Whatever coping mechanism helps is encouraged. Also,

I support you getting through this however works. If you need an alibi, I am here. With you. And we were totally doing a thing.

Hey ND! How are you and Pix enjoying the trip? I hope you are able to get some serious R&R accomplished. Sending happiness wishes to the happy couple. So glad you could join them.

Cashmere, all my sympathy. Do whatever you need to cope. Don't think I can provide much of an alibi, but I look really respectable if you need me.

And I also thought of the vuvuzuela ... they're smaller, cheaper (so buy two! for when the parental units trash the first one) and there doesn't seem to be a learning curve - they're loud and annoying from the start, where a beginning bagpiper just gets squeaks (from what I've heard about).

Also, in me me me news, in the ten minutes I waited for the bus, I managed to acquire three mosquito bites. One on my ankle inside my sock. sigh ... I keep antihistamine ointment at hand, since mosquitoes seem to think I'm really delicious, but three?

Cashmere, I support your subtle anger. Definitely get him one of the dolls that just says the same three phrases over and over and over again. Whatever character he likes so he will make it talk all day long.

TCG likes Jefferson bourbon.

The rain has finally stopped here! I was in so much pain the last couple of days.

I still think the Little Ricky drumset is a good revenge gift.

Bourbon seem like a sound choice with a lot of historical validity. I hope the hangover is not bad and the shopping is ok or even good

Oh, work. An evening's respite and a night of sleep have not made me any more eager to take you on.

I support you getting through this however works. If you need an alibi, I am here. With you. And we were totally doing a thing.

I fear you risk the "I am Spartacus" of alibis.

THEY CAN'T PROSECUTE US ALL

I know my father and his siblings got one another's kids tinker toys when they were feeling spiteful. Not noisy, but pernicious. Do they still exist? What color is the living room rug? 400 Legos in that color could make a lovely gift.

Cashmere, I am so sorry for your loss.

I wasn’t aware of the downess of FB & it’s minions until late in the day when I complained to a friend that I was trying to contact Comcast & they couldn’t find my record. She wondered if they were somehow using FB tools for that sort of thing. The coincidence does seem suspicious.

Meanwhile I am reading a memoir called The Arbornaut and somewhat amused that as recently as the late 70s in Australia intellectual women were called “bluestockings”. How very 19th century of them.

Interesting, sumi. And reminded me that I have been wondering for a while if there were actual blue hosiery involved in the origin of the term so I googled and:

The term probably originated when one of the ladies, Mrs. Vesey, invited the learned Benjamin Stillingfleet to one of her parties; he declined because he lacked appropriate dress, whereupon she told him to come “in his blue stockings”—the ordinary worsted stockings he was wearing at the time.

Which is really far from anything I imagined.

Bourbon, alibis, and vuvuzelas sounds like the title of a Buffista memoir.