Also, Casper at least is old enough that even if we skip NPR tonight she will hear about it from friends. Which means I have to talk to her about it. Ugh.

I'm dreading that one too.

mac is going to be freaked the fuck out. and last night was the first night in months that he went to bed without me in the room. of course, tonight I am just as likely to want to snuggle him, so no real problem.

I don;t want to talk about it with them! I want to talk about it with you guys!

Hopefully "let's not talk about this in front of the kids" will keep them at bay.

I still haven't forgotten trying to explain what was happening on 9/11 to Jake and Ben. When you can't understand something, it's so hard to reassure your kids that it's all going to be okay.

The crazy thing is it looks like his beef was with his parents and the schoolkids were just collateral damage. I guess he wanted to go out in a blaze, make his anguish known. A kind of burn down the world narcissism.

I feel like something is wrong with me that after the initial horror, a small voice is my head was thankful that it didn't happen in Colorado.

As much as I love working from home, today I kinda wish I was in the office and it wasn't so easy to get updates on the horror. K-Bug made me change the channel which is probably a good thing.

One person said "It's not gun control we need, it's mental health control", which is a glib way of saying what I'm thinking.

I feel like I'm having this argument all over the place - people with psychiatric disorders are far more likely to be the victims of violent crimes than they are the perpetrators, and so far there is no evidence that the shooter here was a victim of poor mental health treatment. How does this line of thinking help anyone?

I'm watching the niece so there will be no television for now... which is probably good.

Carolyn Hax was having her live chat when the news about the shooting came in, so here's here outline of how to talk to kids:

Q. SCHOOL SHOOTING In light of today's shooting at the elementary school at CT, can you give all the parents some ideas of what to say to our ES-age kids when they get home? They may or may not hear about it, but I want to be ready and good lord, how can I tell them the truth? – December 14, 2012 12:16 PM Permalink

A. CAROLYN HAX : When I have to tell my kids about these things, I always say that sometimes people do terrible things to each other. I also say we're all very fortunate that these things are still very rare, even if it doesn't seem that way from the number of times they appear in the news. If they ask for details, I might say that I'm not sure of the specifics myself, and that I am going to wait till the full story emerges so that I can learn what I need to know instead of just getting hit with images that will haunt me.

I also let them ask questions, because I don't think talking at kids is ever the whole of what they need; they need to process the news and what we've said about it, and form their questions. Which I will try to answer honestly, though with stuff like this I can't get away from my inability to get my mind around it.

If you start watching the news, I highly recommend CBS.

CNN, NBC, MSNBC are turning their news into an unwatchable clusterfuck with their decision to interview KIDS. WTF.