Dear Ann,
To the gal that said "adopting as a single woman is so expensive"...I say "No way!" Perhaps if you want a private adoption with a newborn, but I am the proud single mother, and always have been, of four siblings. I started the process as a single person with no children, and am still currently single. I started with my son, and when, 10 months later, all three of his sisters were removed from the home, I then started the process of fostering them to adopt. It did take awhile because parental rights had to be terminated, but there are thousands of children who are available NOW for adoption. I have considered adopting more as well. Please tell her that if she's willing to open her heart to an "older" child ("older" can mean as young as two years old!) then the possibilities are endless. My kids did go through some hard times, but there are no guarantees even your biological children will have no problems, but they are now well adjusted and happy to be together. We are as family as family can get...and I can't imagine not having my babies!
Sign me...Single but a Mom many times over!

I don't know if the "new English" - educated people using sentence that contain: I shudda went is a factor of their not having the kind of elementary school teachers who made me want to speak as they did - correctly - or the lack of desire to improve and being let through high school and college without improving. Or, maybe it's the texting phenomenon or the email scourge or the posting scourge - where I suspect people go out of their way to spell incorrectly and use poor grammar. Whatever the problem, it grates on my ear (and eye).
I use a spell checker on this site (and all others) and have downloaded a definition checker from www.dictionary.com and even then sometimes find myself in a quandary about how to express myself correctly. At least I try. When my spell checker told me I'd misspelled quandary, I used the alt-click function of www.dictionary.com to make sure. I had. Learn something new every day.

HOW DO I ASK ANN A QUESTION?

To Cathy Lost: You can't write to her, my dear. Eppie Lederer, the author of the Ann Landers column, died in June 2002. These columns are all reruns. Informative, helpful, and timeless, but for specific help with your own problem, you must try one of the other advice columnists. To do that, look on the upper right side of this page under the calendar and click on "Write the author."

My ex fiancee just had a baby with one of the women he cheated on me with. (This was the second girl he knocked up....one while we were still together....I had no idea. :(...) Right before we broke up he told me he had no intention of having kids, which was right around the time I was going to break up with him, but he beat me to it. I know I'm better off, but I'm sad too as I feel that should have been OUR kid......I feel some of your pain. :(