blumz: Thanks for commiserating! Get it now; don't wait 12 years. I have a hard time imagining how to attack those roots mechanically and still get them all so they don't lie dormant for a while and pop up later. That's what led me to posting this in the first place. So far, I've put down THREE applications of RoundUp, each one week apart, and the little boogers,as you politely name them, still show signs of some life. Comatose maybe, but I cannot yet pronounce them dead. Everything else was totally dead after the second application. I've found a product called Ortho Poison Ivy and Tough Brush Killer that contains 8% Triclopyr. Haven't tried it yet, but I understand that it would be comparable to killing a gnat with a sledge hammer. Also I would need to wait a month or two before planting the grass, as opposed to several days for RoundUp, but I'd be willing to wait. As for what has already encroached into your "good plants", I don't have much to offer. One approach, however, might be to zap them all in order to get the BSC, then start anew. I think the military calls it "collateral damage". Hopefully, someone else can offer some useful suggestions.

Wow, I think I need to print this up for future references whenever I'm feeling put out... You know, your SM didn't ever hold the sobbing at their wedding against you. That's great. But, I'll bet she was a little hurt or puzzled by it - maybe just had too much class to dwell upon it. Regardless, I think your apology to her, even so many years later, really made her day. At the end of the day, I think all SMs just want a little validation. The fact that you stepped up instead of letting the sleeping dogs lie speaks volumes about your character. I'd say your mom, stepdad, and stepmom did something right in having you be the lady you are today. I have no doubt that you will sail through as an incredible SM yourself! Your story also reminds me of my beloved maternal g-father that I lost 2 yrs ago at 93. He lost his wife at 54. She was amazing and beautiful, though I was just a young child when she died. A couple of years later, he met an amazing woman who was like my g-mother in every sense of the word up til her death, just before my wedding (where she was to act as the g-mother). Only since his death did I realize they were an item, lol, when my dad told me that he and my mom had at one time pushed them to marry. My mother said, "I made up my mind when I had to meet her that I wasn't going to like her. How could I? My mom hadn't been gone all that long and I wasn't going to like any woman in Dad's life. But, I couldn't help but LOVE her immediately..." I often forget that this woman was like a SM to my mom. I think I'm the first SM in the family, but really that amazing woman was. Thanks for letting me recall a few fond memories... All the best on your journey, Dana

Reason Season Lifetime People always come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. When you figure out which it is, you know exactly what to do. When someone is in your life for a REASON, It is usually to meet a need you have expressed outwardly or inwardly. They have come to assist you through a difficulty, Or to provide you with guidance and support, To aid you physically, emotionally, or even spiritually. They may seem like a godsend to you, and they are. They are there for the reason you need them to be. Then, without any wrong doing on your part or at an inconvenient time, This person will say or do something to bring the relationship to an end. Sometimes they die. Sometimes they just walk away. Sometimes they act up and force you to take a stand. What we must realize is that our need has been met, our desire fulfilled; their work is done. The prayer you sent up has been answered and it is now time to move on. When people come into your life for a SEASON, It is because your turn has come to share, grow, or learn. They may bring you an experience of peace or make you laugh. They may teach you something you have never done. They usually give you an unbelievable amount of joy. Believe it! It is real! But, only for a season. And like Spring turns to Summer and Summer to Fall, The season eventually ends. LIFETIME relationships teach you lifetime lessons; Those things you must build upon in order to have a solid emotional foundation. Your job is to accept the lesson, love the person anyway; And put what you have learned to use in all other relationships and areas in your life. It is said that love is blind but friendship is clairvoyant. Thank you for being part of my life, Whether you were a reason, a season or a lifetime. Author � Unknown

You bring up a good point about Europe, but there are some key differences between Europe and the US and the way things are handled in Europe vs. the US and you touched on this in your second sentence. And this also applies to antique houses in America, too. Then there is the concept of what is a "natural progression" and I think this concept is something that has not been well followed in the US and that's why there is a problem with "dated". Many people live in houses that are hundreds of years old in Europe. There was no such thing as a "bathroom" in many of these houses for the first couple hundred years of their existence. So, whatever is the first "modern" (~20th c.) bathroom that would have been put in a particular house is always appropriate. And then any subsequent bathroom style up to about 1980. (And not much beyond 1980 or so, imo, which I will get into in a bit). In America, most houses probably got bathrooms in the Edwardian Era up to the Depression, and new houses built after 1900 probably had bathrooms, although I've seen plans without. However, for example, I lived in a building that had no kitchen until 1965, and it had several toilet compartments and probably a room with a sink and bathtub in it somewhere, but not a modern bathroom until 1965. So what's proper in this house? And is a bathroom that was redone in 1955 improper in a Victorian house? Probably not. Really any bathroom that is "newer" than the house (again up to about 1980 or so, imo) is appropriate to the house. Why? because innovations were taking place, and most houses aren't house museums. What happened after 1980 and what is still happening that's problematic in America today? (And maybe not so much in the rest of the world). First, in general, it's one thing to see a very slick contemporary bathroom and kitchen in a 300 year old house, but it's another thing to see a slick contemporary bathroom in a 50 year old colonial revival house. There is much more contrast in the 300 yo house. And what happened after 1980? Up until about 1980, new styles were --new--. the end of the Late modern period was in the 1980s or so and was followed by Post-Modernism which was more or less a statement about reaching an end point in modernism. There is not much left after the white box to pare down. So in the 1980s they started with the fake "Victorian" style bath fixtures and this was followed by revivals of other historic fixtures and elements, and now a prevailing style for kitchen and bathrooms contains a lot of Edwardian and VIctorian inspired elements. It's hard to find a bathroom faucet that is not either a basic style but exceedingly cheaply made; or extremely modern, or faux -Victorian. And that's the crux of the problem: natural progression of bathrooms was always moving forward with technology and new fashions, but now the new fashion is in retrograde, so people are putting in bathrooms that have many elements that are taking stylistic cues from 1910 -1930 more or less in contemporary houses from 1980. It doesn't make stylistic sense. People argue that this is the "current" style going into new construction so it's appropriate but I am not sure. If the current style going into new construction was a bathroom taking design cues from 1955, I think people would see that that looked goofy in a 1980 house. And then there are decorative styles in America that are displaced by geography or are version of something that doesn't really exist. To go back to the OP, there really isn't any such thing as a "Tuscan" bathroom, even in Tuscany. Not how it would be interpreted in America. And while much about the building style may make a bathroom in the Southwest look very appropriate: adobe and or adobe style plaster, wood ceilings, saltillo and talavera tile---that, isolated in a bathroom in New Jersey, when the rest of the house is not that style--again, was never really right, so when that's out of fashion, it looks really wrong. Finally, in new construction, kitchens and baths have gotten larger, more expensive, and higher quality material-wise, than before, and somtimes this is just too elaborate for a house from the middle of the century. There is nothing the matter with improving on quality, there is no need to replace a plastic tub surround with another. But a marble bathroom with detailed nickel fixtures and a crystal chandelier in a modest Cape Cod or rancher just looks displaced. It's the fashion now, so it's what people will do, but it's going to look more dated than something that fit in with the rest of the house better.