime the lowest- paid workers so they can improve their own bottom line.”

Wal-Mart sees it differently. A spokesman, John Simley, says the company doesn’t comment on pending litigation, but in other cases the company has denied it encourages employees to miss breaks or work off the clock. Wal-Mart, company officials maintain, tries to ensure compliance with company policies and state laws, but has no control over individual choices workers make.

Yet those individual choices are often informed by pressure from the company, argues Perl. According to testimony in other wage cases, Wal-Mart compensates its managers largely via bonuses that are tied to profits—and the easiest way to increase profits is by cutting expenses. “They do it by erasing everyone else’s salary,” says Perl. “It’s not a hard job. They cut staffing. They shave breaks. They make their profit goals. It’s the only basis for how they compensate their managers.”

Pamela Reinert, 54, saw for herself how that pressure was brought to bear. A petite, soft-spoken mother of seven from Maplewood who has a PhD in psychology, she joined Sam’s Club—a Wal-Mart subsidiary—in 1997, after she was laid off from another job. Like Braun and Simonson, Reinert liked the work, and was good at it. She made it into the management-training program shortly after joining the company. As a manager, she would sometimes try to intercede on behalf of workers who weren’t getting their breaks. Eventually, though, she was told to stop making trouble. She eventually quit after a supervisor threatened to write her up for insubordination—for trying to take her complaints up the chain of command.

A ruling on the case is expected sometime this month. But no matter how it turns out, Nancy Braun says she will always miss Wal-Mart. “I wish I could have stayed working there,” she says. She enjoyed the other employees, the customers, and the idea “that there was always something to do, always a way to keep busy. I worked my way up—that was a big deal for me. When I quit, I felt defeated.”

Now living in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, and selling insurance at a cell phone company, she tries to attend the trial whenever possible. When she’s in Hastings, she occasionally makes a stop across the street from the courthouse to do some shopping—at Wal-Mart.

Margaret Nelson Brinkhaus is a Minnesota-based writer.

Against the Wal
A class-action lawsuit in Dakota County could strike a costly blow to the world’s largest private employer
by MARGARET NELSON BRINKHAUS

In July 2001, Nancy Braun was watching television with a friend when a commercial caught her attention. The ad was soliciting litigants for a potential lawsuit against Wal-Mart, the Arkansas-based retailing giant, for allegedly cheating employees out of wages they were rightfully owed.

A single mother of two—and grandmother of four—Braun had started working for Wal-Mart in 1997. At the time, she lived in Slidell, Louisiana, where she had previously worked for a grocery store. She considered Wal-Mart a step-up. “I liked shopping there,” she says. “I thought I’d like working there too.”

And she did enjoy it, at least for a while. She liked the people, the work, the sense of solidarity among employees. But in 2000, homesick for her family, she moved back to Minnesota and transferred to the Wal-Mart in Apple Valley, where she was assigned to run the Radio Grill, the outlet’s now-defunct in-store restaurant. There, Braun quickly became disenchanted with the company, especially after a supervisor repeatedly prohibited her from taking breaks—even after she had surgery that required frequent trips to the bathroom. She soon quit.

Braun’s friend encouraged her to call the number mentioned in the advertisement to see if she qualified for the suit, but Braun was hesitant. She didn’t relish the prospect of reliving that period in her life. Yet she remembered how her mother, a longtime switchboard operator at Carleton College, had always encouraged her to speak up, to do the right thing when confronted with an injustice, big or small. “You can’t allow yourself to be treated like an animal,” she says. “I’m sure Mr. Walton would agree with me on that.”

One morning this past October, six years after she first saw that television ad, Braun sat inside a Dakota County courtroom in Hastings, her striped shirt and beige pants—bought from Wal-Mart—in marked contrast to dark suits, leather briefcases, BlackBerrys, and laptops sported by the army of attorneys in the room. “I’m a Plain Jane kind of gal, nothing fancy,” she said. “But I know what’s right. What Wal-Mart did to me wasn’t right.”

That sense of determination is one of the reasons why Braun found herself in Hastings, taking on the country’s largest corporation. She’s one of four lead plaintiffs in a massive, class-action lawsuit filed against Wal-Mart, a case that could affect 56,000 people who worked at Wal-Mart in Minnesota between 1998 and 2004. The suit alleges that over that period, the discount retailer systematically avoided paying wages earned by employees for overtime work and missed or shortened meal and break periods. And though the case is not the first of its kind—workers have won victories in similar cases in California and Pennsylvania—it may end up being one of the most significant. If Judge Robert King Jr. rules against Wal-Mart in this phase of the trial, the company would likely have to pay up to $500 for each employee, which could mean a payout in the tens of millions. More significantly, a ruling against Wal-Mart in this first part of the trial would also mean that the case would move to a jury to assess whether punitive damages are in order. If that happens, Wal-Mart could be on the hook for not only millions, but billions.

Braun’s troubles began after she returned to Minnesota. At the Apple Valley Wal-Mart, she worked in several different departments before running the Radio Grill. At first, she enjoyed the work. “I treated that place like my own kitchen,” she says. “I did it all willingly. I’m not afraid of work…never have been.” Not long after she started in Apple Valley, Braun had learned she needed to have gallbladder surgery. After the procedure, Braun suffered some relatively common side effects that required her to take frequent bathroom breaks. Braun’s supervisors initially said they would accommodate her needs, but that’s not what happened. “I’d get in a pinch, be there all alone, and soil myself, ruin my clothes,” Braun recalled. “I’d feel so degraded. Sometimes I wouldn’t have clothes with me, and the manager would say ‘We have clothes here for sale. Get your purse and go buy yourself some.’ They didn’t care.”

Putting up with an insufferable boss is, of course, an unavoidable part of a job for many people. Yet Braun’s treatment, argue the plaintiffs’ attorneys, wasn’t unique among Wal-Mart employees. Another lead plaintiff, Debbie Simonson, 59, started working as a cashier at the Wal-Mart in Brooklyn Park in April 2000. As a single mother of two children, she needed the money. And, like Braun, Simonson was often told by her supervisor not to take bathroom breaks. “He’d say ‘Skip the bathroom and get your butt out here,’ and I’d do it,” she explained in court. “It was an order. Your boss tells you to do something, you do it.” She quit after 13 months.

According to Justin Perl, the plaintiffs’ lead attorney, the denial of breaks was standard operating procedure at Wal-Mart. As part of the case, he and his colleagues combed through Wal-Mart’s own records to find workplace violations. They identified millions of missed bathroom and rest breaks, as well as millions of shortened rest breaks, along with thousands of missed meal breaks. “It’s the Wal-Mart way,” says Perl. “They nickel-and-dime the lowest- paid workers so they can improve their own bottom line.”

Wal-Mart sees it differently. A spokesman, John Simley, says the company doesn’t comment on pending litigation, but in other cases the company has denied it encourages employees to miss breaks or work off the clock. Wal-Mart, company officials maintain, tries to ensure compliance with company policies and state laws, but has no control over individual choices workers make.

Yet those individual choices are often informed by pressure from the company, argues Perl. According to testimony in other wage cases, Wal-Mart compensates its managers largely via bonuses that are tied to profits—and the easiest way to increase profits is by cutting expenses. “They do it by erasing everyone else’s salary,” says Perl. “It’s not a hard job. They cut staffing. They shave breaks. They make their profit goals. It’s the only basis for how they compensate their managers.”

Pamela Reinert, 54, saw for herself how that pressure was brought to bear. A petite, soft-spoken mother of seven from Maplewood who has a PhD in psychology, she joined Sam’s Club—a Wal-Mart subsidiary—in 1997, after she was laid off from another job. Like Braun and Simonson, Reinert liked the work, and was good at it. She made it into the management-training program shortly after joining the company. As a manager, she would sometimes try to intercede on behalf of workers who weren’t getting their breaks. Eventually, though, she was told to stop making trouble. She eventually quit after a supervisor threatened to write her up for insubordination—for trying to take her complaints up the chain of command.

A ruling on the case is expected sometime this month. But no matter how it turns out, Nancy Braun says she will always miss Wal-Mart. “I wish I could have stayed working there,” she says. She enjoyed the other employees, the customers, and the idea “that there was always something to do, always a way to keep busy. I worked my way up—that was a big deal for me. When I quit, I felt defeated.”

Now living in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, and selling insurance at a cell phone company, she tries to attend the trial whenever possible. When she’s in Hastings, she occasionally makes a stop across the street from the courthouse to do some shopping—at Wal-Mart.

Margaret Nelson Brinkhaus is a Minnesota-based writer.

this nonsense, and no fair naming children.  Why in the world would you choose to live like this with these neanderthal men?  Believe me, alone is so much better.  At least then you have choices.  and the children you are raising are actually children, not grown me. 

Tired of the commercials advertising products for feminine odor?  I just heard this again several times yesterday and it is degrading.  If anyone has an odor bad enough that you are offending others there is a simple remedy . . it's called soap and water.  Is it me, or is that disrespectful to women?  Why don't we discuss some of the more delicate matters regarding men on TV?  I could name a few. 

Is it fair for me (with no education in teaching) to try to teach my child, die, and then expect my child to do well as an adult in this society?  No way.  Let them live and learn as I did.  Homeschooling, in my opinion (again my opinion) is like the MA and PA days where there wasn't enough room at the schools or there weren't enough educated teachers coming in on a wagon to teach the children on the prairie. 

I'm glad my kids go to public school.  The high school I attended had a lot of kids that came from private school because the high school was vo-tech, so the parents felt the kids were getting better than public school.  Those kids that came from the private schools knew more about sex and drugs than I did growing up in the public school system.  I guess their parents had the money, and I guess the kids felt penned up, I don't really know the cause.

Never would I expect my children to go out and get a job or even survive one minute in college without an education from a school system.  I don't care to hear about home school curriculums either because I'm focused more on the socialization.  I don't want my children to be introverts or homebodies!  Let them see the world for themselves and for what it truly is, a melting pot, something to be experienced, a beautiful thing, and to avoid negativity at all costs, but to experience some just to learn from it.  JMO.  P.S.:  Thanks for listening.....

I have a 10-year-old son who is overweight, and for me personally, I would want to know if he is eating 4-6 donuts such as this girl is doing.  I just think your approach would make or break it all.  If someone were to approach me, I wouldn't mind at all, but I don't get really too offended easily especially if I know it is the truth.  Chances are, this girl's mom knows she has an eating problem.  I'm sure she's not just overeating on Sunday's.  But then again, maybe it runs in the family and if you did say something, it may not go well.  In my family, only my son is overweight, not my other kids nor my husband or I.  The doctors have told me it is just genetic.  But for me personally, I would want to know because it is not healthy and we try and work with our son about being healthy and making right choices for himself. 

Here's a though, how about letting the person in charge on Sunday be aware and then he/she can remind the kids to only take 1 donut each, that way everyone can get enjoy them. 

that when he was a puppy and I knew I'd be gone for a long time I wouldn't want to leave him home for a long time.  I don't take him in restaurants EVER, but do take him to stores in his doggie purse.  If he barked at people, I'd quit bringing him.  I personally just really enjoy being around animals.  I have two labs too, but they are impossible to take the places I take my Yorkee to, which is one of the major reasons I wanted a small "purse dog."  I just love animals and enjoy their company either at home, in the car, or in a store.

Most people do not even know I have him.  I put the screened side towards my body and it looks like a regular purse unless you look very closely.  If he is noticed, they usually are thrilled to see him.  I have had more elderly people share their life stories of their small dogs with me when they see me out and about (usually at the kids' ball games or something else where he is not in a purse) with my pup.  He brings joy to many people, including me!

I'd be offended too if someone's purse dog barked at me, but if they were just sitting quietly in the purse, I wouldn't care, but I would care if it were a restaurant as I don't think that is sanitary.

Hope this shows you another side of purse dogs and why we take them with us.

My son is 11 and the last few days has had a few "wet farts" -- there's no color to it, but enough to soak through his jeans.  He didn't even notice it, said he didn't feel wet, but we noticed it and so did another child at school.  At first, I thought he just sat in something wet, but when he came home from school with it, I took a second look at his jeans and noticed the position of it was more in line with "an accident."  He says he doesn't remember passing gas.  There's a slight discoloration to it and a slight odor. 

I've never had this happen to me personally except when I was getting over diarrhea.  Has anyone else had this happen without being sick?  Any ideas on what could be causing it?  I'm hoping it's not a rectocele or IBS. 

Merry Christmas to you also!