I'm glad to here from you Florence. You have such an important place here. We all miss you. At least now you know what is wrong with your hip and have a prognosis. You will be up and about by spring though I know it will take sometime for you to be 100%. And the same for your daughter, it will take time. In my opinion her husband didn't leave soon enough. I'm hoping that with your help she may find the same comfort and inspiration in growing things that I have found in difficult times. I believe that as important as a love is he does not complete your life. You find that completeness in yourself and then share it with someone who is worthy. My very best wishes to you and all your family.

I used a combination of techniques to FINALLY get our curtains to glide easily. Like you, i t was driving me nuts to close and open the curtains every day. We bought a house with blackout curtains that covered a triple sliding glass door—total 12 feet long. There was also a 3 section window that was 11 feet long. The curtains have wide grommets and the curtain rod was 1.5 inches in diameter. We have to close the curtains every night as it is VERY bright and sunny as early as 5 AM in the summer. I tried several different suggestions I found online and finally arrived at a combination of a homemade narrow and longer single rod along with the rolling shower curtain hooks in bronze I found on amazon. I made the new longer and more narrow metal pole without telescoping sections out of half inch metal electrical conduit—about $7 for 10’ at Home Depot. I needed two rods at 12’6” and 11’6”, but could only find 10 foot sections at our local home depot, so I bought three 10 foot sections and a pipe cutter, and pipe connectors to make longer rods. I cut one pole into the two shorter sections I needed to add to the 10 foot section of each rod. I had a couple of pieces of wooden dowels I used duct tape sticky side out and put inside the two sections and the connector so the rod wouldn’t sag at the connection point. I then spray painted both rods with some bronze/brown paint—it took a whole can for the two rods—and I actually went over a light coat of black spray paint I had to get more coverage. I had tried the grommet curtains on the just the more narrow single rod, but it was still sticking a little. So I ordered the rolling shower curtain hooks from Amazon in bronze attaching them to the grommets and then the rings to the rod. IT WORKS GREAT—FINALLY! I still have to figure out the end finials, but can use the curtains for now with ease. Here is the list of things I used for the two 12 foot rods—most at Home depot except for shower curtain rings 1. 3 10’ sections of ½ inch metal electrical conduit—about $7 each 2. a pipe cutter about $18 3. conduit connectors ($2.50 for 5, but I only needed 2) 4. Spray paint (about $8 a can 5. dowel and duct tape—I had some scraps 6. Shower curtain rings with rollers—I got bronze in sets of 12 ($7 each):

I suggest speaking to a conservator who specializes in photographs. They may be able to recommend a method or product to fix the slides. If the slides can not be fixed, you can scan them and then fix the scans with photo editing software. I know it will not save the slides, but at least you will have the photos. And whatever you do, get them scanned before you or anyone else starts trying to clean them. Which brings me to the scanning: If you have a lot of photos that need to be scanned, it may be more cost effective for you to buy a scanner and do it yourself. You can get a very good scanner relatively cheaply and they are easy to use. You can get free photo editing software (Gimp) that has all the necessary features you need in order to fix the inevitable colour shifts and scratches in the photos, or if money is not an issue, you can get Photoshop or similar software.

I use PSP7 to fix issues with photos.