I read about an actuary who calculated that the odds of a man’s trousers falling down if he was wearing both a belt and suspenders was about 35,000 to one. What would be the odds of a man’s trousers falling down while wearing only a belt? What about only suspenders?

?A: Darned if I know. Does anyone else know? Send me a comment and I’ll post it.

Hello. This is kind of an “unconventional” question , but have other visitors asked you how get the menu bar to look like you’ve got it? I also have a blog and am really looking to alter around the theme, however am scared to death to mess with it for fear of the search engines punishing me. I am very new to all of this …so i am just not positive exactly how to try to to it all yet. I’ll just keep working on it one day at a time Thanks for any help you can offer here.

This was a question I had to ask my husband to answer. He is the one who set up my website. He tells me the menu bar was a part of the template provided by VodaHost for the Word Pro’s. It was written in PHP and was easily modified for our needs.

Great discussion and I appreciate your input. Quick question. We are making plans to install wordpress ourselves. Can you point out a good resource for templates and the best plug ins to make it easy for staff to update content in a nice user friendly way? Thx in advance.

A: I had to poll my husband for the answer to this question because I am technologically disadvantaged (which should answer your question about your staff updating content). Our website is set up using Voda Host. They have the templates and everything you need to set up your site.  They offer several website builders along with a video for setting up websites. These websites come with the wordpress blog at no additional cost. He tells me it was quite simple to set up. They have a forum page to ask questions on how to do things and to see what other people do. All that was necessary to set up our wordpress was to add our logo, the pull down options, and contact information.

Thank you so much. This was really helpful.I’m about to be a first time mom do you have any more advice?

A: Congratulations! I think the most important advice I can give you as a first time mom is “relax!” You are going to be working hard at being the perfect mom for this perfect little bundle of joy. And your perfect bundle of joy will occasionally cry anyway, he or she will sometimes get diaper rash, ear infections, etc. Other people will cough around him. The dog will lick his face. All kinds of things will be less than perfect and your little one will live through it anyway. So relax!

There are two advantages to spending time relaxing. 1: You will be less stressed out. 2: You will have more time to enjoy the baby while it is still little. Did you know your infant will double his birth weight by six months? Little doesn’t last long. Enjoy it while you can.

Part of your relaxing means giving yourself permission to sleep during the day when the baby is napping. It may not seem like you are up that much during the night. After all, feeding the baby only takes 20 minutes or so. Total, you might be up for an hour so why do you need all that extra sleep during the day? Because interrupted sleep is not as restful as uninterrupted sleep - that’s why!

If a clean house is a high priority for you, I would suggest you pick one room to keep clean. Preferably the room you rock the baby in. That way, you can relax, enjoy your little one and still be in a clean room. There will be times when the rest of the house is a shambles but at least you’ll have one spot to enjoy. If you have to go back to work right away, this will be even more important. You will be exhausted at night. You will have missed your little one all day and your little one will have missed you. Take some time for the two of you to retreat to your favorite - and only - clean room in the house for some quality time.

Time will pass and the little one will become more independent. That will be the time you can start catching up on all those things that have gotten behind. Enjoy your new baby. And, again, congratulations!

I found your blog while I was doing research for some articles I’ve been writing. Thought I’d leave a link to my article - feel free to leave me a comment and let me know what you think! Thanks!

A:  I was unable to find your article when I clicked on your link.  I would be glad to comment on it and post it for others to comment on as well if I could find it.  Maybe you could email the article to me.  I do need to check out all websites before I post them.  This is a family friendly website and I want to be sure it stays that way so I check everything - even comments - before they are posted.

Did you know that Jesus didn’t make no monsters? My 4 year old told me that a while ago. He had been worried about those monsters so his older sister had explained this to him. And I confirmed this when he told me. Jesus didn’t make any monsters. I’m thinking today of Katrina, of the earthquake in Haiti, of the tornados that come through our state regularly every spring. Most of all, I’m thinking of all those people who call these things God’s judgment. And I’m thinking that they might be wrong. If Jesus didn’t make any monsters, would he really make the monstrous disasters that come to our world so regularly? I doubt it. Maybe that’s an over simplification of a bigger theological study but Jesus did say we had to come to him as a child. I’m not a minister. I’m not a priest. I’m not even a student of theology. And I don’t really have a point to make here. I’m just throwing out a little food for thought. Maybe all those disasters that come to us are just life. And it’s just human nature that, when something goes wrong, we have to have somebody to blame. So we tell people it’s their own fault God had to punish them.

 I think that I prefer the ‘Footprints’ sentiment. When we are the farthest down, when the earthquakes, floods and tornadoes level our homes, destroy our lives and kill out loved ones, it is then that He carries us. May He carry us in our need.

Haiti has been devastated by an earthquake. I cannot tell you the anger I felt when I heard that a leader of the Christian faith is blaming God for this disaster to these people. No wonder so many want to disavow their Christian stand. Who would want to stand with the ‘you got what you deserved’ group?

More likely we would stand with the group from Allentown, Pennsylvania. This is a group of Christians desperate to help an orphanage they support. They compiled supplies, a vehicle, an interpreter and weapons to defend themselves and are headed into Haiti. Their driver will first try to get them past the legal checkpoint. But they know another place that has no checkpoint if they need it. The roads may be impassable, they may end up hiking and carrying supplies but those children they have committed to and the workers who care for them will not be abandoned. Now that, my friends, is a picture of Christ. He said ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’ Here on earth these people continue to try to carry on his legacy. They are headed into that chaos knowing that their physical safety is at risk. They are knowing that, at the very least, this will be a difficult task. They are risking themselves for people to whom they have made a commitment.

May we all be Christians like that.

Message: Hy mom, I’m kati. My familys catholic. Im bisexual. No, Im not doing it to impress guys or to have fun. Im legitimently attracted to both men and women. How do I tell mom, perferable without getting grounded?

Dear Kati,

If you are still young enough to live in your parent’s home and expect to be grounded for your behavior, then you are too young to make this decision. Hormones can fool you when you are a teenager. Many girls look at other girls breasts and feel sexual arousal. That may not necessarily mean that they’re lesbians. If you’re looking at a guy and thinking ‘boy is he hot’ while looking at girls and being sexually aroused, it may not mean you’re bi-sexual. It may just be that you have a normal sex drive. You need to take some time to become a little more familiar with your emotions before you make a decision of this magnitude.

But if you insist on going to your parents, I suggest you set the groundwork for your discussion. Obviously, your parents are not going to be happy about your decision so you better be ready with some answers for them. Some of the things you need to be ready to discuss are:

1) Your family is Catholic. Is being a Catholic important to you? The Catholic church doesn’t condone alternative lifestyles. You have to be ready to let them know that you are prepared to give up this part of your life. I would suggest you go to your Priest and discuss with him how you feel. Go through the steps he gives you so you can let your parents know that you have legitimately looked into how not being a Catholic will affect you.

2) Try to decide what you want in a relationship. Do you want your partner to be faithful to you and only you? If you do, being bi-sexual - by definition - isn’t the way to go. Bi-sexual people accept sex with both sexes so you could never be sure if your partner was about to move to a male partner instead of you. And your partner could never fully trust you. If you don’t need or want a committed relationship then this isn’t going to be a problem for you but you do need to decide that.

3) For most teens, it is important to have a partner when you attend the prom or even just attend classes. For most teens, it is a source of pride to have this committed partner. If that is the case, then you are going to have to decide whether you prefer a male or a female partner. If you choose male, no problem for you. If you choose female, you will again have problems with your parents and your Catholic faith.

4) Next, you will have to be prepared to explain how this will affect your future. Be ready to let them know how you want your adult life to be once you are out of school. When you are an adult and running your own life, how do you want your life to be? Do you plan to have children? How do you think this decision will affect them? What do you plan to do for a living? How will this affect your career plans?

If you go through all these steps, they will see that you have carefully thought through your position. They may see this as a faze you’re going through. They may feel that you are just being rebellious. You can’t expect them to be happy with your decision. Whatever their reaction, you live in their home. Therefore you live by their rules. If you can’t convince them of your sincerity in this matter, then you must wait until you have moved from their home to live the lifestyle you have chosen.

As I said in the beginning, I think you are too young to make this decision anyway. So waiting until you are old enough to move from home will give you the time to gain the maturity you need to make an informed decision.

In the words of Bart Simpson, TV has betrayed us.  We are a generation of adults, dissatisfied with our childhoods.  In perfect harmony, we complain that we were mentally, physically or otherwise abused as children.  Our parents  - who loved us and did the best they could for us -  just simply couldn’t compete with June Cleaver.   Our fathers didn’t always know best.  And our parents never, ever gave us the freedom to roam as Timmy and Lassie had.  If we were punished, it was never the gentle, lenient punishments meted out by the perfect television parents.  We were grounded, spanked, made to do chores, write sentences and numerous other sadistic things our parents came up with.  Sometimes our parents even went so far as to punish us for things we didn’t do but they thought we did! 

Can I just point out what a load of tripe all those abuse allegations are?   June Cleaver had a bevy of screen writers making sure that every move she made and every word she uttered were perfect.  Father always knew best because he had an entire studio of helpers keeping him on track.  Our parents, on the other hand, were just winging it by the seat of their pants.  They were looking at their kids and wanting what was best for them.  They were looking to our futures and trying to be sure we were properly trained to live productive lives.  They were determined to teach us respect for authority, respect for education and decent work ethics.   They were determined to give us the hopeful future we are trying to give our own children. 

I can agree that our parents made mistakes.  They punished us in anger sometimes.  They may not have told us they loved us enough.  They may have gotten so tied up in the necessities of daily living that they forgot the emotional needs of their children.   But I would like to submit to you that most of what we are calling abuse and neglect were neither of those things.  They were mistakes in parenting on the part of our mothers and fathers.  And our calling them abuse trivializes actual abuse. 

It’s time we all realized that television families can’t be used as a standard for actual families.  It’s time we start realizing that parents don’t have to be perfect.  And it’s time we stop blaming them for our mistakes!  What happened in your childhood was years ago.    Get over it!   If we can actually look back at our childhood’s and say ‘that is why I do what I do today’, then we know why we’re making our mistakes.   If we know why, then we can learn from it and control ourselves.  So let’s take responsibility for who we are and what we’re doing.   And – most importantly – let’s turn the tv off long enough to look around and see what we have.  Maybe it’s better than we realized.

I have met the love of my life.  He is perfect.  He’s a widower with a good job, a great house and a killer car.  I have the most wonderful time when I am with him.  The only problem is his three kids.  They are spoiled brats.  They’re whiney and demanding.  If we can’t get one of the relatives to babysit, we’re stuck with them.  If we get married, I’ll be stuck with them all the time while he is at work.  I know this is America but do we have any boarding schools like they have in Europe?  

A:  It sounds to me like this ‘perfect love of your life’ is perfect because of what he has, not necessarily who he is.   When you make the final decision about marriage, it should never be based on his house and his car.  It seems like a pretty flimsy reason for love and marriage.   There are significantly more important things to consider when planning your future with this man.  The most important are the children.   These children are his children.  Does he think they are whiney and demanding?  They’ve lost their mother.  Are you planning to take away their father too?  When you marry, you never just marry the man.  You marry his children, his ex-wife (in your case his deceased wife), his relatives, his friends, his pets and all his emotional baggage.   To make a success of the marriage, you have to be ready to weave the issues of his life into the issues of your life.   From the sound of your email, you need to gain a little more maturity before you’ll be able to do that.   For everyone’s sake – especially those children – it might be best if you spent a couple of years growing up before you plan on marriage.