Sadly I never got the Lifetime thing. It didn't get into my tivo, so I missed the entire "new" PR -- I'll try and catch it on the web. Watched PR Canada on the web while Bravo and LT duked it out. Lifetime? -- oh God help me, no. They have those insufferable dramas my SIL watches...

Didn't we used to care about human rights and social justice? Thought we wanted to educate people and lift them out of poverty. Well, now it's all about embryos and fetuses. I love babies and all but find this disgusting.

...is his muse.

Both my sons did the disappearing thing. They are not so close in age -- I was divorced in between one's adolescence and the next though I did not move. Came to understand that the real work of adolescence is building a separate, autonomous self. You do get them back -- as adults...

Well-meaning and intelligent people are sending me emails that put me in mind of the "Nation of Whiners" speech. We are ingrates; we have so much; what are we complaining about! Got one with Jay Leno's name somehow attached. Then, today, got one titled "President Bush's Resignation Speech" that said the same type of things. I feel this stuff is churned out by the same shop. I also feel that it attempts to guilt us for feeling dissatisfied with the direction of our nation:

"What about the president who took us into war and has no plan to get us out? The president who has a measly 31 percent approval rating? Is this the same president who guided the nation in the dark days after 9/11? The president that cut taxes to bring an economy out of recession? Could this be the same guy who has been called every name in the book for succeeding in keeping all the spoiled ungrateful brats safe from terrorist attacks?" ... "If I were the liar you morons take me for, I could've easily had chemical weapons planted in Iraq so they could be discovered. Instead, I owned up to the fact that the intelligence was faulty." ...

Maybe a steady drumbeat of this stuff as we near the election.