sadly, all I will do is mimic what Astin said. It enragulates me. It's not just television and movies; it's also Internet radio. I'm surprised we're allowed to access the freaking Library of Congress.

Dude! *I* have blue hair!!! What are the chances? Actually, mine's kind of purple right now (oldest son's hockey team colours), but yeah. My hopes are that my boys will do exactly that. Power to cool mums of boys!

My oldest is turning 10 in October. He is also trapped in a 15 year old's angst-filled "THAT'S NOT FAIR!" body. As the mother of two boys, I am at once anticipatory and melancholy about the day I realise their voices have changed and they're stinky...when I had them, I think I always figured they'd be lovely, cuddly, warm, sweet boys for the rest of my life. The one thing I desperately hope for is that my boys will always be huggers. And willing hugees. Personally, I think the time actually physically squips out through the cracks between things - the cracks between floorboards, the space between the hinges and the frames of doors. I think of it rather like an ephemeral flickering cloud of sentient dust, and it swirls away in the evening breezes to a desert somewhere in the Dreaming. And sometimes, I get to go there and see my kids again with their chubby toddler fingers and their gleeful, unselfconscious laughter full of joy. Because, I like to think, there is a desert in Dreaming that is full of the time that slips away.

Dude, I laughed out loud. Don't beat yourself up too much. The worst thing we do as writers is self-edit. We're often much harder on ourselves than need be. And Jules, I *totally* feel like I'm still a teenager and I sign on 100% with the "that was HOW long ago!?" I think part of that comes with realising your oldest/youngest kid is TEN. Something about 'decades'...