I enjoyed reading it. Thanks! You forgot the groundhog day cactus, though...

Well I had seen ads in the back of magazines ad. table pads so I got mine from 800/737-3150 Berger's table Pad Factory out of Indianapolis,IN..Anyway they also have a website and when I placed my order either the print ad or internet site was cheaper and when I mentioned it, they gave me the cheaper price. Make sure you get the upgrade to the magnetic lock that joins the two halves and leaves together so they don't slip around. Also, at the time if you ordered a second pad for a buffet etc. you could get that for $40 extra so I did. They will send you a sample kit with colors etc and they have some manuf table bases in their data bases or just give them the measurements. I also opted to get the bags that are lined on the inside to put the leaves into and I'm glad I did that too. Very nice company to work with. I'm sure if you google them you can find them. Good luck and that sure gave me peace of mind when I got my new dining room table 2 yrs ago and I'm so glad I did,,don't have to worry about kids or husband now.

Ladyvixen, we were in our 30's in 1985 when we bought our 1898 house. Looking back, we were very young. Neither my husband nor I had any skills or knowledge at all about how to work on houses. All we knew was that our house was nearly intact, was very inexpensive, and that we loved it. I had always wanted an old house, and had been buying things such as light fixtures, hardware, etc., for years before we bought the house. We bought the house "as is". Fortunately we were both employed and had no children. We had to hire almost everything done, and it needed a lot of work. We did not take a vacation for years. Then came a time of around a year or two that my husband was either unemployed or underemployed. During that time, the house just didn't get worked on. We didn't care that we lived in an unfinished house; in fact, I thought it was beautiful from day one. We have a corner in the dining room where all the little balls the cats play with end up, but you don't notice the slope otherwise. It has taken us over 25 years, and we are almost finished, but still have some work to do. We should have it finished by now, but are in our 60's now and do like to take a vacation now and then. Also we sometimes didn't have work done even when we had the money, because we were tired of the mess of having things torn up. We lived with a practically non-existent kitchen until about 2004. I said all along that this house was my dream house. People would look at me funny, but it was and still is my dream house. Don't let others talk you out of your dream. Make the decision based on what you want and what you think you can handle. If you think you can live with an unfinished house for years, go for it. If you have to have everything finished and perfect, you shouldn't buy an old house. I have the ablility to not even see the unfinished stuff until we get ready to do something about it. I meant this to be an encouragement to you, but reading back on it, maybe this will scare you because it has taken us so long. Don't let that scare you--you can do it faster than we did! I will try to attach some pictures if I can.

"Blood ties have nothing to do with it." My point exactly (see my previous post "Attachments"). I have two male cousins who divorced their first wives. I love my cousins but also cared deeply for the women to whom they were married. I still consider them family. They are welcome in my home. I visit them when I am back there. My relationship to them, my consideration of them as "family" does not alter the fact that they are no longer "family" to their ex-spouses. My one cousin refused to speak to his mother (my aunt) for an extended period of time because, like Kathline's X-MIL, she refused to renounce his XW. Her attitude was "You divorced her. I didn't." Eventually, my cousin got over himself and reconciled with his mom. In my post on another thread, I wrote that mothers and their children are and always will be family to one another; that fathers and their children will always be family to one another. In writing this, I was simply acknowledging a biological bond; in writing that XWs & XHs are no longer family to each other, I was referring to a "legal" attachment. (For those of you who did not read that earlier thread of mine, I suggested we can become attached/bonded to others on as many as seven different levels: emotional, spiritual, legal, financial, sexual, geographical, and biological/parental. We do not necessarily become attached to others on all 7 dimensions and the intensity of the attachment may be differ, also). I believe it was KKNY who responded to the post with something along the lines of "when ex-spouses share children, there will always be a relationship between them. I agree. And I would hope for the sake of any shared children, the relationship would be cooperative and cordial. It just strikes me as ironic (and somewhat contradictory) that some would deny the validity of the loving attachments that can and do exist between Stepparents and their stepchildren because of the absence of a biological bond but will vehemently insist that the bonds they have to the biological relatives of their former spouses remain valid and deserving of respect and recognition. Because, after all, "blood ties have nothing to do with it." I agree.