Please stop featuring the stars of MTV's “Teen Mom” show in the tabloids and on entertainment Web sites. Having a kid as a teen is already challenging enough. Featuring teen mothers on tabloids and making entertainment stars out of them will likely only serve to screw up their lives even more. These girls are not celebrities; stop treating them as such. Thank you. –MM

Caregiving is hard. I find myself escaping to facebook and eOnline way too often. Hoping to remedy that in the New Year by instituting a schedule for the children — Lex in particular could use more structure at home, I feel (and less TV). I'd like to get my mom more involved in the local Senior Center despite the fact that the facility itself is decorated in the style of early Nurse Ratched.

Has anyone out there instituted a schedule in their home? What is it? How's it work?

On a day when so many were snowed in w/ nothing to do but read the paper, my client HitPoint Studios was a major story in not one but TWO local dailies: the Daily Hampshire Gazette *and* the Springfield Republican. Pretty awesome.

My “I forgot” post is the 1,000th article I have written on this blog. Of course, my archives (see blogroll) stretch to 1995. So, if you're looking to procrastinate, just catch up on Motormouth.

I forgot how excruciating it is, waiting for snow.

…and Mommy's TIRED, notwithstanding the fact I was in bed by 9:30 last night, after watching “Inception,” which I'm calling “SausageParty” because really, all those second-tier players and only one woman who wasn't a murderous dead wife or a flight attendant? Really??? Anyway, Monstro cooked the Christmas dinner of all Christmas dinners: mushroom strata, bleu-cheese-and-cauliflower tart, stuffing w/ pine nuts, pecans, mango, and sausage, and GOOSE. Christmas Goose. It was extraordinary. I think he was fueled by the fact that he'd unwrapped a FIRST EDITION hardcover Gravity's Rainbow that morning (thank you eBay). Lex opened his gifts with great abandon; BK opened about four and then decided he was done with the whole thing. He'll probably be unwrapping gifts through New Year's.

Today I've carried on the celebration by cleaning the kitchen (second load in the dishwasher now) and doing a little day-after-Xmas shopping online. Hope the dress fits 'cause I want to wear it on New Year's Eve!

Is here. Merry merry!

… in every sense. Didn't have to drive 200 miles, that was a plus! Got Mom's Christmas cards written & addressed. Just printed four restaurant.com gift certificates for the teachers in Lex's class — $100 worth of GCs for eight bucks. Niiice.

Monstro and I watched “Art School Confidential” last night (enjoyable and unpredictable) and it got me thinking about the nature of great art. After puzzling it for a while when I couldn't sleep, I edited it to this:

Great art makes us yearn.

It has been a long day, compounded by a shocking tableau. I'm so optimistic it blinds me sometimes. Also, “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse” is a horrible movie. Half an hour into it and Wii Fit Free Step and it feels like I've been stepping for at least twice that long. Also, the batteries on my balance board are nearly dead so at the end of half an hour, it said I'd done 297 steps and my time logged was three minutes. Also, today would have been my parents' wedding anniversary. It doesn't bother me that I don't know how long they'd have been married by now.