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I'm feeling a lot better, Princess - thank you for asking. I had two nights when coughing woke me out of a sound sleep -- it was scary but thankfully the worst of the coughing, knock on wood, appears to be over. The bad news is my husband woke up sick today -- he's still been working and running to the store when necessary for us homebodies, and I'm trying not to worry about what he has. The GREAT news is that, after one week of virtual learning, my kids are on spring break! THANK GOD!! I have a deadline on Friday so I really don't have time to do the jitterbug between two kids on computers ?? Hope everyone in ChitChat Land continues to be safe and healthy!

Is it wrong to hope that Charles breaks sequester long enough to sneeze all over his brother Andrew? Asking for a friend....

I wanted to briefly emerge from lurkdom to say I am really glad we have this group. It’s a nice connection in these odd times, and thus more than just silly celebrity chit chat, even to people like me who don’t post much. Thanks, Princess.

They gave it away when they described Andrew as handsome ?

Hey everybody. So far today it's 10:30 AM my time and no symptoms except for this darn cough. (I've been up since 5 and slept well, and the cough didn't wake me in the night.) Thankful the headache, sore throat, and general sense of exhaustion are gone (although not ruling out an afternoon nap if it creeps back in). Wish people with mild cases were able to get tested b/c I'd love to know if I have it or just a cold. However, Day 5 is generally when cases turn south for people (if they go south at all...). I'm not too worried about that happening, since I haven't had it bad thus far, but tomorrow is my Day 5, so if I am ok after that I will cough I mean breathe a sigh of relief. ? Hope all of you are hanging in there!!

Harvey Weinstein sentenced to 23 years in prison for sexually assaulting two women in New York https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/harvey-weinstein-sentence-trial-sexual-assault/2020/03/11/398f2cf6-630b-11ea-acca-80c22bbee96f_story.html?fbclid=IwAR3D1nZkbMH1abdJcRtcPHhAY6Ji_REeJe41BhT4jPuVL4RFx6N3_6n89es

I hope when Charles becomes king he cuts Andrew right the fuck out

Shouldn’t we pat ourselves on the back? Hasn’t it been a while since we even had a couple on the poll actually divorce? ??

I think all the Jonas brothers have "real" relationships. How long they'll last - no clue! But they all dated a while, engaged a while, etc. (no, Nick & Priyanka weren't engaged long - but they flirted a year or two before they met again at the Met and finally fast-tracked the relationship and OMG WHY DO I KNOW ALL THIS??!!!)

Felicity’s daughter is probably just laying low. Olivia Jade knew exactly how she got into school. She wanted to be popular and loved the idea of being famous for being famous. She went along with what she needed to make that happen. Now she is infamous and realizing that she may never be the pretty popular girl again. She thinks she can only stay relavent if she comes out against her parents. However, she is so self absorbed and vapid that she has no idea how to say the right thing and keeps digging her hole deeper. I think she would have been better trying to relate to the people that follow (ed) her. Go into how hard it was to do well in High School and although she is grateful for what her parents tried to do she realizes it was not fair to anyone else. She regrets their actions, but they are still her parents and she will always love them. If she was a regular student like her sister and not in the limelight, I am sure she would not have come out against them. If you cannot tell - I have no sympathy or love lost for that child?

I do not think Mac will come out. He seems to be in such a chill place. His AMA Reddits are funny and charming. I hope that he is a peace with his part of MJ’s history and does not want to unearth it again. I am also not 100% sure he was molested. MJ was such a conniving bastard, it would not shock me if he treated Mac differently to give MJ credibility. I would not be surprised if other Jackson brothers were also molesters. I have no doubt MJ and his siblings were sexually abused as children, and their father sanctioned it (he totally gives me the creeps). History has shown abused becomes abusers.

The new husband became a father 3 days after he met Miranda, with the baby's mother being someone other than the woman he was engaged to at the time of conception. Miranda may well have found her messy match here. Get your popcorn ready folks - this is a great day for gossip!!!!!

An update: my husband had a doctor's appointment via Zoom earlier this afternoon, and his doctor ordered a COVID test. Results in 7 days, although I suspect we'll likely know ourselves by then. Fingers crossed.

They are marking solved, not yet revealed to be April Fools joke but we know https://blindgossip.com/the-second-baby/#more-100388

Every year they get me with these stupid-ass fake blinds. I guess that's because they post a lot of bullshit the rest of the year, too ?

This is definitely the annual April Fool's BV. That said, a sibling for Archie would not surprise me.

I do medical editing and fact-checking. I am by no means an expert on virology, but I do understand a fair amount of data and read a lot of published studies. I have been studying this thing since early January. As long as the cases were limited to China, I kept my anxiety and paranoia to myself. However, once it jumped to South Korea, I knew it was coming our way too, and with the current administration running things, I figured the situation would quickly turn into a clusterfuck. In early February I began planning for shortages and started stocking up on items we might need in the coming months. In mid-February I began sounding the alarm to my loved ones. There were moments when I thought -- you're fucking nuts! You got people out there worried over nothing! But now I'm glad I said what I said. I wish more had listened. I'm so over these tired-ass Facebook memes about how "it's just the flu" and "I survived ebola, y'all can miss me with this coronavirus shit" and a ton of other garbage that only serves to minimize a threat that has been exacerbated by an administration too focused on grifting rather than protecting its people. In other news, about 3 years ago the Smithsonian ran a fascinating article discussing the spread of the 1918 flu and how the American government aided its spread by suppressing journalists and the medical community from warning people about it. Thankfully, we have the internet and social media, which will HOPEFULLY prevent the same thing from occurring today, but only if we learn from history's mistakes. Ok rant over -- wishing all of my beloved fanchitchatters good health

The one thing I really resent about this whole thing is that it’s made me feel sorry for Kate. I don’t like feeling sorry for royalty ?

Good day to be Zara and have this pass without notice. Already having 9 points before this offence suggests she is indeed a speed demon! I am generally also there with you and - absent the creepy sex trafficking stuff obviously - I actually think this is very similar to the space where Andrew wants to sit, except he is there with successful businesspeople rather than Hollywood celebrities. there are racism issues in Britain that M has brought to the fore, and it’s awful to see and I do feel for her on that front. The pressure must be immense. That doesn’t mean she is not trying to use it to her advantage, for her own ends. equally the tabloids did go after Kate a lot in her early years with William because we also have class issues, yay! Her family were seen as social climbers, now they’re saints. i think my advice would be - just don’t marry royal. ? I believe the main argument goes that the money from the crown state is intended to be used for the administration of the country as a whole (so the plebs don’t get upset about the fact one family basically owns the island by virtue of being borne, you know? ). Anything that is then given “back” to the Queen could technically otherwise have been used by the government to fund other public services like the NHS, education, police etc instead - so by giving an amount to the Queen it then requires the taxpayers to make up the gap in funding for those services (through higher taxation than would theoretically otherwise be required). I don’t think it’s direct taxpayer funding as such, it’s almost more an opportunity cost? the reality is way more complicated obviously - you can argue the royal family results in the country collecting more money by way of tourism than it otherwise would. But then the counter to that is how much does the family itself actually add, if people would still come to see the palaces even without active royals? Edinburgh castle hasn’t been used in centuries but is still a major visitor attraction, for example. so the taxpayers money argument is potentially because a lot of people would like to pay less tax but still maintain or improve public services, and this is a clearly visible outflow of money that doesn’t necessarily create value for those people, so it’s an easy target. Reality is again that the civil service as a whole is hugely inefficient (in my experience, as I work a lot with a government department) and likely ‘wastes’ far more money than the Queen gets. or it’s just that we like a moan when it’s cold and raining, which is most of the time this is long, and just my take on it - I grumble but reality is I don’t care that much day to day ?

I honestly had to come back to this because I am just flabbergasted by the wording. I have spent all afternoon thinking about their desire to work on becoming financially independent. Like they are freaking college students about to graduate with $100,000 in student loans. He has - at minimum - a multi million dollar trust fund and she was, allegedly at least, a successful actress. They have more money than 99.9% of the world. One dress that she wears is worth more than my car. Her best friends are a world famous tennis star and the daughter-in-law of the former Prime Minister of Canada. But they need to work on becoming financially independent. I watched their goddamn wedding and I was excited about it. At this point they could disappear from the face of the earth and I would not care. That one phrase has turned me off more than anything they have done to this point. They are working to become financially independent. That is the most out of touch thing I have ever read. my jaw is still sitting on the floor. Before they got married Prince Harry probably had more good will from the public than just about anybody I can think of. People loved him so much because of his mother. I really really hate to blame her alone and I won’t because this makes me remember the Nazi outfit and all the other stupid things he did that everybody forgot about. There are effing working on becoming financially independent. Good god they are oblivious. And yes, I do recognize that their expenses are very different than my expenses, but still… There had to be a better way to express themselves than that.

Well this ties in nicely with that blind item that was about them. They’re basically feeling that they can make more money off of themselves independently than what they get from the queen, I think. This is allows them to monetize themselves completely. Somehow maybe it’s the way it was worded, I don’t know, I feel like this is more about show me the money than let’s hide Archie from craziness. It was extraordinarily poorly worded. We’re going to step back up but we’re still going to be there. It makes it sound like they’ll be there just enough to keep their names in the spotlight and use the royal family for publicity when they want to.

I think the idea that Andrew just can’t fathom that being royal wont get him out of this isn’t too far off the mark. His entire life is one of unearned privilege; you see it in the way he complains about his kids not being funded by the crown! i could well see that being accountable for his actions (in the way his older brother as future king has to be, at least nominally, due to the scrutiny on him) isn’t something he’ll ever have had to do.

perhaps Prince Philip threatened to take people out for a drive and that was enough to keep them in line until now. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47186875

I only saw the toe-sucking photos. WHAT PHOTOS DID YOU SEE???!!!! [I'm sorry - who could resist a typo like that???? ;-)]

I love how Meghan is gushing about how easy Archie is. It’s such a naive new mom thing to do. Nearly all newborns are easy. If a baby is colicky (and I’m not saying Archie will be—20% of babies are so more likely not) it doesn’t start until two weeks past the due date. That’s also when babies start to get a bit fussy during the evening, called the witching hour (though at its peak usually lasts between 4:00/5:00 and 9:00/10:00 so “hour” is a misnomer) which is more common than colic. If you’re lucky enough to have a baby that isn’t colicky and doesn’t go through the witching hour then the baby usually “wakes up” somewhere between two and six weeks. It’s far too early to know if they have an “easy” baby or not but most moms are fooled in those first few weeks. ETA: Also love the name and the pictures.