Can parents ever stop worrying? Ever, ever, ever? And should we be worrying about not having friends to worry with? And why does Catherine's bathroom fan need bluetooth? These and other questions occupy us on this week's Parenting Roundabout group chat. Here's a road map of our conversation:

0:54 Introduction and What's New With You — As you may hear from the periodic pounding in the background while we were recording, Catherine's having some work done in her house. And it turns out the reason you need bluetooth in the bathroom fan is because it has speakers in it. We live in an age of wonders.

5:44: Is There a Parenting Finish Line? — A tragic story from Terri's old hometown got us thinking about the fact that you can never stop worrying about your kids, no matter how much you want to. Is there ever a moment where your child is successfully delivered to adulthood and you can retire from parenting? We'd like to think so, but we have our doubts we'll ever break that tape.

15:53 Friends IRL — As four friends who met online and mostly interact there, we wonder whether non-virtual friendship is something people still do ... and why, since you've probably already read everything your friend has to say on Facebook.

28:24 Interview of the Week — Amanda called in sick to the podcast last week, and this week she chats with her husband, Jon, about that particular parental hell of having the entire family sick at the same time. Of course, having kids with special needs only up the degree of difficulty.

38:57 Shameless Self-Promotion — Terri shared a blog post on "Inclusion's Chris Traeger Problem"; Amanda has some parent-child behavior contracts for you; Catherine wrote about adventure parks; and Nicole is promoting an online course for people who want to say yes to inclusion and mean it.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our podcast and for our fun in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

Dancing With the Stars is back! And the season is actually looking promising. We're happy to see the return of Len, not so happy to see the return of Mark's ridiculous hair stylings, but overall encouraged by a field with no obvious ringers and few obvious train-wrecks. Our early money is on Nyle and Wanya, but there are plenty of dancers we're happy to see in action.

Meanwhile, on our continuing Parks and Recreation marathon, we watched "Road Trip," "The Bubble," "Li'l Sebastian," and "I'm Leslie Knope" and said hello to Entertainment 7/20, Ron's first ex-wife Tammy, and Rob Lowe's unfortunate haircut; goodbye to Li'l Sebastian; and hello and goodbye to Ben and Leslie as a couple (if only for the moment). On the agenda for next week are the Season 4 episodes "Ron and Tammys," "Born and Raised," "Pawnee Rangers," and "Meet and Greet."

Finally, we mentioned another marathon we're going to be going on courtesy of another podcast -- West Wing Weekly, on which Joshua Malina and Hrishikesh Hirway will be watching WW episodes one by one and talking about them, sometimes with guests. While we won't be doing a full-on chat about the eps, since we'll both be watching and listening, we'll probably have a thing or two to say here too. Why not watch/listen along?

In a special Round 4, Nicole Eredics, founder of The Inclusive Class and a member of our weekly Parenting Roundabout group chat, shares her experience yesterday in the vicinity of the shootings in San Bernardino, California. Although her family was thankfully not caught up in the violence, they did have to deal with the lockdowns and the manhunt that accompanied it. We talk about how events unfolded for her family, as well as whether students should have to take tests the day after a for-real lockdown, how we get our news in this age of social media, and how our kids have survived their lockdowns and lockdown drills (and we adults waiting nervously at home too).