OmegaMom

This morning I read a post on a blog-center (dunno what else to call it?  A place that has bunches of bloggers who are paid to blog there?).  The post was written by a woman who got involved in a horrible divorce case that featured her husband and MIL and others printing out a year’s worth of posts from her old blog and using them to portray her as a horrible woman who was tearing down her husband and didn’t deserve custody of her kids.  The case played out long ago, but today she discussed the fact that post-divorce, her child’s therapist told her that she had read her blog and had known that her husband/MIL/others had found her blog and were reading the posts and printing them out, but had felt it was unethical to tell her so until she was no longer therapising her child.

Anyway.

I mean, aside from that piece of weirdness (okay, your kids’ therapist reads your blog and it’s obvious that issues in the blog are related to the kids’ therapy, but…um…surely it’s okay to say, "Hey!  I read your blog!"?)…

The author of this post talked about how she wouldn’t have written those things if she had known her husband and MIL and unknown others were actually reading it.

Hm.

In a similar case, on a private email list I was on a few years ago, one of the posters regularly vented about things her husband did.  Most of us knew–in general–that it was venting and meant naught.  Unfortunately, one of the other posters had a hate-on for the first poster, and spent a year forwarding bits and pieces from the vents to her husband, anonymously.  Naturally, choosing the ugliest, pettiest of vents.  Over the year, poster number one became more and more bewildered by how morose her husband was becoming, how distant, how things weren’t what they had been before.  Then hubby finally exploded and admitted that someone was forwarding these emails.  There was a Big Blow Up in the marriage, accompanied by therapies and lots of discussion, and a Big Blow Up on the list, accompanied by the closure of the list, the hunting down of the person who had done the forwarding, and a big drop in the overall trust level between all these folks.  The marriage survived, the list changed, people moved on.

So.

The first…well.  Hm.  She didn’t know people were reading her blog.  She was posting all her vents out on the open Internet.  Yes, there are millions of pages of…stuff…on the Internet.  But lordy lordy.  I avoided the whole question of "what would people think about my posting" in two ways.  One way was to just crow to my darling OmegaDad about my blogging.  And to my mom.  And to others.  The other way was to say to myself, when posting, just about the same thing I say to myself most of the time when I’m about to write an angry email or a furious response on a message board:  Do I really want to post this?  So I sit on it.  And a few hours later, usually, the spleen is vented, life is better, I can look at the prompting event, and see it from a different perspective.

(Though when it comes to leaving throat lozenge wrappers all over the house, ahem…No perspective will ever make that acceptable! )

Don’t post something on the Internet that you wouldn’t mind seeing in your local newspaper.  Or else password protect it from day one and make sure it can’t be indexed by Teh Google or the WayBack Machine.  It’s a fairly good rule of thumb.

The second is a different matter.  It was, to me, a betrayal of trust among a group of supposed friends.  One is putting up a broadside on an often-passed telephone pole near downtown.  The other is chit-chatting with your buds in the safety of your living room while playing pinochle or Bunco.  One has an implied privacy (the email list); the other doesn’t (a post on the Internet).  Both involve a communications gap–one of which was solved by party B asking party A what the heck was going on, the other of which was "solved" by going to court and what sounds to be a nasty custody case.

In general, I have no idea where I’m going with this post, aside from the fact that it is vaguely related to yesterday’s post in topic, and the question of the difference between the two situations–the difference that I see but that others may be quite able to argue isn’t there at all–intrigued me. 

Do you see the difference?  Or is there one?

Tomorrow:  Dinosaur Wars!

The explosion of the Internet has its glories–I found our first house on the Internet long before it was the normal way to look at houses, I pay my bills by Internet by preference, I book flights and hotels and learn about adoption via the Internet.  I started out long ago on Usenet, following alt.callahans, then moving to misc.gettingmarried or whatever it was, then misc.pregnancy, then alt.infertility.  And some email lists.  Then I moved on to message boards.  Then blogs.

(But not Twitter.  Or miniblogs.  Or other Web 2.0 social networks.  I joined a few blogging networks, but haven’t really done much with them.)

All of which revealed to me that the written word has an amazing ability to be misconstrued.

Some people can write well.  Some people can’t.  Some people can read well.  Some people can’t.

Writing blog posts, or bulletin board posts, or Usenet posts can be fraught with uncertainty:  Sometimes what you write, meaning one thing, becomes read in a totally different manner.  I’ve had this happen before, and wrote about it before, and when it happens, you become totally flabbergasted, appalled:  But…but…that’s not what I said!  Or:  But…but…that’s how it reads, but that’s not what I meant!

So some people litter their posts with emoticons to ensure that their meaning is not misread.  Or, occasionally, someone who has been misconstrued to the point where they feel they’re disliked, may start sprinkling lots of emoticons to the max, hoping–like a puppy dog wagging its tail–the readers will "read" see?  see?  I’m not being snarky or condescending!  I’m making a joke!  Laugh!  Please!  Please don’t take this the wrong way!  Please don’t be angry at me!  And then, people being people, maybe others will take the overdose of emoticons as a sneering reminder that They Don’t Read Things The Right Way, and take it as being condescending.  Enough of this interaction, and the puppy-like emoticons morph into exactly what is being seen:  an angry tirade, a way of saying:  Damn you idiotic fuckers anyway, this is a joke but I know you’re not going to get it, so maybe if I put goddamned neon lights around it you’ll recognize it (though I doubt it).

Oy.

Long ago and far away, on a private board, someone wrote about her bad body image.  How it affected her life.  How miserable it made her.  Lots of people wrote back, doing the womanly "Uh-hunh, I hear you, girl, I know what you mean!"  Someone else wrote back about her bad body, how she was "ugly", and she used a phrase that I read as being written with a sort of rueful snort, a form of rolling her eyes at herself.  Others in the discussion read it a totally different way–it was seen as a slam, a piece of spiteful cruelty.  The disjunction between the two led to an all-out fight.

Oy.

I’ve seen it play out elsewhere:  something that’s meant jokingly or ruefully or in a silly way gets taken seriously.  Someone saying idly "Lordy, I wish (insert President’s name here) were dead" gets turned into an investigation from the FBI into a death threat.

Oh, it happens in real life, too.  Miscommunications abound.  A guy says to his wife "Yeah, I look at those girls’ tushies and boobs and want to mess around with them", thinking he’s just being honest and open, and she decides it means he’s having a mid-life crisis and is about to leave her.  Or a college girl’s parents tell her, after she announces she’s getting an apartment of her own, "How are you going to pay for all that?!" (meaning pay for an apartment while she’s attending college) and she hears "How are you going to pay for an apartment AND COLLEGE?!" (meaning pay for everything, since she’s obviously about to go out on her own and that means she’s not going to have college paid for anymore) and immediately drops out of college.

But it’s a lot harder to have things totally misconstrued when you’re talking in person.  There are physical cues:  lifted eyebrows, shrugs, blushes, rolling eyes, a V-8 whap against the head.  There are a million different non-verbal cues in person to let someone know you sympathize, you’re joking, you’re being serious, you’re angry, you’re bored.  We’re hard-wired to learn all these cues from childhood.  When they go missing–on paper or on a computer screen–we’re left with only our own extrapolations to fill in the blanks. 

Maybe my extrapolations are the ones out of whack.  Maybe where I saw the puppy-dog trying to wiggle its way back into the graces of friends, I was wrong.  Maybe when I "heard" the rueful snort, I was wrong.  Maybe all those other people were right.  I’ll never know.

(For the record, this has nothing to do with any bloggy blow-ups that have happened recently or in the past.)

Onto other things:  Anocat wanted to know what "that pink thing" was.  It’s called "Pinkie Pie’s Balloon House™, a three-level My Pretty Pony extravaganza of small unnecessary plastic items that garnered awestruck indrawn breaths from almost every girl at the party.  Noreen wanted to know how many attended:  There were four girls and one boy who showed up, plus a small sibling who was supposed to be outside in the general play area but who hung around the glass door with such a sorrowful face, sobbing, "Sissy!  Sissy!" that we let her in, too.

As promised.  The sea scene:

I am jazzed by my fishies.  The dotter, too, was jazzed, and made sure we brought the fishies home to hang in her bedroom.

The cake:

It was expensive.  And full of gooey goodness.  And had a bracelet.

My new home-based business plan:  rent OmegaDad out to birthday parties as entertainment.  He got the kids all giggly and riled up by chasing them as a Big Noisy Monster.  Here, The Chase:

Then, he appropriated the magic wand we were using for a pinata buster and used it to magically change each kiddo into an animal of some sort.  Then, he did the "Funny Alphabet", which is where he gathers the kids around and pretends to have major problems with the Alphabet Song–always good for a laugh with the kids, who keep telling him how the song goes, every time he messes up.  Anyway, I think we could make Big Bucks renting him out.

Making jellyfish:

I like the demon red-eye anonymizing effect, don’t you??

Presents:

That box, by the way, contained the most irritatingly tied-down of girly goodness that I have yet encountered.  This was what was inside:

The whole contraption was secured with fifty kazillion pieces of scotch tape.  There were multiple layers of transparent plastic holding things in place.  The ponies were tied down with twisty ties.  The bed was tied down with twisty ties.  The frog on the second floor was tied down with miniscule transparent elastic stuff.  The teeter-totter was tied down.  The dresser was secured with the transparent elastic stuff.  The mailbox (complete with mail!) was tied down.  The dishes on the table were tied down.  I was untying this ungodly mess for a full half-hour–the entire time the dotter was trying to play with various bits and pieces, until I morphed into Evil Grumpy Mom who bellowed "DOTTER!  TAKE THE PONIES OVER THERE AND PLAY WITH THEM THERE!"

Then there was the pinata, which we discovered, after purchasing, was not a string-pulled but a whack-’em type of pinata.  Alas, the venue did not allow pinata-whacking.  OmegaDad proceeded to appall–yes, appall!–OmegaMom by blatantly encouraging the chilluns to flout the rules.  In other words, there was whacking.  Lots of whacking.  Finally, a mighty blow by K. managed to crack the shell, and then there were kids all over the floor scrambling for candy:

A good time was had by all.  The family stumbled into bed quite early yesterday as a result of all this partying, and had a deep slumber.

We’re a "go" for the birthday party.

I heart Flickr and Creative Commons.

I have managed to morph a "mermaid" party into a "sea theme" party, using streamers and tropical fish and starfish pictures from Flickr (ones with Creative Commons licensing).  So the dotter gets her Ariels, and I get to feel a bit less like a lemming following the Disney siren song.

In the process, I managed to stay up until 3 a.m. last night, cutting out pretty fish, and didn’t wake up until (gasp!) 10 this morning.  (Thus, I managed to scotch a date I had for a phone call with my bro, currently visiting OmegaGranny, which I hope to make up to him after the party.  Damn, I feel guilty.  These time differences leave me all ferschimelt.)

We have goody bags with plastic dolphins or starfish, stickers, crayons, seashells, and coloring pages.

We have purple plates, googly eyes, fuzzy balls, and purple, blue, and seablue streamers to make jellyfish.

We have purple, blue, and pink Gatorade.  We have baby carrots, celery sticks, and dip.  We have apples.  We have an Ariel cake and an Ariel pinata (which we finally figured out how to fill with cheap candy).

And we have time to shower, relax a bit, and sashay off to the party venue.

Oh, and we have one RSVP that included "some other kids".  Um.  OmegaDad took that phone call, so I have no details.  Grrr.

Pictures later.

(Oh, yeah, and I’m feeling better.  But given the way this thing has come and gone in waves, I hold no great hopes for the future.)

I’m sick again.  Urg.  Just bone tired, feeling nauseated, chills.  I want it all to just Go Away.  And I have one birthday party to attend and another to set up this weekend.  (We’ve had another RSVP.)  (Thanks for the advice on goody bags.  I will just assume everyone’s going to make it, and next year I’ll try Sister Carrie’s approach, see if it works better or not.)

While everything was going on this week, PAGent tagged me with a meme.  Woot!  Something I can do without taxing my brain too terribly!

This meme lists every month, with an associated list of traits for people born in that month.  Of course, we all know such stuff is woo, that everyone can "see" themselves in such a description, and yadda yadda yadda.  Anyway, we’re supposed to go through the list and highlight the items that pertain to us, then copy the whole damned list and tag 12 other people.

I was born in April.  April, for those who know, is "the cruelest month".  I’m an Aries.  And, naturally enough, most of the Aries traits do seem to apply to me, but, as I said above, it’s one of those pattern-seeking things, and you’ll see yourself anywhere.

This is what they say about April:

APRIL: Active and dynamic. Decisive and hasty but tends to regret. Attractive and affectionate to oneself. Strong mentality. Loves attention. Diplomatic. Consoling, friendly and solves people’s problems. Brave and fearless. Adventurous. Loving and caring. Suave and generous. Emotional. Aggressive. Hasty. Good memory. Moving. Motivates oneself and others. Sickness usually of the head and chest. Sexy in a way that only their lover can see.

I gotta say, some of it is…a bit weird.  "Affectionate to oneself"?  What exactly does that mean?  Selfish?  Self-loving?  Narcissistic?  "Sauve"?  "Loves attention"?  I hate attention, except from people I love; I prefer to fade into the background.  I was a beige teen as a result.

Frankly, the description for February matches me much better, except for the "superstitious and ludicrous" part…

Here’s the deal if you pass it on:

1. Mention the person who tagged you and create a link back to them.
2. Copy-paste the traits for all the twelve months.
3. Pick your month of birth.
4. Highlight the traits that apply to you.
5. Tag 12 people and let them know by visiting their blogs and leaving a comment for them.
6. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve done it.

THE MONTHLY FLAVORS, WHICH ARE YOU?

JANUARY: Stubborn and hard-hearted. Ambitious and serious. Loves to teach and be taught. Always looking at people’s flaws and weaknesses. Likes to criticize. Hardworking and productive. Smart, neat and organized. Sensitive and has deep thoughts. Knows how to make others happy. Quiet unless excited or tensed. Rather reserved. Highly attentive. Resistant to illnesses but prone to colds. Romantic but has difficulties expressing love. Loves children. Loyal. Has great social abilities yet easily jealous. Very stubborn and money cautious.

FEBRUARY: Abstract thoughts. Loves reality and abstract. Intelligent and clever. Changing personality. Attractive. Sexy. Temperamental. Quiet, shyand humble. Honest and loyal. Determined to reach goals. Loves freedom.Rebellious when restricted. Loves aggressiveness. Too sensitive and easily hurt. Gets angry really easily but does not show it. Dislikes unnecessary things. Loves making friends but rarely shows it. Daring and stubborn.Ambitious. Realizes dreams and hopes. Sharp. Loves entertainment and leisure. Romantic on the inside not outside. Superstitious and ludicrous.Spendthrift. Tries to learn to show emotions.

MARCH: Attractive personality. Sexy. Affectionate. Shy and reserved.Secretive. Naturally honest, generous and sympathetic. Loves peace and serenity. Sensitive to others. Loves to serve others. Easily angered.Trustworthy. Appreciative and returns kindness. Observant and assesses others. Revengeful. Loves to dream and fantasize. Loves traveling. Loves attention. Hasty decisions in choosing partners. Loves home decors.Musically talented. Loves special things. Moody.

APRIL: Active and dynamic. Decisive and hasty but tends to regret.Attractive and affectionate to oneself. Strong mentality. Loves attention.Diplomatic. Consoling, friendly and solves people’s problems. Brave and fearless. Adventurous. Loving and caring. Suave and generous. Emotional. Aggressive. Hasty. Good memory. Moving. Motivates oneself and others. Sickness usually of the head and chest. Sexy in a way that only their lover can see.

MAY: Stubborn and hard-hearted. Strong-willed and highly motivated. Sharp thoughts. Easily angered. Attracts others and loves attention. Deep feelings. Beautiful physically and mentally. Firm Standpoint. Needs no motivation. Easily consoled. Systematic (left brain). Loves to dream. Strong clairvoyance. Understanding. Sickness usually in the ear and neck. Good imagination. Good physical. Weak breathing. Loves literature and the arts. Loves traveling. Dislike being at home. Restless. Not having many children. Hardworking. High spirited. Spendthrift.

JUNE: Thinks far with vision. Easily influenced by kindness. Polite and soft-spoken. Having ideas. Sensitive. Active mind. Hesitating, tends to delay. Choosy and always wants the best. Temperamental. Funny and humorous.Loves to joke. Good debating skills. Talkative. Daydreamer. Friendly. Knows how to make friends. Able to show character. Easily hurt. Prone to getting colds. Loves to dress up. Easily bored. Fussy. Seldom shows emotions. Takes time to recover when hurt. Brand conscious. Executive. Stubborn.

JULY: Fun to be with. Secretive. Difficult to fathom and to be understood.Quiet unless excited or tensed. Takes pride in oneself. Has reputation.Easily consoled. Honest. Concerned about people’s feelings. Tactful.Friendly. Approachable. Emotional temperamental and unpredictable. Moody and easily hurt. Witty and sparkly. Not revengeful. Forgiving but never forgets.Dislikes nonsensical and unnecessary things. Guides others physically and mentally. Sensitive and forms impressions carefully. Caring and loving.Treats others equally. Strong sense of sympathy. Wary and sharp. Judges people through observations. Hardworking. No difficulties in studying. Loves to be alone. Always broods about the past and the old friends. Likes to bequiet. Homely person. Waits for friends. Never looks for friends. Not aggressive unless provoked. Prone to having stomach and dieting problems.Loves to be loved. Easily hurt but takes long to recover.

AUGUST: Loves to joke. Attractive. Suave and caring. Brave and fearless.Firm and has leadership qualities. Knows how to console others. Too generous and egoistic. Takes high pride in oneself. Thirsty for praises.Extraordinary spirit. Easily angered. Angry when provoked. Easily jealous.Observant. Careful and cautious. Thinks quickly. Independent thoughts. Loves to lead and to be led. Loves to dream. Talented in the arts, music and defense. Sensitive but not petty. Poor resistance against illnesses. Learns to relax. Hasty and trusty. Romantic. Loving and caring. Loves to make friends.

SEPTEMBER: Suave and compromising. Careful, cautious and organized. Likes to point out people’s mistakes. Likes to criticize. Stubborn. Quiet but able to talk well. Calm and cool. Kind and sympathetic. Concerned and detailed.Loyal but not always honest. Does work well. Very confident. Sensitive. Good memory. Clever and knowledgeable. Loves to look for information. Must control oneself when criticizing. Able to motivate oneself. Understanding.Fun to be around. Secretive. Loves leisure and traveling. Hardly shows emotions. Tends to bottle up feelings. Very choosy, especially in relationships. Systematic.

OCTOBER: Loves to chat. Loves those who loves them. Loves to take things atthe center. Inner and physical beauty. Lies but doesn’t pretend. Gets angry often. Treats friends importantly. Always making friends. Easily hurt but recovers easily. Daydreamer. Opinionated. Does not care of what others think. Emotional. Decisive. Strong clairvoyance. Loves to travel, the arts and literature. Touchy and easily jealous. Concerned. Loves outdoors. Just and fair. Spendthrift. Easily influenced. Easily loses confidence. Loves children.

NOVEMBER: Has a lot of ideas. Difficult to fathom. Thinks forward. Unique and brilliant. Extraordinary ideas. Sharp thinking. Fine and strong clairvoyance. Can become good doctors. Dynamic in personality. Secretive.Inquisitive. Knows how to dig secrets. Always thinking. Less talkative but amiable. Brave and generous. Patient. Stubborn and hard-hearted. If there isa will, there is a way. Determined. Never give up. Hardly becomes angry unless provoked. Loves to be alone. Thinks differently from others.Sharp-minded. Motivates oneself. Does not appreciate praises. High-spirited.Well-built and tough. Deep love and emotions. Romantic. Uncertain in relationships. Homely. Hardworking. High abilities. Trustworthy. Honest and keeps secrets. Not able to control emotions. Unpredictable.

DECEMBER: Loyal and generous. Sexy. Patriotic. Active in games and interactions. Impatient and hasty. Ambitious. Influential in organizations.Fun to be with. Loves to socialize. Loves praises. Loves attention. Loves to be loved. Honest and trustworthy. Not pretending. Short tempered. Changing personality. Not egotistic. Take high pride in oneself. Hates restrictions. Loves to joke. Good sense of humor. Logical.

Another year.  The dotter is six now.  I brought the requisite cupcakes to school…it was like another world, one I don’t see very often.  It occurred to me that more and more, as she gets older, she’ll be moving out into that other world, and I will know less and less what’s going on with her life.

Gack!  What a depressing outlook!

But oh golly.  She’s six years old.  She’s 44 inches tall.  She’s about 43 pounds (pretty cool:  one pound per inch–it doesn’t work that way for the rest of your life, girly!).  She’s learning to read, bit by bit.  She’s writing lots of stuff–phonetically, but, hey, it’s readable. She’s turning to princesses and Barbie more and more, and now dots her "i"s with little hearts or flowers.  I grit my teeth silently and say to myself, "It’s a phase.  It’s a phase.  She’ll grow out of princesses, Barbies, hearts and flowers."  She’s very girly-girl right now–she brought home a book all about Barbies (a more grown-up kind of book, actually, sort of a "Barbie reference book") from school library, and buys fake makeup and fake nail polish and sparkly things when she gets money to spend.

She still, however, went ga-ga when we located her box of horsies and unpacked it.

The party is on Sunday.  So far, we still have only 4 girls total.  But I am warned by various folk that the phrase "RSVP" doesn’t mean much to people, and that we’ll have others show up who didn’t tell us ahead of time, and some that said they’d show who won’t.  I am contemplating the goodie bags and how many to make.

Still…six.  Wow.  It boggles my mind.

Today, the 34th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, is "Blogging for Choice" day.

Since it’s the 34th anniversary, we also were treated to a local newspaper’s OpEd from a community member who is against "forced abortions".

Well, whoop-de-do.  Guess what?  So am I!

This OpEd writer, in her discussion, decided to write up five murders where guys killed their pregnant girlfriends because they wouldn’t get an abortion.

I felt a certain amount of cognitive dissonance in that litany of brutality.

Because, y’see, murder isn’t choice.  And "pro-choice" means–of all outre notions–that the woman who is pregnant gets to choose whether she stays pregnant or not.  Legally.  The last I heard, murdering someone so that you get out of child-support payments for an unborn baby isn’t an abortion, nor was it legal.  The last I heard, murdering someone for any reason was pretty much illegal.  In other words, I found this lady’s arguments to be…somewhat irrelevant to the question of the legality or lack thereof of abortions.

I’ve never had an abortion; I certainly don’t expect to need one in the future.  But I have a dotter, and that dotter might find herself unexpectedly pregnant at a time when she’s not ready to be.  I don’t want her to have to drive five hundred miles to be able to get an abortion–legally.  I don’t want her to have to go to a backstreet doc to do it–illegally.  I don’t want to make her have an abortion, nor do I want to make her carry a child to term.  Because it won’t be my body, it won’t be my life–it’ll be hers.

I want her to be able to do it without some prurient conservatives saying that the only way she can get one is if she is a pure virgin set upon and raped.

I want her to be able to sit down, think it through, talk it over with boyfriend, friends, and–maybe–family, and decide–on her own–what she wants to do with her life, her future, her possible child.

And that’s why I’ll keep supporting choice.

Check out other bloggers who have "blogged for choice".

Dudes.  Please.  It’s not "exasperating the decline", it’s exacerbating the decline.  (Third paragraph down.)

One of the things I forgot to mention in the "How is Alaska?" post is the prevalence of young moms here.

Small Mountain University Town was, of course, a college town.  There were hordes of professorial types, with their professorial spouses, and the median age of the parental units in town were in their 30s or early 40s.  So, not only did I fit right in in terms of outlook (liberal) and interests (eclectic), but I also fit when it came to parenting.  Half the moms picking up kids at daycare were near my age, and I only got, "Oh, are you OmegaDotter’s grandma?" a time or two.  And the norm in terms of how many kids was…two?

Also, I got my info on good daycare/camps/schools/etc. from the moms I worked with–all of whom were in their 30s or early 40s as well.

Hereabouts…well, heck, it seems as if there’s something in the water.  Dudes, the landscape is littered with moms in their early to mid-20s with three kids in tow.  Or more.  So when I see older moms, I glom onto them, like a drowning man would clutch a life preserver.

And hereabouts, I get the "grandma" comment a lot more–because, well, I could be a grandma to most of the kids I see.

Ack!  That’s a fearsome thought to me.

Right now, we’re gathering RSVPs to the dotter’s birthday party, to be held next Sunday.  She has fully drunk the Kool-Aid by now:  the party is going to be mermaid-themed.  Am I a bad mom if I say that I really liked the horsie theme better?  But I am doing my momly duty, printed out mermaid-themed invites, am going to do the pink and purple and sea-blue stuff with (ack!) mermaids on it, and herd a horde of girls (and a boy or two) for a couple of hours at the local health club, which has a play area for rent.

Let me digress here:  Back at preschool, I knew what to do in terms of birthday party invites.  I just slipped them to Miss Emmy with a whispered, "Can you slip these into people’s cubbies?" and knew everything would be taken care of.  I didn’t know what to do this time; if I handed the invites to the dotter to parcel out, there would be Drama.  The dotter would make a production of it.  There would be Girls Not Invited pouting and sad.  There’s no way on God’s green earth I was going to invite 18 kids, plus the kids the dotter wanted from after-school-care.

So, eyeing the invites with a puzzled look, I stuffed them into the weekly envelope that shepherds homework and school announcements and notes and what-not from school on Fridays, and wrote a note to Miss Shoebox asking her to–essentially–slip them into the kids’ cubbies.

The dotter returned with a downcast face.  Miss Shoehorn hadn’t divvied out the invites, according to her.

The same the next day.

The same the next day.

I was panicking.  Had I Done Something Wrong?  Was it a faux pas to ask Miss Shoetree to do it?  Is it different in kindergarden??

But.  Slowly I am getting responses.  We now have three responses, so I know the party won’t be a bust (whew!).

What does this have to do with young moms, you ask?  That’s a good question!

I just got an RSVP from H’s mom.  H’s mom talks a lot.  H’s mom just moved here last summer, too, from Massachusetts.  H’s mom is 40.  H’s mom volunteered that omigawd-aren’t-the-moms-here-so-young?!  H’s mom had the delightful experience of meeting the parents of some of her new friends…in other words, H’s friends’ grandparents–who had just turned 50.

It was an instant bonding thing.

When you’re sick, and your brain is fuzzy and bleary, you generally sleep and seek out mindless entertainment.  I am trying to keep various space navy stratagems firmly in mind while reading my latest Honor Harrington book, but The Illness keeps me falling asleep instead.

So, off to the intertubes for mindless entertainment.

And I find…

…in all its glory…

…I present…

The Disintegrator!

Our world is a very, very interesting place when there are people who will spend four months lovingly hand-building something like this.

At least this keeps me from having to come up with something intelligent to say to Our Fearless Leader’s plan to "stimulate" the economy (sliding into the crapper as we speak!) by handing out tax rebates.  Ya think that people who are worried that their house is about to be foreclosed on will find a $300 check…stimulating?

OmegaDotter was sick, then OmegaDad got sick.  Now it’s my turn.

My head feels fuzzy and I can’t think.  I hate it when I can’t think.  Gah!

OmegaUnk pointed out in the comments to my previous post that Hasbro is getting huffy about Scrabulous.  As the article I link to says, why on earth don’t they just buy Scrabulous, and keep it running?  Though I suppose they’d get all snarky about paid subscriptions and stuff like that.  Maybe they could do ads, and make it pay that way?

After all, it’s the rare family that’s going to use Scrabulous to play Scrabble™; it would require a computer for each person, or an insane amount of people switching seats and swearing up and down and left and right that they’re not cheating by looking at the other person’s tiles while the other person is playing.  In other words:  people will still buy Scrabble™ for playing at home or with friends, so they’re still going to be getting their money for the game anyway.

Grumble, grumble, grumble.

More later, dudes.

Many years ago, when OmegaMom was a young lass in school, she loved both her creative writing and history classes.  In both, she discovered, she could happily produce chapters of romance novels, fresh from her imagination, and actually get good grades for it!  Hot damn!

In fact, OmegaMom decided, upon leaving high school and entering college, that she would major in history, learn German, take lots of writing and English classes, and forge herself a career writing historical romances.  Bodice rippers, in other words.

Well, she went from being a big fish in a small pond (smart in high school) to being a little fish in a big pond (sat next to a National Merit Scholarship winner at the new student introductory symposium at Big Name Midwestern College) and promptly went into a depressive tailspin, flunking German, spending her spring semester taking horseback riding and ice skating, and dropping out of college at the end of her first year.  *Poof* went my prospective career, lost in the mists with my need to, say, pay the rent and buy food.

Many, many years later, here is OmegaMom, working with computers, eyeing the downhill slope of her life, and long long past the daydream of bestselling romance writer-hood.

But pity the poor romance writer!

You have to do research, y’know.  (This was why I was going to learn German:  it seems that many history research books were written in German, and so, to get the background of various small European principalities, I thought I would need to learn the language.)

And you have to find a way to get it into your book, as background, y’know.  (Most of us have ways of reading stuff, digesting it, and then regurgitating it in our own words.  It’s a skill.  It helped immensely during all my humanities courses.)

So there I was, reading John Scalzi’s blog, Whatever, when I came across this post about plagiarism.  It seems that a best-selling romance writer was found by the ladies at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books to have plagiarized backstory research in her romance novels–one of their friends had gotten intrigued by the clunky dialogue in one spot in a book, and googled it–and the story has been making the rounds of romance fan boards, writers’ blogs, and more…A trainwreck, to be sure.

Then today, I run into a headline on MSNBC:  "Newsweek:  Plagiarizing Hot Ferret Love"…and I just had to find out what it was about.

Lo and behold, it was one of the writers who was plagiarized, writing about the entire affair.  And let me just say, it’s hilarious.

All of which reminds me of some amazing instances of blog plagiarization I have encountered (blog newbies just copying famous bloggers’ posts in toto and changing a few details to make it seem that the posts were their own), and the recent issue photographers on Flickr have had with big media companies actually using their photos without attribution.

The internet, it seems, is both a useful tool for plagiarizing, and for catching plagiarists.  O Brave New World…

Anyway, I highly recommend following the trail above.

The dotter is quite mumchance about her days at school or at after-care.  Trying to get her to talk about it is…well, you either do a version of Twenty Questions, or wait until the Feeling Game at bedtime, at which point some info may (may) come out.  The Twenty Questions approach needs variation, so I can:

1. Ask whether she had gym, library, or music that day.
2. Ask who was teacher’s helper.
3. Ask what book was read today, and what it was about…

You get the drift.  It’s like getting blood from a stone, and I’m sure we’ll be getting the "Where did you go?"  "Out."  "What did you do?"  "Nothing." conversation when she’s older.

So the other day, when she said that she had had gym that day, I asked her, "So what did you do?"

She shrugged and said, "I don’t remember."

AAARRRGGGGHHHHHH!!!

Desperate to get some detail out of her, I asked, "Did you do cartwheels in gym today?"

Dotter shook her head.  "No, we’re not allowed to.  We might get hurt."

OmegaDad and I blinked at each other across the table.  After a moment, I asked, "Did you play games in gym?  Like…like Red Rover?"

Dotter shook her head again.  "No, we can’t play that.  Someone might fall down."

We blinked again.  OmegaDad said to me, in an aside, "Oh, goodness no, we can’t have that!" and then asked, "So what do you do in gym?"

Dotter said, "We do exercises."

Bleah!

I can report, having been at a school do in the gymnasium where there were oodles of youngsters with their families, that many of the girls know how to do cartwheels.  This is a relief.  Even though I am consumed with envy, because I was never able to do cartwheels, being too wussy to actually get my legs straight up and about.

And I am definitely not a fan of, say, Dodge Ball, which I remember as a source of stinging baps from balls hurled with vigor by the bigger and more bullyish of the boys.

But…but…sheesh, guys–these are five-year-olds!  Making them do exercises?!  Gak!  Way to go to make physical activity really appealing and a life-long passion, eh?!

I am tempted to go into a tirade that starts with, "In my day, sonny, we had to walk to school uphill both ways!"  It just makes me sad that some fear of litigation, or general dismay at kids being kids, has led to this.

Said in a snooty, chef-style voice.  "The salad has beans, and celery, and vanilla wine."

Ooookay.

The dotter is deeply into all things restaurateur these days, partly as a result of watching the Food Network.  Instead of building forts or castles, she builds restaurants.  Though she does confuse business enterprise with chivalry when she bows you into her restaurant and asks, "Would you like a menu, m’lady?"

I thought the vanilla wine was an especially nice touch.

Then there’s this piece of highly useful information:

"Mommy, did you know that when people get married, they kiss, and the woman’s foot goes up like this?", complete with a demonstration of classic 1940s-style foot-in-the-air type kiss.  Please note, that kind of kiss does not happen normally, only when you get married.

Then this evening we were talking at the dinner table (after the wondrous salad presentation, which consisted of a variety of stuff–faux lipstick, a row of stickers, some chapstick, the top to one of my little coffees–inside a large clamshell).  The topic turned to boobies.

Don’t ask me why.

But the dotter very seriously said, "Daddy, your boobies are different than mommy’s."  She went on, thoughtfully:  "They’re not so…round.  They don’t stick out as much.  They’re not as…squishy.  Or as…floppy."  It was quite the litany of differences.  Too bad that daddy and mommy busted up laughing.  But then we got off on a discussion of how if you don’t milk goats, their boobies hurt, and that the same thing happens with women who are breastfeeding babies.  "Oh, my, that’s not good!" quoth the dotter.

I’d actually like to discuss some more thought-provoking items, such as, say, political primaries, or Sony BMG’s very short-lived attempt to get people to purchase key-cards so they can download Sony BMG music, which segued into Sony BMG, very red-faced, deciding to just let people download their music via Amazon.

But some of these dotter-isms need to be recorded for posterity.

Some commenters have noted that I seem to be "settling in" and feeling better.  I think they’re right.  The question, of course, is "is this a long-term thing?"  See, the days are starting to get longer, and already we’re gaining almost 4 minutes of daylight per day.  Naturally, with more daylight, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel (har!), and rather than diving into depression, I am rising, Phoenix-like, from the ashes of winter.

Very poetic.

Time for a round-up of differences between Small Suburb, Alaska, and Hippy Dippy Enclave in the Woods, Arizona:

• Fruits and vegetables go south very quickly here, much more quickly than in Arizona.  I don’t know if this is a function of how long it takes to get fruits and vegetables here in the first place, or a function of greater humidity.  Either way, it’s disconcerting to have parsley and cilantro start rotting on the vine within a day of purchase, or apricots and pears turning mushy in two days.  The only fruit we ever had a problem with in Arizona was strawberries.
• Speaking of fruits and vegetables, there is a sad lack of diversity in same here.  It’s not like we were surrounded with yuppie-like abundance of diversity in veggies in Small Mountain University Town, but there was certainly a better assortment to choose from.  Here we have basics, and more basics, and still more basics.  BOR-ing.
• My nighttime hot flashes have turned to night sweats.  This is definitely a function of higher humidity; in AZ, the sweat from the hot flashes would evaporate immediately, while here the sweat sits and pools and drips and is generally just gross.  TMI, I know, but there it is–something I would never have expected.
• Snow is different here.  We have yet to have a snow with the great big goobery flakes splatting against your windshield like we would have in mountainous Arizona.  Here, the snow comes in small flakes.  It also comes in small doses, unlike back in AZ.  Small Mountain University Town would have three or four Big Snows per year–typically 18 inches to 30 inches within the span of two or three days.  Here, we have lots of small snows that peak out around 4 inches.  The end result:  about the same amount of snow, total.
• One becomes accustomed to cold rather quickly.  Nowadays, when it’s above zero, it feels fairly warm.  Not short-sleeve warm, mind you, but "why bother zipping up your coat?" warm.
• I didn’t realize just how drafty our old house was.  How cold.  Our new house, though pretty much your basic box (no character, really), is nice and toasty warm.  No drafts.  None.  Crawl spaces under houses apparently are heat sinks; it’s nice to have warm floors!
• Wood laminate floors need to be cleaned.  A lot.  Dust bunnies don’t hide out, discreetly staying in corners, stuck there for eternity.  No, they go rampaging about whenever someone walks by; they leap out to grab you, shake you by your leg, and shout out, "Yoohoo!  Here I am!"  And then, when you reach down to grab it, the breeze caused by you reaching down has the dust bunnies scooting out of your reach, almost as if they’re sentient and daring you to grab them.
• Stairs = awesome calf muscles.  Even if no other part of my body is getting exercise, I have awesome calf muscles, because we’re up and down the stairs many times each day.
• We have to drive to find trails or places to cross-country ski; back in HDEW the forest was two blocks away, and we could just step off our front porch into our skis and ski over to the open woods.
• The woods are much thicker here.  I never realized just how open the piney woods were, though my life back in the midwest should have made it very obvious.  When you find national forest land, you can’t just go plunging straight into the trees and head out into unknown territory; you need an honest-to-god trail, because otherwise you’ll be bushwhacking and wear yourself out in no time at all.
• I didn’t realize just how convenient having a fenced yard was.  We need to fence part of our yard here, because otherwise our dawg, who is…um…not well-behaved, will go gallivanting off to pester other people.  So we have to walk him three times per day.  In addition, our yard is the crossroads for a wide variety of neighborhood dawgs.  Humph.
• Cloudy days.  We have lots of cloudy days here.  November and December are apparently not only the darkest days in terms of amount of sunlight, but also in terms of days of sunshine.  February through September are the sunny months (with the exception of August).

All in all, we are settling in and growing accustomed to it.

OmegaDad is not what you would call the most macho of men.  He is, in fact, a sweetheart, kind, thoughtful, generous, intelligent, and totally, totally funny at times.  He sniffs at football.  Sneers at racing.  Used to hunt, but claims it was only for the socializing, the male-bonding bit.  He seems to find most male posturing something to look at askance, mock gently, and imitate wildly (for that totally, totally funny part). 

Definitely not your typical Oklahoma redneck dude.

But lately…lately the man has gotten me worried.

He’s found a pursuit–a sport, if you will–that has him posturing and gesturing and uttering manly-man crows of victory and macho snarls of aggression.

It’s a totally new side to him.  It leaves me gawping in amazement.  And amusement.

I’ll be wandering downstairs after getting the dotter off to sleep and enter the office only to hear him yell, gleefully, "HAH! I’ve got you now!"

What, you may wonder, is the pursuit in our office that has roused the prehistoric male in my quiet husband?

Scrabble.

Online Scrabble.

Specifically, Scrabulous.

Now, I have sung the praises of Scrabulous previously, have my own account, and do, occasionally, dip in.  But OmegaDad has become obsessed.  He has become quite snooty about who he will play; he will only play folks whose history shows that they’ve been around for a while, people who have a rating similar to his, he challenges people to "put up or shut up", he has the arcane two-letter combos practically memorized, he prides himself on getting bingoes (seven-letter words that use up all the tiles) at least once per game…

There’s an arcane formula that Scrabulous uses; all beginners start off with 1800 points, and usually drop precipitously from there to bounce around about 1200.  A good player will have a higher score coupled with a long history, because if you win enough games, you gain points.  A really good player will have a long history with 1800 points or more.

OmegaDad has become one of those players.  In the process, he’s become a spectator sport for me, because it’s just so fun watching him bounce about, letting out shouts and groans and snarky comments like, "Well, buddy, are ya gonna open it up for us, or am I gonna have to do it?!"

So if you’re at Scrabulous and want to check him out, look for wannallamanow.  If you play him, realize that you are just feeding a sad, sick addiction–my amusement at this oh-so-macho side of him which is devoted to…a word game!

Saturday afternoon, I was sitting in the office fiddling around the Intertubes, and the dotter was in the family room watching a movie and snoozing, still recuperating from The Virus.

Suddenly she started moaning and whining.  This means, in general, that she’s waking up.  (The dotter, when woken up from a nap, or from a lousy night’s sleep, is just plain horrid.  Whiny, miserable, doing her best to make everyone else miserable type horrid.)  So I called to her, to let her know where I was, and told her if she wanted something, she needed to come in to tell me, rather than whining in the other room.

She dragged herself in, eyes heavy, hair askew, leaned on me, and asked to get in my lap.

I pulled, she pushed, and she fell into my lap.

She tossed, she turned, she wiggled her feet around, she dug her head into my chest…

And then she fell asleep again.

It’s been an age since she’s fallen asleep in my lap.  I have a picture from when she was 2-1/2, both of us in the garden in Hippy Dippy Enclave in the Woods, and she’s sprawled across me, fast asleep, while I have a book in my hands.  We were in the dappled sunlight beneath one of the pine trees; OmegaDad was fiddling in the yard, the dawg was at my feet–it was a pleasant Sunday afternoon.

But as I said, it’s been a long time.  She wiggled some more, dug her head into my chest some more, and her breathing evened out and became heavy and slow.

I reached around her to carefully type usernames and passwords while I checked email or clicked on links.  She’d shift a bit, then settle back down.

It was warm.  It was cozy.  It was peaceful and restful.  I smelled her hair, I listened to her breathing, I snuggled her in my arms.

Of course, by the time forty-five minutes had passed, my back was aching and I really, really wanted to go to the bathroom.

But still, it was a quiet, restful period of time, rare these days when the dotter is zipping around, chattering at every chance, pushing new artwork into my hands, asking me tough questions (like, "Mom?  What is ‘life’?"  Um.  Jeez, kiddo, can’t you ask something like "Why is the sky blue?"), or needing Mommy comfort when she and daddy bang heads accidentally (like just this past minute).

I love watching the dotter grow and mature…she’s learning new things all the time.  But I miss those days of baby-holding.  I really do. 

As promised, an early morning pic of our winter wonderland, birches towering over spruce trees.  Right now, at 2:30 p.m., that corner of the yard is actually a little bit sunlit, but the photo was taken shortly after sunrise.

Miss C. wants to know what the difference between hoarfrost and rime frost is; so far as I can tell, the difference is that hoarfrost is ice that deposits on surfaces directly from cold, moist air, whereas the rime frost is deposited when there’s cold fog that builds up crystals.  Hoarfrost, I believe, tends to form small beady shapes on surfaces; this frost is all feathery ice crystals fanning out from the surface of the trees.

Herewith a lousy pic to maybe show you what it looks like a little closer:

And here is the dotter’s decor–which, I assure you, no longer looks quite so pristine, but is now covered with horsies on the tops and various stuff shoved into the cubbies:

However, she actually grasps the concept of "sorting" and "storing" now; we have two of the drawers filled with legos, one filled with cars, one with dolls, one with airplanes and rockets, etc.  More later!

One thing we get here in Alaska that we never got in our mountain home in Arizona is frost due to fog on freezing nights.  It’s not actually "hoarfrost", it seems, but rime frost, but I thought it was hoarfrost and it made a splendid post title.

Last night, we were under a dense fog advisory, with visibility down to 1/4 mile.  This morning the dotter woke me up with a question:  "Mommy, why are the trees so white?"  Blurry with sleep, I replied it was because we have birch trees, and they have white trunks, unlike the pine trees in Flagstaff.

But then I woke up, and actually looked out the window when the sun came up.  It was a lacy, icy fairyland.  All the trees were covered with a soft feathering of ice crystals, looking like flocked Christmas trees.  You could see where the fog level had been; since we’re down in a hollow, the fog didn’t get all the way down to the ground, but about halfway down the trees.  Many of the spruce (? firs?) in our yard are much smaller than the birch trees, so we have an interesting effect of lacy white branches on trees with white trunks, towering over dark green spruce.  It’s really quite picturesque.

Of course, I’ve kept meaning to take pictures all day, and now, as I sit down prepared to write this post, the light has disappeared and I can’t get that picture.  Bah.  Tomorrow, I promise!

Household-wise, OmegaDad finally bit the bullet and hauled the dotter out with him to look at furniture for her bedroom, specifically storage furniture.  Why are we doing it so long after we moved?  Well, there was another plan originally, consisting of painting the rustic low-level bookcase-ish thing made of orange crates and boards, and then moving it into the dotter’s room…it kept being discussed, but never done.  Then finally OmegaDad wiffled and waffled and allowed as to how he really wanted that particular item to go into the storage shed, for his use.  Ahhhh!

So, anyway, the two of them went out yesterday and returned with two Cubeicals, a little storage bench, and a bunch of pink and faux-zebra and faux-leopard fabric drawers to fit.  OmegaDotter chose these herself.  It’s amazingly kewl.

So OmegaDad has spent the day hammering and swearing, while I try to keep OmegaDotter out of his hair.  I will, of course, provide pics of that, as well.

…the dotter is getting better.

The pediatrician (nice lady!) thinks it’s an adenovirus, and it just has to take its course.

I’m hoping to the Kozmik All that she will be all pink-eye-free by Monday, so she can go to school when it starts up again.  As she is still pink-eyed, even after five days of one eye prescription and a half-day of a different eye prescription, she still can’t go back to her out-of-school care place. 

Am I a bad mommy if I just say:  AGGGHHHHH!!

The dotter has been out of commission for just over a week now.  Today’s visit to the pede was graced with OmegaDad’s presence because I pretty much informed him that I was burned out, I was tired to the bone, and it was his turn to help.  Anyway, luckily the illness never reached Dotter Stage 3, but has chugged along at Stage 2 forever. 

Can I say that I am really really looking forward to next Monday, and a healthy child??  I had all this time off, and didn’t get to use any of it as planned.  Wah!

In other news:  The planned mural in the dotter’s bedroom has been languishing in my fertile imagination for months now.  See, I was looking for horsie coloring pages or silhouettes or pictures that I could dump into my photo/art program and manipulate into all being about the same size.  But the pics I kept finding were…well, some were small, some were large, some were fuzzy, some required lots of fiddling…The end result, alas, is that the horsie mural stayed in my head, rather than showing up on the dotter’s bedroom wall.

However!  Since one of OmegaDad’s shameless bribes incentives for the dotter to take her medicine (which she has had copious amounts of) is a dip into the "goody bag" filled with cheap (aka less than $2) toys-n-things, he has had to replenish the stock a few times this week.  Today…today the dotter pulled out…

…a horsie coloring book!

A veritable bonanza of all things horsie!  And all in more or less similar sizes and styles!  And we have a scanner!  So after I post this post, I will be diligently scanning coloring pages so I can create templates so I can paint that damned much-anticipated mural!  Woohoo!

Onto more topical things:  Johnny wrote a post about New Year’s resolutions, in which he states, "I just believe that the best resolutions are those you keep to yourself."  This is something that resonates with me for a different reason:  I fear stating my resolution and then falling flat on my face.  Julie, over at Using My Words, had a post about resolutions, too, that ended up essentially saying her resolutions this year were more "general goals" than specifics with action plans–which fits right in with another blogger’s approach, to unify your resolutions under one word to direct your life for the coming year.  (I thought Julie had pointed me to the Christine Kane post, but it wasn’t her, and now I don’t remember whose post I read about her post on…)

Anyway, I think I have a goal this year.  But, like Johnny, I’m not going to talk about it.  Neener, neener.  It is, for me and for us as a family, a breathtaking and exciting goal.  Goodness knows if I will succeed.

As you drive the highway between Small Alaska Suburb and Austin, AK, the sides of the highway are peppered with various signs. 

There’s the "Watch for moose" signs, and the accompanying tally of how many moose have been hit by cars on the highway since (date).  And, yes, that truly does happen; while we were stuck in the Shoebox and I was doing laundry at the laundromat, I managed to overhear a lady who was still recuperating from a broken back and leg from when she had hit a moose in March–and OmegaDad’s boss and wife hit a moose last year while driving to see their son (who lives in our neighborhood).

There are the requisite "don’t trash Alaska" signs.

Speed limit signs, of course.

Then there are the never-ending "No fireworks allowed in Hataniska-Satsuma Borough", followed by a list of borough regulatory paragraphs that cite this.

But as you enter Austin, AK, on the highway, you are greeted by HUGE signs.  Gorilla Fireworks.  Hippopotamus Fireworks.  Buy Your Fireworks Here CHEAP!  And more.  When you drive out the other side of Austin, once again the highway signs admonish you:  No fireworks allowed!

I figured that the Austin fireworks stands–which always look deserted when we drive by, but we haven’t driven by in a long time–were legal by Austin’s regulations (thus avoiding the problem with borough regulations), and were probably jumpin’ joints around Independence Day.

Um.  I need to be thinking of those daylight hours again.  Because around Independence Day, the sun doesn’t officially set until midnight.

But on New Years’ Eve…?

In the deepest, darkest depths of winter…?

The sun sets very, very early.

And the "not allowed" fireworks start at about 8 p.m.

And keep going.

And going.

And going.

Until about 1 a.m.

This is a major culture shift for us, folks.  We’re used to living in Hippy Dippy Enclave in the Woods…in the tinderbox-dry woods…where the municipal July 4 fireworks display has been canceled mere days before the date three out of the last four years.  Back there, anyone who was insane enough to fire off lots of private fireworks around July 4 were fined huge amounts, and shunned and scorned by anyone with any grain of sense.  New Years’ Eve?  Eh.  We’d have one or two neighbors who would fire off firecrackers directly at midnight, and that was that.

Last night, in our area, it was like a freakin’ war zone.  Fireworks.  Firecrackers.  Roman candles.  Streamers.  Bang!  Bang!  Bangity-bangity-pop-pop-pop-pop.  Quiet.  Bang!  Whiiiiiizzzz-Bang!  Quiet.  Pop!  Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop!  Bang!  Boom!  Quiet.

I have never, ever, in my life, lived in a place that did this.

Our dog was, luckily, not frantic, but definitely perturbed, and he kept following me or OmegaDad around the house and startling when a particularly loud (read:  direct neighbors) bang sounded.  Our cats were missing in action.  The dotter was both enchanted (when she could see the fireworks from the bedroom) and terrified (when all she got was the bang-bang-bang-BOOM! effect).

I was able to see fireworks from the porch next to the kitchen, looking northwest.  I was able to see them from our living room, looking southwest.  I was able to see them from our bedroom, looking northeast, and looking southeast.

We decided that the borough police department must make its yearly income from all those fireworks, that they’d be able to just cruise around almost anywhere and hand out tickets left and right.