To gno me is to love me.....

If you want to express your heart's feelings in a more cynical way tomorrow (and I have no problem with that), check out these alternative Valentine's Day messages and cards at meish.org.

I sent Mr. F off to his school with 20 (actually 22, in case there are one or two catastrophes and one kid "lost" a gnome or one gets melted) Hershey's Chocolate Kiss Valentine Gnomes.
I , with my able assistant Miss R, have made these for his classroom for the last couple of years. Just some cute little tokens of sweet affection for each child in his class made out of Kisses(we used the striped white and milk chocolate "Hugs" this year), red felt(the caps), glued on googly eyes, and heart shaped feet out of red foam (or red construction paper). They are a huge hit with the third graders.
I have to say--those little red caps are a pain in the ass to make. The glue gets all over your fingers and they don't close right so you have to squeeze the ends together and just hold it for a while (as your fingers become glued together in the process). Maybe next year, we'll forget about the hats and make them into Valentine Hershey's Kiss Aliens (that is what they look like without the hats).

** Update on the kitchen mouse:

We caught the wee thing yesterday morning. After four previous nights in a row where I swear I heard the mouse rattling the plastic trap(always around 4:30 in the morning or so). Each morning, however, we discovered the trap shut, but no mouse inside, and the peanut butter still there. For some reason it kept malfunctioning and shutting before the mouse could at least get inside for the treat. So those rattling sounds were the sound of the mouse desperately trying to get inside. We even noticed tiny teeth marks on the hard plastic of trap, from the mouse's gnawing. I was about to give up and go and buy a new trap since this one wasn't working, when for whatever reason the trap did work finally and J discovered the tiniest rodent imaginable inside, curled up at the end, looking up at us with the most pitiful eyes. Immediately I had visions of how maybe we could keep it as a pet, instead of sending it out into the cold and quite possibly into the claws of hawks (and bad kitties). I still feel bad about it. At least these last few days, it hasn't been cold at all, so it hopefully wasn't too much of a cruel shock.