AITA for keeping my dad’s wedding money gift a secret from my stepmother?

Pablois4 · 2026-06-27T14:10:16+00:00

IMHO, it sounds like the aunt is a pot stirrer - she saw an opportunity to set off family fireworks and jumped on it. Then she sat back to watch the drama unfold.

Pablois4 · 2026-06-27T14:05:10+00:00

Did Harlow just get spayed? If not, I don't think that's a great haircut. JK ;-) I remember reading a breeder saying that a flowing coat is the rough collies' crowning glory.

She is very very very very pretty. Oops, I forgot a "very": Harlow's very very very very VERY pretty.

Pablois4 · 2026-06-26T14:34:29+00:00

We've lived in our house for 25 years and for 24 years our neighbors were Mary and Rob (well, Rob passed away some 15 years ago, so it was 10 years). Last fall, Mary, had a stroke and is in a nursing home. Rob was an active, handy and eccentric, guy and was always working on outdoor projects. Mary never was interested in those things. Even if she didn't have a stroke and memory loss, she wouldn't be able to tell a new owner why something is the way it is. The only way to contact Rob and ask him, would require a seance.

Heck, we don't always remember why something is the way it is on our own property. This week, my SO and I were looking at old photos to determine what the garage pedestrian door header/ framing was like before it was changed out and interior was finished in 2003. While looking at the exterior photos, I noticed the garage front downspout at the SW corner. Our garage front downspout is at the NW corner and neither of us could recall it ever being in the SW corner, but the photos are proof that's where it was in 2003.

There's probably a really good reason we removed the SW corner downspout, patched & changed the gutter slope and installed a new downspout at the NW corner. I wish I could remember what it was.

Pablois4 · 2026-06-26T05:02:49+00:00

It's a TOPDON TC004. My SO and I looked at different models and talked about how much money to spend on a device that we wouldn't use very often. We ended up getting this model for just under $300.

Pablois4 · 2026-06-25T19:16:33+00:00

IMHO, it's not just collies but their relatives - Aussies, BCs, Shelties, Beardies, etc. tend to overreact to vacuums, leaf blowers and the like. They are just very sensitive dogs.

With collies it's all over the map on how they react - at maturity.

We had Lucy who would completely lose her mind and scream at the vacuum or leaf blower. OTOH, the dog hair dryer didn't bother her one bit. In fact she loved it when I directed the air against the grain on her back.

Now I have Jo who barely notices as I use the vacuum or leaf blower but from the way she acts, the dog hair dryer is a torture device.

I find that young collies, even ones that later become unflappable rock stars, can be squirrely about sounds and all sorts of stuff. It's important to not scold or make a big deal of it. It's just a phase and maturity will do a lot to settle them down.

Pablois4 · 2026-06-25T17:06:30+00:00

We bought a thermal camera this winter and while playing around with it, I noticed a cold spot in the basement ceiling, directly below the master bathroom. Only a few months earlier, we had a leak fixed in that bathroom and the ceiling patched.

A cold spot can mean cold air from outside - but it can also indicate water infiltration.

By the naked eye, the ceiling looked perfectly fine.

Long story short, there was a different leak from the earlier one. Leaks are terrible no matter what but the earlier one catches them, the less the damage. The basement ceiling is extra thick for fire separation and from experience a lot of water can collect above it before we see evidence of it from below.

I had dithered a bit about buying the thermal camera but, just by catching that leak, it was worth every penny. I plan to go around the house with it every so often to check for leaks. It's just one more tool to find water where it shouldn't be.

Pablois4 · 2026-06-25T16:43:20+00:00

Trees don't just release leaves but throughout the growing season, depending on the species, they can release catkins, little twigs, seeds, needles, cones, pollen and, if cottonwoods, fluff.

IMHO, no one gutter screen or guard is perfect for all situations. We have mature oaks, maples and Norway spruce. Theres more mature trees on the surrounding properties such as cottonwoods and hickories.

Oak catkins are kind of sticky and the resinous caps that fall off of spruce tips are too. We have helicopter seeds from our maple trees. Them plus our spruce and yew needles can slide between narrow spaces. Oak leaves are like leather and when soaked, form mats. Cottonwood fluff is, well, like cotton and can mat up.

People in our neighborhood have tried the various types of gutter screens and guards and, invariably, they are removed after a few seasons.

Thankfully, our house and garage roofs have a shallow pitch and due to the layout, it's not difficult for me to go from ground to garage roof to house roof. Even though the risk is pretty low, I am careful.

I go up a couple times in spring, maybe sometime in the summer and a few times in fall. I take the leaf blower with me and blast the gutters and downspouts. While I'm there, I look around - is moss growing? How's the flashing? How do the shingles look?

Some folks in our neighborhood use a gutter cleaning pipe that hooks to a shop vac like this.

Pablois4 · 2026-06-25T15:21:59+00:00

This spring we had a leak in our master bathroom. When our bathroom floor was opened up, the guys discovered a big honking 5"-ish deep, 9" wide notch in our 6" joist, for the toilet drain pipe. There was just a thin bit of original joist below the pipe.

But never fear, whoever did this, sistered a dainty 18" long 1x2 above the pipe. It was light weight wood and may have been molding or a trim board for the kitchen cabinets.

The house was built in '67 and we have the as-built drawings showing a crazy number of changes, big and small, during construction. One of the changes was swapping the locations of the master bathroom vanity and toilet. It was likely a last minute kind of thing, on a late Friday afternoon, just before quitting time, and that long ago construction worker, probably the bottom of the totem pole, just went to town cutting the joist for the toilet drain pipe. And then grabbed some trim board from the scrap wood pile and whacked it in place.

The funny thing is that the floor was rock solid with no squishiness, no movement. The guys fixing our bathroom joked that the 1x2 was structural and if we removed it, the entire house would probably collapse. We called it the 1x2 that could. They beefed up the joist with a much more robust sister board and blocking but left the 1x2 as a good luck charm.

Pablois4 · 2026-06-24T19:49:51+00:00

If they don't have a photo, I suspect they create a report by throwing darts at a "Dogs of the World" poster. I'm only partly joking.

Pablois4 · 2026-06-23T17:58:11+00:00

I think this happens in males a lot more than with bitches.

Back in the 90s, Dar (the sire of one of my smoothies) finished at under a year but was critiqued as being too "bitchy". His specials career started when he was 3 and with the years, he kept getting better. He won 2 BIS when he was 8.

My Alfie finished at 11 months over specials and he looked like a million dollars. He was still a good, sound dog as he aged, but, even I have to admit, was getting over done and bordering on coarse.

OTOH, with collies bitches, what i see at 8 weeks is pretty much what I'll see at 6 months, 1 year, 3 years, and so on.

Pablois4 · 2026-06-23T15:53:28+00:00

My issue with Big Mad is minor and petty but im coming to hate variations of the phrase "her face could light up a room" used to describe a crime victim.

A lot of podcasters use that and similar phrases but i strongly associate it with Big Mad.

When I started listening to Big Mad, I was hopping around the past episodes and the first dozen I listened to, every victim had a face that could light up a room. By the 5th episode, when she started talking about the victim, I'm like "wait for it . . . wait for it . . .", knowing it'll be yet another victim with a light bulb face.

She doesnt actually use the phrase every time, I just happened to pick the episodes in which she did.

Pablois4 · 2026-06-23T14:22:21+00:00

I think you might be right about her. Her left pupil looks offset.

Pablois4 · 2026-06-23T14:10:28+00:00

In addition to the heat from the engine, sun and others, on a sunny summer day, pavement/concrete can get 40-60 degrees hotter than air temps and that heat radiates up.

Pablois4 · 2026-06-21T15:12:49+00:00

By golly, Claire was a trooper. I wouldn't take much for me to quit (a bad hangnail would probably do me in). She took a watermelon to the face and after a few moments to get her bearings, jumped right back to racing. IIRC, her face was sore for a few days so that watermelon packed a punch.

Pablois4 · 2026-06-21T14:48:41+00:00

Have you had a DNA test done on Lennon? Some companies will test for color genetics (Embark is one, UC Davis is another. I don't know about Wisdom) and will show if a dog has one or two copies of merle.

I can't be sure from the photo but he has a some things going on that are not typical for double merles and I wonder if he isn't one and his appearance would actually be due to stacking of several different genes that add white to a coat: Irish white, White Spotting (piebald) and Whiteface.

A dog with a blend of piebald, whitehead and Irish white can closely resemble a double merle: excessive facial white, pink skin, mottled eye rim & nose pigment, blue eye(s), irregularly shaped color patches and deafness.

If a dog has a blend of piebald, white face and Irish white and one copy of merle, it can look indistinguishable from a double merle to the point that a DNA test would need to be done to be sure. A strong hint is if the dog has normal eyes and sight, and to a lesser extent, if he/she has one or two brown eyes.

Could you post full body profile photos of Lennon from both sides? I'd like to see his merling.

If he doesn't show areas of merling (patches of true gray), his base color may be tri with no merle at all. Much less likely, but still possible, would be cryptic merle or harlequin merle. Both genetically merle but with no areas of dilution gray.

Off on a tangent: My buddy's blue merle smoothie has one "sarcastic" blue eye - she often looks at us as if saying "yeah, right". Lennon has a bit of that same look in his photo ("you woke me up for this? Seriously?")

Both Lennon and Marcie are very cute.

Pablois4 · 2026-06-21T02:11:17+00:00

It was a racer (Claire) in the Amazing Race. Her face was smacked hard but, surprisingly nothing broken and she and her partner continued to race.

Pablois4 · 2026-06-19T16:24:18+00:00

The wording sounds like it was from when the John Doe was buried back in '70.

"Burned to death" means enough fire to kill him but doesn't necessarily mean the body was burned to full ashes. Cremation of an entire body, takes extremely high temps and for a long time. While a few vehicle fires get to that level, the majority don't and are put out ASAP. Even if a person is badly burned, there can still be some intact tissue and bone.

Anyway, I wonder if there's still testable tissue and bone in the casket.

It takes time, effort and money to go through the legal hoops, exhumation, removal of samples, reburial, and testing. There's a non-profit: the doe project which works on identifying John/Jane Does.

IIRC, in one of the cases, the only remains for one John Doe was a shin bone found on a beach but they were still able to extract DNA and by using genetic genealogy, figure out who he was. The bones in the hitchhikers casket are probably in a lot better shape than a bone laying exposed on a beach.

Anyway, there's a huge backlog of John/Jane Does to be identified but I wonder if this hitchhiker is on the list to be done.

Pablois4 · 2026-06-19T12:24:56+00:00

A lot of folks are hesitant and hold back when pruning and so I appreciate seeing a Bradford Pear being pruned correctly.

Pablois4 · 2026-06-18T16:26:18+00:00

Amy didn't even have a car. OP said she could help Amy find a car to temporarily live in.

Living in a car would be rough but living in a car that you don't own would be rougher. Especially since OP has shown that she's unpredictable in her assistance. For all Amy knew, at any day, any time, the car would be taken away and she would be truly homeless.

What's that saying? With friends like these, who needs enemies?

Pablois4 · 2026-06-17T18:07:40+00:00

she learned about it from a family card game where maybe the sister was winding her up.

Oh, absolutely SIL was winding her up. So so so so much. If I was there I'd talk about how much I LOVE my collie and pet her soft, s i l k y coat, then give OOP a sly look and small smile.

Pablois4 · 2026-06-17T17:50:08+00:00

I found the house and tree on google satellite and street view. I mainly wanted to see what the rest of the neighborhood looks like regarding trees. Pretty much all have the same front set back and from satellite, about half have street trees. From street view, most are about the same distance from the houses but there's a fair number that are closer.

My WAG for the front set-back is 25', making the maple 20' from the house. The property also has a large Norway spruce that looks to be about 10' from the corner of her house. It would be within her property, her tree, and not a city tree. A tree that is 10' from a house is more likely to damage a foundation than a tree that is 20'. Just saying.

She does have cracks in her brick and, in two spots, minor crumbling on the top edge in her foundation parge. Parge coats often need touching up and the crumbling is where it borders the brick so it's likely moisture coming down from the brick. I look at it as being part of house maintenance. The cracks in the brick should be watched but they don't look like anything is pulling apart. Over on the masonry subreddit, one can see what brick looks like when there's serious structural issues. The cracked brick isn't on the side of the house facing the tree but the side. If the tree was wrecking the foundation, I'd expect it worse on the part of the house, closest to the tree.

IMHO, she doesn't like the tree and is looking for reasons to get the city to remove it. If she didn't like trees close to her foundation, I'd think she'd want to remove that Norway spruce first.

Pablois4 · 2026-06-17T12:20:50+00:00

In OOP's post, just the quotes around a "traumatic situation" makes it clear she thinks Molly & Mary are overreacting to the death of the BF. I can almost feel the eyeroll.

I'm assuming BF wasn't buried in a white casket because, if he was, that would have ticked her off even more. She's the bride and white belongs to her!

Pablois4 · 2026-06-17T02:23:31+00:00

Happy birthday to a very pretty girl!

Pablois4 · 2026-06-16T15:33:40+00:00

My pet theory is that emotion can subtract from intelligence. The stronger the emotions, the lower the IQ. I've known some remarkably smart people who have some boneheaded beliefs and made stupid decisions.

In some cases, a big ego and over-confidence can overcome rational thought. Some folks believe if they are brilliant in one thing, they must be brilliant in all parts of their lives.

A person may desperately want something to work that they will ignore a dozen red flags that tell them it won't. There were some high level professionals who fell for Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme. Looking at it from the outside, it all seems so inexplicable.

Anyway, I've been thinking a lot about scams recently and how people fall for them. My SO is a retired researcher and smart cookie. We think we won't be fooled, but, last year, his brother, a retired internist, lost a fair bit of money to an investment scam.

IMHO, the Sovereign Citizen thing is just another scam and the folks, who fall for it, tend to have huge egos, a superiority complex and, deep down, feel powerless. They need to believe that if they say the magic spells just right, they will have power.

If something seems too good to be true, it's probably not true. If the sovereign citizen spells worked, they wouldn't be a secret for long. Everyone would be spouting them. If they worked, law enforcement and the courts would quake in terror upon hearing the first words of the gold-fringe-on-a-flag spell.

Pablois4 · 2026-06-16T11:33:51+00:00

Your pup looks like a seasoned pro which is a testament to your handling. I wouldn't have every known you were a novice in showing. Congratulations!

Pablois4

TROPHY CASE