Enjoy your dramatic, noble and operatic departure, without bothering to mention to anyone your freakish series of personal and insulting emails to me all day long. Best to play the part of the honorable martyr.

Regularly scheduled programming has the advantage of making people wait and anticipate what will come when the program starts again. Come right back when the program starts again.

This reminds me of one more reason why I like the clunky old software here. In other forums they allow PM's and this permits too much access too easily. This forum does allow emails, so it does have a part of that function. But free PM's in general are like giving free access to electricity to probing children's fingers. After a number of years of "stun" you decide you no longer need to interact with people on that level.

In the long long term, all those features they offer in other kinds of forum management software may all disappear and be replaced with features that serve our needs better. An example (of what might exist) is a holdback when any OP names a username, and an automated analysis of how the highlighted use of another user's name might appear. Complex sentence structures would be transformed into shorter ones (so, nothing like "Although ..(semi-positive here).., I see ...(real thrust here)... )

It's normal for people to want to reformulate what they want as they become subjected to negative feedback. So melissasart reformulated to ask that marcolo not write about a fictitious category of teenaged girls.

But, there are a few times when it's best to concede that the input you offered initially cannot be reformulated into another milder request. Either the initial stance gets analyzed on its own merit or the entire project of discussing it gets deleted.

I've read marcolo in threads I've opened, so I can offer my appreciation. I find marcolo qualified in the fine art of evaluation. She can spot better parts + strengths, congratulate the project being evaluated, and offer critique by singling out a part worth changing in specific terms which opens a way to continu, growing the project in a new direction. For anyone it can be impossible to conclude on a positive note when you are formally subjected to negative talk, and PM's on the side, so I draw no strong conclusion about the emotional charge of the current moment.

Hth

Melissastar: I e-mailed you directly. Hope you read it. SQ

The two of you forced others to close the "perfect" thread. Take it off the forum.

Oops. I opened this thread thinking I'd see photos of a finished kitchen. Oh well.

me too. oiy! enough!

Melissastar- Don't let a few snarky comments chase you off the forum. If that worked, I would have been gone months ago! LOL

Honestly, we've probably both learned about as much as we can from this forum, but it's fun to try to help others. I enjoy your comments and think you'll be missed, if you leave. Remember, it's a public forum and if a few posters think they control how the forum runs...well, think again :)

As for all the people posting questions (or maybe too afraid to post) don't worry about a few posters and their comments. Sometimes funny, sometimes harsh, just ignore anything too bizarre and try to focus on the comments that help.

Finally, if I ever again read that 'important posts' are being missed by too many 'less important posts' being submitted...I call all of your attentions to the page buttons. It is possible to check page 2 and even page 3 for posts to respond to...just stating the obvious. Oh, and not every post needs a response...so if you don't like it, try skipping over it. That might make a huge difference in the overall tone of this forum.

Why let the perfect stand in the way of the good?

IOW, the fat lady has sung. With or without acne.
Has every one's biorythms crashed or is every one PMS-ing lately?

Casey

You go first Casey is your Midol bottle empty or full?

I'm trying to piece together what the eff has been going on here lately, and dear Casey sums it up. My least favorite thing is grand announcements about leaving. It's an internet forum.

OK - speaking of PMS ... if communities of women living together "cycle" (i.e., have their period) together, what happens to women who spend too much time chatting on an internet forum together? Maybe the PMS-comment isn't actually even too far off? Who knows??

Catfight.

Here is a link that might be useful: Neely and Helen

A Classic. Love it.

>>Oops. I opened this thread thinking I'd see photos of a finished kitchen. Oh well.Me too! Wow, I feel like I walked into the wrong picture show...and in the middle of it at that! I have NO idea what's going on but maybe if I refresh the page the universe will realign...yeah, that didn't work :o

Monica

I'll see your catfight, palimsest, and raise you a peaceable kingdom.

Here is a link that might be useful: Charming but false dichotomy

Ugh...save me from this. Real life has enough of it.

Melissa - this is your forum as much as it is anyone else's.
If you felt that some comments were offensive, then it is your right/duty to point that out. If it was not received well by the one it was intended for, then it is out of your hands. Others will have seen it and agreed with you or not. In any case, it is over and we should all move on.
In any large group, not everyone is in love with every single other, or at least everything everyone does or says on each day. Just focus on the good and enjoy the stuff you like. Ignore the rest.

Please dont leave!
Just ignore the shouting,name calling. Lets get back to kitchens - white,soapstone for now. Or better yet,start a thread "what is next for kitchen design?"

All the personal attacks are simply noise for me. Just deflect and concentrate on all the great discussions and advice that we give/receive.

Om. om.

It strikes me that the OP made this announcement just so that people would exclaim "please don't leave". If her intention was truly to wash her hands of this forum, she would simply never post again. There is someone on the Cooking Forum who does these sorts of posts every once in a while, and then returns. After three or four times of the "I am leaving, you are mean to me!" posts, people stopped begging him not to leave, and were more like "OK, leave already". Melissastar strikes me as someone in her early 20's, who has never had anyone disagree with her before, and is bewildered by it. I could be completely wrong, but that is how she has always struck me. I think she is unhappy here, spending too much time fretting here, rather than enjoying the forum and the information and chats here. She shouldn't hang out someplace that makes her unhappy. So it actually is doing her a disservice to ask her to reconsider.

Wow, have we been redirected to Junior High USA? What else explains the delight in being cliquish and cruel?

melissastar, I too hope you reconsider. I thought you brought up a really interesting point about perfectionism and our own views of it (but I'll admit I quickly got tired of reading the thread and didn't follow it closely. It started to sink into the type of threads I avoid, the ones where people seem to be overly impressed by their own wit.) I often feel that valid alternative opinions or ideas on this forum can get lost, buried, or belittled when they don't fall in line with the popular trends on this forum.

You got me to think about my own kitchen and the approach I took. I did want to make it perfect but I don't have that standard for the rest of my house. Normally I tend to relish the imperfect. In fact, when I finished what I considered the perfect kitchen (or as perfect as we could get given our constraints), I started absolutely loving my friend's mishmashed kitchen with it's peeling wall paper, 0 counter space (literally, no counters), and partially torn out flooring (soon after starting the project, 15 years ago, they became concerned about asbestos and stopped). It's not like the "designed" unfitted kitchens, it's a pure unfitted kitchen.

Melissastar, I hope you reconsider. We all have demons and I hope you don't let the ones that have been let loose on this forum scare you away.

Shannonplus2- Those are quite a few assumptions, although early 20s is probably a compliment to most of us. On some of the garden forums, it is common for people to say if they're leaving (for good or for a short time) so people don't worry something happened to them.

If Melissastar decides to come back, that's up to her...but assuming so much is how we all get in trouble, with these posts. Let's not assume...how about asking, if we have a question?

It started to sink into the type of threads I avoid, the ones where people seem to be overly impressed by their own wit.

Those arrogant posts are always good for an eye roll. Makes you wonder if they aren't overcompensating for some insecurity ... like the class clown.

"Makes you wonder if they aren't overcompensating for some insecurity ... like the class clown."

Speaking about assumptions.

Lavender Lass - I should have explained better what I meant by my "early 20's" comment. I meant someone who not yet experienced the hard knocks in life, or a job where they were critiqued, or any of the other events that happen after you leave your teens and enter into a world where people are not always complimentary or caring. As people get older, they get a thicker skin. Melissastar seemed bewildered and surprised by any disagreement, that is why I said that. I probably should have substituted the word "naive" or "inexperienced" instead.

I haven't seen forums where people let others know they are leaving for a short time so no one will worry about them. Really? I have gotten busy or gone out of town or whatever and not posted for weeks. I have never had anyone on the Gardenweb check up on me. Let's get back to talking about kitchens. Melissastar wants to leave, why don't we let her. Why feel compelled to control her and tell her to do what YOU want her to do? She wants to leave, she is unhappy here, allow her to do what she wants.

@ dianolo - amen.

I don't think a dramatic exit is an indication of a person's age. I think there's a personality type. I have elderly aunts who still make dramatic announcements about whether they will be coming to Christmas dinner. Sometimes a grievance from 1952 might be trotted out in support of a decision to sit at home. Alone. In the dark. Eating cold cranberry sauce. From a can.

mcmjilly --
I can't stop laughing.... thanks! I have a grandmother (95 in August) who is EXACTLY like that!

After reading the previous posts, I have only one comment . . . and I'm smiling while I say this to all - - "Bartender - bring these nice people another round!"

mcmjilly, now THAT's funny! And yeah, I know some people like that too.

I think for once, in the thread that instigated this, everyone pretty much tried to ignore the conflict. Usually, there is a certain amount of support one way or the other. I think it is best to ignore both parties. Perhaps she felt there wasn't the outpouring of support one usually sees, and expected it. In any case, I hope the trend of ignoring conflicts between two individuals is a trend that continues.

Shannon- They do worry about each other, over on the Cottage Garden forum, but they're a pretty close group. There are actually posts asking about people sometimes and lots of checking up on each other with the tornadoes, etc. The smaller homes forum is pretty close like that, too :)

Shannon, LL's right about that. Some forums have a closer-knit community. I think at one time that existed here. I know there have been real life get-togethers with former members from this forum when they posted here and after they migrated to the cooking forum.