Thanks, Christina! My dad sounded quite happy about my coming.

Yes, what you said Steve does is definitely part of my husband's behavior (impulse purchases). Also, he has his extremes that I guess are on the lower end of perhaps the OCD spectrum. For example, he would buy 30 boxes of Kleenex. Store clerks would even comment about them. Also, he always wanders off elsewhere hard to find. The stores never seem to have phone signals, so I end up having to search for the dude. As I am a methodical shopper, that pisses me off. Duplicate purchases are also common. As I am the sole cook of the household, it's frustrating to find foods in the cart that I had no plans for.

Czech Republic doesn't have many dangerous animals, especially not to dogs or people. A local hawk has killed a couple of our local birds. There are foxes here. Bears only in the remotest wilderness. New Jersey, on the other hand, has these, plus the occasional wild cat or bear. Wild cats are more in northern Jersey, but bears show themselves all over central Jersey, even in the suburbs. My husband has a real fear of bears, even beyond the usual fear.

There's a very cute Czech song from the 1970s, that all Czechs know, about a bear. The lyrics tell the story about tourists going into the woods for a hike, then encountering the bear. The bear scares them all off, steals their cameras, transistor radios, and clogs. Then the bear goes to town and sells them for money to buy peanuts, raspberries, and honey. If interested, the video with song is at The Czech word for "bear" is "medvedi" with "med" meaning "honey". So, they are "honey animals".