Hi Cathy, please let me add my welcome too! We really are mostly a good, and helpful, group although admittedly we have a "lunatic fringe". I try to ignore them!!
About your posts disappearing, are you sure they've been pulled? When you come back to a thread you've visited before, whether or not you posted on it, all the posts you've read are hidden so that you only see the new ones since your last visit. The first post of a thread is always shown, plus the last one you read. There's an option to see them all again - just click on the "1" beside the word Previous under the last post.
Hope that helps! Glenda