Chooks, I'd like to learn more about how your family eats for diabetes. My aunt is diabetic, took the nutrition class her doctor sent her to, and still doesn't seem to have a firm grasp on some of the information. If you can steer me towards the right research or books or whatever, I'd appreciate it.
Karen, OW! I'm glad your isn't seriously damaged, though it probably feels like it is. What an honor to be the first hen-peck victim your doctor has seen. 
Hawkeye, I'm so, so sorry about Seymore. I loved looking for her in your pictures, especially the ones where you didn't even know she was there until later. Please don't beat yourself up about it. I know it's hard; I blame myself for every animal I've ever had who died. I go over everything I ever did wrong ... please don't do that to yourself. Things happen. You gave her the best home and lots of love. 
My strawberry fiasco: I saw the pictures of gardens made from wood pallets online and thought it looked cool, especially for someone with limited space. I've wanted strawberries for years, but have no place to make a decent sized strawberry bed. I thought, hey, they make those strawberry pots so the strawberries can just hang over the edge, a pallet would work the same way. So we went to the newspaper building and got a free pallet. DH didn't want to shell out for landscaping fabric, so he found some old tarpaper in the garage and decided to use that to cover the back of the pallet. We happily buy a couple of 10-packs of strawberry roots for $5 a pack. We sift compost. We discover that the pallet is made of oak and the staples won't go in. We have to find scrap wood to put inside along the sides where there are cutouts. DH finds a bunch of U-shaped brads to nail on the tarpaper. The instructions say to fill the pallet while it's flat, let the plants root a couple of days, then stand it up where you want it. We can't do that -- I can't pick up my end of when it's filled and besides, the tarpaper will tear out. We prop it up against the deck and start filling. As you might guess, dirt is everywhere by the time we're done. We need two more 10-packs of strawberries to fill the slats and top (another $10). Watering causes more dirt to fall out. DH wonders if we'll get $20 worth of strawberries out of this and I'm quite sure we won't, even if the plants survive the winter and produce next year! There's a reason the pictures online show a pallet filled with about $100 worth of already-grown plants -- that's how you keep the dirt in.
I'm just hoping the tarpaper will last all season and enough dirt will stay in to keep some of the plants alive.