I think you ran out of time. Spraying the RoundUp was your final mistake of the season. Given what you're saying, I would find a bag of 100% Kentucky bluegrass. Call around to hardware and feed stores until you find one. I would absolutely stay away from any mix of rye and KBG for the reason listed by kidhorn. Rye comes up in a week and looks like everything is hunky dory...so you back off on the watering right before the KBG was going to sprout. You end up with nothing but rye. If you really want rye, then put the KBG seed down first and in 2 weeks, put the rye down. That won't hurt a thing. Walking on seed that has not germinated is no problem. If you don't use compost, then don't use topsoil. Topsoil is a mistake 99% of the time. Compost is more of a user's choice. If you want to spend that money, go for it. You would get a much MUCH better bang for the buck by using alfalfa pellets (rabbit chow) instead. App rate is 10-20 pounds per 1,000 square feet for the first app. Stick with 20 pounds per for subsequent apps. I would use that and forget about starter fert. If you go ahead and seed now, roll the seed down to ensure it is in contact with the soil. Then do the 3x per day watering to sprout the seed...for the next month with KBG. You don't need all the KBG to sprout, because it will spread to fill in the next few years. But the more you get to sprout now the faster it will fill in next season.

Your making to many assumptions here. What could a battery have to do with the engine overheating? It sounds like you have a coolant leak, and antifreeze is spraying out, hitting the battery, and the belts. This could easily cause the belts to slip if they are worn and not tight, hence the battery lamp. Of course accidently giving the alternator a drink of engine coolant won't make it very happy either, VBG. The hammering sound is something you have to simply follow with your ears to locate, it could have been the coolant flashing on hot spots in the engine from the overheating. At the same time, you could easily be losing a belt driven component, and it could be the source of the noise, as well as the cause of the overheating, and the alternator stopping charging. The main thing to think about is the headlight replacement probably had nothing at all to do with this issue. Cars simply break whenever they want to.

Wow, there is a lot of good information here. Glad I posted with my problem, now I have something new to try out. Thanks owbist. ravencajun, thanks for the compliment but I only had the first half of it figured out and cboy came to the rescue and helped me with the last half of it. I can't take all the credit. "Smiles" Then zep516 came in catching the fact that System Restore wasn't working right and gave me great information on how to correct that. This was the first time that I've had problems with my desktop, but I have changed the backround on it before and I remembered that and I thought why not check it out and see if I could get it to change and that is when I discovered that the backround had been changed and all I had to do was to put it back like I had it, but then I didn't know how to get the icons back and that's when cboy posted the solution for me. If that ever happens to me again I will know exactly what to do. Thanks owbist for telling me how to move the icons down to the taskbar. I will try that on Wednesday, I will have more time to try it out then. thirdfrt!!!

The only time in that stretch of time that I determined what a punishment will be was when A__ has made a sexist remark directly to me (I sent him to the bedroom until he was ready to apologize for not treating women with respect), so I'm not making his life horrible. I will uphold rules or rewards/punishments put in place by Mom or Dad, but rarely decide them on my own. Oh - and I have chair removal/replacement authority. TOS - the reason A__ gets sent to his room for things he says is that he will say horrible deliberately hurtful things at even very little things like "Please put your shoes in the closet so no one trips on them" or "No, you can't have a can of pop tonight. You had your can of pop this afternoon." When the response to a cheerful "OK kiddo, it's time to get your stuff together to go to soccer. We have to leave in 20 minutes." is a venomous "I hate you! You're the worst dad in the world! I want you to die so you can't be mean to me ever again", he goes to the other room to calm down (because screaming and throwing things often follows next if he's not sent to somewhere quiet to mellow out) and to think about why what he said was the wrong choice. Different kids have different reactions and different levels, so if your kids are angry with you, remark that they hate you and it gets left at that, then that's fine for you guys. If it's just grumbling about "You're so mean for always making me take my plate to the sink" or "I hate picking up the Xbox and you're a jerk for making me do it", then I agree with you that it's better just talk about how that wasn't nice and that everyone has to pick up after themselves. When it's malicious shouting, or sexism/racism/classism that's another story for us. FD - I'm not sure what's elaborate... Occasionally there are two parts (1- Go to the other room to calm down so you're not screaming any more or to think about why what you did was wrong and 2- The actual punishment)... The no dessert and do the dishes alone started off as just "You should be sitting at the table during the meal. I've asked you three times now to stay at the table through the meal, and if you get up again, you're not having any dessert" Then when he spit food on the table (on purpose) and refused to clean it up, doing the dishes on his own was added. Could I ask what you would have done in that situation? How would you have disciplined getting up repeatedly even though he was asked and told not to, followed by spitting food onto the table and belligerently saying "No. I won't. You do it." to his Dad when told to "Go get a dishtowel to clean that up." ? We know that no popcorn tonight for bugging the cats is a little abstract, but we can't come up with anything directly related to the cats (the only thing my BF thought of was making him clean the litter box for being mean to the cats, but thought that was too extreme) so we stick with popcorn and try to be consistent with it. Any alternate suggestions? Haha, FD - I got a good-natured chuckle out of your interpretation that his behavior isn't improving! I know it may not sound like it, but he IS getting better! Punishments for bad choices and rewards for good choices is working, believe it or not! I love him very much, but to be honest, how A__ was when I was first getting involved with my BF really made me hesitant to get serious with them. i could tell that A__ has a HUGE heart, and that made me take the chance that he and my BF were worth it! The progress I've seen in A__ over the past year has really been remarkable - my instinct that this bad behavior was remediable and would be worth it was right. Even five or six months ago, he was going to the other room about 4 times a day and was down to about 30 minutes of Warcraft, for breaking things on purpose (accidents are never punished for of course), for lying at least daily, for dumping his plate upside down onto the table when he was done eating, for screaming malicious things and swearing, for holding the cats upside down by their back legs, for throwing his clothes out the window or in the garbage because he didn't want to get dressed, and so on. The A__ of today is a peach in comparison to the A__ of six or eight months ago!! I haven't heard him swear in over two months, shouting name-calling fits are down to less than once a day from at least twice, he chases and annoys the cats but is no longer actually mean to them, he complains that he's bored at the table and tries to get up (and spit his food that one time) but his plate has remained upright for five months now, he rarely lies anymore and he'll admit it right away if he does, he'll still spend half an hour getting his socks on but he doesn't throw them out anymore... He doesn't try to sneak things into the cart or run away at the grocery store anymore because when he's good he often gets to choose dessert for that night but he always gets a high five when we get out the door for behaving so well at the store. He (usually) tells us if he has homework now instead of "forgetting" it at Mom's because he often gets to go do cool activities and always gets lots of praise for doing his homework without being asked. If he sees one of us cleaning, he often asks if we'd like his help because he knows that has gotten him 15 extra minutes of Warcraft in the past. So, yes, he's in trouble a lot, but he's rewarded a lot too! I've really made an effort with my BF about being consistent with him, asking him to do something (like put his socks on) well in advance, asking him to stop something (like using the computer mouse as a lasso) the first time he does it rather than getting angry the third time, telling him what the consequence/reward will be so he can make a better choice, etc. And now instead of more punishments than rewards, A__ gets more rewards than punishments. It used to be that the second my BF's back was turned, A__ was doing something bad, but now he's not! He's getting better about being good, even when no on is watching him. We "catch" him being good all the time, his behavior keeps improving, and he's getting better about rewarding himself! A__ being able to self-reward and self-chastise is a big struggle for everyone involved with him. His ADHD prevents him from getting a neurological boost the way that you or I do when we know we do something good and his poor decision-making skills (also a result of his ADHD) make it hard for him to see the right thing to do... But lately, he's been making better choices and telling us what he chose "I thought about ____the-bad-choice____ but instead I did ___the-good-choice___!!!" and we high five and whoop and holler and celebrate with hugs and kisses... I know this will seem ridiculous to anyone who doesn't know A__, but I almost cried this weekend when he made a good choice all on his own and self-rewarded for it!! Saturday morning, we did our usual routine (he wakes us up when he gets hungry around 8:30, I get him breakfast and go back to bed for a bit while he plays Warcraft, then BF and I get up around 10:30) and once I was up he said "Andguesswhat I got hungry again after breakfast, butguesswhat instead of having cookies that I knew I probably wasn't supposed to have, guesswhat I had the other half of my orange that you told me was in the fridge. Andguesswhat, since no one was up, I high-fived myself for doing what I was supposed to do!" OMG I was so happy I nearly cried! I think A__ was a little surprised by the extremity of my reaction: a HUGE hug and "A__ that awesome! I'm sooooo happy that you thought about what to eat and chose what you knew you were allowed to have! You did what you should even though no one was there to make you! That's such a great grown-up thing to do! Wow! I'm proud of you kiddo!" followed by more hugs and a high-five. Then when I passed this onto BF, he also came running from the bedroom, pounced on A__ with a hug and said "I'm proud of you A__! Would you like to have a wrestling match??" So I think what we're doing is working. A__'s behavior keeps getting better and he is always excited to come over, so musn't be too miserable :)