OmegaMom

A rant.

So the inevitable “China Doll” discussion has reared its ugly head on APC again.

As usual, those who have been around a long time mention the fact that “China Doll” is seen by many Asian-Americans, particularly Asian-American females, as being derogatory and stereotypical, and usually used in conjunction with ooky sexual connotations.

As usual, there are those who see absolutely nothing wrong with the term “China Doll”, have no truck with others finding it demeaning, and say, “As long as it’s said with loooooove, I don’t see how anyone can object!”

OmegaMom goes cross-eyed when she reads these posts.

In fact, there are a few particular posts that make OmegaMom want to reach through the computer screen, pull the posters out through it, give them a good solid one-two shake, then get them in a headlock and give them a GREAT BIG NOOGIE!

(When informed of this irrational feeling on OmegaMom’s part, Mr. OmegaMom snickered and commented, “Oh, yeah, that’s a great way to solve the world’s problems!” Harrumph. He just doesn’t recognize truly World Saving Ideas when they snuggle up beside him in bed at night, that’s all.)

In separate off-line email exchanges with a number of Asian-American females who have adopted from China, sparked by the recurrent “China Doll” discussion, these separate women have told me that (a) they are tired of hitting their head against the wall of people ignoring, downplaying or pooh-poohing their personal experiences and that of their friends, and (b) a lot of the Asian-Americans who have adopted from China who started out on the bigger lists feel marginalized and isolated from and by the larger Caucasian adoptive community.

OmegaMom doesn’t get it. There you are, people with FIRST-HAND EXPERIENCE are telling you they have PERSONALLY been subjected to boorish street commentary a la “Ooooh, sexy little China Doll, come give me a f*ck!”, and you’re saying to them, “Well, it’s different when you say it playfully and with love!”

Hey, reality check here! You’re getting commentary from Asian-American females. Guess what your daughter is?!?! She’s a…drum-roll, please!…Asian-American female!

There are loads of perfectly fine pet names for little girls. How about: Punkin’, dumpling, sweetpea, bao-bao, half-pint, baby-doll, pookie, sugar, honey-chile, xiao wa-wa…pick a term, any term. Just maybe think a little harder about using a term that Asian-American females have clearly said makes them feel objectified and turned into a submissive sex-object.

Noogies. That’s what’s needed. Lots and lots of noogies.

Picture OmegaMom storming off, wildly waving her fists around her head.

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P.S. OmegaMom is NOT saying that no-one can use the phrase. Go right ahead. Just be prepared for your child to possibly be one of the folks who says something like this when she’s grown-up: “She said it would be cute to have all these China-doll grandchildren,” Chau said. “So, thank goodness for my grandmother’s racism, because otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”…just substitute “my mother” for “my grandmother” and “children” for “grandchildren”.

On this day last year (admittedly an exceptional year for hereabouts), our area had recorded 82 inches of snow since September 1. This year, we’ve had “a trace” since September 1. The norm is for 35 inches of snow by now. We’ve had 2.25 inches of precipitation since September 1; the norm is for 8.25 inches by now, and by this time last year we had had 16.5 inches of total precipitation.

Each week, OmegaMom pulls up the 7-day forecast from NOAA. Once every two weeks, there’s a day that has lovely “party cloudy” weather icons, and a POP (probability of precipitation) approaching 50%. Then, as the days go by, and that day gets closer, the POP drops…and drops…and drops.

A week ago, there was rain in the state. A bit. On the radar pictures, there was a swath of moisture that started at the southwest corner of the state and marched directly across to the northeast corner. There was a divot out of this stretch of clouds that marked the town where the Omegas lived.

Typically, the fire season starts hereabouts in early May.

This year, we can feel it in the air: fire season is going to be early.

In the eight years we’ve lived here, OmegaMom has become quite good at triangulating between plumes of smoke and the location of the hippy-dippy one-time vacation enclave in the woods where the Omegas live as she drives down the highway. If the plume of smoke is north of the highway, all is well for the Omegas (not necessarily for others). If the plume is south of the highway, OmegaMom’s keen, razorlike mind focuses in and determines just how close it is to home.

Last year was a luxurious mental break from the constant niggling worry during May, June, late September and October. So much water had made its way to the area that Natural Lake had water in it for the first time in years; the Forest Service had had to open up the spillway from Upper Dam Lake to Lower Dam Lake, and area inhabitants had gone to the spillway to gawk, incredulously, at the roar of water spilling out. The woods stayed soggy until late in the year; the roads and trails up the mountains were still closed in July due to snow and mud.

But now…now it’s looking pretty crispy critters out there.

Of course, this isn’t going to do any good for the problem with the pine bark beetle, which two and a half years ago had accounted for the death of up to 4 million ponderosa and pinyon pines in the state.

OmegaMom understands that there are stay-at-home parental units in the Oregon area who would kill for an end to rain this year. OmegaMom assures them that she would equally kill for a return to more normal precipitation here.

Maybe we can all trade?

OmegaGranny asked, in an email, where’d I come up with “OmegaMom”? Did it have anything to do with the IBM software of the same name? (No.)

Mr. OmegaMom asked the same thing this week.

OmegaMom has been around the world of internet bulletin boards for a long time. Seeking information on pregnancy and childbirth, she hit the Usenet newsgroups (this was 12 years ago, sigh). Then she moved on to mailing lists. Then she discovered parenting websites such as iVillage, and the forums on those websites.

It seemed there was a subgroup of moms who were going for the “Golden Vagina” award on all these arenas. (OmegaMom can’t take credit for the phrase; it’s been around for a while, with variations being “tightest vagina of them all”, “brass ovaries”, “uberMom” and more.)

AlphaMoms ferry kids from one activity to the next on a constant basis. They read to their burgeoning uteri as their AlphaBabies are gestating. They play Baby Mozart to their fetuses, and then in the crib, to stimulate their AlphaBabies’ neural pathways. They breastfeed to ensure that extra IQ point or two, to smooth the way to Harvard. They feed their babies only homemade baby food, using only organically grown vegetables from the local health-food store. The best schools, the best after-school programs, the best art classes, music classes, dance classes, French au pairs, and on and on.

Don’t get me wrong: I have lots of online friends who have done one or more of these different things; it’s the attitude that makes OmegaMom’s eyes bug out when encountering true Alpha Moms. The implicit understanding that if you don’t do these things, well…you’re just a Bad Mom and Not Sacrificing Enough.

OmegaMom, let’s face it, is lazy. Being an AlphaMom seems like so darned much work. Case in point: This article, about a lady name of Isabel Kallman, who embodies this type of uber-competitive woman.

It spawned much eyerolling and “tight vagina” remarks on various internet sites that OmegaMom frequents. In counterpoint, there was the coterie that claimed that no-one rolls their eyes and gnashes their teeth about men doing this kind of thing (100-hour work weeks, go-go-go CEO approach to life, etc.). OmegaMom’s response to that is, I wouldn’t want to be an AlphaMom, and I sure as heck wouldn’t want to marry someone like that, either. And, from one or two women whom OmegaMom recognizes as Alpha types, came some impassioned defenses that came right out and said that the Omegas were just jealous, or defensive because they felt that they weren’t doing enough. Um. I read that article, and I think, “But where’s the relaxation? Where’s the ‘let’s sit on the futon and eat junk food and watch movies together’ mode? Where’s the ‘let a kid be a kid’ downtime?

Anyway, OmegaMom’s philosophy of parenthood is to read the snot out of the subject, then to just muddle through, doing the parenting thang by guess and by golly.

So I picked the title OmegaMom out of a rueful acceptance of the fact that I will never be an AlphaMom, will never understand the go-go-go, go-for-the-finest mentality, and my children will be just children to me, not an Olympic sports event.

OmegaMom just had to pass this one on…as a recent convert to blogging and tracking site hits, this hit too close to home! Brother, Can You Spare a Hyperlink?

Write, wrote, written…

Smite, smote, smitten…

In her last post, OmegaMom spoke (speak, spoke, spoken) of Pat Robertson being in glee because of the way “we heathens are being smitten“, then questioned the usage, offering up “smited” as the proper word.

OmegaGranny very thoughtfully added a comment in which she claimed the word OmegaMom was looking for was “smote”.

This actually sent OmegaMom off on a grammar quest on the web. Oy! You know you’re a geek of one kind or another when someone else’s casual commentary spurs a dive into the dictionary, encylopedia, obscure corners of the web, or (o, geekiness of geekiness) the technical manual.

Okay, let’s see:

It’s passive voice (Who is smiting? the Lord. Who is the Lord smiting? Us.). It’s present progressive or continuous (the action started in the past, and is continuing now–didn’t this verb form used to have a different name?).

So what’s needed is the present progressive indicative (we are being) plus the past participle of smite (smitten. Dammit, it’s SMITTEN. Smote is offered as an alternative, but the most common usage is listed first in this handy-dandy chart of irregular English verbs, and this chart [and others found on the web] claims SMITTEN is the more common usage).

OmegaMom could have avoided this whole irregular verb brouhaha by simply writing, “Pat Robertson must be alternating between total glee at the way the Lord is smiting us heathens and simply being terrified all the time.” But then you get into the question of whether it is “us heathens” or “we heathens”. Sigh. You also run into the ambiguity of whether it is Pat Robertson or The Lord who is being terrified all the time. Though if you grew up in a proper Christian household, you know darned well that The Lord is never terrified, so the sentence stops being ambiguous.

Forgive me. I grew up with my nose in dictionaries and encyclopedias. As a sop to non-geekiness, I offer up the fact that I hated grammar class with a passion. I’d much rather just play with words.

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(Yes, I did it again. Within the space of TWO DAYS, I TWICE published something on the web where I confused the first- and third-person writing within ONE PHRASE. Sheesh. Excuse me while I go off and get my scrambled brains checked out.)

Yes, OmegaMom does speak and write the King’s English.

No, OmegaMom does not always spell-check or grammar-check her posts.

OmegaMom is well aware that switching between third-person and first-person within a post is a writerly device, whereas switching between third-person and first-person with the space of a single clause is just plain stupid.

OmegaMom pleads her belly. Or, rather, her daughter’s pneumoniac cough, which has distracted her a few times this week.

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The best way to get a boatload of hits on your blog (aside from pimping it to all your best buds and shamelessly courting votes for Cute Picture Post [voting is closed, so I'll know if OmegaGranny's fraudulent double-vote counted or not tomorrow]) is to have someone with a boatload of regulars link to you in the first paragraph of her post. Muchas gracias, Cubbiegirl! I’m just glad you liked my post enough to link to it, and hope that a few of your worldwide audience (Australia, England, Alaska, wow!) liked my rantings enough to wander back now & then. I also sincerely hope that anyone who feels like they might be at risk for PAD or currently in the depths of PAD found my post a wee tad helpful.

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A news headline: A four-year-old turns up on Homeland Security’s “No-Fly” list. What a surprise. As the mother of an almost four-year-old, OmegaMom is merely surprised that more four-year-olds aren’t already on that list.

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Another headline: Robertson is at it again, saying that Ariel Sharon had a stroke as a result of God’s Wrath.

Is OmegaMom alone in thinking that Robertson’s God doesn’t sound like a very nice creature at all? Smiting Sharon, suggesting we assassinate Venezuela’s president, drowning New Orleans, chastising the entire U.S. via the 9/11 attacks because we’re so gosh-darned secular. Pat Robertson must be alternating between total glee at the way we heathens are being smitten (smited?) by The Lord and simply being terrified all the time. Ain’t my kind of Kozmik All, is all I can say.

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Gratuitous pics of OmegaDotter in various headgear:

This one was kind of cool. OmegaMom seems to be more solid in her love life than she would have expected–they asked her for advice about love! Woohoo!

This Is My Life, Rated
Life:	6.7
Mind:	6.9
Body:	6.4
Spirit:	7.8
Friends/Family:	5.3
Love:	9.1
Finance:	6.4
Take the Rate My Life Quiz

I did have two other tests to display, but the formatting was all wonky, and I give up. Suffice it to say that OmegaMom and Guatama Buddha walk hand-in-hand, but OmegaMom has a slight problem with paranoia.

While cocooning with the OmegaDotter during her illness, OmegaMom has had numerous opportunities to reflect upon the more obvious lessons contained within children’s movies.

Take Mary Poppins. We thought it was high time that OmegaDotter got a gander at this grand old children’s musical. It has been watched and re-watched numerous times this past weekend.

The main lessons from Mary Poppins:

• Women who want to vote are ditzes. Mrs. Banks, though charming in her passion for women’s suffrage, can only be characterized as a true ditz.
• The only way to happiness is to be a member of the Working Proletariat. The best way is to be a chimney sweep. Do not be a banker. Chimney sweeps get gorgeous views, dance the night through on the rooftops, make friends with beautiful, magic women, and have the wisdom of life at their fingertips. Bankers, on the other hand, are crabby, ignore their children, and just plain don’t have any fun. Until they lose their jobs.

Then there’s Spirit. Have I mentioned that OmegaDotter likes horses? “Likes”, of course, is a pale word for the passion she possesses.

The main lessons from Spirit:

• You can gallop from Monument Valley to the Grand Tetons in only a few hours. Furthermore, you can gallop from Monument Valley to the Grand Canyon in mere minutes.
• Wild horses are a Thing of Beauty. Do not tell Mr. OmegaMom this. He can wax passionate about the environmental damage wild horses and wild burros have done to various areas of the Southwest.
• Horses are incredibly smart. Once again, do not tell Mr. OmegaMom this. His belief is that horses are mean, dumb creatures. (I must say that Mr. OmegaMom, being a kindly soul who is wrapped around OmegaDotter’s little finger, hasn’t uttered a peep about these beliefs in her hearing.)
• Female horses are flirtatious, sexy blond bombshells, with eyelashes to die for, and hairstylists who turn their manes into locks that any grown human woman would envy.
• Native Americans are noble, care for the environment, and instinctively attuned to horses. Amurrican men exploring the West are evil, destructive to the environment, and just plain can’t stand uppity horses.

Lessons from The Parent Trap:

• When you get divorced, if you have twins, you should separate them and not let them know about each other. This particular piece of egregious BS makes me steam.
• Parents are dumb. Kids are smart. Long-term home employees are smart.
• It is Good to be such a mischeivous hellion that most parents would run screaming from you. It shows you Have Spunk.
• All it takes to save a bad relationship are two conniving little pre-teen twits manuevering you into various situations that make you reminisce about your original meeting.

Well, that about wraps it up. OmegaDotter is feeling much better (really, truly this time!). OmegaMom is feeling better. OmegaDad, on the other hand, is hacking and coughing and looks likely to be bedridden this weekend.

So there you are, you’ve just got a referral or have just been matched with a baby due any minute, and you’re over the moon. You pad through the Shrine To Baby (aka the nursery) late at night, when the spouse is asleep, and you daydream about the future. You sit on the glider and snuggle with one of the stuffed animals that various friends and family have presented you, and pretend it’s your baby, and you sit and croon lullabies.

Your daydreams about motherhood (or fatherhood) are portrayed in your mind’s eye with a roseate glow, a soft-focus medallion of Madonna-esque Precious Moments type joy.

Friends are excited, relatives are excited, your spouse is excited, you are excited.

If you’re traveling to meet your baby, the excitement builds. You’re in a different place–Russia or China or Cincinnati or some other place you have never been before. You’re sightseeing, you’re dealing with officials, you’re meeting and bonding with your baby, it’s all new and different and vivid.

And then you get home.

Your baby, who slept like…well, a baby…while you were elsewhere, suddenly is adjusting to a new time zone. New smells. New sights. New sounds. He or she wakes up every three hours, and nothing you can do, short of carrying baby around for hours, will put baby back to sleep.

You are in a haze of sleep deprivation, and find yourself questioning your ability to do the most mundane of things (parallel parking? How do I do parallel parking again? I know I’ve done it before!).

The house becomes messy.

Your spouse returns to work, leaving you alone.

And this baby…this precious, darling child who you have longed for for years…is a stranger. You are suddenly a stranger to yourself. And this baby…precious, darling child…is a leech.

Yes. A leech.

Hanging on you.

Demanding all your time and attention.

Screaming if you leave the room.

Desperate for love. Hungry all the time. An endless source of wet and poopy diapers.

And you are the object of this small, self-centered person’s obsession. You realize you can’t do anything without this child hanging off you. You realize you can’t sleep, because your ear is suddenly attuned to the tiniest of grunts from the crib (or another room). Vacuuming the house is ditched entirely (even us lousy housekeepers do vacuum once in a while), because (a) you can’t do it with baby hanging off you, and (b) the noise terrifies baby.

You realize that you are Everything In the World to this small, self-centered creature. And your soft-focus daydreams of gently crooning baby to sleep in the glider have gone into the trashcan, because baby hates your singing, or baby is (like mine) a wiggler who couldn’t settle down to a nice crooning session to save her life.

You feel like your life is spiraling out of control.

You don’t like yourself anymore.

You resent your spouse (the light of your life) because s/he just Doesn’t Get It, and, besides, the bastard gets to leave the house and interact with other adults.

Your house is a shambles.

You feel like your life is a shambles.

You wonder if you’ve made the worst mistake in your life. You know there is No End In Sight, because you’ve signed an oath to take care of this small creature forever.

Does this describe your response in the first six months to a year after you adopted?

Don’t beat yourself up.

You’re not sick. You’re not insane. You’re not an Evil Person. They’re not going to come take your baby away (even at your most down moment, you are terrified that They are going to take her away).

Most of all, you are not alone.

There’s a thing called “Post-Adoption Depression”. It’s similar to Post-Partum Depression. PPD has the advantage of being explained away by waving hands at hormones, but y’know, OmegaMom has very big suspicions that the majority of it is what Jean MacLeod calls Baby Shock.

If you’re a new parent who has spent a long time with spouse, getting settled into spousal and life routines, tossing a baby into the mix just throws the whole gyroscope off balance. What was once a two-body problem (a very familiar term to physicists) has become infinitely more complex by adding a third body to the mix. And this holds true for adding another child after the first. (Please remind me of this when DotterSecunda shows up.) It’s a severe shock to the system.

I would say that it took OmegaDotter about six months to really, truly believe she “belonged” with us. I look back at pics of her first six months with us, and see, over and over, that what we considered “thoughtful” expressions were just plain “scared” expressions.

Further, I would say that it took me and Mr. OmegaMom a year to fully re-arrange our lives and become comfortable again.

As a person who is prone to depression, the disconnect between my daydreams and our reality after adopting did a number on me. (It didn’t help that I got laid off six months after we came home, what a blow to the ol’ ego.) The one thing that helped me immensely was realizing it was normal to feel this way, that many other adopting parents felt the same. I had read up on the various lists about returning home and having the child not sleep for the first three weeks. I had read up about Post-Adoption Depression, and was pretty much expecting it to hit me, due to the depression proneness. While I didn’t have a great real-life support system, I did have lots of friends on the internets who had BTDT, which helped.

For those who are about to adopt, and want info to be prepared, and for those who have just adopted and might be facing the same thing, I submit the following links:

• Post-Adoption Depression Syndrome - from Adopting.Org
• Post-Adoption Depression - It’s Real - from Rainbow Kids
• Adoption and Depression - from Bella Online

There’s more. Just do a search on “PADS” or on “Post-Adoption Depression”.

An addendum: OmegaDotter is a joy and a delight. We love her with all our hearts. Those first few months are more than counteracted by the years that have followed, filled with new discoveries and delighting in learning her personality.

P.S. This was prompted by some posts on email lists and some blog entries I’ve encountered lately, and is in no way to be considered “aimed” at any one person in particular. Just a BTDT, and a helping hand.

One last glance at MSNBC, to see what’s goin’ on in the Big Wide World Out There.

One headline that caught my attention: Is Angelina Jolie Expecting? Digression: I’m not much of a celebrity-watcher, but La Jolie is followed in adoption circles due to her stated desire to have a child from every country…

One photo caption that sent me ballistic: “Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, accompanied by Jolie’s children, arrive at Narita Airport in suburban Tokyo on Nov. 27. Could the couple have another child of their own on the way?” (Emphasis mine.)

Goddamn.

I am just so tired of the “child of their own” bullshit. What, did we just borrow OmegaDotter? Is she a library book that we’re expected to return as soon as the loan period is over? When I kick the bucket at age 90+, will my obituary list my 50-year-old daughter as my “adopted daughter”?

Grrr.

I know those who haven’t adopted will think this is picayune, petty PC-ish-ness. But these attitudes, coupled with the attitudes that adoptees are inevitably Bad Seeds, castoffs from bad families, just make me growl.

On the Big Chinese Adoption Email List (APC), three current hot topics are:

• What 2 and 3 year olds call farting. (Subtext: 2 and 3 year olds are obsessed with bodily functions. Girl or boy. Be prepared for booger, snot, and fart jokes. Be equally prepared for a husband who not only indulges such jokes, but joyously and wholeheartedly joins in and comes up with new lyrics to old songs featuring such bodily functions.*)
• The ol’ perennial “should you or should you not incorporate Chinese culture into your family life once you adopt from China?”. (Subtext: “My daughter is going to be American! I don’t want to force any differences upon her!” Counter-subtext: “Your daughter may be American, but everyone who sees her will see ‘Asian’ first and foremost.” For an Asian-American’s take on this, check out Johnny’s “Checking the ‘Asian’ Box” post.)
• White Pride T-shirts and what they signify. (Subtext: Folks who wear White Pride T-shirts are asking others to think of them as racist jerks. This has devolved into a discussion between two of the most garrulous posters on APC. Check out The Grouchy Ladybug for a snarkily hilarious take on how the discussion has played out.)

* Mr. OmegaMom’s contribution to such hilarity has been “Mom’s FAVORITE Song!”:

There’s a booger in my nose
And it’s green, And it’s green.
It’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen, ever seen.
There’s a booger in my nose
And there’s poop between my toes.
There’s a booger in my nose
And it’s green.

Needless to say, this prompts roars of laughter from OmegaDotter. OmegaMom is NOT amused. Much.

So the Omegas went on a field trip yesterday evening: to the ER.

OmegaDotter, who tends to run high fevers, exceeded her own stellar febrile performance and pegged 105.9F. After her dose of Ibuprofen.

OmegaMom, who doesn’t give a fever of 104+ much thought anymore, just stuffs the cheeild full of Tylenol or Ibuprofen, immediately hollered to OmegaDad, requesting help with dumping OmegaDotter into the bathtub to see if it would kick-start the meds.

OmegaDotter, who normally bounces and plays and has a grand ol’ time in the bathtub with various ducks, Willies (killer whales) and zebras, just sat in the middle of the tub, shivered, and whimpered.

Off to the ER we went.

Five hours and many medical pats on the head later, we got home.

While in the ER, our dotter treated the various medical staff to her best imitation of a banshee crossed with a very strong octopus. The ER doctor (Mr. OmegaMom asked me in an aside, “Since when do they allow pretty 14-year-old girls to be doctors???”), kept patting OmegaMom on the knee and saying, “My husband calls it ‘Baby Rodeo’. She’s not strange–lots of little kids do this. You’re doing fine. If she’s this active with a high fever, This Is Good.”

Mr. OmegaMom decided that we need to videotape any ER visits in the future, so we can discourage horny 17-year-old males when the time comes…”Why, yes, son, this is what she is really like…is there a problem?” He thinks it might be better than a shotgun. I just kept expecting OmegaDotter’s head to start whirling on her neck and her to grate out, “REDRUM! REDRUM!”

ER observations: The ER was full of various flu victims and their families. Then there was the gal who Mr. OmegaMom and I suspect had been beaten by her boyfriend, and the nice (young!) police officer who was taking her particulars…this made us very sad. There was the hispanic family who put telenovelas on on the TV (Mr. OmegaMom’s comment on the soaps: “Big-haired men kissing big-lipped women.”). There was the guy in the cubicle next to ours, who had apparently been punched in the head; the doctor and nursing staff were trying to persuade him to have a CAT scan (”Sir, it’s just like a long x-ray–a machine rotates around you for five minutes and you’re done.” “How much is this gonna cost? I can’t afford any of these things!”).

And OmegaDotter constantly asking, “Can we go home? I want to go HOME!”, with the last words rising up into a screech.

All is better, for the nonce. I am home with dotter. We slept until 10. Mr. OmegaMom somehow found the titanium spine to wake up after a mere 2.5 hours of sleep and drag his ass into work.

This parenting stuff is tough.

So, while Mr. OmegaMom was taking OmegaDotter off to the doctor, I had to re-arrange things on the ol’ bloggeroo. Did a little painting (out with those oh-so-’70s oranges, in with the sleek new ‘06 greys), re-arranged the furniture (columns), got rid of the category listing, which wasn’t working the way it was supposed to anyway, ditched the calendar and added a quote of the day and a list of latest posts.

The look-n-feel is courtesy of Isnaini Dot Com, who does a lot of templates for various blogsites.

Still no categories (sigh)…still no calendar (sigh).

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In other news:

Mr. OmegaMom returned from the doctor with dotter in tow, saying that we were this close to having dotter thrown in the hospital. She has pneumonia. We have Zithromax, again. OmegaDotter is miserable. We are worried.

OmegaDad is doing yeoman duty–both dotter and wife sick (wife is not anywheres near as sick as dotter, but is not her normal perky self).

No doubt you, like others, have encountered this holiday season a link that leads to an amazing Christmas light show choreographed to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s Wizards of Winter.

OmegaMom is a sucker for bombastic symphonic and choral music. She blames this directly on her mother, OmegaGranny, who gave her, when she was 17, a copy of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. You may not recognize it by name, but OmegaMom assures you you know it by hearing–the chorus O Fortuna has been used for everything from grandiose introductions to and battle scenes in movies to advertisements lampooning those same grandiose scenes.

Actually, though, when OmegaMom thinks further back, she has to pardon OmegaGranny for the slur–it was not the Carmina Burana that did it, but Walt Disney’s Fantasia, which had not only the Augurs of Spring selection from Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, but also Night on Bald Mountain. OmegaMom thought the dinosaurs dying off to the Rite of Spring was intensely romantic, and the Night on Bald Mountain (Mussorgsky) segment gave her delicious shivers, a la horror movies.

OmegaGranny is not off the hook, though–the same Christmas she presented OmegaMom with Carmina Burana, she also gave her Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto #2.

But maybe one could blame OmegaMom’s dad, who used to play Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-Sharp Minor ALL THE TIME…because OmegaMom loved it.

Another grand piece of bombast is Guiseppe Verdi’s Deus Irae.

Then there’s the presto adigiato of Beethoven’s Moonlight Symphony. Everyone loves the first movement; I don’t. This one has always been OmegaMom’s “I’ve got to get out I’ve got to get out I’ve got to get out” theme song for when I’m feeling fed up with work, life, boyfriends, spouses, children, what-have-you. (OmegaMom’s dad played this one beautifully, as well.)

There you have it. I am a bombast addict. And now I have this loverly Creative Zen MP3 player. I think it’s time to dig out my old bombastic albums and load that puppy up…

(Blast. I have to edit this entire post, because Amazon–bah–does not allow direct links to either their pics or their clips. Bah. You will have to locate the specific music clips yourself, sorry!)

I promise there will be a more uplifting post later.

OmegaDotter’s been sick (again) this weekend. The mama-bear in me worries, and has plans to call the doc–four whopper fevers in two months just doesn’t seem right to me.

So she is feeling better this morning. I, on the other hand, feel like a Mack Truck has rolled over me. My neck hurts, glands are swollen, head is stuffed, and brain is fried. Bleah. What a way to start the New Year.

Like I said, wah, wah, wah.

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OmegaMom has been nominated for “Best Photo Post of December” at the Order of Brilliant Bloggers for the How to Make Sugar Cookies” post at the beginning of December. Voting is open until January 5 at midnight; you have to have a Blogger account to vote (boo!), but my bud Miss Cellania says, “Hit the “get your own blog” button at the top of this page, then follow the steps. You don’t have to create a blog, just dump out before hitting the “create blog” button.” Thanks for the tip, Miss Cellania–I’ve got friends who would vote, but don’t want a blog. (By the way, Miss Cellania’s blog has been nominated as December’s Best Comedic Blog as well.)

Gotta dump a dancing banana in here for this:

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Today is the Omega’s wedding anniversary. Eight years already!

Shortly after midnight, Mr. OmegaMom kissed me on the nose and said, “This is how I always dreamed of spending our wedding anniversary: forcing a child to take medicine and taking a tepid bath.”

I sing the praises of tepid baths; it did the trick and got the fever down.

I’m gonna take my aching body off, snuggle on the futon with OmegaDotter, and watch Shark Tales once again until Mr. OmegaMom comes back from his Sunday meeting, then I’m gonna go back to bed.

Wah wah wah.