OmegaMom

It’s not often you hear those words.

The chickens are growing apace and have become quite familiarized to people.  I am calling myself "The Chicken Whisperer", though perhaps it should be "The Chicken Clucker" instead.  I go "buck buck buck" to them and cuddle them and they have become tame enough to sit on my shoulder:

…or, in this case, the dotter’s head:

As you can see, Buffy has gotten kind of big.  Comet, the bitchy bird on my shoulder, is not as big, but Winona and Angelina are as big as Buffy.  The silkie chicks (still nameless) are no longer little itty bitty balls of down and now have the cutest little dandelion fluffs poking out of their heads and tails at random intervals. 

Anyway, they are all still living in the makeshift baby coop in the garage.

They are getting peckish.

In other words, "pecking order" is becoming the word du jour.  We have had to segregate the silkies for fear that the bigger gals will get into their box and peck them to death.

The Grand Coop is being built.  I am hoping it will be complete by this weekend.  (OmegaDad, the poor deluded dear, thought he would be able to get it done all in one weekend.  When he passed this thought on to me, I kept my mouth shut; 14 years with the same guy makes you know when to speak up and when to keep quiet.  Even if he does sing Carpenters’ songs.)  We have a nice 8-foot square floor with linoleum in a faux wood pattern, and one of two walls halfway framed in.

The birds need their space.  We need our garage back.

In other news, I was treated to a late lunch or early dinner by my regular commenter Noreen, who is in town visiting relatives.  It was great fun–we yakked about adoption and foster care and social work and Alaska and how amazingly conservative this area is (I joked that I don’t dare say anything bad about GWB, or put any bumper stickers on my car…not that I’m the type for bumper stickers, but I’d be afraid to put certain ones on…I am chicken, hear me cluck).

Thanks to all my commenters who have left me with the tunes to various Carpenters’ songs stuck in my head.  All I can say is:  I’ll get you all, my pretties!  And your little dogs, too!

I love OmegaDad dearly.  We have been together (OmegaMom pauses, counts on her fingers and toes, and continues) 14 years.  We’ve known–since the very start–that we Belong Together.

True wuv.  Ain’t it wonderful?

But I have discovered something extremely disturbing recently.  Something that made me pause, and wonder if we really, truly Belong Together.  It has shaken my world to its core.

While driving back from Big City last night, we were listening to a rerun from Kasey Kasem’s Top 40 Countdown from 1974, a blast from the past indeedy-o.

We were up to, oh, number 16.  The song started.

OmegaDad started singing along with it.

(Now, OmegaDad couldn’t carry a tune if you held a gun to his head, or to my head, or our dotter’s head, and said that the trigger would be pulled if he didn’t sing in tune.  I’ve known this from the beginning.  It was, actually, directly contrary to my early musings about how any man I decided to marry must be able to play a musical instrument, sing in tune, and be able to take me dancing.  I think OmegaDad might be able to haltingly blow out a ditty on a saxophone; there was a period in his early teens when he took it up for about a year.  But aside from that, my deeply held beliefs on musicality and rhythm were knocked asunder by the Tide Of Love which swept over me when we met.  Bah.)

Those of my readers who are of a "certain age" will understand my shock and horror when I realized…

…forgive me, I must take a moment to regain composure here…

…OmegaDad knew…Every.  Single.  Word… 

…to The Carpenters’ "I Won’t Last A Day Without You."

Puh-leeze.  Oh, my eyes were rolling.  Especially since he was soulfully gazing at me (and not at the road, dammit), putting his hand on my knee (and not on the steering wheel, dammit), and crooning, "I can take all the madness the world has to give, but I won’t last a day without you".

Gak!  My good lord, the syrupy sweetness!  The pap of the bubble-gum pop! 

He also knew all the words to Olivia Newton John’s "Please Mister, Please".  (I have to admit, I knew them, too.  I called it Newton-John’s "country period".  He claimed the song didn’t get airtime on country music stations.  A few minutes later, KK said it made it to number 4 on the country charts.  Hah.)

He did not know all the words to Three Dog Night’s "The Show Must Go On".  In fact, he claimed he didn’t recognize it at all.  I, on the other hand, did know the words to that song.  All of them.

This is the difference between a woman of city beatnik heritage and a man who was raised in small-town Oklahoma.

I don’t know if I can go on living with these shattered illusions.  My life is blighted.  How can I sleep every night next to a guy who knows the words to Carpenters’ songs???  Who knows what other twisted personality traits he has been hiding all these years???  Who…who, I ask…is this stranger in bed beside me???