“Dear Annie: She's just a 'sweet deal on the side' for ... - San Gabriel Valley Tribune” plus 3 more

Dear Annie: She's just a 'sweet deal on the side' for ... - San Gabriel Valley Tribune

Posted: 06 Apr 2010 10:20 PM PDT

Dear Annie:

I have been dating an older married man who works at my office. My problem is, he has told me he will leave his wife, but he hasn't yet. When I don't see him on a night he is supposed to come over, I get angry. He later apologizes, and I forgive him. I feel like I have wasted these past two years, but I keep coming back for more. Should I give up?

- P.H.

Dear P.H.:

Wake up, honey. He's not planning to leave his wife for you. He has a sweet deal on the side, and you put up with it. Yes, you have wasted two years. Please don't waste any more. He will make all kinds of promises when you tell him you are leaving, but gather your strength and don't believe a word. We don't want you writing us in another five years, asking the same question.

Dear Annie:

I am a carpenter's apprentice. "Joe, my brother-in-law," called and asked for help with some repairs on his home so that he could receive family and friends after his second wife died last year. I agreed, for a fee, but didn't specify the price. I told him I'd leave that up to him. The repairs were extensive.

Knowing that this is my livelihood and I am currently out of work, I expected to hear from Joe when I finished. I gave him a two-month grace period before I mentioned the money. He responded as if I were being disrespectful of the dead. He yelled at me and hung up the phone. Now I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. Do I sue him for

the repairs or let it go?

- Sick and Tired in Connecticut

Dear Connecticut:

Would you rather have the money or the relationship? You are not going to get both. Since you never specified a price, he apparently thought you had done those repairs out of the kindness of your heart. We hope he will eventually agree to give you something for your hard work, but the only way to maintain the friendship is to chalk this one up to experience.

Please e-mail your questions to anniesmailbox@comcast.net, or write to: Annie's Mailbox, c/o Creators Syndicate, 5777 W. Century Blvd., Suite 700, Los Angeles, CA 90045.

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Princesses in the Making - Daily Beast

Posted: 06 Apr 2010 08:54 PM PDT

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Prince William's girlfriend Kate Middleton may be a commoner, but her sense of style resembles Princess Diana's, at times astonishingly so. VIEW OUR GALLERY.

When Prince William first started dating Kate Middleton in 2003, she was a slim, pretty commoner with a girlish look—sweet and cute perhaps, but hardly fit for a queen. How much has changed since those early days at the University of St. Andrews. The 28-year-old Middleton now sports a distinctly royal sense of style, and soon enough, it looks like she'll get a title to match.

Click Image to View Our Gallery of Diana and Kate Middleton

AP Photo; INFGoff.com

By all accounts a world-class shopper, Middleton has amassed a regal wardrobe in the past few years. In 2006, the Daily Mail reported that her biggest style influence was her mother, Carole. But, sartorially at least, she also bears a striking resemblance to another young woman who married into the Windsor clan: William's glamorous mother, Princess Diana.

Like Diana, Middleton has mastered such staples of British dress as the poufy hat, the equestrian look, and the conservative summer polka dot jumper. VIEW OUR GALLERY of her royal style.

Plus: Check out more of the latest entertainment, fashion, and culture coverage on Sexy Beast—photos, videos, features, and Tweets.

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The Untold Teen Dating Violence Story. - KCBA

Posted: 06 Apr 2010 06:02 PM PDT

WATSONVILLE, Calif.- The 18 year old accused of shooting his girlfriend in the head in Watsonville will make his first court appearance Wednesday.

Jose Antonio Rodriguez will be charged with attempted murder. Police say Rodriguez shot his 16 year old girlfriend. Officers say Rodriguez was remorseful and turned himself in when police arrived. Central Coast News learned that conselors say this type of violence is becoming too common.

Statistically, 1 in 4 teen girls will admit to being abused by their boyfriends, and crisis counselors say the numbers for teen relationship violence is just on the rise.

"He was so sweet at the beginning, gave me flowers...but as the months passed it changed to I don't like how you look, how you're dressing," said youth advocate Ana Lydia Rosales as she recounts one of the recent stories a teen girl told her about being abused by her boyfriend, "The name calling that verbal abuse, you're too fat, I don't like the way you look, so she became anorexic."

Rosales and Women's Crisis Support/Defensa de Mujeres says it's tragic, but not surprising to hear stories like 18 year old Jose Rodriguez shooting his 16 year old girlfriend in Watsonville; or a 17 year old girl kidnapped after leaving Alisal High in Salinas by her 20 year old boyfriend.

"They're already coming from an evironment that includes violence. Many of these kids grow up with that around that and thinking thats ok," said Defensa executive director Laura Segura.

Rosales says she's seen girls as young as 13 in abusive relationships and says it's a matter of breaking the generational and cultural traditions.

"One big thing is machismo, the man is the head of the house, what he says is done, and the woman has to be culturally submissive, they can't speak up whenever they get talked to, just take it," explains Rosales.

And she says the challenge is to stop the perception that violence is ok before the abusors start, "To them its so simple they think oh I'll just slap her and she'll be quiet, they aren't seeing the effects it has on her."

And before its too late for the abused, "Alot of them are threatened, the boyfriend may be saying if you leave me I'll kill you or I'll kill myself and it's a reality...it's something that we want to brush off and say no it doesn't happen but it's a reality," said Rosales.

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Why the South loves banana pudding - Raleigh News & Observer

Posted: 06 Apr 2010 10:56 PM PDT

Building the layers until the casserole is full, then covering it with a final layer of fluffy, white whipped topping.

The whole thing goes into the refrigerator to wait until supper, while the wafers soften into cakelike layers and the banana flavor tinges both pudding and cookies, melding into something that will be cool and sweet on a hot night.

Watching them, I absorb a little about dating and a little about listening, and a lot about taking time for both comfort and desserts.

Only in the South

Recently, I set out to explore banana pudding. I looked into instant puddings vs. homemade custards, into vanilla wafers vs. fancier fillers like pound cake or ladyfingers.

I tried meringue toppings, whipped toppings and simple sprinklings of crushed cookies.

I fell in love with the banana pudding at Savor Café on West Morehead Street in Charlotte, where Lori Pearson's vanilla wafers are homemade and the perfectly browned meringue is an impossibly smooth marshmallow creme.

Along the way, I wrestled with a mystery. Every source agrees that banana pudding is quintessentially Southern. It's so connected to this part of the world that if you join the Southern Foodways Alliance this year, you'll get a sticker declaring you a "Proud Citizen of the Banana Pudding Republic."

At Carolina barbecue restaurants, if dessert is offered at all, it is usually banana pudding. It can be made cheaply in big quantities and turned out in sheet pans or disposable aluminum trays at church potlucks.

But why is banana pudding Southern? Bananas are everywhere. In the U.S., they're ahead of apples and oranges as the most consumed fruit. Nabisco's Nilla Wafers are sold nationally, with the recipe on the box.

But banana pudding isn't everywhere. I took an informal poll, checking with food-writing colleagues in four Northern cities.

In Milwaukee, banana pudding doesn't show up at all, just banana cream pie. I had to explain the difference to my source there. In Minneapolis and Pittsburgh, food editors had seen it only in African-American-owned restaurants.

It is widespread in Chicago, where many Southern black families moved in search of work during the Depression. But it is still strongly connected to family events, particularly potlucks.

Tracing it back

One piece of the puzzle is the bananas. Starting in the late 1800s, they were imported through Southern ports, particularly New Orleans. Before the late 1960s, when Standard Fruit moved to Gulfport, Miss., so many bananas came ashore in New Orleans that watching the unloading became a tourist attraction.

Author Joe Dabney offers another Southern connection in his 1998 book "Smokehouse Ham, Spoon Bread and Scuppernong Wine." Starting in 1880, bananas shipped from New Orleans by the Illinois Central Railroad were stored in Fulton, Ky., before they were dispersed across the country.

The town used to celebrate its role as "banana capital of the world" with a yearly banana pudding festival, a tradition that continued into the 1990s.

Stephen Criswell teaches folklore and English composition at the University of South Carolina Lancaster. A native of Gaston County, he likes to track the origins of things like fish camps and pimento-cheese burgers.

He wrote the puddings entry for the "Foodways" edition of "The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture." He got the assignment after he and editor John T. Edge went to see Southern Culture on the Skids and heard their song "Banana Puddin'."

"I married my wife partly based on her ability to make banana pudding," Criswell says. "A good Southern boy, I had to marry somebody who could cook like my mother."

Criswell couldn't say why banana pudding mostly stayed here. But he had theories on why it started here. He noted the strong resemblance between banana pudding and English puddings, which were generally anything that combined soft cake and custard.

"Technically, it's not a pudding, it's a trifle," Criswell says. "And it's sweet. There's that Southern fondness for excessive sweetness."

The South has always had strong Anglo-Celtic ties that turn up in the origins of recipes - particularly desserts that don't call for long baking times in the sultry heat.

As easy as you want

Criswell also noted how easy it is to make banana pudding if you take shortcuts. You can fall back on instant pudding and whipped topping instead of custard and meringue. And mostly, people won't complain.

But as I tested recipes, I noticed how my movements were so much like my mother's on that long-ago Sunday afternoon.

Placing vanilla wafers in a pattern, slicing and arranging banana circles just so, I wondered whether maybe that's why banana pudding stayed so much at home here. You can put it together in the morning, before you get too busy. It doesn't take a lot of fuss.

And in the evening, you have something cool and sweet that almost everybody likes.

Maybe that's explanation enough.

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