If you had measured a JD at Home Depot, don't know if they sell the same model, you'd likely have seen the same poor interface you got a Sears. That's part of why buying from a dealer cost more, you get better/knowledgeable interfaces. In my case I don't want any help or home repair, albeit I'd not object to a warranty repair, never had one on 40+ years of yard maintenance,the last 20 with over 3 acres of mowing, plus all the other stuff... I am about 95% Sears/Craftsman, and that included my wood shop and auto tools too. While I was disappointed in Sears dropping its extensive catalog business (guess that's been more than 20 years, some of the young types on this forum didn't have any experience with that), and was again disappointed when K-Mart (of all the companies) bought Sears. My last tractor purchase was a DYT4000 in 2005, and while it has a much more flexible frame than my still in use 1993 GT6000, it is a great lawn mower. About to replace my 20 year old Sears self propelled lawn mower with a Walmart Yardman with a Honda GVC160 engine, so that'll be a break with Sears on may years of using their lawn mowers. Sears, like all other business, have to win customers every day, but I am a lost when I read complaints about Sears in the Past...I've been and continue to be happy with their products, and couldn't care less if the salesman knows anything beyond filling out the purchase order.

Agreed the understory looks good in PA for the most part. What makes no sense to me is why the salt spray damage is SO MUCH worse in that stretch of PA than anywhere else? Could it be the method the PA DOT applies the salt? There was some frost damage in OH for sure...There have been two freeze events this May there, interspersed between an otherwise quite warm May. There were a few singed leaves on my dad's Japanese Maple that were probably due to frost, but the shoots themselves were intact and few leaves had more than a little damage. I saw some oaks with "crinkly" looking older leaves that might have been frosted. The only major frost damage I could see conclusively were on the Ailanthus trees that sprout up everywhere...a clump of them at a low site near my father's house were completely zapped. Not that anyone would care if some Ailanthus were killed. The cornfields looked fine even 2 days after the freeze on May 25. Things like tomatoes and peppers, etc were toast in much of the Akron area though.

also remember that MOST of the people who post here are the ones who are having problems. People who don't have problems, don't mention it. I have almost never had a neighbor who was inconsiderate. Once, I think, and once I got a change to exchange more than 2 sentences with him, things were easier for me. So there are pleasant neighbors in apartments. I think the attitude you outlined is a sensible one. I hear my neighbors walk above me now and then, and I've heard the laughter from their parties, or the music from their instruments or their stereo. Never so loud that I can't ignore it. When I hear their nosies, it is first filtered through the basic fact that *I wish them well and like them*. This makes it easy to say, "Oh, Lee's having a party, how nice for her" instead of "what are they doing up there, i wish they'd shut up." There's an unspoken deal I make w/ my neighbors--I refuse to *notice*. I hear, I just don't remember. I think all NYers make this adjustment. Someone can bump into me on the subway, apologize, and get a "what?" in return--I paid so little attention that I don't even REMEMBER that they jostled me. Ditto w/ the ordinary noises my neighbors make. The less I dwell on it in my OWN mind, the less of an impact it has.

Pseudo-as far as your OP, you said: "How come dad's are blasted when they have more children ... But when mom's have second families they do not get blasted." This has been my experience with DH and BM. I think I've talked about this on here before, but I can't remember. A little background...DH had a son when he met BM. His son was about 6 or 7 when he met BM. She played the loving SM until right after the wedding (pretty evident in pictures I've seen). DH's son was 12 when they got married. BM got pregnant right after they got married. As soon as she got pregnant, she 'turned' on DH's son. She started arguing about his visitations, grilling DH about conversations with the other mom, refusing to spend time with the son when he visited, made plans when DH was supposed to visit his son, and so on. After about a year of the constant harassment by BM, DH quit visitations, after 10+ years. According to DH, BM wanted her and "their" daughter to be his only family. I'm not saying DH is totally blameless here, but I can understand the constant pressure and resistance he was facing (especially with what he's going through now). Fast-forward a few years. When I met DH, he had been divorced for over 2 years, SD was 7, BM had been remarried for 7 months and was pregnant by her husband. No one questioned any part of it. It was all as if BM had the RIGHT to be pregnant because SF didn't have any kids. As a matter of fact, everyone at ball games and SD's school (except DH) was all excited and doting all over her. No one knew the backstory that BM had left DH and taken SD to move in with the "future" SF and then brought the future SF back to try to kick DH out of their house. That was 7+ years ago, when I was 23. I was still planning on having more children at that time. I never imagined it would be 7 more years before I would get re-married. Now, I don't know if we will ever have anymore kids. Here are my reasons: 1) DH's son will be 25 this year 2) DH has two grandkids now; an almost 2 year-old and a 3 month-old 3) SD will be 15 this year 4) DS just turned 11 5) SD has moved away and DH's relationship with her seems to be crumbling away 6) DH is just now getting back on regular-speaking terms with his son Somehow I just don't see how adding a baby to this mix will help anything. As a matter of fact, I feel like BM WANTS us to have a baby because she thinks that if DH and I have a baby together, he will just forget about SD (like she thinks he did with his son) and then she and her husband can have SD all to herself. I told this to DH once and he said to me "for that to be true, she would have to assume you would act just like she did". I said "BINGO! She's a narcissist! She thinks EVERYONE acts/reacts as she would! That's the very definition of the disorder!" I think that, while it was okay for her to do the things she's done, that if we were to do the same, she would further poision SD with stuff like "well, he has another family now" and blah, blah, blah. Right now, she doesn't have an excuse (that we know of) for keeping SD away. She keeps her distracted. But if we were to have a baby, I'm sure she would use that to her advantage.