Something up with Which I Will Not Put

It occurred to me today that breaking up with someone is very much like a really huge pimple:
~ painful
~ obviously must be dealt with
~ dealing with relationship/huge pimple provides a curious sense of relief and satisfaction mingled with vague self-loathing
~ the aftermath is usually pretty messy
~ one hopes there’s no scarring.
I haven’t broken up with anyone. You do the math.

I’m still at a loss for words, or at least a loss for the intellectual energy required to reflect on what’s going on in the world ~ at some point, maybe I’ll have something to say about the Sheryl Crow TP debacle (um, she was kidding ) or the Jessica Lynch affair (they were lying), but for now the best I can come up with is a list of neologisms inspired by my own question in the previous post.
How self-absorbed am I (enough to get by on one square, perhaps)?
So I have been thinking along the lines of “blodging,” “retriblog” or “blogsplanation,” having rejected a series of phrases, such as “bloggier-than-thou,” “hot-blogging” and “a real bloghard.” Mum’s suggestions were interesting, but would no doubt lead to me referring to myself as a “blithering” idiot, and frankly, there’s already enough of that without me doing it to myself.
Right now, my personal favourites are “self-bloggelation” and “mea blogpa.”
Further suggestions will be entertained, of course.

…has abandoned me.
I’m assuming that there must be a tenth muse, or that we’ve modernized Calliope (or in my case, perhaps Thalia) to incorporate blogging into her portfolio. We could call her Wikerpe.
Anyway, whoever she is, she’s giving me the cold shoulder these days. I’ve even had correcting to do, which is usually a guarantee that I’ll find something to blog about, just to distract myself. I can only conclude that I have become more conscientious when it comes to correcting ~ or that in my advancing years I’ve lost the art of procrastination. It’s a shame really; I was very good at it.
So, in the absence of anything worthwhile, let me put this out there, instead: what is (or should be) the term for blogging about one’s lack of blogging? I mean, it happens all the time. There’s gotta be a word for it.

Plagiarism is a bad thing, obviously. First of all, it’s theft. When you try to present someone else’s ideas, directly or “in your own words,” you have to give that someone credit – and if you don’t, you’re stealing from that someone. Secondly, it’s deception. Presenting someone else’s ideas as if they are your ideas is a blatant lie. And of course, there’s always the laziness factor.
But the element of plagiarism that really pisses me off is the sheer arrogance.
Let’s face it, a student who presents a plagiarized paper is saying several things to his/her teacher:
1. I couldn’t be bothered with your lame assignment
2. The mark matters, but the learning doesn’t
3. I believe you’re too stupid to catch me
The penalty for plagiarism shouldn’t stop at a letter in the student’s file and a zero on the assignment. The student should have to walk around campus for a week wearing a t-shirt that says “I committed academic plagiarism”. Or that says simply “CHEATER” in big, I mean fricking HUGE, red letters. And the teacher should be allowed to follow the student around swatting him/her with a nerf bat.
Yeah.

This weekend was wonderful, not least because the weather was well and truly springlike. Naturally, we threw open the doors and windows to get some of that lovely, warm spring air in the house. After a few months, “cozy” starts to feel like “stuffy.” Dr. T even swept off the back porch, and I toured the garden, relishing every tiny sprout of green. Who knows? Next weekend we might even rake up all the dead crap.
I took advantage of the weather on Saturday to walk from Dina’s place, with Dina, to our favourite fancy dress store (OK, our only fancy dress store), where I found a great dress to wear to my cousin’s wedding in two weeks. We walked back to her place, then I toddled off home to get supper ready for Irene and Dave & Kate. After supper, Kate got out her knitting and I whipped off a few more granny squares for the next baby blanket, and we got caught up ~ it’s been ages since we saw everyone.
Well-fed, well-wined, and content, we saw our guests off and crawled into bed, and slept the sleep of the righteous.
Righteous, but not all that bright.
Now that Colin and Robert are nine and seven, respectively, they’re pretty good about getting up by themselves on weekend mornings, and heading downstairs. They eat cereal, and turn on the TV or the Nintendo in the basement, and Dr. T and I actually get to sleep in.
On Sunday, however, the boys woke us up because of the bird in the basement.
Remember when I said “we threw open the doors and windows to get some of that lovely, warm spring air in the house”? We neglected to close the balcony door in the office.
Now, those of you who have lived through similar experiences (or who pay attention to the post titles) know where this is going…
I headed down to the kitchen to get a cup of coffee. So there I was, minding my own business, when the bat buzzed my head.
To my credit, I did not, at that point, shriek like a little girl.
I edged over to the back door, and opened it, talking calmly to the bat the whole time. Despite my reassurances, the bat chose to fly back to the basement, rather than through the open door. My soothing voice must have touched a chord, though, because once I was back upstairs, sitting in front of the computer, the bat followed me and started flying haphazardly around the room, getting pretty frickin close to my head with each pass.
At that point, I did shriek like a girl. I mean, it’s one thing to encounter a bat in your kitchen; it’s kind of disconcerting to be stalked by the bat.
After a few more heart-stopping minutes, the bat apparently exhausted itself and flew into the closet, otherwise known as the barely-contained stack of crap and old boxes. Armed with an old tennis racket (which had a really small head, but Dr. T refused to use one of our good rackets on bat control), I entered the fray, and found the bat huddled in an old box, which I gingerly pulled from the closet. I was almost at the balcony door when the bat jumped out of the box. I thought that all was lost, but rather than flying around again, the bat slumped on the floor, right in front of the door. I used the box and the racket to scoop up the bat, and actually managed to get him (or her ~ we didn’t get that close) out the door and onto the floor of the balcony.
Suffice it to say, we’re never opening our doors and windows again.