OmegaMom

Today’s dose of BRM:

Left house in Suburban Alaska at 1:30 p.m. to head to Fancy Performing Arts Center in Big City.

Hauled a heavy laundry basket filled with various supplies two blocks across downtown Big City.

Spent 6.5 hours with 8 five- and six-year-old girls in one small room.  Along with two other backstage moms.

Helped deal with a DVD player that didn’t have sound.

Coped with two little girls who missed their mommies.

Passed out copious amounts of string cheese, bottled water, crayons, coloring pages, and granola bars.

Scoped out Stage Right and Stage Left.

Helped herd little girls into costumes.

Fed little dancing bunnies imaginary carrots.

Helped herd half the little girls into Stage Left for the performance rehearsal while another of the backstage moms herded the other half into Stage Right.

Helped herd little girls all the little girls into Stage Right for the final bows.

Helped herd little girls out of costumes.

Watched the car in front of me at the garage exit try, for ten minutes, to come up with the right combination of dollar bills that the garage exit machine would accept.

Spent five minutes myself trying to get the garage exit machine to accept my credit card.  Then realized I was inserting it in backwards.

Avoided the dead moose in the middle of the highway, only a few minutes after the large old pickup truck had hit it.  Large old pickup truck was by the side of the road and quite crumpled-up front.

Stopped at Wendy’s for food.

Arrived home in Suburban Alaska at about 10 p.m.

For a few years, my running gag with OmegaDad was that there were Martians, and they just didn’t want us bothering them.

Now that we’ve had a few years of Spirit and Opportunity exploring the red planet, for a much longer period than originally planned (yay!), and now that the Phoenix has landed, I guess I have to say a sad farewell to that little joke.

Aside from that, we had Ballet Recital Madness–The Preview (aka the production run-through of the recital).  Some lovely dancing, some extremely tired but very well-behaved three- to six-year-olds, a few glitches, and some laughs.  Next up is Thursday, dress rehearsal.

I may actually have real content here tomorrow, but can’t promise anything on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday.

Just a moment to thank all those who have helped to protect our nation.

Our veggie beds are all filled with dirt and planted with seeds and plants.  OmegaDad, realizing what a tasty treat he had just set out for various varmints, is off to Lowe’s or Home Debit to get some orange construction fencing, which is reputed to scare moose.  Or he may end up with moose repellant.  (I never thought I’d be googling that phrase, but life is full of interesting surprises.)

This week is Ballet Recital Madness.  Tuesday evening is the full run-through.  Thursday is the dress rehearsal.  Friday and Saturday are the performances.  Luckily, the schedule is not as bad as I originally believed; someone in charge had sense enough to tell the littlies to come later.

I signed up as a backstage mommy for dress-rehearsal day.  That was before I knew that it was the Longest Day.  I will know better next year.

And if I ever complain about one of the dotter’s teachers, please remind me of this story and ask me whether it’s as bad as that.  I am far too mellow today to take that one on, but just let me say it left me speechless.

We had a friend sleep over last night.  Poor OmegaDad was amazed that two girls could make so much noise, and kept trying to find a quiet spot in the house.  He was also amazed that the two didn’t destroy the bathroom when they took a bath together (one way to keep two girls entertained is to lock them into a room with a bathtub filled with bubble bath).

All went well.  There was one Solomonic decision required by me the first day, in which there were three pieces of bubblegum and K. accused OmegaDotter of giving her the two split pieces and taking two full pieces for herself.  At which point the judge (that would be me) decided that the only fair thing was to make them both spit the gum out.

Har.  Just call me mean mommy.

But by this morning, the love and togetherness was wearing off, and the drama began.

In the midst of the drama, the girls were watching Shirley Temple in the family room while I piddled around on the intertubes.  The harmonicas were being played, and suddenly voices were raised.  And then I overheard:

"Let’s ask the lady!" sayeth K.

"What ‘lady’?" asks OmegaDotter.

"The lady in the office."

"Well, duh, that’s my mom!"

"No she’s not!  She’s not your real mom!"

"Wha–?  She is too my real mom!  What do I call her?  ‘Mommy’!  So there!"

"She’s not your real mom!  She adopted you, so she can’t be your real mom!"

"She is so my real mom!"

"Nuh-unh!"

"Unh-hunh!"

"Nuh-unh!"

"She is so!"

(Six- and seven-year-olds have such a command of logic, language, and rhetoric…)

At this point, hearing a certain amount of puzzled panic in the dotter’s voice, I thought I should intervene.

OmegaDotter was buried in blankets on the futon, sucking her thumb and looking thunderous.  K. was kneeling with her head down on the futon, pouting and picking at imaginary fluff.  When I came in, K. went bounding out and up the stairs.  OmegaDotter looked at me with her lower lip stuck out.  I sat down and poked my head close to the dotter, and whispered, in a mock drama whisper, "Hey, girlie girl.  Am I plastic?"

She shook her head.

"Am I imaginary?"

She shook her head, and said, in injured tones, "K. says you’re not my real mom!"

"Well, sweetie, I’m your real mom.  You have two real moms, your mommy in China and me.  And I’m real–poke me!"

And she poked me, and giggled, and snuggled a bit, and we went upstairs and got the girls to kiss and make up.

And a few minutes later, another drama began.  And another a little later.

Oy!  The Drama!  (Picture OmegaMom rolling her eyes at the prickliness of girls.)

Anyway, I was actually surprised by the whole thing.  Obviously it’s the first OmegaDotter’s heard of this concept.  I thought it was something that just oozed from the primordial conceptual soup that floats around preschool and kindergarden.  Guess not.

So, sometime soon, I expect to hear the dread, "You’re not my real mom, so I don’t have to do x, so there!"

Blogging will lead you to an early death!

No!  Wait a minute!  Blogging is good for you!

Wait.  Really.  Here’s the scoop:  If you’re a popular blogger, you’ll get tabbed for a Big Internet Site Job, get hooked on exposing too much of yourself, ruin your personal relationships, have a nervous breakdown, think about leaving blogging entirely, and end up pretty much where you were to begin with, except (maybe) older and wiser.

Of course, we all know blogging isn’t real writing.

So much for blogging.

On a different subject entirely, can someone explain to me why everyone is (gasp!) shocked and horrified that Clinton, while discussing the ins and outs of primaries, mentioned Bobby Kennedy’s assassination?  I mean, she also mentioned a few other situations where the nomination wasn’t set until after the convention.  Dudes, she isn’t advocating assassinating Obama.  Really.  She may have been stupid to say such a thing, given how tender and delicate everyone’s sensitivities are these days about any perceived slight or threat or…whatever it was.  I swear, these days people just need to keep their yaps shut about everything, because someone is going to be (gasp!) shocked and horrified. 

The Chinese adoption community has been rocked by the news that Steven Curtis Chapman’s youngest daughter was accidentally run over by one of their sons.  I read the story and my heart froze; his daughter was five years old.  Once again, motherhood has changed my outlook–I would have read it and sympathized before, but now I read it and the hair on the back of my neck rises because OmegaDotter is six years old and scatterbrained and I could so easily see her paying attention to something else and running right behind the car as OmegaDad pulls out of the driveway.

The Chapman family is accepting donations to the Shaohannah’s Hope Foundation in Maria’s name.

Science-y stuff:

Jupiter has given birth to a brand new bouncing baby Red Spot.

I want to give one of these T-shirts to OmegaBro.  Or OmegaDad.  Or both.  Or maybe one for myself.  Go check ‘em out.

This is the night sky I miss from Small Mountain University Town.

Lisa got it first:  Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s Karn Evil 9.

Ballet Recital Madness has started.

Today was photo day.

I got the dotter all dolled up in her costume, including makeup and hairspray holding the little wispies up off her forehead.  We got into the car, complete with a sheet covering the seat so that the (white!) costume didn’t get dirty.  We got there in plenty of time.  Only to discover…

…the photographer had left a Crucial Piece of Equipment at his studio, back in Big City.  So he was driving back there and back to the studio.  And there we were, half of the parental units having been contacted in time, the other half not, with dotters in tow, all costumed and made up…

…for two hours.

In white costumes.  Did I mention the costumes are white?

I had to re-do the dotter’s hair three times, with more and more hairspray, because the girls were running and jumping and having great barrels of fun.

A bunny:

More bunnies (with blurred faces!):

It took a lot longer than I had planned, and we didn’t get home until 1 or so.

And then this afternoon, OmegaDad arrived home early, removed the tarp from the Ginormous Mound o’ Dirt to transfer to the veggie beds, and this is the result:

Our thought is that we should have gotten a Ginormous Mound o’ Dirt many years ago, as a plaything for the child.  She could spend hours in it.  She gets tossed into the bathtub as soon as she gets inside the house.  Her friend K. is coming over tomorrow, and I have to warn K.’s mom to send a change of clothes, because between the chickens and the GMOD there’s no way on gawd’s green earth that she’ll be clean for very long.

(Bonus points to any commenter who recognizes the subject line of this post.)

The court has ruled that Texas CPS acted incorrectly in seizing 48 women’s children.

But not underage.  At this point, 15 of the 31 "girls" who were pregnant or already mothers that Texas CPS claimed were underage have turned out to be adults.

The anonymous, hushed call that started it all?  "Sarah was officially considered to be a real person until Monday, when CPS dropped her court case, acknowledging that she doesn’t actually exist. State police are now investigating the calls for help from "Sarah" as hoax phone calls, made by an adult from Colorado with a history of making false reports."

I do not condone old men using the cloak of religion to force underage girls into "spiritual" marriages with other old men.  I do not condone child abuse.  I do not condone sexual abuse.

But ruthlessly sweeping through the compound and separating 440 children from their families in the guise of "doing good" makes me think of the road to Hell.  It’s paved with good intentions, as we all know.

Were there girls being forced into marriage and childbirth against their will?  I’m sure of it.

Were all of them?  I’m sure not.

Does the end–rescuing women and children from life in what seems to be a cult–justify the means?  I don’t think so.

But other people seem to think so.  While there is a contingent of people like me who found the entire operation a sweeping infringement on civil rights, there is also a contingent who has been saying, "If there are underage girls there who have been trapped, then it’s right."  My thought is what should have been done is an examination–case by case–before any warrants were served, before any children were taken.

While I tend to think that all religions are essentially lunacy, and I regard people who live their lives circumscribed by religious beliefs with a certain amount of befuddlement, this does not mean that their civil rights are negligible, eligible to be tossed aside for the "good of the chiiilllldrunnnn".

Given also that my forays into adoption research made me aware of the inconsistent oversight of foster care from state to state, and even county to county, and the fact that many states offer what is essentially a "bounty" for children to be moved to adoption as soon as possible, and the relentless market for healthy white infants, and I am bound to cast a jaundiced eye on such a widespread sweep as this.

The good thing is that the eyes of the mainstream media are upon this case.  The faults of the MSM aside, when the journalists are in full cry, the tendency for things to be hidden away, shadowed, swept under a rug will be difficult to fulfill.

I am sure that there will be some cases where the separation of the children is justified.  But there was never a justification for the full-scale raid.  Even if the "ends" are good, the "means" were not.  If a sweep like this is done and no outcry is raised, then the next time the sweep may be aimed at…inner city welfare mothers…homeschoolers…who knows.  The outcry and the subsequent examination it has provoked is a Good Thing to this observer.

OmegaDotter’s last day of school was yesterday.

This is what she looked like on the first day, departing from the porch of The Shoebox:

And this is what she looked like yesterday afternoon, standing on the porch of our house:

How on earth did one whole school year pass so quickly?!

(Because Kris asked!)

And the poop is now returning to its normal look and texture.

I love living in a time and place where we have such things as antibiotics.  They’ve saved my sanity (numerous sinus infections) (numerous child-with-a-need-for-antibiotics occasions) (numerous husbandly illnesses of one sort or another).  And now they’ve pulled the dawg out of bloody hell and back to his normal self.

In other words, when the plumber arrived to fix the water heater (I still say "hot water heater", so sue me), the dawg had to be confined to the bedroom, where he yelped and barked and generally carried on.

You will be interested to know, no doubt, that Whirlpool Corporation performed a recall on the thermocouple assembly for our particular model of water heater after being hit by a lawsuit.  The lawsuit was not because of a possibility of explosions in the middle of the night.  It was not because of a possibility of gas leaking through the household in the middle of the night.  It was not because of the possibility of phalanges breaking and sending gouts of water through the basement/garage in the middle of the night.

No.  It was because people were sick and tired of finding out, after the hot water disappeared due to a bad thermocouple, that Whirlpool had deliberately designed this model (and others) so it required a specific, left-threaded thermocouple.  Unlike all the other water heater manufacturers had happily gone to "universal" modules.  In other words, "easily replaceable" modules.

Unlike our water heater’s thermocouple module.  Which had apparently angered a multitude of homeowners and plumbers to the point where they sued, because the homeowners and plumbers wouldn’t be able to get the right piece, and the homeowners and plumbers would fiddle, twiddle, and twist the incorrect piece until it fit.  Which was kinda dangerous, in the long run.

In short:  No hot water since Sunday morning.  One phone call to plumbers this a.m.  Plumber dude with eyebrow stud arrives.  Plumber dude removes thermocouple only to discover it’s this weird left-threaded dingus.  Plumber dude goes to Lowe’s to get one-and-only-remaining-left-threaded thermocouple in 60 mile radius (which Lowe’s gave to him gratis as it was a demo model).  Plumber dude returns.  OAORLTT turns out to be defective.  Plumber dude consults with dad.  Dad arrives.  Dude and dad spend time peering at various parts and cussing out Whirlpool.  Dad calls his Sekrit Source.  Sekrit Source says to call Lowe’s, as it’s the only source.  Lowe’s, when given model number, informs plumber dad that it’s our lucky day and they have the replacement unit waiting for our particular model and serial number, and it has been waiting since the recall.  Dad and dude go to Lowe’s.  Dad and dude return.  New thermocouple unit goes into water heater.  Hey presto:  hot water.  AND!  Dad and dude charge us for only one plumber, one hour, because that’s all it should have taken to begin with.

Woot.

No doubt when the moose returns to eat more of our Nice Green Grass in the middle of the "night", when we are doing our best to sleep through the gloaming, the dawg will bark his head off and keep us awake.

Such are the modern miracles of medicine.  At least we’ll be able to shower in the morning.

I said "No" to the horsie idea.

I said "No" to the plan to get goats.

But OmegaDad recently read Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: A Year of Food Life and was charmed by the tale of Kingsolver’s daughter, who became a wheelin’, dealin’ nine-year-old mini-entrepreneur when presented with the idea of raising chickens and selling eggs. 

Now, I will tell you a great secret.

I have wanted chickens for quite a while.

Yes!  Really!

I swoon for Silkies and Sultans.  I wist for Gold-laced Wyandottes.  I pine for Polishes.  I yearn for Yokohamas.

Fifteen years ago, I wouldn’t have known one from the other.  But then I met up with OmegaDad.  And he started hauling me off to county and state fairs.  And I discovered these way kewl fluffy chickens.  All of them owned by darling gap-toothed ten-year-olds who would cuddle them on their laps (when they weren’t cuddling their equally adorable flop-eared bunnies in the bunny barns).  The chickens were soft and fluffy and friendly (lots of handling!), and I wuz sunk.

So when OmegaDad broached the subject of chickens to me, I said…yes.

Behold.  OmegaDotter with two (yes, TWO!) cream-colored silkie chicks:

OmegaDotter putting the Buff Orfington into the makeshift chick coop in the garage:

"Mommy" proprietarily gazing upon her flock:

The Sign:

So.  The Omega Flock consists of two cream-colored Silkies, one buff Orfington, a gold-laced Wyandotte, a Brahma of some sort, and a Comet (?) of some sort.

The plan is that OmegaDotter is to take care of these creatures (with assistance, of course), and when they start laying eggs, she is to gather the eggs.  We will pay her $2 per dozen.  She is welcome to sell any more than one dozen per week to the neighbors for whatever price she can get.

There is also a thought of a gap-toothed six-year-old maybe entering a hen into the state fair.  First, though, we need to make sure they (a) live and (b) lay the eggs.

The dotter was absolutely beside herself with delight.  Last night at bed time, she kept bouncing up and saying "Chickens!  We have chickens!  I’m so happy!"  We will see how long that lasts!

Yes, life is a circus around here.

The new vet, who was doing emergency surgery on a bird when OmegaDad arrived at 10:30 p.m., immediately dissected the lumpy thing the dawg had thrown up.  It turns out it was a piece of toy rope.  A large chunk of toy rope, actually.  They did x-rays, they hooked the dawg up to an IV, and kept him overnight.

The thing is, the chunk of toy rope was all white; the latest toy rope we have is blue and white.  The last time we had a white toy rope was many years ago back in Small Mountain University Town.  We are stumped as to where the dawg got this thing.

He’s home, but still very unhappy.

Onto the real circus, the kindergarden circus.

To get you in the mood, clowns abound:

The kiddies do their songs, en masse:

Dancing bears:

Prancing horsies:

The mighty elephants:

Roaring lions, who also jumped through "flaming" hoops and went "RAWR!":

Send in the clowns:

I missed pictures of the strong men and the acrobats.  The strong men lifted "weights" made of aluminum-foil-covered paper plates attached to picture tubes.  The acrobats did (dreadfully lousy) cartwheels and walked across a balance beam.

The dotter afterwards:

Too bad you can’t see her truly elegant mane and tail!  Note her horsie shirt, claiming "Best Friends 4-Ever".  If I remember correctly, this was a Christmas gift from OmegaGranny.  Also note the gap-toothed grin; her two front top teeth are missing.

A good time was had by all.  I decided not to blur out features because all the kiddlies were covered in make-up and not really recognizable at all.

The dawg has had unfirm poops for the last few days.  Yesterday, it started being more runny.  This early a.m., he was in and out multiple times, and in the gloaming it sounded even more runny.  Then this morning in the bright sunshine, it was obvious it was almost liquid.  There was straining and twitching.  Then he started barfing.  We were getting worried.  OmegaDad located a vet, called, and got an appointment for 4 p.m.

Today was the dotter’s Kindergarden Circus.  We left, watched adorable five- and six-year-olds playing at being horses, lions, dancing bears, acrobats, and clowns, and singing songs.  (I’ll give you one guess as to what the dotter played in this do.  One.)

We returned home an hour and a half later, to discover the dawg had not been able to hold it and had splattered all over the living room floor.

Well, ewww, yes.  But what was most disturbing to us was that…(grossitude alert!  I mean, even more gross!)…there was obviously a half-and-half mixture of liquified trying-to-be-poop and blood.

Blood?!

OmegaDad has a history of bleeding duodenal ulcers.  These are things that don’t hurt, because they are in the part of the intestine without any pain nerves.  So they just stew along, getting worse and worse, until they start bleeding.  In human beings, you end up with black, tarry poop.  That’s when OmegaDad starts looking like a strung-out junkie, purple bags under his eyes, ashen skin, purple lips, and having dreadful headaches.  And we haul him off to the hospital for transfusions and (if not caught in time) some time in the ICU.  I’ve dealt with this three times since we got together (the ICU incident was, luckily enough, before I met him…that would have just sent me ballistic).  OmegaDad has learned that he cannot stop his Prilosec.  Ever.  Because he doesn’t have the kind of ulcers that you can cure with a month’s worth of intensive antibiotic treatment.

Anyway, any time there is blood in poop, I get Very Anxious.

So OmegaDad got the appointment moved up.  I got out the Clorox and started cleaning like a maniac.  The thought of this thing being contagious just raises the hair on my head.

Then I hauled OmegaDotter off to her Friday gymnastics class.

When we returned, the hubby and dawg had also returned.

OmegaDad was not impressed by the vet.  The vet had not even touched the dawg.  (Well, he does have a bad rep, and we do have to tread very carefully around any vet, because the dawg needs to be either tranquilized or muzzled.  But even so…)  We were able to provide an excellent sample of the stuff from the splatter on the living room floor, which the vet had analyzed, and he proclaimed it a bacterial infection, prescribed antibiotics, no food, water only for a day, then the bland diet thing, plus chewable Tums.

This didn’t really impress me, either, because…well…very bloody poop just sets all my alarm bells ringing.  Like I said, I get Very Anxious.

Then dawg indicates to me that he needs to go out.  I take him out.  He squirts.  It sounds like water pouring out.  When he’s done, I take a peek, and it looks like cherry red water with some brown mixed in.

Dawg is not happy.  I am not happy.  OmegaDad is not happy.  We may try another vet tomorrow morning.

Anyone have any experience with very sick and unhappy dawgs?

Update:  The dawg vomited again, including his medicine, and there was a hard ball-like thing in the vomit.  So OmegaDad called another vet, and is on his way there now.  We know the dawg is sickly when a moose can be rummaging around in our back yard and he doesn’t even twitch an ear…damn moose, eating our nice fresh green grass!

WHOA!  I was downloading the pics of him from afar when he sauntered up to the house and started chowing down on the grass right outside my office window!!!  I was wildly watching the "files transferred" number, and then clicking on the "delete files uploaded from camera" and going "don’t go away…don’t go away!"  So he didn’t.  And then I wished he would, because he wuz big.

You can see some of OmegaDad’s new veggie beds behind him, in front of "The Villa", which desperately needs painting to match the house.  You can also see some of my Christmas cactus collection.

Note the bent forelegs.  Why reach down using your neck when you can crouch down like that?

Damn moose.  Eating all our nice green grass.  What the heck are we going to do to protect our veggies??

I trekked off to the doc-in-the-box to get antibiotics for my sinus infection, which was feeling like someone was jabbing an ice pick up through my cheekbone.  Actually, OmegaDad and I trekked off, and I got to see The Wound.  It turns out that Dr. SledDog did not slash his throat; he merely used a paper punch to punch a hole in.  As the helpmeet, it is my duty the next few days to take a monstrous long Q-tip, drench it in H202, and plunge it into the gaping maw of the hole, then dig around the edges.  Ewww.  The things we do in the name of love.

In the meantime, I’ve come across some discussions on the intertubes that have to do with intent–as in, "Well, hey, if this offends you, it’s not my fault, and I’m going to keep doing it!  So there!"

Firstly, we have the tale of the tavern owner in the Atlanta area who has jinned up a T-shirt featuring Curious George eating a banana, and labeled it "Obama ‘08".  The question was, is this "racist"?  In the comments to Pharyngula’s write-up, an interestingly large number of folk did not "catch" it–people from Europe, young people from America, and a few folk who obviously knew it was denigrating yet sneered at the idea (mostly people who crashed Pharyngula from elsewhere, I think).  Given the quotes from the guy who did it, it’s pretty obvious it wasn’t intended nicely, yet an argument arose in the comments section as to whether "paying attention" to it, recognizing the past connotations of "black person = ape", was, in fact, perpetuating the racism.  And whether there really was racism intended.  And whether it’s better to ignore such things or fight them.

A few people in the thread suggested that those who did not think it was racist buy it and wear it around their black friends, and see what the response was.

It’s interesting that there are honest, intelligent people who do not think it was racist; it promises hope that the "black people = apes" trope is receding into the mists of history.  At the same time, it obviously hasn’t, because enough people know the coding to realize it’s offensive and wear things like this for that reason.  So is it better for the trope to fade in general consciousness, but still resonate in two areas–the targets (black people) and the perpetrators (racists)?  In other words, is it better that something be seen–and called out–as racist by the general public, or be glossed over, shunted aside?

Another item of "intent versus effect" is in Karen’s story of her dad’s response to her daughters names.  The first is that he doesn’t like the chosen name for the new baby.  The second is he makes fun of her current daughter’s Chinese middle name.  Her daughter’s middle name is "Chao Xing" (chow shing), and her dad teasingly does the "ching chong" thing with it.  There’s a lot wrapped up in it, specifically a "why remind her she’s Chinese?" attitude, a "you’re making too much of this" (the adoption) attitude.  The problem is, it’s all too easy to slide from that to the "ching chong chinaman" song.  Right now, Karen’s daughter is only a toddler…but as she grows older, this kind of thing can hurt.  (Google "ching chong Rosie O’Donnell", or "ching chong Yao Ming" or "ching chong Margaret Cho" or "ching chong Helene Chung".)

The third item that caught me was posted by YouKnowWhereYouAreWith, pointing to an article in Canadian MacLean’s Magazine, about the abrupt slowdown in adoptions from China, possible reasons behind it, and the question of whether international adoption is A Good Thing or reflective of colonialism.  Once again:  intent versus perception.  Adoptive parents aren’t looking to practice cultural genocide (and, frankly, they aren’t, because the cultures are still there, still going strong–perhaps it’s more a case of "cultural theft"?).  But some folks see it that way.  The question is:  if adoptive parents are providing the dollar motivation for cultures to not clean up their act, aren’t they helping perpetuate the problems that provide the commodity (babies)?

Anyways, all stuff to think about.  I’d write more, but that ice pick in my cheekbone is pushing a bit harder, the dotter is in bed, OmegaDad is soon to be in bed, and I’d like to go there myself.

I had, somewhere in the midst of my old collection of LPs, the Angela Lansbury/George Hearn Sweeney Todd production.  It is a queasy-making musical, weird and fantastic and creepy and hair-raising…and full of quite hummable songs that talk about murder, violence, twisted lust, cannibalism, yadda, yadda, yadda.

One of these days I’m going to have to rent the Johnny Depp version.

So why discuss "the demon barber of Fleet Street"?

OmegaDad had a thing growing under his chin.  It grew quite fast.  We decided to send him off to the doc-in-a-box to get it checked out.

Dr. SledDog, the doc-in-a-box, shot him full of local anesthetic, whipped out his scalpel, and cut his throat.

Eeek!

Well, okay, not his throat, but the large goiterous mass under his chin.

And ever since OmegaDad came home with this humongous bandage under his chin, covering his beard, I have been humming "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd" in my brain.

Grossitude ensued (really, this is a warning that you may not want to read the next bit):  Dr. SledDog, when he shot him with the anesthetic, had to shoot him four or five times, because each time he plunged the plunger on the opposite side of the growth, the anesthetic went squirting back out the other side.  When the growth was opened, some pus emerged, but Dr. SledDog had to reach inside with his scalpel and dig stuff out…which, apparently, was somewhat crystalline in make-up.  Then Dr. SledDog packed the entire thing up with gauze, slapped the bandage on top, shot OmegaDad with a butt-load of antibiotics, and sent him home with instructions to come back this morning for a follow-up.

Amazingly enough, OmegaDotter listened to me when I requested she not bounce OmegaDad, and was quite gentle with him for the entire evening.

This morning, OmegaDad went in for his follow-up.  He has returned, after having to have a CAT scan (?!).  He needs to go back again to learn the results.  It seems that there is more swelling and what-not that is not reachable, and Dr. SledDog needs to know what’s going on before plunging his straight razor scalpel back in and noodling around with it.

Many years ago, I had outpatient surgery to remove a cyst from my lower back.  (This cyst is apparently a genetic thing; Great-Grandma had one there, and so does OmegaGranny.  I didn’t know it at the time.)  The docs who did it told me it would be a quick-and-easy thing, in, a few numbing shots, slice, remove, sewed back up, and out the door.  Well, firstly, it was much bigger than they expected; a lot of it was subcutaneous.  Secondly, since it was bigger than they expected, they kept running out of numb skin.  That was fun.  Not.  So they ended up chasing the scalpel with more shots and digging further.  Finally, when they got it out, the whole thing was about the size of my thumb.  Ewww. 

Anyway, gross description aside, the thing I remember most was just how much that "small" surgery took out of me.  I was wasted for days; my feeling is that bodies are not made to be cut open on a whim, and doing it can send a finely-tuned collection of skin cells, nerve cells, hormones, chemical signaling pathways, and what-not into a great tizzy.

OmegaDad is feeling the same way.  I’m just waiting for Dr. SledDog to sew him up, fer cryin’ out loud.  And I’m really hoping that the CAT scan doesn’t show anything extraordinary, just more pus and where it is…and hoping that the antibiotics kick in and things calm down and OmegaDad can go to sleep at night, and then I can go to sleep at night.

Ah…

Ahhh…

AHchew!

In my early 20s, I would visit Grandma down in Sun City on a regular basis.  As planning would have it, there were a whole slew of elderly aunties and uncles that lived there, too–my grandfather having decided, as he was nearing the end of life, that he should move himself and Grandma to that area so that they’d have family around. 

Great Aunt Iola lived down the street from Grandma.  A tall, rangy, raw-boned woman with a deep voice, she was one of my most favorite of the elderly aunties.  Her austere exterior argued for a no-nonsense kind of woman, someone who was brusque and cold and distant.  In reality, though, Auntie Iola was a sentimental pushover, warm and loving and fun.  She introduced me to the wonder that is ginger-ale floats, a much better concoction than root beer floats, trust me.

Auntie Iola had a Siamese cat named Greta, cross-eyed and with a creaky voice, who loved to sun herself in the little courtyard attached to Auntie Iola’s Sun City duplex.  Greta would bask in the sunlight, and, when the mood struck her, would roll about on her back in the dust for minutes at a time.

Given that this was Arizona, and in the summertime, with low humidity (obviously pre-monsoon season), Greta’s fur would fill with static and she would return from one of these dust baths with her fur filled with torrents, masses of dust.

This is how I learned that I was allergic to dust.

KtChew! Ahhhh….ahhhhh…

Because Greta was a sucker for luvins.  So one day, when I was visiting, she returned to the house after her daily dust bath, leapt up onto the table in front of me, and did some serious nose-diving, begging for luvins.  I obliged, scritching around the base of her ears, scratching gently under her chin, pushing her over to massage her tummy.  And within minutes I erupted into the absolute worst allergy attack I have ever–before or since–encountered.

…chew!  Ktchew!

In this area of Alaska, the prevailing winds come looping up the coast, circle inland a bit, and barrel down the glaciers.  The satellite loops look like immense commas, great big swooping spirals of cloud that march in on a regular basis, dumping the moisture sucked up from the ocean.

Right now, though, they’re not dumping moisture.  What they’re doing is kicking up dust from the glaciers and riverbeds as they go.

Small Town Alaska, to the east of us, where OmegaDad works, has been shrouded in clouds of dust for days.  Suburban Alaska, where we live, hasn’t.  Until this weekend.  Suddenly, the laminate flooring upstairs has this fine layer of dust, blown in through the open windows.

We were outside in the back yard almost all weekend.  Early Sunday afternoon, my eyes started itching.  A few hours later and my nose was streaming, and sneezes were exploding from me like the snooze alarm on our clock.  A little series of sneezes–ktchew!  ktchew!  ktchew!–and then a momentary rest where I could snurfle up the runnies with a sound like the honking of a goose, and then another eruption of sneezes.

Antihistamines don’t seem to be doing very much good, either, though I suppose if I weren’t taking them, things would be worse.

So even though it’s gorgeous weather, the sun is out, the trees are green (yes!  green!  woot!), and we have actually had a series of red flag warnings due to (it is to laugh) "low" humidity and high winds, I am praying to the Kozmik All for a good drenching in the next few days, just to get the dust to settle.  And pollen, too, I suppose.  But mostly the dust.

Ahhhh….ahhhhh….

KtChew!

It’s Mother’s Day.  OmegaDad and OmegaDotter let me sleep in, and then marched in with breakfast in bed.  Whoa!  It was little Nancy’s quiches and strawberries, plus one of my Frappucinos…they then brought in their own and joined me, and presented me with a cardboard box which contained truffles (yum), three "flowers" made of pipecleaners and seed packets (some nice pansy varieties), a large abalone shell from the dotter (which I had given to her ages ago), a scarf from the dotter (which I had given to her ages ago), and another shell.

It was, actually, quite charming and loving, and I loved it. 

So much for being a "non-mom mom".  Har.  I’m cynically amused at how Teleflora and NBC scrambled all over themselves trying to recoup from that blunder.  At the same time, I’m glad that they did.

I’m sure they’d flinch at including birthmothers in any way in their motherhood tribute–too ambiguous for their tastes.  After all, they’d have to figure out how to present birthmothers as saintly martyrs who are gently satisfied with their choice, and avoid all the questions that even thinking about birthmoms brings to many folk.

OmegaDotter wrote a letter to her birthmother this morning.  She was happy to do it; she had asked me a while back if she could write a letter to her.  This entailed, of course, explaining that while she could write a letter, we had no way of delivering it because we didn’t know where her birthmother was or if she was okay.  But, I said, we could make a special box, and put letters to her birthmother in the box.  This morning, when she wrote the letter, she had completely forgotten that we couldn’t actually send it, and was all excited (momentarily) about getting a letter back.

::whimper::

But I explained again, and the dotter took it in good stead.

The letter was pretty short, but the first thing the dotter quickly wrote out was "I forgot your name."

::whimper::

She wrote that she can do cartwheels, and that she is good at learning.  And signed it, "Love, OmegaDotter".  Then she put it in an envelope clearly labeled "CHINA", and put it on the refrigerator, held by our very best, strongest magnet.

Then, that done, she merrily went on her way, demanding to help OmegaDad with building the veggie garden, helping me rake (yes, more raking), dipping into the house to build a picnic basket out of paper, and then dashing off next door to play with the kids there for a while.

I know that I have readers who simply don’t understand why we do things like this.  That it seems like a way to make the dotter feel capital-A-adopted.  That we make too much of it.  That our lives are all adoption angst.

First off, no, our lives are not all adoption angst.  In fact, there’s very little of it.  It’s just part of the tapestry of life for us and for the dotter; there are some things that remind her of being adopted, and we talk about them, and she chews on them a bit, and life goes on.  She goes to school, she has to do homework, we play with friends, we deal with Ballet Recital Madness, she practices her gymnastics, and on and on.

The thing is, she is adopted.  She’s our dotter, through and through, but somewhere out there is a birthmother and a birthfather, and a big question as to "why?"  From our readings of musings by adult adoptees, it seems that even the most happy, well-adjusted (female) adoptees think about birthparents and the circumstances of their adoption throughout their childhood, adolescence, adulthood.  And a lot of the adoptees who have written about it say that they were afraid to talk about it with their parents, that they feared hurting their parents by even thinking about another set of parents, by even wondering about their biological background.  Or that they tried talking about it, and their parents brushed it off, and they learned, very quickly, that it was a subject not to be touched.  And many of those adult adoptees said that they thought about the subject of birthparents a lot and were hurt and worried that they couldn’t talk about it with their parents.

Also, there’s OmegaDad.  OmegaDad’s mother died a week after giving birth to him.  He thought about her a lot.  He, too, learned early on that it was a sore subject; of course, it was because she died young, leaving a bereft husband and sons and parents, all of whom remembered her and were hurt by her early death.  So OmegaDad remembers wanting to know more about his mother, and not being able to talk about her.  So he feels it incumbent upon himself to make sure that OmegaDotter know that it’s okay to talk about her birthmother to both of us.

We’ve told the dotter her adoption story since we brought her home, too small to even understand what we were saying.  "Once upon a time, there was a lady in China who had a beautiful baby girl…" was how it started.  And "on the other side of the world, there was a man and a woman who really wanted to have children…"  And ending, "And they drove up the mountains to Small Mountain University Town in the little white car, and got home just a few days before Christmas, and that was the Very Best Christmas Ever."  As she’s grown older, the story has changed, gotten more detail, specifics have been fleshed out.

It’s all a little bit like sex, actually.  Well, not having sex, but talking about sex.  You want to keep the channels open.  You don’t want One Big Just So Story scene where you talk about sex when the kiddo is 17 and that’s that.  So you start out basic, you get comfy talking about the whole idea (omigod omigod i can’t even think about the dotter having sex omigod omigod), you try to not get tied up in knots when A Question comes up. 

I dunno.  It works for us.  Somewhere on the other side of the world is a woman who gave birth to our dotter.  Goodness knows why she had to abandon her–it could be that the dotter has an older sister, and her birthparents were trying for a son; it could be that her birthmother was a young, single woman who couldn’t keep a baby; it could be that there were in-laws who took her away and told her birthmother she was dead, in hopes of a future son to carry on the name; it could be that her birthmother couldn’t afford to keep her…We don’t know.  On a day like this, though, I think of her missing being able to watch this amazing girl grow up, not knowing her belly giggle, not knowing her artistic creations, not knowing her need to bounce and thump.  The least I can do for this other woman out there is to keep her memory alive and not flinch away when the dotter wants–or needs–to talk about her.

Adoption ranting alert!

Whoop!  Whoop!  WHOOP!  Brrrp…brrrp…brrrp…brrrp!

At this point in family life, I normally let the usual mainstream media faux pas (tell me how to pluralize that?  Please?!) about adoption pass me by.  At this point, life is less about Deep Musings About Adoption and more about how to survive the few weeks at the end of school year that are jam-packed with stuff like "Teacher Appreciation Week" (please bring a dish–Monday is breakfast, have it there by 8:30!, Tuesday is casseroles, Wednesday is sandwiches–but the staff are bringing the makings so don’t bother, Thursday is salads, and Friday is desserts) and "The Kindergarden Circus" (in which the dotter is being–natch–a "prancing horse"–and they really need volunteers to help sell popcorn before the circus) and ballet picture day (scheduled for the middle of the morning?  Oh, well, at least it’s not in the middle of school, since school ends two days before) and Ballet Recital Madness (update:  no, littlies don’t need to be there at oh-dark-thirty and stay for 24 hours straight, thank heavens!).

In other words, general adoption stuff has taken a back-burner to Real Life.

(Which is not to say "general adoption stuff" doesn’t happen, and isn’t important.  It does, and it is.  It’s just that what pops into the ol’ noggin to write about tends to be more on the panicky side than on the thinking deeply side.)

But when egregious mainstream media cluelessness attacks, I just have to sit up and take notice.

Brought to my attention by two adoption bloggers is this little lovely:  The category in the Mother’s Day TV special "America’s Favorite Mom" that is called–wait for it–"Non-Mom Moms".

I had a few "non-mom moms" in my life.  There was Aunt Lou, my mom’s best friend.  There was Mrs. Crysanthemum, who lived next door to my paternal grandparents, and who stunned me, absolutely stunned me, when she announced to me, at 16, that I should stop calling her "Mrs. Crysanthemum" and call her by her first name.  It took me years to be able to follow that request without feeling both awkward and disrespectful.  These were women who spent a lot of time with me, disciplined me, gave me hugs, fed me, let me have adventures with their kids, knew me from the time I was a wee chee-ild until I was a grown adult.

I never, ever though of Mrs. Libby, who lived on the other side of my grandparents and had an adopted kiddo, as a "non-mom mom".  Honest!  She was just Jarrett’s mom.

NBC and its minions, though, would place her (and me, and every other adoptive mommy on earth) smack dab into that category.

There it is, in all it’s glory, among the "semi-finalists" in the category "Non-Mom Moms":  "She was an adopted child who is now mom to her own daughter, plus six adopted children who started life as "meth babies"."

First off, even by their skewed standards, she’s a "mom mom":  she has "her own daughter".

OmegaDotter, of course, is not "my own daughter".  I’m just play-acting mommy for her.

Secondly, there’s that old cliche, the "crack baby", recycled as the "meth baby".

Thirdly, she’s not being a "mom" to those adopted children, oh no.  She’s being a "non-mom mom".

Sweet Kozmik All above.  Don’t these people think?  Don’t they have any concept of what "adoption" is?  Don’t they realize how they’ve dissed all the adoptive moms in their audience by that casual sweep of the semantic hand that dusts adoptive moms off into the "non-mom mom" dustbin?

Gah.  Get a grip, NBC.  My dotter has two moms, and they’re equally valid and important in my dotter’s life.  (Which I will talk about on Mother’s Day, I think.)

Frick-frackin’ rowrbazzlin’ dim-witted dismissive twits.

Nothing is going on with our lives.  Okay, yeah, the dotter ends her first year of Real School in a week and a half…it’s spring and I’ve seen one tree with all sorts of itty bitty pale green leaves bursting out, so that’s exciting.  And we have rhubarb growing.  And Mother’s Day is coming up.

But I?  Am in a rut.  Nothing seems interesting or exciting to me right now.

So, channeling my mom, I hear:  "Just join a club!  Go to a Mensa do!  Go take walks!" et cetera.  And I say it to myself, too, especially the "go take walks!" or the variation, "go get some exercise on a regular basis!", but it doesn’t help.

My life is boring.  My blog is boring.  Nothing is going on.  The most exciting thing that has happened to me recently is that I stabbed myself beneath my fingernail with a cactus spine opening the kitchen window.  And it hurts.

I even went off to The Daily Meme to see if any of the subjects might amuse me or incite me, and it was all…meh.

Here we are, it’s May 6, and the sun is rising at 5:30 a.m., setting at 10:20 p.m.

In most areas I’ve lived, "twilight" is pretty well-defined.  It lasts about 30 minutes, then *poof*, it’s nighttime.

Here in Alaska, though, I’ve learned some new terms:  "civil twilight", "nautical twilight", "astronomic twilight".  The one I’m used to is the "civil twilight"–the time when the sun is less than 6° below the horizon.  Then there’s "nautical twilight", the period when the sun is between 6° and 12° below the horizon.  "Astronomic twilight" is when it’s officially night, and you can do starwatching.

Last night, I was suffering from insomnia.  I kept waking up and still being able to see faint light around our windows, at the edges of the curtains.  Surely, I thought, I was mistaken.

So I fired up Teh Google and searched for a sunrise/sunset calculator.  I found one with civil twilight mentioned, and it didn’t seem to match my experience, so I tried another.  And there it was, in all its glory:

Civil twilight–4:35 a.m. to 5:30 a.m., 10:20 p.m. to 11:16 p.m.

Nautical twilight–2:25 a.m. to 4:35 a.m., 11:16 p.m. to 1:27 a.m.

Astronomic twilight:  "Light".

Eh?  Say what?!

Hey, by my calculations, we should have one hour of full dark right now!  Look right above–Nautical twilight begins at 2:25 a.m. in the morning, ends at 1:27 a.m. in the morning.  So there’s a full fifty-eight minutes being ignored by that calculator.

Harrumph.

Anyway, "nautical twilight" means that navigators can see bright stars and the horizon at the same time.  "General outlines of ground objects may be distinguishable, but detailed outdoor operations are not possible, and the horizon is indistinct" sayeth the write-up in Wikipedia.

What it means, in general, is that we have no Real Dark now.  Not to say that we have light all the time, but we are possessed of "glow".  And it’s enough to seep around the edges of our curtains, and enough light so that I can stumble through the house in the faint light and see humps where the chest at the foot of our bed is or the sofas are in the living room.

It’s quite disconcerting.  And we have a month and a half of increasing daylight to go!

In the meantime, we have been plagued by moose.  Meese?  More than one moose.  Lolling about in our backyard.  Nibbling on the nice, tender, tasty shoots coming out of our shrubbery, with their just-about-to-bust-open leaf buds.

Damn moose.

The dotter is losing teeth left and right.  The last one was one of the two top front teeth; this left the second one, also loose, all on its lonesome and able to stick out by itself when her lips were closed.  It was cute and adorable.  It also became quite wiggly.

At which point, it is my job to supervise the evening ablutions.  While both OmegaDad and I get the heebie-jeebies at really wiggly teeth, I have teeny-tiny heebie-jeebies; OmegaDad gets wigged out and has to leave the bathroom entirely.

Of course, it reached that particular point that parents the world over know:  it wiggled itself loose on one side and not on the other, and the dotter had reached the pinnacle of impatience.  I assured her it would come out over the next few days, but OmegaDad decided to promote the tie-a-string-around-the-tooth approach.

This resulted in severe dithering.  First it was "Oooh, yeah!"  Then it was "Ewwww, no!  Stop it!"  Then it was "Maybe I’ll try it."  Then it was tears and "I can’t do it!"  And all of this was before the string ever reached the tooth.

Like going zero to 60 and back to zero within a minute.  Whiplash!

So we abandoned the attempt and the dotter and I headed off to her bedroom for story time.

At which point, she decided she wanted to try it again.

This time, we avoided the bathroom, so she couldn’t see what was going on.  Apparently, it was seeing that was scaring her.  So we plopped her down on a dining chair conveniently scooched near the kitchen door, took the neat little lariat that OmegaDad had made out of cooking twine, and I slipped it over her tooth and cinched it down almost tight.

At which point, she decided she didn’t want to try it again.

Foreseeing an hour or two of this back-and-forthing, I reaching for the string, saying "Okay, okay, kiddo!  I’m taking the string off!" and surreptitiously yanked with one hand on the string while the other was making ineffectual forays at the string-encased tooth.

Pop!  Out came the tooth (of course).  (There was one moment of resistance, and I had a queasy fear that it wouldn’t work and the dotter would be both in pain and brokenhearted that Mommy was torturing her.)  The dotter had one moment of "Owww!" and then realized what had happened.  Much surprise and great swelled-headedness on her part:  "I did it!"  She totally thought that I had really been trying to untie the tooth…

Later on, in her bedroom, I whispered to her, "You know what?  I was sneaky.  I wasn’t trying to take the string off, I just yanked…"

She thinks it’s hilarious.  She has spent the last day giggling about it, and saying, "Ooooh, you’re so sneaky, Mommy!"  (Tee hee!)

She now has a two-tooth gap.  Another tooth is loose.  The Tooth Fairy is soon going to have to make another run to the bank for Sacajawea dollars.  I have it on good authority from the girls at gymnastics that at least one kid gets $20 per tooth, and another $8.  Whoa.  I got quarters.  The dotter gets the nice golden Sacajawea dollars.  And the Tooth Fairy is running out Real Soon Now.

You invited the dotter to your daughter’s birthday party.

The party was in Big City at the science museum.

WAY kewl!

Um.

But.

Um.

That’s a fifty mile drive.  One way.  It takes an hour to drive.  One way.

Sorry, we’re not going.

(Does it strike anyone else as a wee tad overboard to be having your six-year-old’s birthday party at a big science museum that is an hour’s drive away?)

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Elvis.

Of course.

And an island in a deep blue sea.  The island, I suspect, is related to Lilo and Stitch.