Or should mom just stop looking and consider it a lost cause that he will sneak to school and either sell for cash or trade for something else and just pay the dimwitted babysitter her money back while telling her AGAIN that no no no on buying the manipulative child anything that costs more than $5.

Oh jeez. I maybe vote for this one, but I am no parent.

For the record: I am not wearing red or plaid and have no intentions of driving anywhere tonight.

I don't know if Buffistas count as an alibi... but I bet we'll find that out for sure sooner or later.

ICompletelyRandomN, words cannot express how devastated I am that I never knew this remarkable person ever existed until four days after she died:

RIP Suzanne Beauclerk, Dowager Duchess of St. Albans

Dude! Her infancy was marked by the care of an amah who soothed her unruly brood with small doses of chloroform! She spent her childhood in a decaying villa, stomping grapes with the townspeople and storing her collection of live pythons on the nursery shelves while miniature owls nested on top of the wardrobe! She was recruited by British intelligence during WWII, but set to work at basic reporting as she was congenitally incapable of deception (and yet she had such an elfishly gleeful smile)! She is probably the only person on earth whom Graham Greene ever caused to dissolve into helpless giggles. She wrote memoirs to pay the bills and ran an art gallery that exhibited Mervyn Peake's sketches. Her husband was a descendant of Charles II and Nell Gwynn.

I just...I... Sigh. I fear I'm girlcrushing on a dead woman.

while telling her AGAIN that no no no on buying the manipulative child anything that costs more than $5.

I'm with Brenda. Especially since you said AGAIN. That's kinda one of those lessons people need to learn. And this is how.

Sorry you are still having such DS drama. Ugh.

Or should mom just stop looking and consider it a lost cause that he will sneak to school and either sell for cash or trade for something else and just pay the dimwitted babysitter her money back while telling her AGAIN that no no no on buying the manipulative child anything that costs more than $5.

This sounds the least crazy-making for mom. In my totally inexperienced opinion.

For the record: I am not wearing red or plaid and have no intentions of driving anywhere tonight.

Phew!

And in a separate post, because msbelle posted while I was loving on the Dowager Duchess,

Holy shit, that's awful. Also, what megan said, including the part about the bourbon and ginger.

I so desperately want to find it, but I think that is what the therapist refers to as "seeing it as a win/lose situation when it isn't". Pfft! Clearly if I do not find it, I lose. shakes fists!!!

If I thought the bourbon would help me get to sleep, I might, but I have no ginger ale.

Go for the straight bourbon, msbelle. And give up on finding the game. Instead, unless it's too confrontational, check through his backpack every day after school for a while?

I so desperately want to find it, but I think that is what the therapist refers to as "seeing it as a win/lose situation when it isn't". Pfft! Clearly if I do not find it, I lose.

I think you lose if you keep stressing about it. Give this skirmish up in the interest of winning the war. And have a shot of bourbon, seriously. I hope you get some rest.

I do vote for object lesson to the babysitter of no reimbursement.