Don’t you just hate when someone has brilliant ponderings about …well, everything, and they share it with the world in the form of a blog only to drop off the face of the earth?

Yeah, me too.

Not that I ever pretended to be fanatically regular about my thoughts, nevertheless I’m embarrassed about the gap between now and my last post. I actually have a whole list of subjects I needed/wanted to tackle such as the status of my 50 before 50 list (yes, my birthday was almost 6 months ago) or the top ten stories of my life in 2011.

So what happened? Life, of course.

I’m still writing for my day job but my creative writing – which includes this bloggy corner of my world – took a little hiatus. So much going on in the past several months but not enough time, energy, mojo or inspiration, I guess. (Just pick your excuse – I have extras.)

In this blog downtime: I’ve received an extra gig at work that involved a bit of a raise and a lot of mind-numbing meetings, continued mothering a very interesting, yet challenging child who has joined a local 4-H club (why did no one tell me what a HUGE commitment 4-H is? Hmm?), returned to the land of cable TV (and why did no one tell me about all of the midnight episodes of Househunters International?), fellinlove, unearthed the floor of my house, rediscovered my love for movies NOT made by Disney or Pixar, in a theater that SERVES WINE, and renewed my hatred of local wildlife with annual roof repairs resulting from four-legged attic squatters.

So frickin' cute UNLESS they are creating a timeshare in your attic with multiple entrances.

Among other things.

Some of the life lessons I’ve learned during this blog break? Let me share a few…

• The local school district spends an incredible amount of time discussing how much time they should spend discussing stuff. None of that stuff involved orange folders.

• 4-H is a wonderful organization for kids who love horses and other animals, but instilling its values in my kid involves a lot of time (in which I’ve discovered I’m not really a farm person. I KNOW, RIGHT!?) I wonder if we can incorporate the raccoons and squirrels tearing apart my house into a 4-H project?

• Now that the novelty of cable has worn off, I still watch the same handful of shows that I did before cable. Go figure.

• God surely intended grownup movies (not to be confused with adult movies) to be enjoyed in theaters that serve wine and I’m now annoyed by all other theaters.

• My daughter is a handful — no, wait. I already knew that. Fortunately, I adore that kid.

Twitter – creating love connections in 140 characters or less.

• Love is still as grand as it used to be — and yes, even better.

• Lastly, I’ve learned that except for the irritating AARP letters, life does indeed begin at 50.

And what have you been up to these many months??