radishgirl88

Would the following be a realistic and grammatically correct sentence in British English:

'I ought to give the garden a going-over with the rake.'

Also, is the phrase 'going-over', as in to give something, such as an area, a thorough cleaning, a common phrase in British English? Do people use it often, informally or formally?

I'm fourteen weeks pregnant. In a week, I must have an abortion for medical reasons. This is an incredibly hard and heartbreaking thing for me to do. I am not looking for any cruel answers or comments. I only want to know if, at fifteen weeks of pregnancy, or fifteen weeks plus a couple of days, I'll be able to know if my baby was a girl or a boy after the procedure is finished. Is it possible to ask the person performing the abortion if they're able to discern the baby's sex? Would it be possible to ask him about the baby's sex prior to the abortion, when they're checking things with an ultrasound? Thank you.

I'm twenty years old. I moved long, long, long way from home close to two years ago, practically running away when I did it, from a seriously emotionally and physically abusive, toxic household. Both my parents were just about insane; so were my two younger brothers. I was scared to death of both my parents and brothers, and sometimes even scared for my very life. The relationship I had, and still do have in some ways, with my mom was absolutely horrible. She was the worst parent ever, abusing me nonstop in all kinds of hideous ways. Emotionally, too, and to this day, I don't know if the physical stuff she did to me was worse than the emotional pain she wrought. But enough about all that, because all that's just background...For many months after I initially got out of the physically and emotionally abusive household I wasted the first nineteen years of my life in, I continued to write e-mails to my mom, at her insistence. She still wanted to keep me completely under her thumb, and I guess I was just too weak to say no to her. In those e-mails, she did nothing but wreak even more emotional havoc on me. She always did nothing but call me a lot of names and ask me for money all the time. Before I moved out, Mom and her boyfriend broke into my locked bedroom and stole all my clothes and books, and everything else I was planning on taking with me when I moved. Mom wears the same size as me in everything, and she told me that if I wasn't going to ''work for her anymore'' (so she can steal money from me to buy weed and crap like that with it), then I at least owed her all my clothes and books and stuff, even though I'd previously bought every bit of it with my own carefully saved money. Oh, but none of that is really my point either, I guess.

What I really mean to say, is that now, my mom has started trying, harder than ever, to put a huge guilt trip on me so I'll hopefully come back to her one of these days, to be forced to work like a slave for forty-five hours a week, plus having to pay all the bills for she and my dad (while my brothers do absolutely nothing but get into trouble with the police and play computer games), and constantly clean 100% of their large old house, buy and cook all the food, and even paint my mom's toenails gold whenever she wants it - because if I refuse, in any way, to do any of this, I'll get slapped, or worse, or talked crap about all over town to all of my older relatives on both sides of the family, all of whom must surely hate me now, after my parents decided to tell this big lie to everybody, saying that I moved out of the house so I could participate in porn and ''have sex and get abortions'' - in those very words.

For the last several months, my mom's been sending me these pretty good-sized boxes of utter crap in the mail, and probably paying God-knows-what to send them, when she should be spending that money on my brothers, for new shoes or whatever they need - and I hate it. I've asked her politely before, several times, for her to stop sending me the packages. She sends me things like packs of paper plates, old newspapers - all kinds of old garbage - as well as some of my old clothes and shoes and stuff like that, which I had ten years ago, which she had been wearing after I moved out and evidently doesn't want anymore for herself. Sometimes she sends me some pretty nice stuff in the boxes too, but I swear, I don't want any of it, and yet, because I know good and well that she wasted so much money sending me all the stuff in the first place, I never just leave the boxes at the post office. I go and claim them, and use whatever stuff she thought necessary to send me to the best of my ability. I don't like waste. Now, I haven't spoken to my mom whatsoever in probably a little over a year, but today I received yet another box from her, anyway. She sends the boxes every few months. This one contained a pair of my shoes she doesn't want anymore, an old blazer of mine, a little stuffed black cat (which she in all likelihood sent me because she knows that I have just about a phobia of stuffed animals, as well as other toys, because of some truly terrible stuff she used to do to me involving them), some tubes of lotion and shower gel, a small container of lip balm, a pair of old socks, some old jewelry she bought for herself but gave me instead, even though I never wanted it either, and four or five cans of almond paste. I have no idea as to why she had to send the almond paste. Everything in the box was absolutely plastered over with all manner of cruel notes written on sticky paper.

So, I don't know where else to turn, but now, after getting the box in the mail, I feel absolutely sick to my stomach - guilty, sad, depressed, nostalgic, and even extremely nauseous - and I never want any of Mom's so-called ''gifts'' again. She's a narcissistic, selfish, cruel person who ruined my life, along with my dad's help. I'm scared to death of her, because if I ever go back to see he

For personal reasons, I'd like to give myself a second middle name. The name I already have is Rachel Hannah, but which additional name, out of the list below, do you guys think sounds best to tail Hannah with?

Helena

Amelia, Emilia

Alice

Priscilla

Katherine

Abigail

I kind of think that Rachel Hannah Helena sounds best together, but I'd like everyone else's opinion - and if you have any other suggestions for names, I'm interested. Just nothing trendy or tacky or overly popular or spelled weird.

If so, please tell me, because I'm really interested: Did you still have a period of some kind that same month, whether it be normal or otherwise, or at least what you thought might have been implantation bleeding? And how long did it last? Was it accompanied by any cramping in your stomach, similar to period cramps? And did you get another period again the following month, even though you were pregnant, or no period at all?

Sorry for all these questions. I've been trying to get pregnant for such a long time, and now, like so many times before, I'm wondering if this could actually be it. My period almost always (like at least ninety-five percent of the time) comes between the 11th and 15th of every month, and typically lasts from five to seven days. It's always quite heavy, and I have extremely painful menstrual cramps every single time that tend to begin about ten minutes before my period actually starts, and then they last continuously for one or two days. This month, it's already the 23rd, and my period hasn't come. So, I'm kind of wondering if I might be pregnant, because for about the past two weeks, both of my breasts have been very painful and tender to the touch. Especially the left one. But I don't think this could be a false pregnancy symptom my mind has just made up, because I actually haven't been giving the matter much thought - I want to get pregnant as soon as possible, but I'm not trying to stress out over it.

Today, however, about an hour ago, I started getting extremely light cramps in my lower abdomen that are similar to how menstrual cramps feel - but nothing at all how the cramps accompanying my normal periods begin, because they never begin lightly and then slowly but steadily get worse and worse. With my normal periods, when they begin, I just suddenly get one single, excruciating cramp right out of the blue, and then it continues from there. When I went to the bathroom a couple of times in the last hour while these tiny cramps were going on, I noticed that I had some very, very light, pinkish spotting, only when I wiped myself.

Do you think this could be implantation bleeding? I've heard that it is possible to get pregnant only a day or two before your period is due to begin. Doctors have even told me that before. They say that it's always very possible, though with many women, the chances for them to get pregnant decrease during this time. What do you guys think? Has anyone experienced anything sounding like this before?

Recently I've been having dreams, every once in a while, about this little girl, maybe four or five years old, walking slowly across the yard in front of my house, carrying an old-fashioned black wrought-iron lantern in her right hand. She's holding the lantern far out in front of her as if to light her way, and in the dream I can clearly see a candle or some other light source inside the lantern. The little girl always looks exactly the same - she's got sort of dark red hair that falls in loose waves around her shoulder blades, and she's very pale. She wears a dress that actually reminds me a lot of one I had when I was a kid myself - but it's not the same dress, and the little girl definitely isn't me. In the dream, it always looks like very early morning outside, and I can see the little girl as if I'm standing in my kitchen, peering straight out of the window at her. What could a dream like this mean? I've only started having it recently, but it hasn't come again in several nights, and I usually have the dream in the morning right before I wake up for the day.

A year or two ago, like maybe right before I got married, I started having this really strange recurring dream that I actually really liked having. I don't know why, but being inside that particular dream made me feel peaceful. In the dream, it was very early morning, and I was walking through this field of wheat stubble, or possible corn stubble, and I guess there might have been one or two small trees, far off, in the field. The light was clear and gray, and the entire field was just rolling with fog. I couldn't see any sun, but it looked like really any normal foggy, cloudy morning...As I was walking through the field, I could hear the wheat stubble crunching softly underneath my feet, and eventually I came across this little group of three or four boys who looked like they were maybe between the ages of six and nine years old. They were dressed sort of old-fashioned, almost like I think boys coming from lower caste families might have dressed in the Victorian era. They were very nice looking little boys, with blonde and dark hair. We started talking, and this one boy in particular, whom I think was blonde, came up to me and told me to put out my hand. I did, and he gave me this fistful of large pumpkin seeds. The seeds were dyed all sorts of colors - white, neon pink and orange, and maybe brown or something, from what I remember. In my dream, I looked at the seeds and thanked the boys for giving me them. And then the dream ended. I had this dream probably seven or eight times in a row, for a few weeks, when it was still going on. What could the dream mean? I've never heard of anybody dreaming about pumpkin seeds before, and maybe the wheat or corn stubble in the field also means something, but I can't imagine what.

Also, if it makes any difference, I believe that I could faintly hear crows calling in the background, in this dream. Maybe that means something as well.

What I mean to say is, I've heard that fallout levels are affected a lot by wind currents. Like, wind can blow fallout profusely over one country or many countries, or it can instead go over the sea - but I know that there would probably always be some fallout blown over Finland, if a bomb roughly the size of the ones that exploded in Japan during WWII decimated Moscow. But if that happened, and even if the wind currents didn't blow great amounts of fallout over Scandinavia, would everyone living in Finland still get poisoned by the radiation and die?

Do you also think they would hear the explosion, like a distant rumble of thunder?

Carrot cake is my absolute favorite, with or without raisins or some kind of nuts. Next to that, I'm a really big fan of stuff like pumpkin cake, zucchini bread and banana bread. Apple cake is also nice.

Mine is spinach. I'm not kidding. I think my favorite thing to eat, anytime, is spinach sandwiches with vegan margarine, fresh basil and finely-chopped fresh garlic.

I like the idea of giving a child a first name and two middle names, instead of just a first name and one middle name, like most people do. What is a good third name that sounds good with Rachel Hannah?

I was thinking Rachel Hannah Helena, but I'm not sure. Any suggestions?

That was the original surname of my dad's side of the family. It sounds kind of Russian to me or something, but I haven't been able to find out any information about it on any website. Does anyone know anything about it, or even heard the name before?

I was born with dark red hair, which gradually lightened to sort of a dark strawberry blonde as I got older. It stayed that way until I was twelve years old, when I got extremely, dangerously sick and stayed that way for many months. I was surprised that after the sickness ended, both my hair and fingernails got extremely light in color. I'm not kidding. My hair turned from strawberry blonde to some kind of weird shade of gray-blonde with an unwelcome hint of pink, and my fingernails and toenails went almost white. Now, I'm twenty years old, and my hair has been getting a bit more ''colorful'', I guess I should say, since it lightened up so much when I was twelve. But I still think it looks very colorless and dull, and my fingernails and lips are always sort of blue or lavender, though apparently I don't have anemia of any kind. Why did my hair become lighter after I got sick? Did all the vitamins burn out of me with the fever or something...? I also got dangerously sick again and almost died back towards the end of 2007, if that means anything, and once again all the natural color seemed to just wash out of me. I'm interested in knowing why.

I've got these two colleagues that I might not get to see again for a very long time, as they live far away from me. Before we parted ways last time, both of them gave me an e-mail address I could reach them by. However, a few days later when I tried to send my colleagues a short e-mail apiece, I immediately received ''failure notices'' in my Inbox, telling me that neither mailing address was valid, or they didn't exist, or something like that. Since then I've tried to send messages several times, but get the same results. I even tried to send my colleagues e-mails from a different e-mail address of mine, but the same thing happened. I don't think the problem is with my computer, and I know that my colleagues would have never given me fake e-mail addresses. I found some website on the computer that allowed me to check if both mailing addresses were valid ones, and it said that they were; but they're still not working for me to send messages to.

I use a Yahoo! mailing address for my main address, but I have another account with Hotmail, if that makes any difference. What could be wrong with my colleagues' e-mail addresses?

I plan to start having kids quite soon, like hopefully in the next year or so, but to be honest, I'm absolutely terrified of gaining a lot of weight during my future pregnancies. I just don't get all that stuff about the recommended weight gain guidelines American doctors give pregnant women. Since about 1990 American doctors have been telling women of normal weight that they must gain at least twenty-five pounds in order to have a healthy baby - something I don't believe is true in the least. I live in Finland, where doctors strongly caution, even for underweight women, against gaining anything more than twenty-five pounds during the end of their pregnancy. And most women in Finland don't, and yet Finland has just about the highest rate of living, perfectly healthy babies in the world, even though tons of women of normal weight prior to pregnancy only gain between eight and fifteen pounds before giving birth. Of course, a few do go *way* over that, but I don't even think the problem is that Americans stereotypically eat a lot more processed foods than Europeans do, because Finnish people typically eat plenty of processed foods, and still mostly don't become anywhere near overweight after having even many children. So, not to sound mean, but just why is it that most American women tend to gain such great amounts of weight during pregnancy?

I suspect that I might be a few weeks pregnant right now. For the last two days I've had what I'm pretty sure could be implantation bleeding - but, even though I've felt nauseous all day long (like yesterday, that was awful) from time to time, I've mostly just had diarrhea sometimes. Plus, I haven't had any food cravings, or anything like that - but some smells make me feel faintly sick. My breasts also don't seem to feel any different before. Sometimes they feel a bit tender, but they've done that for as long as I can remember, all my life. I don't know what's wrong with me. Any help?

I haven't taken any sort of pregnancy test yet. I want to wait about three weeks for the best results, even though I heard that women can usually take a pregnancy test, even a cheap generic one, and get a positive while they're having implantation bleeding, or right after it ends.

This is the second day I've been having what I think might be implantation bleeding. The first day it was just a tiny bit of reddish-brown discharge, and today it's slightly more pinkish or reddish, rather watery discharge. It's come almost two weeks earlier than my period this month should have, and when I checked online, it seems as though I've had most of the symptoms that people say normally go along with implantation bleeding. And quite frankly, that's what I'm hoping it is. But I'm still a little worried. My periods are never like this, anyway, because when I get those, they're always accompanied by severe, two-day-long cramping and relatively heavy bleeding. I think I'd like to try to take a pregnancy test as soon as possible, and I actually have one right now, but it's a very cheap (I think it was about five euros) and generic type. Should I risk wasting it by taking it already, or in the next day or two, especially if I stop getting discharge like this? Or should I wait a few more weeks?