I seriously doubt there is any danger or risk involved here, Spazzycat. Think about the difference in psychological profiles between a gardener who spends all their time caring for, loving and nuturing a garden vs. the criminal type who loves and nutures nothing. And think of the joy my letter brings to someone who does the thankless job of tilling, sweating, weeding and digging. A gardener's true reward is the pleasure others find in their creation. I am only too happy to encourage good gardeners when I see one. There is nothing to fear and everything to gain.

She's not going to change. Cut your losses ASAP, get her to move out, and then you can move on.

I had been programming in C for several years before I learned C++. I'm not sure whether the C was a help or a hindrance in learning C++. I had also taken a class that I think was called Data Structures and the professor required us to use object oriented programming for all of our assignments. He didn't care what language we used as long as we hadn't programmed in it before and as long as it was OO. Many of the C programmers in both of those classes had a lot of trouble grasping the OO concepts. In my opinion, your first goal should be to learn OO without worrying about a specific language, then apply it to C++ or java. Java is pretty similar to C++ but it enforces more of the OO and doesn't allow you to do unsafe things (like write to invalid memory locations). C is a function based language, and you can actually write a C++ program without using an OO features, but that kind of defeats the purpose. What compiler are you planning to use? There are a lot of good free compilers these days. What other languages did you consider and why did you decide on C++? The reason I'm asking is that I think there may be other languages that would be easier to use and there are some that probably have wizards to help you get up and running quickly.

daisy if I only knew lol! First I have to figure out how to deal with all of the mismatched moulding & baseboard transitioning from the office to the basement, & how to cover up the blocked doorway on one side of the bottom, & whether to do a niche on each side at the bottom & if so, how to make it happen, & I'm trying to figure out what I want to use for a stair rail, & how to execute the corner at the top of the stairs, & what color to paint the walls, & what kind of floor covering to put at the landing. & along the way, in the back of my mind, will be thoughts of what to do with the stairs themselves. Which, in all likelihood, will simply be sanded, patched & painted. Much as I would love new wood, I don't see that happening at this time. OK now I'm tired! I did start a thread some time ago with questions about the stairs, got a few good ideas & got started, but I got side tracked when I replaced the windows in the office & decided I needed to start there.