Opalita

A woman I know will not let her Chihuahuas out in her backyard unsupervised because she says so many people in the American Midwest have had their small dogs carried off by hawks and eagles. Is this really possible, or common?

It looks awfully big for a mouse, but it isn't as big as the usual rat. I live in Mexico.

so, why aren't they treated with antibiotics or preventative inoculations like other bacterial infections? Why do we have to have all that drilling and filling? Wouldn't it make more sense to stop the infection before the tooth gets damaged?

I see a little bird with a long pointy beak come to my wall everyday and it seems to be eating something. I don't see anything there for it to eat. It can cling to the vertical wall. What kind of bird is it and what is it doing?

I would like to see annual total statistics on the deaths by violence over the last ten years, listed by country, of American tourists who have been killed while traveling in foreign countries. I have heard many arguments about how dangerous foreign travel is, but I'd like some facts. Does anyone know a reliable source of such information? Also, for comparison, how many people are killed by violence in the USA every year for the last ten years?

I am 64 and she is 61. We seem to be in conflict a great deal of the time, and it affects the rest of our family relationships. She appears to have difficulty differentiating between herself and myself, or accepting me as I am. She invalidates my feelings and thoughts by telling me that is not the way she feels or thinks. She cultivates her relationship with my children and grandchildren to the extreme of closing me off from them. I don't know what to do. She is stronger and more outgoing than me. Of course, there is nothing I can do to alter her behavior. What I want to know is, can I do or say anything that will help resolve this life-long conflict, or is it time to give up?

A little girl in my family is being blamed for the death of the gerbil because she was supposed to fill the water bottle before she went to bed and the gerbil was dead the next morning. Is it possible for a little animal to die like that from lack of water for just one night in an air conditioned apartment?

I am old and hate to mow, I don't want my yard to look like a mess or with rows of food plants. I'd like it to be pretty, fairly low maintenance, affordable and with lots of edible things or fragrant things that don't have to be planted every year and no grass at all.

I live in town in central USA, but have a fair amount of yard with good soil.

I feel like I have become a magnet for betrayal. I betrayed a trust placed in me when I was very young. I am 60 now, and over the last ten years I did what I had to to make up for what I did, and even felt that I had forgiven myself. But, even though I have done everything I know to do to make my life right again, as soon as I begin to trust, it seems like things happen. I get my car stolen by a "friend", or a total stranger rips me off for $1,600... I have learned to trust in God. I have learned to trust in myself. But it seems everytime I try to trust anyone else I get disappointed.

How can I find that normal level between trust and skepticism, being able to protect myself without being cynical? I want to be kind, and expect others to be kind as well, but I seem to just end up being stupidly overtrusting... or else totally untrusting. I want to find a balance that is more sensible.

When there are so many ordinary things that people cannot be allowed to do in the US now, and it costs so much to live there too?

And, people are no longer allowed freely to move there either?

What exactly makes America free now?

I do not like to eat the peels of anything. Often when people see me peel my apple or leave the skin of my baked potato on my plate they tell me, "Oh, you really ought to eat that, it is where all the vitamins and minerals are." Does anyone out there know if this has actually been determined by chemical analysis, or is it just popular opinion?

This question came up in a discussion tonite as a lady had seen one after an accident, and later in public he did not recognize her. She figured it wasn't her face he'd looked at... Then we began to wonder, how does anyone choose this for a career. Seriously.

I have trouble with the canvas touching the braces and leaving white marks on the front of the paintings. I paint large and wet so it really shows. Does anyone have a good construction technique?