I was thinking of removing the pavers as well, they either need to be laid correctly or gone. I almost tripped on one of them yesterday. And boy, I thought I had seen what the water was like until yesterday. It was like a monsoon in the yard! That area off to the side of the pavers that looks like it runs off into the woods was about 2ft wide. It was quite a mess and a larger problem than I thought. I am still going to try the pot filled with stones idea and have seen a few that might work. On another note, I found out that our building will be getting a new roof but could get no confirmation on whether they were adding downspouts, I can hope can't I?

Well, I like this forum! I rarely post, consider myself a great cook but am far from fancy or traditional with my cooking. I've gotten great results from postings when needed and have not been insulted once. Hey, not bad! I enjoyed reading this topic especially since I have a great deal of trouble using packaged foods due to sodium content. I DO use packaged foods though! I've never made my own yoghurt--never even tried to. Same with butter, cream cheese, aged cheese (I have made paneer by heating milk and adding lime juice), pasta and that is all I can think of that I need packaged food for. I've made lots of things by just trying it out. Ketchup wasn't that hard, no-sodium tomato paste, vinegar, garlic and onion powder (actually, I like the dehydrated granules), black pepper, cumin, dash of lemon juice, dash of water. I just read the bottle to get an idea of what went in the stuff. And, yes, I buy the packaged no-salt ketchup quite often. So quick and easy! There is no way I'm going to pay for packaged dressing; I make my own even though I almost always just use straight balsamic. My guy makes a great vegan Caesar dressing using nutritional yeast, almond meal, lemon juice, vinegar, no-salt stone ground mustard and an unbelievable amount of fresh garlic. Think of all the oil we are avoiding this way! I do love olive oil though~ Canned soups are a no-go mainly because of the salt. I can't actually taste the can but sometimes I can taste the plastic when I buy things in plastic bottles. We made our own "power bars" for the first time a few weeks ago. We had made granola bars and similar things before but never with the intent to get protein, carbs and low calories all in one bar. They are great for hiking! Yesterday, my guy made bagels from scratch for the first time, just for me as they had no salt and almost zero sodium. Did you know that a regular sesame bagel has over 600mg sodium?! The ones he made were topped with black sesame seeds and tasted very good. They were missing that salty taste but, oh well. I think one of the biggest factors with packaged foods is that they are very inexpensive, especially mixes and things like rice a roni or hamburger helper. They can also make things go very quickly in the kitchen for those who have limited amounts of time to feed entire families. There are lots of things we make that cost more than buying pre-made but there are also lots of savings involved in making things ourselves. We may not be rich but we make the effort to allow a good food budget so we can eat as much natural and organic things as possible. We try to stay away from preservatives but that is hard to do with packaged foods. I'm pretty darned impressed by some of the things people make on the board. Pickled veggies and other home-canned items are the most intriguing to me. It was a good read. Thanks, Jennifer

Well siddle that was absolutely no help! Nice way to sneak in and SPAM your business. I don't believe baltomom was looking for a steel building! Baltomom, being on city water with 4ppm of chlorine, sediment and oxidized iron you will need a back washing filter to catch the sediment and remove chlorine. I might suggest a Multi-Media backwashing filter system with about 8 lbs of KDF media added. This will remove all the sediment and chlorine. The Aquasana filter has carbon and KDF but the problem is it will load up with iron quickly the next time that flush of iron/sediment problem occurs there is no way to backwash the system. So it will be useless in a very short time. Do the times this problem occurs correlate to when hydrants are flushed by your city? Also if you are on a cul-de-sac or dead end this is a common problem. You often get the brunt of sediment especially during high use periods IE: summer. RJ

I have trouble motivating FDH to parent A__ too... And like you, I think that FDH is just totally unaware of his son. If I'm not home, FDH will have A__ all darn day without feeding him a proper meal. It's easier for him to let A__ play on the computer all day than to think up stuff to do with him. But I just do things my way, and he goes along with it because he realizes that he's sort of a slacker if left to his own devices. For example, right now, FDH wants to watch Trailer Park Boys, and A__ is right here in the room, so I pointed out that there is too much swearing in that show for a 9yo. He changed it back to the ball game. FDH would probably do the same thing with Meet the Teacher night as your DH did... He's the king of "Oh, and we're supposed to be at this place at 6:30" when supper is already on the stove and it drives me nuts. I think it's inconsiderate of him to spring last minute plans on me... But I think it's a Mars/Venus thing: I plan ahead, while he ignores my planning ahead - He makes last minute plans, while I get mad about it. I've found that most men are like that (with some exceptions of course) For things like chewing with his mouth open, it's quite probable that DH doesn't notice. A__ can have his face LITERALLY in his food and be poking it into his mouth with his fingers and FDH looks confused when I remind A__ of his table manners. When I was a kid and I chewed with me mouth open, it was always my mom or my older sister who reminded me to close it - I don't recall my dad or brothers ever reminding me. Maybe that's a Mars/Venus thing too? It puts you in a hard spot though. Either you say "DH, your son is chewing with his mouth open" or you remind SS of his table manners yourself. Option one makes it seem like you're purposefully avoiding interaction with SS and he'll probably react poorly to that. Option two is that you're doing the parenting for DH, which you seem tired of. I guess for me, it comes down to this: If I do the crappy stuff like wiping dirty handprints off the wall and telling A__ to use table manners, FDH gets much less frustrated with A__ and they have a better relationship. The difference between our situations is that A__ has improved from where he was last year (which is a lot like where your SS is now) while your SS is still in a rough patch. I know you're still frustrated and SS is still misbehaving, but it sounded like he was progressing a little... Is he still?