Blog Clog

Pardon the silence lately; I've been afflicted with an acute case of Blog Clog. We've had a million little things going on here at the Bears' Den lately: we hosted Grandma N's 74th birthday party, I've been planning a Valentine's Day play date for Keira and a few (now almost a dozen!) friends, we're deep in the throes of end-of-trimester testing at school, Ellie is all over the place and has imposed a strict Watch Me Every Second Or I Will Totally Eat Dog Food Out of Catey-Pup's Bowl policy, and things have generally been so busy lately that--horror of horrors--I've barely had a spare minute to spend on the internet!

Besides that, now that I've finally sat down to post something, my brain is so filled with tiny scraps of thoughts and plans that I'm finding it impossible to form cohesive thoughts. Instead, then, how about a collection of assorted ones?

• I am turning 30 in a little over a month, and am pretty sure I will not be having any sort of crisis over it. I said, pretty sure.
• I wore a dress with tights to school one day last week, and one of the little boys in my class came up to me to ask a question but got sidetracked, apparently, by my ensemble. He scrunched up his face and asked, "What happened to your legs?" I stifled a laugh and told him they had tights on them. Pause. "They have tights?" He wandered away, looking confused. This makes me giggle every time I think about it.
• I broke down and traded in my dinosaur of a cell phone for one of those newfangled ones with a full keyboard, and then had to spend an entire day of my life contemplating which ring tone(s) define me as a person. This is why technology is evil. However, it does bring me a tiny burst of joy to hear the opening notes of New Kids on the Block's "Dirty Dancing" every time I get a text message...which, thanks to Bittle, is quite often. (Go ahead. Mock me. I can take it.)
• Merit pay for teachers is a truly idiotic idea. My blog clog will not permit me to articulate the various reasons why at this time, but this article sums it up pretty well. Unfortunately, I don't think the Governator is listening.
• I got Bear's Valentine's Day card while I was at Target the other day. Because I am a lazy wife, I left the Target bags on the kitchen counter; because he is an awesome husband, he decided at some point to unpack them. His card is now sitting here on the computer desk, and I'm considering having him finish the thing by just signing it over to himself, too. Ah, romance.
• I have lowered my expectations of myself as a "LOST" viewer considerably, to the point that my main objective is now to understand what's going on in the scene we are currently watching. Having any idea what it means in context of the entire episode, season, or series is completely beyond me anymore--I'm like a kid in the back seat of the family car, just strapped in and looking out the window. "Wooo, smoke monster!....Hey, there's another John Locke....Wow, lookit that weird foot thingy." I blame motherhood for kidnapping the brain cells I might have used to formulate the complicated theories that Bear tosses out so casually, and using them instead to store infant Tylenol dosages and growth chart percentiles. Although, I guess those things are kinda useful.
• If there is anything sweeter in this world than having a baby's warm little cheek on your shoulder and her soft milky-breath on your neck while she sleeps, I don't know what it is.

Speaking of sleep...