Hilarious! Can no one ‘stop the steal’ 
?
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@JPM. more or less. About the same amount of work as a parakeet, but not quite as fun as your friend’s dog.
@MarkD I’ll go for that. Though I’m quickly becoming the insect version of a crazy cat lady… What does that make me? Spiderman? Antman? “Look kids it’s that weirdo with all the bugs, let’s cross to the other side of the street”?
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RELEASE THE KRAKKEN! 
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@jpm I think I have heard that grandkids and @MarkD nephews and nieces are lower on the effort and higher on the fun list than your own kids … Though personally I am so grateful with my own kids and would not trade these brief years for anything
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Absolutely! My garden demands more care than my two dogs and my niece and nephew put together or my stepson when he was still at home with us, but I still find it richly rewarding. Sometimes the demands contribute to the engagement/entertainment.
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@Randy, grandkids have the advantage of being able to enjoy them without the responsibility of being responsible for everything. You can enjoy their antics without having to discipline them. Sort of like the fun you have with a friend’s dog on the graph!
It is easy to have bittersweet feelings about having your kids grow up, but there is certainly a lot of fun and joy you can have with knowing your children as adults also, so don’t mourn the loss of childhood too much!
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(This has nothing to do with science or theology.)
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I got my wife a robe. 
[Just kidding. 
]
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I trust you’ve made sure all the relevant family members got to see this.
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Oh, yes. And it was right after the conversation about a Twitter post that had gone viral where a Muslim young man in Canada who couldn’t be with his family for Christmas decided to celebrate his first Christmas with his roommates as an anthropological learning experience. He had written that he bought himself stocking stuffers and his roommates had told him that was not a thing, you absolutely could not put things in your own stocking. And my friend (that I’m staying with) and I were both like, “Clearly he has spoken to zero married women with children on this point.”
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Things have changed. When I was a kid we loved giving my mother things. Every finger painting or paper plate with dry macaroni glued on it and gold painted was ceremoniously given to her. You’d have thought it was real gold from her reaction then and from the fact that she’d take it all out periodically years later.
Stockings were a thing my parents did through their Santa alias. But in Lia’s family everyone would give everyone else something in their stocking from the time they figured out what was going on. So we still do it that way, or we will if any future Christmas begins to resemble normal. This year we’re planning Christmas for two and have already decided to give each other the gift of no gifting. She can be so thoughtful that way. I’ll rotisserie wild salmon, bake up a bunch of small potatoes in olive oil and serve it with brussel sprouts with butter and horse radish. Lia will make a persimmon pudding which we’ll have with whipped cream (had to give up the hard sauce or else kiss off old age). We will Zoom with cousins and siblings along the way.
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Stockings are the only thing Santa brings in our family - we’re not anti-Santa by any stretch of the imagination. However, it has never really sat well with us the thought of trying to explain why Santa gave Jimmy at school and Nintendo Switch and an iPad but not some other child who was, frankly, better behaved all year.
So, in our house Santa fills the stockings and anything else comes from Mum and Dad, Gran and Granpa, etc.
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My wife just said maybe that would get people to wear masks. 
(Of course I’m sure that cannot be in your office without one.)
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That was our hope!–or at least to take things more lightly. Yes, masks are absolutely required.
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I love #9 above. Guess what we’re having tomorrow.
#5 is good, too. After having worked in a moderately large hospital for over thirty years in a relatively high profile job, a lot of people knew my name, but not I theirs, or at least didn’t remember it when I saw someone again, either at work or elsewhere. And now that I’ve been gone for almost sixteen years… you can imagine. Of course, anyone’s tenure that began after that I wouldn’t know, but I still see ‘old folks’. Just in early December I was there and recognized someone by their eyes, and was able to ask them their name and what department I knew them from… without any chagrin.