Hi, Not sure what privet you are looking at, but we have an 80' hedge row of them that flower & have berries. Our particular species does not drop its berries. Flowers do drop though. Smell - only for a very short time is there a slight musty smell but only when you are standing right near them can we smell them. Our row we wanted to grow as high and thick as possible. After 7 years they are about 13 feet tall and hardy. I love them as they serve their purpose well.

IMO, your father is playing both of you like a fiddle. As long as each of you are complaining about the other one, all focus is off of him. Brilliant! Golddust.. I agree. I've started replying 3 times and deleted all of them. I think there's more to the story & doubt it's just the girlfriend. Reading her letter, she probably thinks she's helping her man. Danielle, the best advice I can give you is to try to understand where she is coming from; but don't let her walk all over you. This is a very touchy situation; you know what your dad was like when you were growing up & she came into the picture after he was out of his "unhappy" marriage. While he's probably told her his side; she's never going to know what really happened because she wasn't there and IMO.. she needs to respect your feelings & how hurt you were by him but try to respect her for trying to be there for your dad now. I have issues with my step son. He likes to go back to his father & say that I said this or I said that. When my hubby fell off of his truck I sent him an email because he stopped speaking to my hub & wouldn't you know it, he twisted my email around trying to start a fight between my hub & I. Thankfully my hub knew about the email before I sent it; it was a rude awakening to my hub of just what his son would do to get me out of the picture. This is all in SS's head, not mine because I can be grown up about it & smile like nothing ever happened but he can't. The best advice I can give you is to try to have a relationship with your dad without the GF around every time. You still need father/daughter time. I encourage hub to call his son or go golfing with him because even though we can't see eye to eye, it's still his son. My hub does not talk about me when they are together & if the kid starts, he says it's between you 2 and not me. SS's mother was an alcoholic - probably why he hates me so much because we have the life he never had growing up & his father has been raising my 2 kids for the last 10 years.. so he's bitter; but he's also an adult man in his 30's & a divorced father. I don't feel that the GF was trying to place "blame" on any of the kids for the marriage/drinking problems, I read it as her just stating why he was drinking. My dad stayed in a bad marriage because "It was cheaper to keep her" & we kids suffered with the fighting. Dad was not around most times, he chose to work as much as he could.

Well slept on the couch last night ( what a joy) after yet another arguement about S.D. with my wife. This last week has been filled with the same crap different day. So heres the scenerio. My wife and I work differing shifts most of the time, so I end up spending most of the time with my S.d. After school and evenings, my wife works mainly 4 - midnight shifts. Last week was more of just the same, my s.d talking to me anyway she feels like it ( totally no respect ) and a week of mainly all out battles between us. Yesterday, i argued with her for 4 hours trying to get her to clean her room, when i can't see the floor and there are dirty dishes in there, its time for her to clean it, finally i just gave up told her to do whatever she wants, live like a pig, i'm beyond caring, and i stopped talking to her for the day. Now over the week she had lost her computer time, phone time and tv time for lying to us about her school homework ( telling us it was all done, after parent teacher confrence we found out she had not been doing any of it ) she ended up grounded. Anyways, wife comes home, s.d comes out of room, talking as sweet as ever, Oh hi daddy blah blah blah, i just said uh huh. after an hour, i went in the computer room, there my wife on her computer and my s.d on my computer. I said um excuse me your not allowed on the computer and after a day like we had, dont' expect to be on there for a long time. Well that was a mistake, wife turns around says she's doing her homework, and I just laughed, shook my head and walked out. next thing i know my wife is yelling at me cause i'm not allowing s.d. to do her homework, and i told her what kind of day we had and it didn't matter. I told her once again that she has NO idea wht i put up with on a daily basis, my son 16 years old pipes up, ummm ( wifes name ) she talks to dad with totally no respect when your not here, wife tells son to shut up that he treats s.d with no respect either, to which i replied, well when she learns to talk to people with respect, maybe she'd get some back. Suddenly wife yells she has had enough and her and the s.d are leaving ( moving out ) So i decided to sleep on the couch. So now what??? Been thinking about it most of the night, personally i think it might be a relief to all concerend it it happened. Much as I love my wife, and I know she loves me, we can't continue like this. I know i will never accept anyone talking to me like my s.d does, and if my son was talking to my wife that way, well lets just say son would be very bored for the next two months. My wife says, well your the adult, my s.d says you can't do anything to me cause mom will just move out. HELPPPPPPPPPPPP. I'm so tired of being stressed, i think everyone is, is there any solutuiont o this, or am I just wasting my time in something that is never going to change.

Rebunky - Thank you for that. Very kind of you to take the time. Your design is very good for where you placed everything. We tried variations of this design but could not fit a regular size fridge in that space. It covers the window, and a counter depth is not in the budget, unfortunately. Plus that jog is 48" wide and what do you do with the remaining space? There's too little to do much but too much to waste. The main thing that would bother me, however, is we would lose so much counter space by not not utilizing the north wall. One thing I've learned in living with a small kitchen is that counter space is the highest priority. It trumps everything. We will mitigate the closed in feeling you mentioned at the U end of the kitchen by use of shelves and wall hangers. This is why few of my plans include uppers. Both of us are non-traditional thinkers and will be fine with shelving replacing a lot of the uppers, and that will open up the kitchen a lot, although it is a trade-off with a more cluttered, or should I say "industrial" look? We have some shelving now and dust is not a problem (at least when I'm not remodeling :), plus we will have pretty good air filtering when the HVAC system is finished and no carpeting in the house (yet another reason to keep the kitchen closed off as it would be extremely noisy with no carpets). As bmorepanic said above, you have to pick your poison. I'm an amateur too. No need to apologize. This is the first kitchen I've ever designed with actual skin in the game. Plus, I'm a guy and that makes me extra ignorant when it comes to kitchens :) All the advice I get here is extremely helpful. I've learned so much by doing just what you did, jumping in and trying something.