They could have told me this in the first place (or at least, if they did, I don't remember seeing it)

According to an e-mail I just got from BlogCatalog:

Thank you for submitting your blog Living La Viduez Loca (http://beeljo.blogspot.com/) to BlogCatalog.

Unfortunately upon reviewing your blog we are unable to grant it access to the directory.

The most common reasons for not getting into Blog Catalog are:

    We could not verify ownership of your blog.
    A link back, widget or meta-tag is required to verify site ownership. visit: http://www.blogcatalog.com/buttons for more information.

I would think they would want the "BlogCatalog Approved" badge displayed only after the blog was actually approved, but c'est la vie and que será, será and a whole bunch of other non-English phrases like that.  So I added the badge, resubmitted the blog and let's see what happens.
Oh, and the other funny thing about the e-mail? It's addressed as follows: Dear donotreply@blogcatalog.com.... =OP