WOW this has been a neat swap. Apologies to both Ellie, Farmergirl and our hostess Margo for taking so long to post. I'm finally home after logging almost 6000 miles in about a month. Crazy I know......... There was a terrific package waiting on the Dining Room Table from Ellie for this swap. Jack said it has arrived several days ago. a lot of seeds. Yeah! Some from my wish list some veggies and a pack of tomatillos which I have been thinking about trying for a couple years. That will be fun. Three bright and pretty hand towels in red and green. Already hanging up. Two pot holders that are prefect for my kitchen. Pink and blue on off white. I use my pot holders hard and some of the older ones are looking ratty so these are great. A BIG green mug with snowflakes and a tree shaped tea bag holder. I'll use this for my Christmas Cocoa and think happy thoughts about all of you Gardenweb friends. There was a beautiful crystal snowflake in the box and I have the perfect place for it to hang in my sunny front window. Again, thanks and a Merry Christmas to all. hugs Beth

Don't post to this. Let's keep it over on Discussions side where more people venture. It might be nice to do something fun to counter all the unpleasantness of late. Sher

Oh, goodness! I'm still confused! LOL! Great suggestions and great reasons for both talking to X and not. @Sylvia - what you suggested was what I was thinking. I was planning to take DS to the store to get the game this weekend, but I wasn't going to buy it for him. He has 2 gift cards left from his b-day so I was going to let him use those. For the record, I would not use my own money to buy a game for DS when he has gift cards at his dad's house that belong to him. That would be petty of me. But if DS wants to use his own money or gift cards, that's another story. @Sweeby - why do you think your X did those "for you but really for me" gifts? Was it to justify spending the money or do you think it really was the thought of DS, but didn't realize he'd get more use out of it than DS? @Nivea - you make some really, really, really good points! I hate the gimme mentality, too. I found out X got it for him AFTER I told him we were "thinking" about getting it. So what would an 11 year old need with 2 $400+ game systems???? He wanted it for himself. The sad thing is that X's entire family went in on this "gift" for DS, so he got nothing else from that side of his family. DS now knows that the game system was really for his dad and that his dad conned the other family members into helping him pay for it. And you're right that if I say something it might open up the boundaries I've been trying to re-set for a while now. I am totally amazed at how self-centered X can be. He lost his job and now DS doesn't have health insurance (he said he was going to get COBRA, didn't, and wasted away the time limit to put him on my insurance). He swindles DS out of his Christmas gifts. On top of that, he's not even looking for a job! He didn't come to his basketball practice the other day because "it's finally a nice day so I need to clean and polish the bike". Seriously??? He NEEDS to clean and polish a motorcycle instead of be at his own kid's practice??? My heart breaks for DS every time he has to listen to some stupid excuse like that. You know, if I were to do any of that, I'd be the worse mom ever.

At an annual family gathering with my wife's family we often play a game that they call "Celebrity", which goes as follows: Divide into two teams, each person gets four (or five or six) small pieces of paper on which they write a name or object or short phrase. All of the pieces of paper are folded and placed in a basket. Each person takes a timed, one-minute-long turn with that person selecting papers from the basket and the rest of their team guessing. In the first round, the rules are similar to catch phrase, the clue giver cannot say any part of the answer. So if the answer was "Abraham Lincoln" the clue giver might say "He's a President, He freed the slaves, He's on the Five Dollar Bill" When someone on his team guesses correctly the clue giver draws another and continues until the minute runs out, and the number of clues correctly guessed is tallied. Then the next player from the other team goes, and give clues for a minute, alternating like this until all of the clues are gone. If a answer hasn't been guessed when the time runs out, it is returned to the basket. Then ALL of the answers are re-folded and returned to the basket for the second round, which starts with the player after the one who ended the first round. The second round is charades, with all the usual rules of charades, but since the clues are one that you've just heard in the previous round it tends to go faster than normal charades, and even if you cannot think of what to do for a given answer, there's at least a chance one of your teammates will remember a particularly tough answer from the first round and shout it out (perhaps they even wrote it) Again each clue giver gets one minute, and the total number that are correctly guessed are added to the tally. Round two continues until all of the answers have been guessed, and again the slips of paper are re-folded and returned to the basket. In the third round, play proceeds as in the first two rounds, but the clue giver is only allowed to say a single word. They can say the word slow or fast or say it multiple times, but they can only say one word. Again given that the players have all heard the answers in the first two rounds, the play in the third round can proceed surprisingly quickly. In the end the team that guessed the most answers correctly wins. You have to establish house rules about whether a clue giver is allowed to pass if they don't know the answer they drew, and some sort of guidelines for what are "acceptable answers" and how close the guess has to be to the written answer to be correct.