I could pick out endless scenes from my childhood and young adulthood I would love to go back and re-live and they're all burnt in my memory somewhere. Sometimes they're layered so deeply it takes a smell or the light hitting a certain way to bring them back......and when they bubble up to the surface, butterflies go off in my stomach and I get to taste them again in my mind. However, I think I'd rather talk about something I find for the most part missing in today's lives, and that's the delicious anticipation we don't have anymore. Christmas season didn't start until after Thanksgiving and that month to a child was endless. By that time the weather had turned and it was cold and dreary with the yellow blur of old electric lights and remnants of decor in most houses from the thirties. There were no artificial trees that anyone I know of had, so a Christmas tree didn't go up until right before the big day. The stores didn't have their seasonal merchandise out until the snows flew, either. Christmas shopping was a two week blur of excitement and gift wrapping usually happened the night before. If you had a phone, long distance was something saved for emergencies. You corresponded with friends and family by mail and even if the person to whom you wrote answered immediately, there was a two week hiatus before you got a return letter. I don't ever remember there being a carton of ice cream in our ice box, or a carbonated beverage when I was growing up. They were treats and you got them at an ice cream shop or a soda at the cinema. Speaking of cinemas they were one of the few places you could see a 'movie'. So a film was also a treat. I don't know of anyone personally who had an air conditioner in their homes, either. Summer was summer and nights were hot. Winter was winter and mornings were cold until my Mama would rise and stoke up the coal furnace and I miss the smell of wood and coal smoke on the air in winter. I never even heard of an answering machine until I was an adult, and nobody had heard of a cell phone either. So, if you were away from a phone, somehow you got along until a message got to you. LOL. I miss the privacy of being unreachable when I wish to be. And if you lived in a town, there was never a school so far away you couldn't walk to it or a corner grocery so far you couldn't walk to it either for emergency supplies like a quarter's worth of lunch meat and a loaf of bread. The only people who worked through the night or on weekends were emergency personnel, and everyone was home on a Sunday evening. You waited until early afternoon to see a television program if you were lucky enough to have a set and the test pattern came on again at eleven p.m. Everyone had slamming screen doors their parents told them not to slam, and front porches where you sat and watched the world go by. Not much of anything was instant.

Jeff I used to have that one, and still may have, it is a miniature form, it will never get big, are we on the same page. So don't hold your breadth waiting for it to get large.There is a small dwarf form with curled back leaves. I think mine may have croaked as well. Norma

Thanks for the suggestions. I took the handles off again and tightened down the cartridges a bit more, which seems to have helped. Is it possible to overtighten them? It didn't take much to loosen the old ones, so I initially didn't do much more than a half-turn or so past finger-tight. I was able to do at least that when I went back again. The leak seems to have stopped, so I'm thinking I was probably just a ninny. Thanks again!

I think the internet is changing, and GW has been promising to update the forums for a long, long time, but never has. As long as they have such old-fashioned forums, people will leave for the newer, fancier, easier to share places like FB. I personally like the old-style forums, but a lot of people want to evolve. Plus, the demographics on the sites are totally different. Facebook is mostly under 30 and GW is mostly over 50. The under-30's don't even know what a kitchen table is, or the significance of talking around the kitchen table. They're more into texting from Starbucks. I wonder what will happen to GW when it's main demographic dies off. I know that's morbid, but that's the way it is. If most of us are over 50, then eventually, health and life in general will take its toll. Plus, in today's world, a lot of people who were home all day and had time to post have had to go back to work and probably don't feel like posting afterwards. I know I don't post much because I'm just too tired to socialize after working all day. People come and go from forums. I've run a bunch of them back when I was a housewife and had more time. I really think they are like everything else in life, and change as people's lives change.