I feel better today,but I also have dialysis today sooooooo its never ending it seems.It seems theres soo many here with health problems. Thank you for thinking of me. I amnot on the list yet.But if a family member or someone else were to donate a kidney I could have transplant now.No one in Immediate family can donate.So I wait.The dr said if no family member donates its a 3-4 year wait for a kidney,just not sure I can wait 3-4 years,Im having anxiety attacks at dialysis now.I lose my breathe and they need to put oxygen on.Its tough.Ive been there now it will be 9 mo.

valzone5 - LMAO!! I do believe they are meant to place hand towels in. :) That lovely piece of "furniture" has since left our home...well actually it sits in my garage begging to be burned. walkin yesindeed - I will gladly send you a big section framed once i get it pulled down! :)

In a way, yes, in other ways, about the same. Financially, about the same. I have a happy marriage with a great DH and we've had quite a few fun adventures together. My parents had a very happy marriage, albeit with less adventure, just way too short. They never had a mortgage on their home and always bough cars with cash. Dad was what I would call a "gentleman farmer" in the sense that he ran the farm and other ancillary operations from an office and Mom, with a fine college education, was a stay at home Mom until Dad died far too young, at 52, leaving Mom a widow at 44. While Mom would have preferred graduate school, instead she stepped in and ran the farm and excelled. She was the first woman on a number of agriculturally related boards and not just local small time ones either. While she enjoyed the challenge, especially in a male dominated world, and loved our small farming town, I also think she was trapped by the circumstances. Her plan was for my brother to take over the farm completely after 8-10 years at which time she planned on going back to graduate school, but my brother never got around to taking over the operations (I don't know any other way to put it, he's smart and knows the land well and will work hard on something that interests him, but he never developed the stick-to-it day to day work ethic). While this was going on, I went to law school and then got my LLM. Mom ran the farm until her seventies, but by that time we rented out all our land. Unfortunately about 8 years ago the farm started going down hill financially, most income was going to debt service, and at the same time Mom was developing AMD. Our banker and accountant realized that that something needed to be done to save the farm and came to me and suggested that we move to professional management. Mom saw that this was the right move, but my brother was resistant although eventually went along with it without a family fallout. That was a tense time, but he liked the bank management/manager and was not cut out of some control especially with marketing the crops, which is his forte,and now agrees that it was a good decision, actually I think it was a relief. We also sold off about 30% of the land, which was enough to retire all debt and pay the capital gains (basis was from the 1930s, so ridiculously low), with a bit to spare. The farm, though smaller, is doing very well, throwing off nice income to the three of us, while retaining a contingency fund, so all is well, and it's still a nice legacy even after selling a bit of the land, it is now a bit over 5000 acres total, cropland and timber. DH and I are both professionals and have had fairly successful careers. I am a lawyer, a partner in a great law firm, and DH is a dentist, who sold his practice when we recently moved. We are both scaling back. I am staying with my firm, working remotely, with regular trips back to the office for a couple of weeks every few months as the need arises. DH lucked into a two day a week job as an independent contractor with a good dental practice in our new location. We will probably continue to work along these lines for another 2-4 years. We have a wonderful, responsible daughter and son-in-law and a precious grandson. I think we will be better off than Mom in our later years, not so much financially because she is in great shape (she also had some money of her own and was a good investor), but because we planned ahead. She had planned to stay in her large house in the small town for the rest of her life. However that became impossible for her to manage. She moved to independent living in the city where I worked last year and now she moved to Colorado with us, living at a wonderful independent living center less than 5 minutes from us and I can go see her everyday. She seems content and loves having me so nearby, but it is hard to move to a new state and town at 86. We built our retirement house, actually a duplex, at 62 with (for) our DD and SIL, near all essential services and making it easy to maintain. As we age it will be easy for our DD to check on us as necessary, just pop over for five minutes and then go back to her regularly scheduled life. But, for now, DD also has a built in babysitter much of the time. If at anytime as we age we need more help than I am willing to ask from our DD, we can easily hire a caregiver for far less than Mom's place costs on a monthly basis and still stay at home (at least if our health is as good as Mom's is right now).

I agree that 54” for a thoroughfare seems about right. I don’t believe that the real issue is the width of that aisle, but how far the points of your kitchen triangle are from each other. By estimating from your pictures, your refrigerator is 9’8” from the range. NKBA recommends that no major appliances are more than 9 feet apart, which is why the extra 6” seems to be critical. The sum of the distance between your work centers is about 24’6”, less than the recommended 26’. Given that your kitchen is not that large, it points to the inefficiency of the kitchen. I do think you did a great job with the selection of the finishes. A really nice looking kitchen.