Maddie, My tractor mower has headlights. Mine is an old one I bought for $300 - mows great, has four speeds, plus revearse, and has headlights. :) I tend to get cracked heals, too, and cracked fingers and they are painful. I use a dremel to sand off the thick calluses and then I apply bag balm. At night, I put socks on afterward when are very cracked & sore. Works great, gets rid of the stains and helps them heal. Bag balm has a natural anti-biotic in it that helps heal cuts and sores, too. Great for cat scratches. When I was a Vet-tech years back, I used it on the animals feet or sores or when they bit or scratched me. I found that it helped prevent my feet from cracking, because of the emolients in it. Put the bag balm, rub in well, then don your latex gloves or other gloves. In winter, I put on latec gloves then my winter gloves to keep my hands dry and warm. I love to "play in the dirt", go barefoot and garden till I am grubby, but I can't stand to be dirty and wet afterwards, for some reason. I am constantly rinsing off my feet and hands with the garden hose, which of course, tends to make my feet dry out and crack even more. The calluses get so thick that they crack and it really hurts. It also cripples me if I don't keep them sanded off with the dremel. I don't like that. But wearing shoes causes my ankles to swell, so it is either men's sandles, Flip-flops (we used to call them thongs), of I go barefooted. I do have a pair of men's Adidas slides, but they are size 12 - just twice my shoes size, but I wear them. I look like a Hobbit in those! I am a dust magnet and always have things caught in my hair - twigs, bits of grit, flowers, leaves, bugs. Believe me, I am not a "priss", but I like to look nice when I go somewhere. Once a week I work my feet over really well. I cannot go to bed with dirty, craggy feet. Grosses me out! I also paint my nails from time to time. (doesn't last too long, but I like it and it makes me feel pretty). Gotta go put up my chickens. It is thundering and about to storm. Zooks! Love this thread! Keep it going! ~ SweetAnnie4u

this is from the GardenWeb terms of service. Basically if you upload to their servers your content is fair game. "By submitting content, which shall include your member name, to any "public area" of the GardenWeb Network, including, but not limited to, the forums and your personal website, exchange page and journal, you grant iVillage a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive right (including any moral rights) and license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, sublicense, assign, derive revenue or other remuneration from, communicate to the public, perform and display the content (in whole or in part) worldwide and/or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed, for the full term of any Rights that may exist in such content. If you are not the creator of such content, you also warrant that the holder of any Rights, including moral rights in such content, has completely and effectively waived all such rights and validly and irrevocably granted to you the right to grant the license stated above. You also permit any visitor or member to access, display, view, store and reproduce such content solely for personal, noncommercial use" from photobuckets TOS "When you make your Content public, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to copy, distribute, stream, post publicly display (e.g. post it elsewhere), reproduce and create derivative works from it (meaning things based on it), anywhere, whether in print or any kind of electronic version that exists now or is later developed, for any purpose, including a commercial purpose." Most other website that allow uploading of content have the same TOS. Now if you own the Server and the website then you have a bit more "rights" When i share a photo I realize that now it is public and could be taken and used elsewhere. That is why I would suggest everyone watermark you photos. mike

Several are rather revolting, but I think the dirty mug is funny and I could be tempted to do the teeth ice cubes for a party. It reminds me of the time a nursing home resident wandered here, and I served her a cup of tea while waiting for a staff member to come pick her up. When she finished her tea she handed back the cup to me.....with her teeth in it. :-)

Dear all--thank you so much for these responses. I knew I could count on GWers for wisdom. This situation is ripe for overthinking, something I am much prone to anyway...it is really fascinating to me how these issues of home, personified in the kitchen, are really so deep and wide. I want to respond to each individually but everything seems to be intersecting--so this is for all of you--an I'd love to keep the conversation going-- first things first--jaeedwards, you are absolutely right, and one thing that slows me down is this guilt I feel that I sometimes lose sight of what really matters. It is hard to tease apart materialism from practicality from real need sometimes. But something you said really made a practical point to me--one of the main things I want IS a table!!! Right now we usually sit crammed around the island with our knees squished, and everyone leaves too soon because we're uncomfortable--so that is in my top three--because that IS where memories are made. The more practical I can be, the better. I am trying to say to myself, we are so blessed, this is a wonderful house, life is good, a few changes would make things a little easier, and sooner or later we will move because it's practical and life will continue to be good. As a friend of mine said to me recently, we have privileged problems. Pbris--yay--okay, I think I'm going to use that copper hood, darn it! Seriously, after reading what you said I am fairly certain that most of the changes we want to make are really just for us. That's why the giant bids stopped us short. I think this house is just about maxed out in terms of value, and spending $220K (yes, that's what the bids were!) makes no sense. So--Bmore and cooksnsews--we need to figure out what we would spend on ourselves. (This is where DH and I might have some problems--he is an ascetic Yankee and I am a hedonistic southerner, LOL) Actually, when I think about it, if I just painted the cabinets white I would be so much happier! Farmhouse--what you say makes a lot of sense--unfortunately the two bids were quite close. That's why I got so discouraged--I assumed the first one was just insane and the second would be more realistic. What I am thinking is we should do minor things, and make sure that nothing we do precludes something bigger later, if we decided to really stay. It is weird though when you suddenly start thinking about moving...your heart isn't in the work as much. Mamadada, you understand these crazy MA prices!! We are lucky in that our home has basically held its value (down a little from the crazy inflated values of a year or two ago, but still a lot more than we paid for it). About yards, I am actually a fan of small gardens...they are much less overwhelming and I can be sort of OCD and pluck every stray blade of grass :). But my ever-larger sons really want room for the pitchback and a basketball hoop... I did go to some open houses on Sunday. It was educational. One of them was this lovely Victorian but walking into it just made me tired...I could just feel things breaking as I stood there! I think our next house (if there is one) might be of a more recent vintage. That or already COMPLETELY overhauled (dreaming...). Thank you all again. This forum is wonderful.