I know I said I wouldn't be back before my paper is due, and I really shouldn't be here, because the paper is due tomorrow and it ain't nowhere near finished, but I came in to do some other housekeeping and I just couldn't help myself.

And no, we will not be talking about how Kansas and Duke were tied with 1:18 left in the game and Kansas had the opportunity to knock Mike Kzkyzyykzyzkkskwky and his elitist little basketball team out and screw up everybody's brackets and become the darling of the tournament, but didn't because they choked just like they do every damn year. No, sirree, we shall make no mention of that, except to thank Meredith for trying. We will talk about mothering and Oscars instead.

I've been feeling incredibly maternal lately. We saw Erin Brockovich on Saturday (excellent movie, by the way, and I agree with Patrick, I think everyone who says they hate Julia Roberts is saying that just to be ornery), and I think that set it off. The kids are not the focus of the movie, but they're obviously an important factor in this woman's life, and even though she had to raise them by herself you knew she never regretted them, not for one second.

Then I had this dream Sunday night, a very strange dream, but one which fed into the mothering instinct. I was in a play with a famous actor, and although I didn't realize it at the time, I think I was playing this man's mother. I was standing on a porch a couple of feet off the ground, and he walked up to me with heavily bandaged legs (was he coming home from war? I have no idea) and being that he's a very tall actor (like, oh, say, Noah Wyle, just for example), when he walked up to me, his head fit just under my chin. He wrapped his arms around me and just stood there, and I felt like I wanted to absorb him, like a mother who wants to take away her child's pain. We got to stand there for the longest time like that while other things were going on in the play (I know, I don't get it either), and it made me so happy (as the person, not the actress) to just stand there and hold him and stroke his head, being the comforting mother that I was in this play. I woke up the next morning still having the sensation of having held someone like that.

Then Rosie did a whole show about adoption today. (Hey, I was working on my paper while it was on.) When she went into commercial, they showed pictures of all these kids waiting to be adopted, and it just broke my heart. I wanted to bring each and every one of them home.

Now, except for the always-possible Second Child of God, I'm not pregnant, and I'm nowhere near ready to be a mother at this point in my life. Maybe it's the fact that it's spring, that it's the beginning of the season of fertility, of animals and flowers and plants being born. Maybe it's that I realized it's been years since I held a baby. Maybe it's just a movie and a dream and a show about adoption. Who knows. But there it is.

Some more Oscar blathering. You can go now if you've entered already.

If you haven't, it's okay, I accept that you don't love me. But if you're planning to and you're just one of those last minute people, I wanted to let you know that I'm going to a friend's house on Saturday and staying until Monday (we're on break next week), so I'll be unable to respond to entries that come in after I leave. Just trust that I've gotten them, but if my little e-mail clock tells me that it arrived after the start of the show, I'm going to delete it, so don't tempt fate... why not enter now??