Hi rager, thanks for the reply. Here is a picture where I've circled the major area that i think was impacted from lack of water the circled area turned silvery gray from lack of water prior to turning brown. When i look closely in that area i don't see any green at all yet. I didn't mean to imply it was dead and never coming back, just that it shows no green at all currently. There are a bunch of other smaller areas that have been impacted by either dog pee or poop, or something else. Curious how I would determine dead vs. dormant, and curious how it would go dormant in the middle of summer, stress? Lack of XYZ? When sod was laid nothing was added, no lime, no fertilizer, no pre-emergent no nothin. I hadn't researched it and was trusting landscaper to do it right, i was wrong to have trusted him. Following his instructions i waited 4 weeks for first mow, and finally decided to call a lawn service company to take care of chems and fertilzer and any disease/issue that crops up. They said they needed to wait further because it was still too new to do anything to, and they explained to me what should have been done, and how some of it would have to wait till next year (crabgrass etc.). They said i could put some starter fertilizer on it which i did, but they said that would also cause broad leaf weeds to grow. They came out for the 1st time a month ago, sprayed for broad leaf weeds, not sure if fertilizer was applied, and told me to water more. I started looking into buying a smaller mower because of all the scalping that was occurring and the more i read the more i realized i need to do. This all lead to reel mower purchase and attempt to shorten grass mowing height but i see that i should just wait till next spring for that.

I think that if you are not satisfied with it, then you owe it to yourself to call and talk to him at very least...see what he is willing to do to make you happy with it...you can speak to him about it and be nice and chances are he will be willing to come back (as I believe he should) to try to "fix" it for you. I think that anything that you pay good money to have done, should look like it was done professionally and look right from the get go. If it looks otherwise, it could have been an honest error, but you should not have to pay for a sloppy job. I also think things like chips etc are just invitations for future problems and if you wait til it's a bigger problem, then you really wouldn't have a leg to stand on..(ie: normal wear and tear could be blamed). Call him now...certainly cant hurt.

Em, I'm sorry I am late getting back, but I'm very glad to hear that you've had no further contact from him. I hope he has gotten the message and moved on. I really think you need to let your dh know how very upset you have been over this and how it has really affected your well being. He probably saw it in a whole different light and never realized that you have been stressing about it in a big way. I think he needs to know exactly how you feel and how this other man has intruded in a manner that leaves you feeling extremely vulnerable. These days, especially, you have to be very cautious with anyone who continually makes inappropriate approaches without encouragement. Your dh isn't worried about you wanting to fool around, but that is completely beside the point. It isn't about YOU at all; it's the unknown of what is going on with someone who is playing mind games with you on your cell phone. That's scary and deserves support. My situation was entirely different but nevertheless gives me something of an understanding of how you must feel. Before the days of cell phones and caller ID, I began getting very frightening phone calls. It began as a "wrong number" call. The guy made some joking statements to which I responded jokingly as well and then we both hung up. But he called again, and again, and again. At first, it was light-hearted banter and I am sorry to say that I did not hang up immediately, but kind of enjoyed the chat. But it didn't stop and it got weirder. He made it clearer with every call that he knew exactly who I was. Gradually the tone shifted to a menacing one. I would walk in my house to hear the phone ringing and he would say, "Welcome home, Cheri! I'm going to get you soon," or something like that. There was always a threat to "get" me or something similar. I was petrified. If I didn't pick up the phone he would leave a message. If I shut off my answering machine, he would call and call and call. If I unplugged my phone, I felt so scared and vulnerable anyway, as it was obvious from the things he said that he knew when I left my house, came home, even where I went sometimes. He also knew how to play the game because I couldn't get anything done to stop him. The police refused to put the thing on my phone that would trace calls because he never made a specific threat to kill me (is that ludicrous????). The phone company recorded the calls but wouldn't trace them either for the same reason. They wouldn't change my number because they were recording the calls and even if I could have gotten them to change it, they were going to charge me a fortune to do so! Can you believe that? I was a single mother. My kids had to spend every other week with their dad, so most of these calls came when I was alone and most of them were at night. My ex was/is very capable of having orchestrated the whole thing and I suspect he may have been behind it, but I had absolutely no way to prove it. The voice was not his. It just stopped, finally, but after months of being terrorized, I had a very hard time getting over it. It seemed like an innocent thing at first, but it quickly escalated to something way out of my control. I was also a lot younger and had been pretty much...well, brutalized, I guess you could say, in my marriage, so I just didn't have the personal resources at that time to tackle such a situation. Predators sniff out the vulnerable, so the best thing to do if you can manage it is to not appear vulnerable! Sorry to say that I don't exactly know how that's done.

It might have more to do with your husband's, uh, neediness?, devotion?, obsession?, than with something being wrong with you. You dated in college, got engaged, *broke up*. One thought that occurs is that, since he "followed" you, you equated it with true love. so you got married. didn't work, so you *divorced*. but he was still around, & after all he was your child's father, so you re-married, & now you have another child. & now you're thinking about *divorce*. Maybe you're together now because he's persistent & you (like so many of us) find it hard to say no. Maybe you need some time alone, maybe some counselling alone, to see your own direction more clearly. I wish you the best.