Some of you may remember the girl from Ireland who came to Utah for a guy she met online. She's a wonderful girl, they ended up marrying and having a kid. After various hardships, she has managed to get back to Ireland with her son, and our friend eventually followed them. Hubby has been messaging with her, and we've discovered that she's realized she's made a terrible mistake getting married to him. He's been threatening to take her son aware from her, and she's afraid that his family will help him.

Hubby's online with her right now, and we're pointing out that she is on home ground, and the odds of an American successfully challenging an Irishwoman in her own land for custody of their child in a troubled relationship is very low. Her family and friends hate him, he aparently hates him, she's a mess and wishing someone had warned her off of him. We told her she never asked us or we would have.

I am so very, very grateful she made it back home.

Oh dear Connie, how hard for her.

Yikes -- what a terrible situation to be in. Good thing she's home, at least.

The benefits of an old house: I wanted to ask my mother if she thought they had a power sander of any kind, but didn't want to call too early, and I heard her coming downstairs to get the paper! So I popped out and asked, and she doesn't think so. Ah well.

Yikes.

I don't think I've ever had kale. In general green leafy veggies don't work for me, though at least fresh fried okra was delish.

Jesse -- I bet you can rent power sanders from Home Depot.

Yeah, I think at this point I'm just going to have the guys do it.

morning update

I think I mostly use kale in blender drinks where I don't even notice it.

My 92 yo mom Skypes with her 4 yo great-grandson. He of course takes it all for granted. It is still pretty amazing to me since I remember the first hand held calculators as being cool beans.

Connie, I agree that she is likely on safe ground, but still so hard for her to have to learn this lesson.

Mmmmm, power tools. With renovating this house we have collected even more than our previous impressive collection. Still. Want. More.

When you start to need specialized equipment to continue with your renovation, it's either time to go whole hog and just buy it all (we'll call that the sarameg/Laura approach) or call in the professionals.

I did buy a honking big wrench to fix my kitchen sink, but it was less than $13 and I avoided a much more expensive plumber visit thereby.

Is that a murder weapon in Clue, the honking big wrench?

And that seems long-term useful. And not just for murder....

I read a thing that really crystallized my thinking about tools/appliances/etc. If you're already doing the thing, and think, "If I had X, this would be so much easier/better," that's worth buying. If you think, "If only I had X, I would totally start doing the thing!" that's not so good.

I definitely don't see myself as doing many more home reno type projects, so probably have all the tools I need.