Am I being unreasonable to expect contributors to respect the occasional limits I put on the Dish? If I say, give me "your thinky and not-so-thinky thoughts" and then say don't bash, don't not be negative, am I contradicting myself?

Not unreasonable at all. If you contradict yourself, very well, you contradict yourself. (Sorry. Just had a Walt Whitman moment there.)

I had a friend who made a distinction between morons and jerks. Morons make us crazy because they lack the capacity, for whatever reason, for recognizing that their behavior is irritating other people, and changing that behavior. Jerks make us crazy because they get some payoff from irritating other people. I think the commenter you just banned is a jerk, and banning is the only way to enforce that the behavior is unacceptable. ...It somehow makes it easier to deal with jerks when I think of Fauna, one of the fairy godmothers in Disney's Sleeping Beauty, saying about Maleficent, "Sometimes I think she's not very happy."

Anyway...

Sympathy for the moving woes. Speaking of people being jerks, I hope your buyer stops jerking you around and you close on the house soon. Hurrah for your nephew turning out to be a lovely young man, and a second hurrah for having the help cleaning out the house. It's must be emotionally draining as well as physically tiring to go through all those memories. I think it's wonderful that you found the crystal pendant. Such things are treasures.