On “From Cool to Tool”: I’m with you on that. I’ve never heard of a Bluetooth Headset. But from the context, it must be some cellphone appendage. I despise, not cellphones, but abuse of them. Yet, since I don’t know anyone who doesn’t abuse cellphones, I consider the cellphone one of the worst inventions ever. My parents gave me a cellphone for Christmas once–even though I had told them I did not want a cellphone. Their intentions were good, but “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” Finally, after two years, they asked me to give it back to them, since I’d never used it. And I gladly did so!

On “Kid update”: That’s why I love kids (though I have none, of my own)! They say whatever is on their minds–they’re far more honest than we!

On “On the ‘Scary’ Front”: I liked “Friday the 13th” too, when I was younger.
But now it seems unoriginal and senseless, to me. I love horror films, as long as they’re not just horror films. My favorites include “Interview with the Vampire,” “Ghost Story”, “The Sixth Sense”, “The Shining” (Kubrick’s version), “The Vanishing” (the original, French/Dutch version), “Hellraiser”–and, of course, Hitchcock’s “Psycho”.

Glad to hear the swelling is on it’s way down.

As far as your daughter’s bathroom humor goes, my daughter also went through that “twinkle twinkle little poop” phase. (Actually, she’s still in it at 5yo. Maybe it’s not a phase after all, just bad parenting.) I’m thinking your daughter will grow out of it just fine.

Talking about death and young children, a friend of mine got leukemia. At the time, her two kids were 18 months and 5 year old. She spent 5 months in the hospital but attained remission. She still to this day has strong odds of relapsing.
Three years later, her family was in Spain vacationing, and her 42 year old husband got a heart attack while windsurfing and died, completely out of the blue.
Try to explain the concept of death to these poor kids.