Be lucky I actually have no idea what I'm talking about, and so I didn't go into what histamines actually are.

See, now I'm actually interested in the subject, just, you know, can't breathe, so a little cranky.

Also, congrats on being so "Master"-ful!

Maybe I will do a blog entry on allergies. Hmm.

I feel your pain, Plei. Well, not all of it, having no Tickybox to take care of, but the money stuff, yeah. I hate that.

Can't decide if it's wacky allergies or the cold that wouldn't go away

Well, considering what this spring's been like so far for my sinuses, and as I understand it SoCal (where I am) is actually supposed to be better for allergies than other less-irrigated-desert-y places (not recalling where you're located here), my vote's for the former.

apartments don't clean themselves

If they did, I don't think I'd mindthe horrific prices to live in San Diego near so much.

Maybe I will do a blog entry on allergies. Hmm.

I've inspired a man to write! Not exactly a sonnet to my beauty and grace, but it's a start.

P-C, congrats on the Master's!

vw, go you on finals and much job~ma.

Fay, all the anti-asshat-boss~ma in the world to you.

Susan, I can understand where you're coming from. I was raised around guns also and always took it for granted there was going to be 3 or 4 rifles and maybe a couple of assorted handguns in the house. Between hunting, target shooting and quick draw contests, we were never without. Usually, in the basement where my brother kept his reloading equipment. I was never interested in them, though, and just left them where they were stored by my brothers. It wasn't until I was assigned to the military police for nine months and ended up having to wear a .38 every day that I ever even learned how to shoot. Now, I have no guns at home, but if I did, it wouldn't be a big deal to me. I'm with connie, take the DH out with you when you go to play with the Bakers and maybe it will ease his mind some.

The only gun ever in our non-rural house (and I think that is a HUGE contextual difference, btw) was my Uncle the police officer's service weapon.

My gun talk was as follows:

I was about four. He took it out and held it flat in both hands and let me look at it up close. He turned it over so I could see the other side. He told me never EVER to touch it or any other one I might see, that even by accident it could kill me or somebody I loved. He let me hold one of the bullets, I remember it was heavy and cold.

Then he put it away and never took it out in my presence again.

At his home it was in a high locked box, the bullets were in a seperate locked portion. We knew which shelf it was on and that there'd be hell to pay if we ever attempted to get up there.

I remember seeing a program on TV a few years ago, where they had a cop give a bunch of nursery school kids a gun safety talk -- pretty much, "If you see a gun, you should leave it where it is, don't touch it, go get an adult, and never ever touch it." There was one kid in the class who, about every 30 seconds, pretty much every time the cop said the word "gun," would jump up with, "And I already know that, if you see a gun, you should never ever ever touch it, and you should go get an adult." The cop's opinion of that kid was pretty much that he was kind of distracting the others, but that's the one kid he absolutely wouldn't worry about.

After this, they put the kids in a room with a bunch of toys, with a very realistic toy gun under something, to see what would happen. After about five minutes, the kids found the gun. Most of them looked at it, looked kind of stunned, got a little scared, and went to go play with other stuff on the other side of the room. Interuprting kid stood there for awhile, both hands behind his back, repeating, "I don't touch guns I don't touch guns I don't touch guns." Then very slowly put his hands closer to it, and closer, then verrrry slowly picked it up and whispered, completely awed, "I'm touching a gun."

I'm not sure I have a point here, but I watched that program at least five years ago and that image stuck with me.

Susan, I think you should be just fine with a black-powder musket in your house the way you describe dealing with it. And yes, the hubby should be introduced to them somehow beforehand. I didn't grow up with guns in the house save my father's BB gun. The DH and I own four rifles and two handguns. Learning to shoot helped me understand both why people enjoy owning them for non-lethal reasons as well as why it's vitally necessary to be careful with them.

Most children are fascinated by some object, to the point of fixation. It could be cars, it could be lions, it could be fire engines, it could be guns. The kid repeatedly interrupting with the admonition he'd been drilled in is a big old clue that he's fixated on that object, and someone who understood how kids' minds work would have felt, not that they didn't need worry about him not knowing what to do if he ever found a gun, but that his fascination would overcome the training his parents had tried to instill.

Usually what works in these situations is a calm and quiet exploration of the object, if possible, to "normalize" it, and remove the mystery and illicit attraction. But sometimes even that doesn't make the fixation fade, and the only recourse is to remove the object from the equation.