Hi Everyone!
Thank you all for your support and thoughtfulness, as always!
Wendy - let me in on that group hug, too! {{{{BIG GROUP HUG}}}} And lots of good wishes and PD coming your way. Please try not to worry about anything and keep thinking your wonderful, positive thoughts! And as Elaine and Linda said, "THE SISTERHOOD OF THE SUITE"
is always here to listen or talk, if you need us!
So glad to hear that your DH had a fulfilling and pleasant weekend and a good experience! And I can't believe that you got even more snow! When was the last time that you were actually able to see the ground, where you live???? I hope that it all melts quickly! You are very brave to have mowed your lawn with copperheads around and to have gotten anywhere near black widows! But most of all, you are so brave to have actually gotten bats out of your house! If there were bats in my house, I would move out before they did! I would be petrified!
Elaine - I'm right with you, when it comes to spiders! And I think that Linda is right - I'll bet if you DID find a spider in your hotel room at WDW, you could call the front desk or room service or housekeeping, and they WOULD send someone over to take care of it for you! I'm too afraid to kill spiders by "smushing" them (one of my friends did that once, and it turned out that the spider was pregnant. So when he "smushed" her, all of her babies came flying out.....alive!), so what I do is "suck them up" with the vacuum cleaner hose! That way, I don't feel like I'm really "killing" them - maybe they are still alive and living in the vacuum bag....but at least they're out of sight! Frank does what Wendy does - he catches the spider (or any other type of insect) and brings it outside. I would do that, too (particularly after experiencing "It's Tough to be a Bug"!), but I am too afraid of holding on to the bug for the length of time that it would take for me to walk to the door and take it outside! Speaking of "It's Tough to be a Bug", I was totally petrified in there! I hate things popping out and touching me, and the worst part of that attraction for me was the constant blasting of air in my face and the loud noise that was made every time an air blast was "fired"! Strangely enough, I didn't mind the very end, when the beetles and other hard-shelled bugs walk under the audience's butts - I actually thought that that was ingenious and very funny! But you wouldn't catch me in there, again! I was sitting at the end of a row when we saw it, and I spent almost the entire time half curled up in a pseudo-fetal-position in my seat! You could never, ever get me into "Honey, I Shrunk the Audience"! I don't know if you remember our discussing this several months ago, Elaine and Linda, but I remember asking your advice about the show. I just don't think that I could deal with the snake and mice! Muppetvision is another story, altogether, though! I just love that attraction! Anyway, don't worry about going to WDW alone.....certainly not because of the possibility of running into a spider! I don't think that I've ever seen a spider, down there (they have more "tropical bugs", instead), but even if you see one, I'm sure that you would easily be able to get someone to come and "alleviate the problem"!
Linda - I also like the music from "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" - I haven't seen the film, but I have heard some of the bluegrass music and it's really neat! Glad to hear that you and the boys had fun at the zoo - that's really neat! And it sounds like you are getting so tiny that we will barely recognize you! Congratulations on more pounds lost! I'm sure that there will be many more to celebrate, very soon, too!
Thanks for your kind thoughts. Ever since Frank told me that my friend (her name is Lisa, too! Funny that I have a best friend from high school who is also named Lisa......and believe it or not, we dated twin brothers, when we were in high school, so it was "Lisa and Lisa and the twins"!) and her mother and sister are planning the shower for me, I have been a nervous wreck. I know that this probably sounds ridiculous and totally irrational to all of you (....probably because it IS, in reality, ridiculous and totally irrational!), but if my parents - particularly my mother - find out about the shower, they will start a huge war with me and probably stop talking to me. I think it's the principal of the thing, not the actual party. They just don't like showers, and they refuse to see the good intentions behind my friends wanting to do something nice for me. I think that there is a lot of emotional "stuff" tied up in their behavior, too. My mother is (for lack of a better term) jealous, every time something good happens in my life, so she does her best to make me miserable every time something does (I've bored you with all of those stories before - like how she acted after Frank and I were engaged, how she acted each time I passed a professional exam or had a professional accomplishment, how she acted when I was married the first time, etc.). She doesn't like my being happy without feeling "bad" or "guilty" about something, and she doesn't like the rare times when I am the center of attention (because that means that she isn't - for example, every year on my birthday, if I am the "center of attention", to whatever extent, she has to start talking about how she is the one who gave birth to me, etc., to shift the focus to herself). Anyway, I tell you all of that just to give you the "background". So I'm totally petrified that my parents will find out about the shower. Frank and my best friend, Gary (who now feels badly for not throwing the shower for me himself, as he is my "Man of Honor"!) advised that I should tell my girl friends at the actual party not to mention anything about it to my father at the wedding. (They are all close enough to me that they know what the "story" with my mother is). Maybe I will do that. I know that this all sounds really silly to all of you, but I really worry about stuff like this! As for the shower itself, I'm just looking forward to being with a bunch of my girl friends at once. It's so rare that I get to see them at all, these days, since most of us live far away from one another, and everyone is so busy with jobs, children, and life in general. Plus, many of them haven't seen eachother in a long time, so it will be nice to see them seeing eachother. In terms of gifts, I would be perfectly happy if nobody brought one - Frank and I really don't need anything, since we've both been living on our own for so long and have our own combined sets of cooking utensils, supplies, machines, flatware, dishes, etc. We didn't register, either (my parents also think that registering for gifts is "tacky", so that, combined with the fact that we don't really NEED anything, made registering out of the question). I'm just happy that my friends want to get together and spend some time with me in honor of my upcoming marriage, and I don't want to feel "guilty" about that or worried that my parents will find out and tell me that I'm selfish and evil for "allowing" my friends to do such a "cheap and tacky" thing for me............any thoughts, suggestions, or words of wisdom, ladies???? Again, I know that this all probably sounds really superficial and silly to you all - thanks for listening, as always!
OK - speaking of "evil", I'm being a bad girl and writing from work, again, so I'd probably better get back to it before my boss comes out of his morning meeting! Hope that all is well with all of you (hope that you're doing well down there, too, Angie!) and have a great day! Talk to you soon!
) Although I will have to respectfully disagree with Dan, after over 1000 posts, I think we can hardly call it a "little" thread anymore 
I screamed the best I could with toothpaste still in my mouth. I eventually got Luis downstairs and he couldn't understand a word I said (toothpaste got in the way). He got mad at me and yelled at me because I wasn't helping him find it. He did find it and killed it for me and I finally could get the Listerine toothpaste out of my mouth (which was burning my mouth by then) So while washing my hair I refused to close my eyes because I was afraid another spider would come down and bit me and so I got shampoo in my eyes. So work is okay but I will have to help train a new employee this afternoon... and I just got rid of all the work from last week :sigh: So there's the start to my day. You know as I type this out though, it sounds rather amusing doesn't it? My day is half over, so that at least is good 
I only wish I had someone as tall as you living at my house... it gets really hard to kill the ones on the ceiling 
