OmegaMom

Here it is, almost 6 p.m. on New Year’s Eve.  As usual, we have a sick child (who is getting better), and besides we’re not really party animals, so we’ll have pot roast, toast each other with eggnog, and fall into bed early.

It’s been quite a year Chez Omega.  The main event was, of course, the move to Alaska and associated upheavals.  The dotter had her first recital, started "real" school, and lost two teeth.  OmegaDad is finding his new job challenging and filled with responsibility.  I’m slowly getting accustomed to the lack of light, with the continued promise of more light (woot!  Today we gained 1 minute and 30 seconds!) lifting my spirits.

Tomorrow, OmegaDad and I will wake up to our 10th anniversary.  He and I stared at each other the other day with deer-in-the-headlights looks, realizing that it was our Big Tenth and we hadn’t done anything to prepare.  Hopefully in a few more months, we’ll have cemented some budding friendships, so will be able to dump the dotter beg the new friends for some babysitting help and actually go out.  Like maybe even overnight?! 

Here’s to the passing of 2007 and a wave "hello!" to the new year of 2008.  May the year to come be filled with joy and excitement for all my readers.  Don’t set yourself too many resolutions, and make sure one or two are the kind of resolution that will be easy to fulfill.

 Happy New Year!

ETA:  Sorry, everyone!  I really didn’t even consider that the last post was my "Stoned Cold" one.  I’m fine–I did toss out the Bad Drugs, I haven’t had a single twinge from my foot (though that will have to wait until I spend a day at the computer, working again, to see whether All Is Well), and I did not fall into a ditch or spin out in the snow or plunge down the stairs or any other disaster that may have popped into people’s imagination.  Thanks for asking, though!

I spent the entire week planning to write a post.  But each time I sat down at the computer and actually thought about a post, my mind would go wondrously blank.

Totally, completely tabula rosa.  Pure, pristine white.

So I’d shrug, read my bloggin’ peeps, and then return to the Bosom of My Family.

Unfortunately, part of the Bosom of My Family has decided, as usual, to get sick.  If it’s the New Year, dotter gets sick.  Really!  Go look at my previous end-of-year posts; you’ll see it’s true.

So my original plan was a wonderful, restful week off, with me being able to tackle a bunch of projects while the dotter was at her all-day after-school care place.  This went to hell in a handbasket as of Thursday, when we decided her constant crying over the sore throat (but no fever) warranted a visit to the doc, who posited a sinus infection and non-feverish tonsillitis.  When she seemed better on Friday, I sent her off to ADASCP, only to have them call an hour later requesting us to take her back because she had pink eye.

Then Friday night she started running The Fever.

Another visit to the doc’s today, and the dire news is that whatever it is is viral, because the slew of antibiotics that she was put on by the doc on Thursday are actually doing their job vis-a-vis the tonsils, and are broad-spectrum enough to hit anything bacterial.

Bah.

The dotter’s illnesses have a three point scale:

1. Temp between 98.6 and 101 - generally just fine, happy as a clam, but unable to go to school or other places if the temp is 100F or greater.
2. Temp between 101 and 104 - miserable.  Whiny.  Bitchy.  Petulant.  Any touch hurts.  Die-away airs…she can’t sit up to get her milk, she must have anything liquid handed to her, medicine is a major PITA to administer.
3. Temp over 104 - More than miserable.  Wants to spend her entire waking time on top of mommy.  No whining, no bitchiness, no petulance, just plain quiet misery.

She’s been at stage 2 for three days now, and it looks like she’ll be there for another day or two at least.

Christmas was a blast.  Dotter and daddy made sugar cookies on Christmas Eve to leave for Santa Claus; mommy and daddy duly ate bites out of the cookies and drank all the milk, which just blew the dotter away.  She’s at a stage where she suspects that it’s me and OmegaDad, but she keeps reassuring herself that it isn’t, but she keeps asking very practical questions that indicate she thinks it’s all a bit unbelievable.

We went cross-country skiing on Christmas Day, had a great time, and took the dotter out too far and too long.  The end result:  OmegaDad had to carry a sobbing dotter back after her plucky attitude gave out entirely.  Turns out she had sprung a leak or two or a thousand in her ski boots, and her socks and feet were entirely soaked and cold as ice.  Bad Mommy and Daddy Score:  -1000.

Some pics–First, OmegaDad and dotter showing off the wreath we made:

Next, the dotter as the chef, taking down orders (okay, so the waitress takes orders; she has the chef hat courtesy of Christmas).  Note, also, the array of horsies on the floor behind her; of course she got some horsies for Christmas.

Me, looking more like a fixture for St. Patrick’s Day.  The hat was because I had not showered, so my hair was stuck up in a mohawk.  The bow had topped off one of the dotter’s presents; we wanted to see what I would look like with it.

Skiing across the bridge in the foggy snow:

It was really a great skiing expedition, but generally too much for an almost-six-year-old.  We’ll be more cautious in the future; I was actually scared that we weren’t going to be able to get her out unless we dragged her behind us.

We got the prescriptions Friday night.  I took the first batch on Saturday morning.

Three hours later, I was getting quite…woozy. 

Sunday, I took another batch.

I had found information on a "Holiday On Ice" show at the ice skating rink attached to the Big Mall in Big City.  So we were driving in to Big City to see the show.  I was woozy again.  I closed my eyes.

Y’know how, when you close your eyes tight, you get flashes of light and patterns and sparkles?  But normally you have to close the eyes quite tightly for a while to get that…

There, relaxing in the car, with my eyes lightly closed, I was getting quite interesting versions of the flashes. 

There were also visions.

Yes, really.  Visions.

The best one was a highly detailed little Santa who appeared in the middle of my vision, then spun backwards, shrinking, until he vanished with a little flash of stars.

Then there were the neon-like straight lines that marched upwards from the bottom of my eyes on up.

Lemme tell you, it was quite interesting.  I never fell asleep, but listened to OmegaDad and dotter chattering, and watched the light show.  But when it came time to "wake up" in the Big City, my eyes felt glued shut.  The eyelids were heavy.  It was a chore to open them.

The "Holiday on Ice" show turned out to be a recital by ice skating students.  But, oh, it was too cute for words.  I could easily turn out to be a recital junkie.

On the other hand, I don’t want to become a medication junkie.  The worst part?  The part that scares me the most?  Was that by the time we got home, I wanted another dose.

Um.

Nuh-uh, thanks very much.

So I tossed the Lyrica into the garbage can and got online to research the stuff.

Apparently, a "drunk feeling"/"inability to concentrate" was a side effect felt by about 12% of the research guinea pigs.  There was, hidden away in the fine print, a little blurb about how a particular group thought it gave a "good high" and that it would probably have a market on the street.  There was also a warning that it might be addictive.

Eeep!

Apparently, Lyrica is one of the very few medications out there that helps with nerve pain; regular painkillers like aspirin or Ibuprofen don’t work.  If my nerve pain were constant, I could see wanting to take the stuff.  But, as it is, the nerve pain is highly intermittent, and I’d much rather try back exercises and stretches and yoga to control it as opposed to getting addicted to this medication.  This is the first time I’ve tried something and actually been scared by my instant reaction, the desire to take more.  It’s a pretty creepy feeling.

So, like I said, into the garbage with that prescription.  I think I’ll have a little talk with the doc and tell him to warn people when he’s prescribing this medication.

"Hi!  I’m Rachael Ray!  Today, I’m not going to be teaching you about food–I’m going to teach you about farms!"

She flourishes a pink cowgirl hat…whispers, "You’re a teenager…"

"Now!  You’re a teenager!  And you have a job.  And you want to be a cowgirl.  And you want to be married.  And you want to be a teenager."

Mommy:  "Hi.  I want to be a cowgirl."

"Okay!  You want to be a cowgirl.  And you’re a teenager!  And that’s okay.  Now, after you get married, you can become a cowgirl!  And go to your job.  And come back and be a cowgirl!"

She pushes the cowgirl hat onto mommy’s head.

"You need a cowgirl hat to be a cowgirl!  Now you’re a cowgirl!  But you are still a teenager.  And you’re getting married!  Cowgirls can be married!"

She gestures to the "stable".

"You have horses!  This is Kayla and this is Spot.  Kayla’s kind of shy, so be gentle!  You need to feed them some oats.  And some hay.  This is how they eat!"

Kayla (formerly Frankie) nibbles from her hand.

Mommy suggests that maybe they need a feed bucket.

She grabs a box from Lands End.

"Now!  This is for their food!  What are the oats?  The purple socks are the oats!  And the white–orange–socks are the hay!  And now we’re going to feed the horses!" 

She grabs a bright orange plastic school bus and drags it in front of "Spot" (the wooden rocking horse).

"Now, Spot is a pony, a shepherd pony.  But that’s okay!"  (For the uninitiated, "shepherd" is a confused Shetland.)

"Now we’re going to give them some treats!"

And on and on from there…

Rachael Ray, I have to say, is everywhere.  A few weeks ago, I had no idea who Rachael Ray was, or that she was everywhere.  However, a few weeks ago, we lugged the second TV upstairs to the living room and plugged it in to the cable.  The first station that showed up?  The Food Network.  The dotter was mesmerized. 

We haven’t bothered to figure out how to change the station.

She laughs at and with Paula (just watching Paula puts pounds on your hips, trust me; I think Paula could deep-fry everything), but she adores Rachael Ray.  And now, when we go out shopping, she sees Rachael Ray on everything.  There are Rachael Ray Triscuits.  Rachael Ray on cereal boxes.  Rachael Ray on magazine covers.  Rachael Ray being interviewed on TVs in department stores.  Trust me, this woman is everywhere.  And, trust me, the dotter sees her where-ever she is.

The dotter also announced this morning that Hannah Montana was "the grrrreatest rock star ever!"  We quickly disabused her of this notion.  Or tried to.  OmegaDad claimed Elvis.  I said The Who or Eric Clapton or anyone else but HM.  The dotter promptly said:

"Okay!  Elvis is number two!  Hannah Montana is number one!"

Ahem.  No, that’s not what we said…

So right now, the dotter wants to be a cowgirl/rockstar/cook/girl who does hair when she grows up.

In other news.  The doc-in-a-box xrayed me, did the blood test thing, tsk-tsked over my cholesterol levels, said my blood sugar was just fine, told me about his lead sled dog whose name is Paxil, wrote me some painkilling prescriptions and sent me on my way.  (Can I just say how neat is it that the doc-in-a-box has a sled-dog team?)

He kept insisting it was arthritis pain, and when I’d say it was an electric shock would repeat back to me that it was a stabbing pain.  No, that’s not what I said, dammit!  I know a stabbing pain and I know an electric shock type of pain, and I know the difference.  And I sure as heck know the difference between arthritic pain and nerve pain.  But, hey, I’ll give the prescriptions a try and rest reassured that I’m not about to explode with hypo- or hyperglycemia.

And in the biggest news…

The best news…

Today?  Today on the weather page?  Where it says how much daylight there is hereabouts?

Today, rather than a "loss", it was a "gain".  Of 2 seconds.

WOOT!!!  Yes, folks, today marks the solstice.  From here on out, until June 21 or thereabouts, we’ll be gaining sunlight.

OmegaMom does the Snoopy Dance out the door.

I’m borrowing Mrs. Figby’s "Hypochondriac Thursday" theme today.

The past few days, I have been merrily working along, dealing with this and that, and suddenly, out of nowhere…

(cue the theme from Jaws)

I will have a sharp, stabbing, electric-shock like feeling in a very specific spot in the arch of my foot.

We’re talking something that jerks me wide awake out of my deep thought with an audible "Ah, ah, ahhhh, OH!" and grabbing at my foot in desperation.  Lasts about five seconds.  Then, poof, it’s gone again for a random number of hours.

Years ago, I had a pinched nerve in my neck.  Or else something called "thoracic outlet syndrome".  Either way, it manifested itself similarly in a spot on my upper right arm, with a delightfully, painfully zingy electric shock sensation, numbness and tingling in my last two fingers on that hand, and the ability to actually trace the radial nerve down my arm (yes!) because of the pain.  (The radial nerve tracing felt like I was touching a healing bruise.)  The pain started out occurring fairly randomly, like maybe once a day, and then escalated to a point where I was feeling it jab my upper arm once every 30 seconds.  Like someone is stabbing you with an ice-pick.

It took six months of physical therapy to get rid of that feeling.

Add in to this a family history of diabetes.

And the fact that a typical diabetes symptom is something called Neuropathy, and it typically occurs in the feet.

My oldest brother had both his feet amputated due to diabetes, which led (indirectly) to his death.  My dad had problems with his feet for years related to his diabetes.

Probably it’s another pinched nerve.  Fun, fun, fun.

Or, according to Dr. Google, it could be a Morton’s Neuroma.  Fun, fun, fun.

But then again, almost every single "foot pain" link I connected to that talked about zingy electric-shock like things in the foot talked about diabetes.  Since it’s been at least a year since I had a diabetes check, I guess it’s time to go and look again.  Bleah.  I am totally paranoid about diabetes, even tho my fuddy-duddy older brother biologist claims that diabetes is genetically linked through the mother and I should be fairly safe from it…

So, hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to see the doc-in-a-box we go this afternoon.

Here’s an awesome post at Good Math, Bad Math about some of the thinking in the banking business that led to the growth of subprime loans, the housing boom, and the current housing bust.

Gotta love ScienceBlogs…

Right now, it’s a balmy -10F.  It’s 30 degrees warmer "back home".

The dotter has lost a second tooth and I again successfully performed the Tooth Fairy Move.

I have a new computer, a Christmas gift to myself; spent many hours today configuring and re-configuring my network router and home network (entailing schlepping laptop and new computer up and downstairs a few times between office and dining area, where the router is located), finally figured out that the reason my new speakers weren’t working was because they weren’t plugged in (duh!), and am dealing with Vista.  And a clacky keyboard.  The office is full of boxes.

The tree is trimmed.  Pics to come (assuming my camera plays nicely with the new computer).

Damn, it’s cold!

More tomorrow…

A few years back, OmegaDad rented a car while on a business trip (”The boys and I were playing poker in Nebraska City…”) (inside family joke).  During this trip, he apparently scraped the bumper while parking.  Our insurance covered it, but it was a small hassle, entailing various faxes back and forth and a letter or two from the rental company.

So this trip, when OD rented the car for the week, he signed on for the various insurance charges, hoping to avoid any further hassles.

Y’see, in his innocence, he thought the charge was a flat, one-time fee.

He mentioned that he had signed up for them with his one-day rental to get back to Phoenix on Tuesday, but didn’t say anything about the one-week-and-one-day rental…

Picture OmegaMom in the large super-rental facility in Phoenix.

First, take a moment to picture OmegaMom trying desperately to locate the car keys which had been in her hands mere moments previously…luckily, I discovered them buried in the dotter’s backpack, where I had hurriedly been tossing various dotterly accoutrements from the back seat.  Har.

Then, picture OmegaMom glancing at the printout from the nifty hand-held car-rental gizmo from the patient and helpful rental car dude.

Picture OmegaMom’s jaw dropping and eyes popping when she reached the bottom line.

$737.18?!?!

Dear God in heaven.  Surely there was a mistake?!

We sashayed up to the little “Customer Service” kiosk in the dark underground cavern.

The nice lady there said, “Well, this line is for this, and that line is for that, and this line here and that line there and that third line in this other place is for the insurance.”

I sat down this a.m. with the receipt and did some kackle-ating.

Note that some of these charges are taxable!

I was expecting to pay somewhere around $300…and, sure enough, after my kackle-ating, it turns out that, without the insurance damages (har!), the car would have cost $330.67.  Or thereabouts.

In other words, more than $400 went to those “helpful” insurance coverages.

Gasp!

Rest assured that this will not happen again.  I know that our insurance covers this stuff.  The hassle of dealing with it ourselves, through our insurance company, is more than worth $400.

Holy moly.  I am so glad that we have $$ in the bank and it’s not the disaster it would be if we had, say, been gallivanting to the southwest on a budget.

(Thanks to Scott for pointing out that it was Dylan Thomas, not John Donne, who penned “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”.  I whapped myself on the forehead for that one.)

John Donne Dylan Thomas says, “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.“  In general, I agree; don’t give in, don’t give up, keep on keepin’ on.

At this point, though, I’m sure he was talking about people dying young. 

I remember, oh so many years ago, when my grandfather W. finally died, it was such a relief to him and to everyone in the family.  He had been suffering from heart attacks and emphysema and Parkinsons’ Disease for so many years, in and out of hospitals, the EMTs regularly called out to jolt him back into wakefulness when his heart stopped yet again.  Grandma W. had been coping with this for ten years, and even though we had plenty of family in the area who tried to help her with everything, it was wearing on her.

I was in my mid-twenties when the phone call came from my cousin, in the middle of the night.  Grandpa had died.  And while I was sad that he was gone, I remember distinctly feeling very happy that finally, finally Grandma would be able to take a rest, a break, turn her eyes outward from the cocoon of the family home.  She had a lovely year or two afterwards–my aunt and uncle moved her out to California to be in their area, her meds were adjusted, with the majority simply being tossed out, and she was making new friends and socializing like crazy.  Then she, too, died.

Here I am, twenty years later, coping with a different grandparent in a different situation.

Marguerite is 104.  She comes from a line of people who live long, healthy lives.  Her brother was in his 90s when he died; her two sisters both made it past 100 themselves.  Her husband died more than 30 years ago…

She has been a constant in my life.  Not as much for me as for my cousins, whose yearly all-summer visit was one of the few pieces of calm and normalcy in their lives.  But, nonetheless, she’s always been there.  A wonderful grandmother for small children; not-so-wonderful once the kids hit adolescence and start having minds of their own.  Once we all made it through adolescence and our early 20s, we were able to come to grips with how Grandma operated, and we all made our peace, in one way or another, with her.

Which is to say:  We love her.  We may not really like her quite as much as we’d all like to like her, but we all love her.  Fiercely.  Because she’s an amazing woman.

She was still driving until her late 90s.  She was still bowling at age 99.  She was still playing bridge at the assisted living center–and beating the other players–just two years ago.  She just kept keepin’ on, getting slightly frailer, but mostly being astonishingly hale and healthy and doing her puzzles every morning.

I spent a year living with her during the weeks shortly after OmegaDad and I moved to Arizona.  I got a job down in the Valley of Death, but our house was near OmegaGranny, ninety miles away from the job.  So I’d wake up early on Monday mornings, pop into the car, and drive down to my job, then Monday evening would drive to Sun City and spend the nights through Thursday…then, Friday night, would drive back up into the (small) mountains and meet up with OmegaDad for the weekends.  He, in the meantime, was driving 100 miles the other way, on pretty much the same schedule.

Yesterday was my last day in Arizona for a while.  OmegaGranny, the dotter and I visited Great-Grandma in her nursing home.  She is so frail.  She was lost in her mind, trying to figure out why her husband was stepping out with another lady…and I reassured her that B. loved her totally, and that she must be mistaken.  When I asked her if she wanted me to lotion her hands and arms, she agreed, then fretfully told me that I’d have to wash them first, because they were all covered with squashed bugs (the little black spots again).  So I went into the bathroom, wetted down some heavy paper tissue, and came out to carefully wash the non-existent bug juice off her hands before applying the lotion.

This is the woman who kept three little girls squealing with delighted terror at ghost stories featuring herself and her sisters.  This is the woman who won prize after prize for her flowers at her flower club.  This is the woman who took some gold wire and a disposable furnace filter and somehow managed to make a darling angel out of the separate pieces.  This is the woman who trekked to Australia in her 80s, who flew to British Columbia every summer to see her sisters until her late 90s, the woman who sewed her own wedding dress and made smocked clothing for her granddaughters, the woman who put on elaborate plays with her brother and sisters, the woman who was taught for a year at home during the 1918 influenza epidemic, the woman who moved across country with her husband because his job demanded it…

And on and on.

This one is really shaking me up.

Part of it is the realization that I can’t help my mom.  I’m 4,000 miles away.  It’s so stressful for her, and I wish I could wave a magic wand and make it better.  But I can’t, and she can’t.  No-one can.

Right now, all I can do is hope that my grandmother’s amazing body will just decide to…stop.  Right now, I wish her:  Do go gentle into that good night.  Because the time for raging, raging against the dying of the light is past.  Because I wish her rest, and peace, not this drifting in and out with phantoms of a non-existent past bothering her like this.

I’m trying to write a post–or multiple posts–about a variety of topics/issues that are on my mind this week, but every time I try to compose a paragraph, or start a mental outline of how to approach the post, my brain short-circuits.  Like a hamster on a wheel, or a car stuck on the ice, the ol’ brain just seems to keep spinning in circles.  So, rather than do anything substantive, I’ll just do some meandering.

First: my computer access has to be shared with my mom, as I have returned the work laptop to work.  ACK!  Then there’s the fact that we’ve been going hither and yon, visiting with folk and checking up on Great Grandma.  This means that my time on blogs and what-not has been severely curtailed.  Every time I pop into my Bloglines feed list (thereby having to log OmegaGranny out, which means she has to keep re-remembering her own log-in and password), there seem to be fifty kazillion new posts.  The end result is I’m tempted to hit the "mark all blogs read" button right now, and just glaze over.

We went off to the mall this a.m.; read OmegaGranny’s post on the subject.  I will merely say that the Hannah Montana wig was lusted after by the dotter.  The dotter has never seen Hannah Montana; her desire is fueled solely by her classmates’ and after-school cohorts’ discussion about how cool HM is.  That and the fact that HM has long straight blonde hair.

We met Singing Bird and the Bee for lunch out and playground playing and home socializing.  It was a lovely afternoon, and I am in love with the Bee.  The dotter is also in love with the Bee, so I expect to hear more about having a sister in the future.  I foolishly have told the dotter that I miss my little baby oh-so-much, and mentioned it once again today in the throes of Emme-Lu-lust; the end result is that the dotter decided that she should act like a baby, "Because you want a baby so much, Mommy!"  This is problematic:  I don’t want OmegaDotter to act like a baby–I want her to be herself.  And she’s just plain pestiferous when she uses baby-talk.  It is all, of course, in desire to make mommy happy, but ack!  This kid is so much fun right now, at this age, and I don’t want her to be a baby again, I want another little baby.

OmegaGranny has given me another new sun to grace the Alaska house.

Great Grandma was much better yesterday.  It made my spirits soar to have her crabbing about people whose children don’t mind, and sniffing at people who let their hair grow shaggy; it was like having her back to normal.  This evening, she wasn’t as peppy.  The dotter told OmegaGranny and me, in the car, "Great Grandma was okay tonight…not as good as last night, but much better than she was."  Fleeting glimpses of her future emotional maturity…

Yesterday, I took advantage of lovely sunny weather, and hauled the poor dotter all the way up Thumb Butte trail and back down again.  And she did it.  And there was hardly any complaining.  And when we got to the overlook at the top of the trail (not at the top of the butte–that requires rock climbing skills and a mom who won’t have her heart stop if the dotter’s hand slips), she looked out at the town and the never-ending view and sighed and said, "Oh, it’s so beautiful!"  Which made the coaxing required for the fourth fifth of the climb all worth while.

I’m trying to come up with a discussion of RAD (reactive attachment disorder), how it is different than any other horrible chronic illness, adoption disruptions, how biological parents are not all paragons of perfection who never relinquish their children (as if anything like an adoption disruption is something that never, ever happens with biological children), and how having a family member turn your life into such misery that simply turning down your street to go the last block or two home makes you feel like you might as well just cut your throat might be similar to how it feels to be dealing with a child with RAD, but, like I said, my brain isn’t working well and it may have to wait for days.  Maybe weeks.  We’ll see.

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I found it first on Twice the Rice.  Then PAGent posted about it.  Then Figlet.

The gist:  a diplomat and his wife, while living in Korea, adopt a 4-month-old little girl (and choose, of all stereotypical names, "Jade" for her name).  When the girl is 3, they move to Hong Kong.  At that point, they have two biological children.  At age 7, they decide to abandon their child to the social welfare system in Hong Kong, apparently citing "culture shock" or "inability to integrate into our lifestyle" or "problem with our foods" or "inability to integrate into our family", depending on which story you read.  Oh, yes, and then there’s the fact that she hasn’t been made a citizen of the diplomat’s country, or of Hong Kong, so she’s still a Korean citizen–but she doesn’t speak Korean–but she’ll probably have to go back to Korea in order to be legally adopted out again.

Dudes, OmegaDotter is almost six.

I simply cannot imagine taking her by the hand, taking her to Catholic Social Services or the county borough welfare system, and saying, "Eh…she’s too much for us.  She doesn’t like to eat the same things we do.  And, geez, she still won’t sleep in her own bedroom, and does the Foot Thing, and bashes against us as a sign of love, and we can’t take it any more.  Find her another home."

I find myself desperately hoping that there’s more to this story, that this couple aren’t as clueless and obnoxious as it seems.  That the child was threatening their smaller children.  That she had RAD and this is the end of a years-long struggle.  Or something.  That the "she doesn’t fit into their lifestyle" commentary was made by a grumpy social worker without a clue, rather than coming from the mouths of the adoptive parents.

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The tooth is out.  I was in the kitchen with OmegaGranny and OmegaUnk, chit-chatting, and I heard the dotter calling out, "Mom!  MOM!"  Now, she tends to holler out in excitement for a variety of things, none of which I tend to think are important, and if we don’t HOP when she calls, she goes into conniptions, which irritates me no end.

So, mentally rolling my eyes, I was about to call out, "Girl, what’s wrong?  Why can’t you come here and tell me?!" when she darts into the kitchen and shouts, "It’s out!  It’s out!  My tooth!  Here it is!" and she held out a teeny tiny barely visible white thing.  And then we had to stuff her mouth with paper towel until the bleeding stopped, but for once she was so excited and interested that the Sight Of Blood didn’t bother her one little bit.

So the Tooth Fairy will have to visit Grandma Julie’s house.  Luckily, a hurried run to the bank on Saturday had resulted in one (1) Sacajawea dollar, carefully stashed in Grandma Julie’s purse for the big event.

We’ve told the dotter that the Tooth Fairy is quite shy, doesn’t like being seen, and may just not visit if she knows that the dotter is going to be sneakily trying to catch her in the act.

Oy.  My baby is growing up.  Wah!

If you look closely at the pic up above, you will see the new adult tooth already well on its way.  It’s much wider.  If the dotter actually does end up with the same number of adult teeth–I’m informed that this is normally the way that it works –it looks like we’ll have some orthodontial work ahead of us.

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The seasons, they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We’re captive on a carousel of time.
We can’t return
We can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

Painted pony number one:  Five years ago Saturday, we met our dotter for the first time.  It doesn’t seem possible that it’s been so long already.  We’ve gone from a tiny little baby coming home for the first time:

To an almost six-year-old full of creativity and vitality:

Her first tooth to come out is just about out–it’s at that stage where it can lie almost flat.  We almost thought it was out tonight, but it looks like at least one more day, after all.

Our trip to Arizona has blindsided us with some Issues.  The dotter decided–unbeknownst to us–that it meant we were moving again.  Um.  Oops.  Then, since OmegaDad’s job is still fairly new, we had decided early on that he would stay only a few days, while the dotter and I would stay longer.  So I spent this evening in the bathroom with her in full-blown brokenhearted weeping mode–Daddy was gone, she missed him, I would be gone on Wednesday (a trip to the office) and would leave her all alone, and she first refused to believe we were actually going home on Sunday, and then declared in tears that she wanted to go home now, and then told me that Sunday would never come.

Some kid point-of-view things just blindside you, y’know?

Painted pony number two:  A person who I have posted with for years on various debate boards died of colon cancer this week.  She was in her early 40s.

Painted pony number three:  Marguerite, coming up on her 104th birthday, had a bad infection that required her to be on antibiotics.  The infection and antibiotic combo, along with heparin, had her hallucinating and sleepless for three days and nights, unsteadily wandering the halls of her assisted living center and falling often.  No broken bones, but they finally hospitalized her, got the infection under control, figured out the right antibiotic, and got her to sleep.

But the assisted living center said they couldn’t handle her anymore, and she needed a nursing home.

Sigh.

So Great Grandma (my own grandmother) is now in a nursing home, and sad and confused.  Nothing tastes good.  She can’t hear well.  Her eyesight is going, with black spots in her vision that make her think there are black bugs wandering all over her food and her clothes.  And she, like OmegaDotter, wants to go home.  Imagine going to sleep in one place and waking up in another–with the intervening days and nights just vanished from your memory–and being told, "This is your new home."

I’m so glad that we had planned a party for Great Grandma, so that there were lots of folks in town to help my mom out during this extremely stressful time.  But it’s so sad for us all–we have been spoiled…Marguerite was still bowling up until 1999, she was still out playing bridge at the assisted living center two years ago, she has always been sharp as a tack and filled with tart commentary and memories.  Having her in this state is…heartbreaking.

This evening, at bedtime, the dotter quizzed me:  "Why is Great Grandma like that?"  And I had to explain to her that Great Grandma is 104 years old, that most people don’t live that long, that she’s wanting to go home and is having a hard time realizing that she has a new home, and that she’s just tired tired tired.  So in the midst of all the upheaval, all the worries about moving again, the dotter is learning some other things that are very difficult to process.

Parenting is hard sometimes.

Life is hard sometimes.

But I’m so glad we have the dotter with us.  I’m so glad my family can pull together like this.  I’m so glad we all have each other.  Because it makes the hard stuff more bearable.

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We got on the plane in Anchorage…the sun was low down on the horizon and beginning to set.

The dotter behaved beautifully all day long.  In the morning, when our petsitter arrived to "practice" with the dawg (we haven’t received any frantic phone calls yet, so I’m guessing things have gone okay).  During the quick stop at OmegaDad’s office so we could print out the itinerary and various confirmation numbers.  At the airport.  In the plane.  All the way.  She was awesome.  We were pleased (and relieved).

The flight stopped at Sea-Tac, we deplaned and replaned, and OmegaDad leaned over to me and whispered, "That young lady is traveling by herself."  I knew exactly who he was discussing:  the pre-teen brunette with the slightly excited air, who was sitting a few rows ahead of us and on the other side of the aisle.

When we deplaned in the Valley of Death at oh-dark-thirty, tired and running on empty, as we exited the jetway, we saw a small head peering from around the doorway.  As we got closer, I realized it was a small Asian head, attached to a small Asian girl about the size/age as the dotter.  We headed into the gate area, to an empty, echoing area devoid of people, except for a woman in the distance.  OmegaDad and I glanced at the girl, glanced at the woman, assumed they were together, and headed on, trudging wearily to the baggage claim, with visions of a bed at the hotel luring us forwards.

We get to baggage claim, and OmegaDad decamps for the little boy’s room, OmegaDotter snuggled up beside me on the bench (I think, I honestly can’t remember at this point!) and we zoned out.

I see in the distance the lady with the little Asian girl and the cute pre-teen and one of those bag-carrier thingummies.  She comes closer and smiles, and says, "Excuse me…are you by any chance…"

Mentally I’m already finishing the sentence:

"…are you by any chance part of the Phoenix FCC?"

"…is your daughter by any chance from China/Korea/Vietnam?"

Or something similar–the kind of encounter you become accustomed to, where you have a quick meet-and-greet of someone who has a family similar to yours, recognition of commanality in the middle of an empty airport.

And then she knocks my socks off by saying:

"Are you by any chance OmegaMom?  I read your blog all the time!"

WHOA!

NO SHIT?!  Someone is asking me if I’m my blog persona?!  In an international airport?!

Holy cow!

This was such an amazing ego-boo I can’t describe it.  A shot in the emotional arm.  An OMG-I’m-blushing moment like you wouldn’t believe.  I have a real, live reader!!!  (Okay, of course I know I have real, live readers, and have actually met a few on purpose, but this was my very first chance encounter and way kewl.)

This is, obviously, one of the reasons actors act and pop singers sing:  Just to get that zingy ego-boost out of nowhere.

We chatted; I asked her if she had a blog (no) or had commented, and she said, "Oh, no, I’m just a lurker, but I read you all the time."  The lovely young pre-teen was her niece, visiting from the bush, and her daughter was, indeed, exactly OmegaDotter’s age and also from China.

So, to my nameless fan:  Hi!  I’m sorry I didn’t talk more, and wasn’t more prepared, but we were honest to goodness almost staggering with exhaustion and the ol’ brain cells weren’t firing quite right.  And I just wanted to tell you that your greeting was truly appreciated and made me feel all warm-n-fuzzy.  Shout out in the comments!

So we’re here.  We chowed down at our favorite dim sum restaurant in the Valley of Death, then stopped at Trader Joe’s to grab some stuff for OmegaGranny, and headed up the hill.  I soaked in the sunlight, and felt the fifty kazillion knots of tension and misery in my back easing off.  OmegaDad eyeballed the clouds and voiced his sincere hope that he’ll be able to tell his coworkers, when asked, that it snowed every damned day we were in Arizona.  Har.

The sun has been up since 7:30.  It’s almost 5, and the sun hasn’t set yet.  I’ve hugged my mamasan like she hasn’t been hugged in a long time, and same for Unka Bill.  Cousin R. has made it here and is relaxing in her hotel room for a bit, and then we’re off for dinner.

Great-Grandma’s 104th birthday was two days ago; I thought it was yesterday (my mnemonic is Pearl Harbor Day–but I left out the "day before" clause in my memory).  A post about her tomorrow.

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Jess asked about the T-shirt the dotter was wearing in the previous post.  The T-shirt does, indeed, say, “I’m the BIG sister”.  The T-shirt has no meaning in our family, alas, though we’d really like it to.  Someone at summer camp had the T-shirt.  The dotter liked it.  That someone handed it over to the dotter, because that someone’s mom had spilled bleach on it and the bleach had eaten holes in it and who cared, right?

When birthmother sensitivity goes bad–OmegaDotter to OmegaDad in the car last night, conversing about her birthmother:  “Oh, yeah?  Well, I’ve got her in my heart, dork!”  Okay, to really grok that last item, say it with a typical kids “neener-neener” tone to it, then top it with the emphatic “dork!”  OmegaDad and I busted up laughing in the darkness.  Then I informed the dotter that we don’t call people “dorks”.  Like that’ll stop her (”He did it first!”).

The “ACK!  Run away!  Run away!” department:  OmegaDotter has taken to decorating her “i”s with flowers when she writes.  She’s learned this perfidious practice from some older kids at after-school care.  She is very careful and detailed.  This is too, too cliché.  I will try to get a picture.

Tomorrow we head off to Arizona!  Yes!  For sunshine!  And my grandmother’s 104th birthday!  Yes!  And I’m excited!  Yes!

Later than planned, but here it is:

OmegaDad makes a sad face because he has never made a gingerbread house in his life.  A deprived childhood, obviously.  (We’ll leave aside the fact that OmegaMom has never made a gingerbread house, either, shall we?)  Anyway, it made a fine excuse for him to insist on making a gingerbread house with the dotter.

But he didn’t get too carried away.  None of this make-it-from-scratch silliness, for instance.  Nope, he scoured the local grocery stores for a gingerbread house kit, which you see over to the right.  It comes with walls, roof panels, icing packets, geegaws to decorate with, and a little gingerbread man to put out front.  The knife doesn’t come with the kit; it is a special OmegaFamily tool for opening shrink-wrapped gingerbread house components…

Dad and dotter examine the kit and decide how to approach things:

Note the dotter’s pink T-shirt.  Note the holes in it on the shoulder.  Note that OmegaMom was firm in her demand that the dotter wear a sweatshirt over that old thang when she wanted to wear it to school the other day.  Note that when OmegaMom picked up the dotter at after-school care, the sweatshirt had been long since pulled off, and the dotter had been rampaging around the classroom in the gnarly, holy old thing without a care in her heart.

Starting the construction:

Three walls up:

Raising the roof:

Holding down the roof (you have to get the icing to “set”):

Making the front door:

Dotter decorating with dots.  This is serious work, y’know…:

The finished product!

The purple-y thing by the sidewalk is the gingerbread girl; the purple is her hair.

Of course, once the gingerbread house was completed, the dotter wanted to eat it.

What?!?!  Gads, no! sayeth OmegaMom, wanting a cute little gingerbread house gracing the top of the glass-front bookcase as part of Christmas decor.

Well…yesterday, I succumbed, and told the dotter she could eat the gingerbread girl to see whether she liked it or not.  Thus, if she didn’t like it, the house would be saved.

Alas, she liked it.  The house still stands, but I don’t know how much longer.

For your amusement:  The TRUTH about wireless devices!

My PalPal change-of-address rant garnered many similar complaints.  The one that really caught my eye, though, was Del’s link to a similar complaint by someone who is using PayPal to accept registration fees for a conference.  Ack!

Since I had everyone in my corner, I was feeling righteous.

Since everyone had said that they had similar problems and finally gave up, I was not feeling hopeful.

But I had sent out a plaintive missive to PayPal help, via their website form:

Surely this isn’t an unusual question!

We’ve moved.  I want to update my address and phone number.  But in order to update my address and phone number–you have to contact me at my old (NO LONGER VALID!!!) phone number or address!!!

I call the customer service phone number as suggested.  I go to
“update/change account information”…then it tells me to go to the website!

Sorry for all the exclamation points, but I am getting EXTREMELY
FRUSTRATED.

My husband has had the same problem with his PayPal account.
Please help.  PLEASE.

And you know what?

I got a response.

From a real, live human being!

And she was nice and understanding!

And she “reset” my account!

And I was able to remove the old address, *poof!*

And I was able to remove the old telephone number, *poof!*

And I was able to even change the primary email address, so I no longer have to log in using the old address (which will be defuncticated while I am off visiting OmegaGranny)!

So, I have to give PayPal a halfhearted pat on the back.  The pat on the back is because they did help.  The halfhearted part is that they shouldn’t have needed to help.  This is not an unusual request, I am sure; there must be thousands of people registered with PayPal who move every month.  They need to fix their system, because it should not require me getting frustrated and having to contact their help desk to get this fixed.

While OmegaDad and OmegaDotter were waiting for the icing to set on the gingerbread house (a kit), I stepped outside to snap a picture of the neighborhood.

It was 12:03 p.m.

This is what it looked like:

See those long shadows?  That weak, slightly melancholy, golden light?

High noon, folks.  That’s as good as it gets these days.

Today is cold.  Right now, the temp is 14F.  The wind is averaging 24 mph, with gusts up to 36; supposedly, gusts up to 80 mph.  Wind chill is -8F.

The lights have been flickering all day with the wind.  The internet has gone out intermittently as well.

But we’ve been inside, listening to Christmas music and decorating gingerbread houses and washing clothes and reading or watching TV.  Snug and warm and cozy (so long as the flickering doesn’t turn into all-lights-off-for-more-than-a-minute-or-two).

Last night, we had A Visitor.  I was outside the kitchen again, having a smoke (yes, don’t shout please), and heard crunching and rustling.  Thinking it was neighbors, I peered over the railing and down.  There, in front of the neighbors’ garage (not pictured, it’s to the right and behind me from that pic) was a moose.

He thumped.  He rustled.  He crunched snow and ice.  He moved ponderously down the driveway, into the finger of woods between our house and theirs, then plunged down the hill into our yard and thudded his way through, then was gone in the night.  The howl of dawgs followed him through the neighborhood.

Gingerbread pics tomorrow.

When you move 4,000 miles away from your old abode, your address changes in lots of far-flung places.

So, in this age of the wonder that is the intertubes, you sit down at your computer once you have sorted out all the details (like, say, where you’re going to live, and what your phone number is going to be), crack your fingers in a semi-macho display, poise the hands over the keyboard like Leonard Bernstein, lift a hand…

…and type http://www.bofa.com…

…and Hey Presto! you’re there, you answer a few security questions that no-one else is ever going to know (your father-in-law’s middle name is not exactly common, nor is it exactly common knowledge outside your spouse’s circle), and voila, you have happily changed your primary address and phone number and your bank statements are now delivered to your bank-o-mailboxes at your new address by the postal person and you’re happy.  Well, kinda.

You do the same with a variety of services.

All on the web.

All nice and easy.

All using Sekrit Kwestshuns with Sekrit Ansers that only you know.

And you go along with your life, merrily having a grand ol’ time trying to adjust to life in your new abode.

Then one day you discover Etsy.  Some wicked woman lists some artists in her “gifts for less than $50″ blog post, and you foolishly click on the links, and you are in love and you MUST.  HAVE.  THESE.  THINGS.  NOW.  (Especially since you are trying to decorate a new house, and counteract the continually shrinking amount of sunlight by scattering Bright Things around the house.)

Now, Etsy allows you to use PayPal.

You have a nice small amount in your PayPal account, due to your previous go-round with blog ads (and you wistfully hope that your new go-round with blog ads will prove as pleasantly pseudo-lucrative).  So you decide to purchase your new treasures using PayPal.

There’s a little note at Etsy when you select PayPal to pay; it says to be sure your shipping address in PayPal is the correct one.  So you schlep over to PayPal’s website, knowing you haven’t changed your address, so maybe it’s time to change it.

And you think you’ve done it, and order your Glittering Things, and the shipping address that shows up is not your new address.

So you scratch your head.  “Say what?!  Dayum.  I know I changed that address.  Hunh.  Maybe I need to change the address that’s marked as the main address.” 

You are in a maze of twisty, turny passages that all look alike.

You are in a maze of turning, twisty passages, all looking alike.

You are in a maze of twisting, turning passages that all look alike.

First you add an address.  That works.  Then you add a phone number and an email address.  That works.

Then you try to make the new address your primary address and delete the old one.  You get a page that says they will contact you with a Sekrit Code so you can confirm the changes.

They will contact you at your primary phone number, which is not the new phone number you just added.

OR…

They will contact you at your mailing address.  Which just happens to be the old mailing address.

OR…

You can select “Other”, which brings you to a page where they say to contact Customer Service at this particular phone number.

So after trying a few go-rounds (surely there’s a way to get your new address and/or new phone number to appear in the drop-down??), you grit your teeth in frustration and call the phone number (which is not toll-free).

You get a nice pleasant-sounding computerized voice.  You follow its instructions.  You select the “change customer address and/or phone number” option.  You get a voice message that says…

“Did you know you can change your address and phone number on our website?  We’ll be sending you instructions on how to do this to your email.”

See OmegaMom.

See OmegaMom’s eyes bug out.

See OmegaMom turning red.

See OmegaMom start howling.

See OmegaMom jump up and down in frustration, just like her five-year-old daughter does.

See OmegaMom go wash dishes to get away from her frustration.

See OmegaMom sit down at the computer once again to try to figure out how to contact a real, live human being who might be able to help her do something that LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS OF PAYPAL CUSTOMERS MUST WANT TO DO, JUST LIKE HER!!!

Now, really.  Banks do it.  Utilities do it.  Lots of places that are just as needful of security measures as PayPal do it OVER THE INTERNET.  Without all this rigamarole.  Why the fuck can’t PayPal?!?!

I just want to be able to use my “OmegaMom fund” to be able to buy myself some kewl artwork.  Is this too much to ask?

Grrrr.

So I’ve sent an email to their help desk.  Now I have to wait until Monday to be contacted.  The Kozmik All is no doubt arranging, right now, for the person at PayPal to ignore my offered new phone number and new email addresses, and try to call my old phone number.  ARRGGGHHHHHHH!!!