OmegaMom

The “lice incident” was not.  The school nurse moaned to me about how that class has driven her nuts because a few parents are paranoid about lice; the dotter’s reportage was garbled, thank heavens (she had said that Nurse Lady had found cocoons in her hair!!!!! ACK!).

The award was for creative writing and art.  No surprise there!

Obama had a press conference today which served to indicate a few things:  1) He is not president yet, which he reiterated three times to my counting; 2) he takes the economy issue very, very seriously; 3) Paul Volcker was standing to his left and was shown during almost the entire press conference, so that’s an indicator of the type of economic advisor he’s going to tap; 4) he’s not going to discuss his security briefings; and 5) the new White House dawg will need to be hypoallergenic.

Some fun stuff:

• Election cartograms, very kewl.
• Behind the scenes on the campaign trail, also very kewl.  Read all seven chapters.
• The Obama team is quite hip to the Internet:  Here’s the set of Creative Commons pics of election night; the team also had “Change.Gov” ready to go.  Remember, he plans to have a cabinet-level Chief Information Technology Officer to advise him.

I had other stuff to post, but can’t remember it.

Off to do some NyQuil.  Drugs are good.

Six years old.  You can see her tooth gaps.  I like it.  Tomorrow we are told to show up at the first quarter school general assembly because the dotter is supposed to be getting an award; I suspect it’s something like “perfect attendance” or something like that, but we’ll be there.  Then there’s the “lice letter” that showed up from the school nurse.  Ahem.  Eeek?  I have to call her to find out more info; it merely says there “was a lice concern” about the kids in the dotter’s class, and that all the kids were examined and “cleared for school”.  However, a question or two put to the dotter revealed some info that makes me really want to talk to the nurse…

A big thank you to all my commenters; your long and thoughtful replies have made me feel a bit cheerier.  I will write more substantive stuff tomorrow; tonight I’m just pooped and have a headache and want to go to bed.

It’s great.  It’s historic.  Jesse Jackson and Oprah Winfrey teared up on national TV.  The first black American president.

He was my candidate.  I’m glad he won.  But…Now he’s stuck with the job. 

And here comes my cold-water, wet-blanket, pessimistic post.  Sorry.  If you’re still feeling giddy with happiness, go somewhere else and don’t read this post until a few months have passed; I don’t want to rain on your parade.

I had a draft post entitled “the Janitor-in-Chief” (based on John Mauldin’s column, “Electing the Janitor-in-Chief“) which I never published, all about my (usual) dismal outlook on the economy, and the mess that the president-elect (whoever he might be) would inherit, and I’m afraid that my pleasure in Obama’s victory is highly tempered by that outlook.

It’s a mess.  It’s a royal mess.  I reiterate my prediction that the new president will be a one-termer.  I hope not, but the economy is racing down the toilet, and there’s a helluva lot more bad economic news to come.  Auto industry executives have been quoted as saying it’s the worst their industry has seen since World War II; Goldman Sach’s investors’ outlook note leaked today says that they’re revising their unemployment estimate upwards from 250,000 jobs lost in October to 300,000, and they expect it to keep getting worse; commercial real estate investment is drying up; the ISM factory index is the lowest it’s been since 1982; real personal spending–which fuels 70% of U.S. GDP–plummeted at an annual rate of 3.9% in the month of September; and on and on and on.

I’d love to think that the hearts and flowers and joy and luv-luv-luv will win over the 53 million people who voted for McCain, but given some things I’ve read on the ‘net today, and some things I’ve heard on boards and in emails, we’ve got a whole slew of people out there who think that Obama is a Marxist/Leninist/socialist/communist/jack-booted thug who is out to tear down the structure of the United States and RUIN US ALL.

(Hey, it’s the right-wing’s version of the liberals’ dreaded October Surprise, the staged terrorist attack that would give BushCo the excuse to call for martial law and suspend the elections…)

Yup, Barack Obama, who the lefties think isn’t left enough, is too moderate and centrist, is a communist thug.  Sigh.

And I sit here thinking to myself:  What?!  Why on earth would anyone want the job?  Why on earth didn’t we let McCain take it, and have him get stuck with the tar and feathers, the anger and frustration and disillusionment that will greet the upcoming years of cleaning up the mess that BushCo left us with?

Gah.  Maybe I’m feeling like this because it’s November, and the light is vanishing fast, and it’s been cold as hell.  Or because some folks who I really love and respect are taking this…um…not well.

(Edited to add:  Okay.  That’s it.  The last.  I was so excited.  So happy.  So thrilled.  And realizing that intelligent, sensible people whom I know and love are scared just shocks me to the core and makes me want to cry.  I see hope; they see fear and hatred.  I see trying to change some of the gawd-awful stuff that BushCo has done; they see destruction.  I see an intelligent, moderate, quiet man who will do his best to do a competent job; they see a Hitler-like demagogue.  And I want to cry.)

Anyway, to read a better (less pessimistic) take that looks at the practicalities, go read John Scalzi’s post, “Reality Check“.

And really, truly, I’m very happy Obama won.  I watched the speech and teared up.  We made OmegaDotter watch with us, telling her it was a historic occasion that she would remember all her life.  It’s amazing that the U.S. was able to actually vote–clearly and decisively (though not a landslide, as some would claim)–for a black man as president.  Forty years ago, one would never have imagined this day.

I waited for OmegaDad to be done with work, then we schlepped over to OmegaDotter’s school to pick her up from “Mad Science!” class and vote.  No line, so we were in, voted, and out in no time at all…Not that it’s likely to make much of a difference here in Palinland. 

Also I delivered these red, white and blue cookies to the school election day bake sale first thing in the morning:

Now all that’s left is to bite my fingernails while waiting for the election results.  Actually, I think we’re going out to dinner, which will take an hour or so, and by then it will be called, I’m sure.

California’s Proposition 8–the “marriage is to be defined as one man and one woman” amendment to the state constitution–is running neck-and-neck (sigh).

So the Prop 8 folks have spent $$ on Google Ads to show up on blogs.

So far, I’ve run into three blogs, on wildly diverse subjects, that have had to post disclaimers about the ads, because they have no control over which ads show up on their blogs.

I thought it was interesting that enough readers complained that the bloggers had to do this.  Too bad all those people don’t live in California…

As for the proposition itself, and my feelings thereon?  In a word:  Ugh.  OmegaDad and I have been together now for 15 years (yes!).  The idea that giving someone who is gay or lesbian the same marital rights as we have will somehow destroy our marriage, cause our country to slide into moral decay, and lead to our dotter being OMG TEH GAY!!! just makes me roll my eyes.

I can’t remember where I read it, but it seems that the institution of heterosexual marriage is so devastated by having legalized gay marriages in one of the Scandinavian countries that…

…the heterosexual marriage rate has increased.

Whoa.  Those bad, bad gay folks!  Lookit what they’ve done!

John Scalzi, over at Whatever, has a number of good blog posts about the whole affair.

And it’s the cutest little thing, too.  Actually, the silkies have laid two eggs, but we’re keeping that from the dotter, because OmegaDad happened to…um…step on the other one.  So we have one itty bitty egg sitting in our egg carton in the fridge, and one itty bitty egg all squashed to bits in Le Petit Coop.

Visit NaBloPoMo
Eh.  I’ll give it a try this year.  Last year, I forgot all about it until it was a couple of days into November.  Oops!  The year before, I was doing great until the last two-thirds of the month, in which I tried a timed post which got posted too early because of time-zone differences.

Bah.

But–into the breach, dear readers!  Let us try, once more, to conquer November!  Woot!

That said, November started off badly, to wit:  OmegaDad left the garage door open all night long.  It got down to zero last night.  The water pipes froze.

BUT!

Luckily for OmegaDad, there is that “but”.

He caught it in time!  He closed the garage door, turned the garage heater on full blast, fiddled with a valve, and we sat around for hours waiting for a plumber, sans water, fearing the worst…

Only to be told by the plumber that OmegaDad had actually left the valve closed.  So the plumber opened the valve, and voila!  Water!  Gushing out of open faucets all over the house!  Woot!

The plumber says that, yes, the pipes had frozen.  Just barely.  And the garage heater had thawed things. 

Then the plumber suggested to me, as I was writing the check, that it might be a good idea to get a thermostat alarm thingummy (which he wasn’t sure where to get, but he kept meaning to find out, because he thought it would be a good idea to stock them, because of people like OmegaDad).  It just so happens that I had been suggesting the very same thing to OmegaDad!

So all is well that ends well.  OmegaDad is showering as I type.  Shortly I will be able to wash clothes, clean house, do my normal weekend-ly things.

And there is no husbandly body stashed under the front stairs.  This is a good thing, don’t you think?!

What does it spell?  Halloween!

The dotter decided she wanted to be a cheerleader this year.  (This was after first wanting to be a princess, then wanting to be a “really mean witch!”)  So I looked at cheerleader costumes online, and got more and more frustrated, because it was either cheesy cheap faux cheerleader costumes from High School Musical or another TV series, or trampy cheerleader costumes.  Nothing in-between.

So I went to a cheerleader supply store online, got her a purple cheerleader outfit and pom-pons, and we went with that.  She was delighted.  (Yes, it’s really purple, but the camera got blue, and the editing software made it slightly bluer.)

She’s actually wearing a shirt under the top, and leggings, ’cause it’s c-o-l-d here.  Like, “tenth coldest October on record” type cold.  Bah.

Let’s see a cheer jump, why don’t we:

We made our ghost tree, but never put it out. 

The plan–yes, we had A Plan–was that we would go to her school to do the Halloween Town trick-or-treating, then go swing by her buddy K’s neighborhood, then would go to Small Town, where OmegaDad’s office is, to do T-or-T-ing there.  Why not here?  Well, because we’re in a neighborhood of one- to two-acre lots, and it’s a pain in the butt to even think of T-or-T-ing here.

But when we got to K’s house, her mom invited OmegaDotter to go trick-or-treating with them.  So OmegaDad and I went out for dinner, and never got around to putting out the ghost tree or the jack-o-lantern.  Bad folks.

Anyway, goodness knows whether we had trick-or-treaters or not.  It’s not like our old neighborhood, which really wasn’t any great shakes for kids, but at least was better than this one.

I owe people emails; please don’t think worse of me for putting things off.  I’ve been feeling kind of punk lately, and just doing the minimum to get by for the past week.  Aside from a rant or two.

I watched Obama’s half-hour TV ad.

Then I bop online, and find people who were moved to tears.

I wasn’t.

I was irritated.

We saw families “down on their luck”…but not really down.  I’ve got to say, if my husband’s job were cut to one week out of every two, and I were laid off, why on earth would we be going out to eat?  Equally to the point:  why on earth would Obama’s campaign film a family in such straits doing such a thing??

Then there’s the fact that…um…look, I know they were playing to the moderate white vote, but my overwhelming feeling in this ad was…it was very white.  I suppose it wasn’t PC enough for me, har.

Then Obama says he voted for the bailout and is hoping to Do More.  Aaarrgghhh!  Right now I feel like the financial gurus are busy pulling cards out from under one side of a tottering house of cards to shore up a different side.  What we need is for the U.S.–and all the other countries who joined us on the drunken binge of borrowing and spending over the past ten years (dear lord, I am using Dubya’s very own phrase, just shoot me now)–should stop trying to get banks to loan and people to borrow, and start encouraging savings and investment in real goods.

Over the past six months, at an increasing tempo, the U.S. has flung fictional money this way and that, to the tune of:

• $700 Billion – The bailout bill; U.S. Treasury to purchase toxic mortgages and other non-performing assets from financial institutions.
• $50 Billion – To guarantee principal in money market mutual funds.
• $10 Billion+ – Treasury purchases of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) in September.
• $144 Billion – In additional MBS purchases by Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac.  (With a limit of $850 billion…whoop-de-do).
• $85 Billion – AIG bridge loan giving the Fed a 79.9% controlling stake in the firm.
• $87 Billion – Repayments to JP Morgan for providing financing to underpin trades with the now bankrupt Lehman Brothers.
• $200 Billion – $100 billion capital infusion for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by the Treasury.
• $300 Billion – Provided to the FHA to refinance failing mortgages into new, reduced principal loans with a federal guarantee as part of the housing bill.
• $4 Billion – Provided to local communities to purchase and repair abandoned homes due to foreclosure.
• $29 Billion – Financing for JPM’s takeover of Bear Sterns. The Fed takes $30 billion in non-performing assets as collateral.  (Goodness only knows how much those “assets” are worth now.)
• $200 Billion – Currently outstanding loans to banks through the Fed’s Term Auction Facility.
• $150 Billion - Stimulus checks.  Remember those?
• Not to mention a whole slew of additional multi-billion-dollar chunks o’ change being handed out to GM and foreign countries…

Just where is all this money going to come from??  A hundred billion here, a hundred billion there…That’s almost two trillion dollars.  And now they’re talking about another $50 billion to guarantee up to 3 million mortgages where the mortgage-holders are underwater (more than a month late).

Look.  My husband and I aren’t poor, but we’re not rich.  We’re not the best money managers around, but we managed to put a fair amount down on this house, pay off debt, purchase two cars outright, and keep up with our mortgage payments.  We won’t see that help.  And that makes me angry.  Yes, there are people who were bamboozled into bad mortgages at the last minute, but the majority of the folks who are in foreclosure used funky mortgages to buy more house than they could really afford based on teaser rates and the assumption that their houses could only appreciate in value.  They get help; my husband and I, who deliberately looked at houses where we could afford the payments on a plain vanilla fixed-rate 30-year mortgage (even though we’d have loved to get more house) won’t.

I think I was looking for more of a “Fireside Chat” approach.  Something with more substance, and something that came straight out and said “The next few years are not going to be easy.  We’re all going to have to tighten our belts.”  What we got was fluff, violins playing, and warm-hearted shots of Obama shaking hands, giving and getting hugs, and holding babies.

It didn’t move me to tears.  Or at least, not in the way that the ad writers wanted.  And I’m voting for the man.

Just think what the people 40 years ago, funded by DARPA, looking at a new way to (a) protect communication in the face of a nuclear strike and (b) share research quickly, would think of if they looked at the ‘tubes of today.  I’m sure they would have never conceived of a world where people could buy just about whatever they wanted without leaving their computer, or the way that the music industry has been rocked to its core.

Definitely, they would never have envisioned the lively political debate that it has fostered.

Oh!  Did someone say “political debate”?! 

And I’m sure those intrepid internet pioneers would never have considered a world where such joys as this are available:

I do.  I truly do luuurve Teh Intarwebs.  They rawk!

Yesterday afternoon, OmegaDad came to me as I was folding clothes, and said, in an urgent, worried voice, “Come upstairs and listen to this!”  I grabbed some clothes on hangers, planning to drop off the jackets in the coat closet, listen to his mystery noise, and then drop the remainder in our closet.

He was very perturbed, and almost wouldn’t let me stop at the coat closet.  “Do you hear that noise?  In the corner?  Over by the TV?”

I listened, and smiled, a world-weary, tolerant smile.  Tap.  Tap, tap, tap.  Tap.  Tap.  Tap, tap, tap, tap.  Tap.  Tap, tap, tap.

“It’s our woodpecker.” I said.

“Our what?”

“Our woodpecker.  He’s pecking the house.”

“Our what?  We don’t have woodpeckers!”

“Yes, we do.  I swear I’ve told you about it before.  We get woodpeckers who peck at the house, up by the eaves.”

“Nooo!”  He sounded astonished.

“Yes!”

So he had to go outside to look, and the dotter had to go with him, and sure enough, just like I’d said, there was the woodpecker.

Now, mind you, I’m not happy about a woodpecker pecking at our house.  We’re going to have to have the eaves inspected next summer, just to see what sort of damage the beast has been doing.  But I certainly wasn’t surprised.

What I was surprised by was the woodpecker decided to move to the other side of the house, and then move over to the birdfeeders.  And then stay there as the dotter and I oh-so-carefully opened up the kitchen door, and I oh-so-carefully aimed the camera, and I oh-so-carefully got the picture before the bird flew off due to the blinding of the flash, which I had not oh-so-carefully turned off.  Oh, well; at least I got the one good picture.  He is, I think, a hairy woodpecker; the downy woodpecker has some black spots along the outside of the tail feathers which this dude is missing.

So that’s the nice stuff.  Onto other things:

My post yesterday stirred up a bit of emotion.  The first commenter was a regular reader and commenter who was offended by my characterization of those who believe in the Rapture and in the anti-Christ as “bat-shit crazy”.

Sigh.  I have never hidden my lack of religious belief.  I have actually written posts about it in the past.  I may not say things like what I wrote in yesterday’s post except once in a blue moon (or, more accurately, once in three years and three months), but I have to admit, I think it on a regular basis.  I typically avoid discussing religion for that very reason; it is worse than politics, in my books, because some of the nicest, friendliest, smartest folks just go…daffy…as soon as religion raises its head.  Magical thinking takes over, and rational thinking flies out the window.  People who believe “other” are suddenly seen as “less than” simply because their magical over-being is different or because they don’t believe in a magical over-being at all.

I said that it was not tolerant of me.  It’s not.  The mindset baffles me.  It baffles me that groups that profess to follow a set of “loving” precepts use that belief as an excuse to hate others.  It bothers me that there are people out there that believe, since I don’t follow any religion, don’t believe in any religion, that I can’t be moral.  Or good.  Or kind, thoughtful, gentle, blah, blah, blah.  And, believe me, there are plenty of folks of religious bent who actually write columns that get published in national newspapers that say exactly that, and additionally say that the only thing that holds all of humanity back from being greedy, rapacious, murderous, thieving, vile, sociopathic, psychopathic bastards is religion.  This has been written multiple times, in multiple columns and magazine articles, from followers of different religions.  It is, to be blunt, a bunch of horse hockey and a sad commentary on people’s viewpoints of humanity in general.

I think humanity is much, much better than that.  I don’t think we need an omnipotent magical parental figure overseeing our every waking and sleeping moment to keep us moral and striving to do the right thing.

Furthermore, I feel there are plenty of existing things that hold people apart without adding belief in mythology into the stew.

If any generic reader feels that knowing this about me means you can’t read my blog any more, I certainly accept that, and wish you well. 

Remember how I asked here whether Obama is supposed to be the anti-Christ, because some folks were giving us rally-ers the devil’s horn, as opposed to the finger?

Well, apparently I’m just a sweet, innocent naif from Alaska, wide-eyed and gobsmacked, because, yes, Virginia, there are folks who think Obama is the anti-Christ and that’s why they’re not going to vote for him.

Really and truly.

I was whacked by a 2×4 alongside the head with this realization when reading a 400+ comment thread on A Little Bit Pregnant.  One commenter flat-out said she wasn’t voting for Obama because he fit all the characteristics of the anti-Christ, and another one said she was pretty sure she was voting for McCain because she was merely worried that Obama might be the anti-Christ.

Setting aside the whole question of “OMG so you really believe this stuff?!”, I find myself puzzled by this approach.

Surely, if you think Obama is the anti-Christ, then you’re likely to be a person who believes in the End Times, in the Rapture wherein all good and righteous folk will be sucked up into Heaven to sit on the right-hand side of the lord, complete with halo and harp.  And you’re likely to believe that this is preceded by the second coming of Christ, which is preceded by the rise of the anti-Christ.

So wouldn’t it be logical to, say, vote for Obama in that case?  Wouldn’t that be hastening the aforementioned series of events?  Like, almost guaranteeing it?  Sing hosanna, vote Obama, get me to the Rapture on time?

(OmegaDad, when I broached this thought to him, told me that maybe these people secretly aren’t sure they’re going to be sucked up into Heaven come the Rapture, and that’s why they don’t want to vote for him.

Hmm.  This is always possible.)

Moving on:  No doubt someone will tell me that the reason for not voting for the anti-Christ is that the rise of the anti-Christ is supposed to be a time of terrible turmoil and misery for the world, and that no-one with a kind heart would want that to happen.  But…but…I thought all of that is gonna happen anyway in that world view, no matter what you do.  One way or another, the whole row of dominoes is supposed to fall; it’s all predestined.  So surely the faster it’s done, the less turmoil and tribulation, the quicker the Rapture?

I can’t wrap my head around this stuff.  I really can’t.  Here we are, living in an amazing world filled with man-made miracles, living lives of ease due to technological advances, a world where people are taking photographs of the further ends of space and the amazing intricacies of microscopic things on our own world, where people are living longer lives through the application of science, where practically every single instant of our days is touched, in some way, by science, technology, or the rational thought process…

…and there are still people out there who (first off) really, truly believe that there is such a thing as the anti-Christ, and (secondly) really, truly believe that Obama is him.  When I come across people like this, I think to myself (and come mighty darned close to saying out loud, or typing out), “You are just bat-shit crazy.”  Whoops!  There goes any pretense to tolerance I have.  Sorry…but there it is.

It’s a Bizarro World, indeed.

A few years ago, I produced a lame-ass lifebook for OmegaDotter.  I did it in Word, I cribbed pics from clip art and random websites, and managed to confuse her the first few times we read it together because there was a picture of a Chinese woman, and the dotter automatically assumed that she was her birthmother.

Um.

Okay, so it didn’t work out too great.  I’ll have to find it and re-read it to her, see how it goes; it was definitely aimed more at a 4-year-old than a 6-year-old-on-the-verge-of-16.

Anyway, one thing about the lifebook that I was very proud of was that I had a (cribbed from the web) diagram of a fetus inside a woman’s uterus, which prompted all sorts of intensely interested dialog, including the dotter deciding that she was going to demonstrate to all and sundry just how a baby comes out of its mother.

Um.  Ahem.  It provided OmegaDad and me with some hastily-subdued amusement when she would wander into the living room, squat down, go, “EEEAAAAGGGGHHHHHHH!”, and then produce a baby doll from between her legs, then brightly announce that this was her new daughter.  At least I managed to explain to her that she needn’t do that at pre-school, thankyewverramuch. 

Anyway, I’ve been on the lookout for sex-ed books aimed at kids, and finally found one that seemed to fit the bill:  It’s Not the Stork!: A Book About Girls, Boys, Babies, Bodies, Families and Friends (Robie Sex Books) talks about everything on a 6-year-old’s level, gets the basics covered, talks about good-touch/bad-touch, and isn’t boring.  After two tries at the local bookstore, which supposedly had it in stock, I finally gave in and ordered it through them, then waited around for the phone call, then forgot it was there, then remembered one day while off at the grocery store getting Pepperidge Farm Chesapeake Cookies to feed my addiction that it was there, at the bookstore, and the bookstore was two doors down, and hey, I had some extra time…

So I finally got it home a few weeks ago.

The dotter took one look and was immediately demanding I read it to her.

She was thrilled to get the info, interested in all the “right names for things”, and so eager to read it that she ditched Ramona for quite a few reading nights in favor of this book.  She giggled and exclaimed, “EW!” at the anatomically correct drawings of boys.  She kept demanding to see what was next.  I found myself blandly talking about pen1ses, test1cles, vulv@s and vag1nas and smoothly segueing into a brief description of the sex act itself without stuttering, blushing, getting tangled up, or desperately wanting to Be Somewhere Else.

We took our time going through it, doing about 4 pages per session.  There’s a lot of information; it covers what sperm is, what eggs are, relative sizes, what happens to your body when you go through puberty (though a great big gaping hole is a lack of mention of menstruation), ess eee ex, how babies are made (not the ess eee ex part, the sperm and egg part), how babies grow, a glossed-over description of how babies are born (any child who is read this book will not get the “EEEAAAAGGGGHHHHHH!” part), a quick talk about twins, triplets, and higher, a paragraph about adoption, etc.  It’s filled with cheerful cartoon drawings, shows “diversity” without being preachy about it, and has a cartoon bird and bee mascots who make smart-alecky commentary as you go along.

So, if you’re like me, ready to tackle it but needing help getting through some of the parts, this book is for you.  Highly recommended.

Okay, I have a few posts in mind, but right now I just want to pass on something that Pretzel passed on to me.  It’s in the spirit of earworms:  Once you pass it on, hopefully it’s not stuck in your own mind anymore, eh?

Boomshine!  A bubble-bursting chain reaction game.

Go forth and waste time.  I just want you to know that I made it to 336 points.  Woot!

(Posts in mind:  OmegaDotter builds a house…A review of a kid’s sex ed book…fear and loathing on world equivalents of Wall Street…cold weather…)

This morning, as the schoolbus pulled in to stop at our corner, the dotter turned to me and quickly said, “No kissy!”

It was like a dart to the heart.  No goodbye kiss?!  What?!  Is she already going through that stage of “my mommy is soooo embarassing!  Ew, no, don’t kiss me in front of everybody!”

Later on, as I was coping with the tummy cramps from whatever-horrid-bug-it-is that I’ve caught, I realized that it wasn’t a case of being embarrassed.

It was a case of internalizing warnings from mommy and daddy; to wit:  don’t kiss someone who is sick.  I had already almost sent her off to the bus stop by herself, fearing a need to dash to the bathroom toot sweet.  So she was merely protecting herself.

Much better than growing up!

Pretzel asks if it has gotten cold here.  Well, yeah, considering that we’ve had a number of snows.  We’ve had lows in the teens.  Bleah.

Sarah (MotherOfSonOfThor) asks if we used online plans for our chicken coops.  I think OmegaDad used them as starting points, but we had an issue:  rather than starting from scratch, as it were, we were retrofitting the coops into the (way off kilter, old, dumpy) stable-ish area off our yard shed.  This meant a lot of home designing.  I think OmegaDad did a bang-up job.  The nesting boxes were also designed using online plans as a starting point.  They were very easy to do, in general.  Chickens, I must say, don’t need much; give them food, water, and a nice quiet boxy space for nesting and they’re pretty happy.

Doesn’t that sound like something out of a first-grade reader?

Our silky girls, Fluff and Puff, have been subsisting in a substandard housing arrangement, to wit:  no nesting box.  They have had to deal with (o the horror!) a bunch of straw on the floor of le petit coop.  So OmegaDad finally got with the program, sanded the (previously built) nesting box, painted it white, and then set OmegaDotter loose upon it with pink and purple paint and the instructions “do whatever you want”.

“Do whatever you want” ended up including painting a big pink heart on the plastic drop cloth, then walking on the wet paint.  So OmegaDad–quick thinker, he–grabbed some of his hand condoms (disposable plastic gloves) and outfitted the girl with gloves on her feet and hands, then herded her into the house from the garage, up the stairs, and directly into the bathtub.

I got the pleasure of washing pink paint out of the dotter’s hair, which left an inordinate amount of pink paint flakes in the bathtub.  Ugh.

Anyway, this evening the paint had all dried, and dad and dotter forthwith took the new nesting box and placed it in with the silkies.  The idea being that at some point in time the silkies will actually consider laying eggs.  Word has it that silkies don’t do much egg laying; they’re too busy being pretty and fluffy for such shenanigans.  (This is The Kozmik All’s honest truth:  silkies were bred to be pets, sort of the Pomeranians or Shih-tzus of the chicken world.  They also, apparently, are “broody” and will happily hatch any eggs in their nests and raise the youngsters up.  Chicken fostering…)

The dotter with her newly decorated nesting box:

Nesting box in place, filled with straw, and being investigated:

The silkies at the feed container:

The dotter with three of the other chickens (Comet, Angie, and Buffy, l. to r.; Winnie was being shy, as usual):

We’re swimming in eggs.  We get four eggs per day.  The dotter happily collects them and takes a dozen over to the next door neighbors every so often, getting $2 per dozen.  So we don’t really need any eggs from the silkies; it just seems that they might need to lay some.  Some day.  Once in a while, when they’re feeling like it.

You will notice that the dotter is growing out her bangs; they now are almost long enough to be tucked behind her ears, but not long enough that the hair stays behind the ears for more than a few seconds.  There is, behind that head, a ponytail; the stuff on either side of her face was in that ponytail this morning, but, of course, out by the time she got off the schoolbus this afternoon…

I’ve kept meaning to write about Nebraska’s “safe haven” law, which took effect in July.

That’s the one that people across the nation eyeballed before it was passed and then told the legislators, “OMGWTFBBQ?!”

Okay, they didn’t quite say that.  I do think there were quite a few “OMGWTF?!” comments, though.

That’s because Nebraska did not denote a specific age cut-off for their safe-haven dropoffs.  They used the language “child”…and, in Nebraska state law, a “child” is anyone up to the age of 18 (the age of emancipation).  Safe-haven advocates and opponents from across the nation read this law and said, over and over, “Dudes!  Get a grip!  Don’t you realize that people will use that mile-wide loophole to drive their teenage kids through?”

The legislator who wrote the law smiled, shook his head at their naivete, and said, “Oh, really.  Please.  That’s not going to happen!  And if it saves a single life, it will be worth it!”

Since then (this list cribbed shamelessly from Daily Bastardette):

• September 1: Male 14–left by mother at Omaha police station. Currently in foster care.
• September 13: Male 11–left by grandmother–another report says mother–at Immanuel Medical Center, Omaha; currently in foster care and partial hospitalization.
• September 13: Male 15–left by guardian aunt at Bryant Medical Center West, Lincoln.
• September 20: Pregnant female 13 left by mother at Immanuel Medical Center, Omaha. Returned to mother.
• September 22: Male 18, turned himself in to hospital in Grand Island; too old for foster care, but can receive services.
• September 24: 9 siblings, 1-17 (left by father, Gary Staton, at Creighton University Medical Center ER).
• female, 1
• male, 6
• male, 7
• female, 9
• male, 11
• female 13
• female 14,
• male, 15
• male 1
• An 18-year old sister who does not live at home was not abandoned. All these children are now in foster care and several relatives have requested custody.
• September 24: Male 11–left at Immanuel Medical Center, Omaha.
• September 24, Male 15–left by guardian uncle at Immanuel Medical Center, Omaha; uncle plans to relinquish guardianship.
• October 5: Male 12–left by guardian grandmother at Brian LGH West, Lincoln.
• October 5: Male 12–left at Immanuel Medical Center, Omaha.
• October 7:  Female 15–her 34-year-old mother attempted to dump her and was talked out of it by hospital authorities.
• October 7:  Female 14–Driven across the river from Council Bluffs, Iowa, and left at a hospital by her grandmother.
• October 12:  Male 13–Michigan mother drove to Omaha, Neb., to leave the child at a city hospital early that morning.

Even Saturday Night Live got into the act, apparently, including a “news item” about another drop-off in their “Weekend Update” segment this past Saturday. 

Well!  After this bounty of out-of-control teens being abandoned by their parents risk-free due to the poorly written safe haven law, Nebraska state legislators have seen the light, and are planning to amend state law to change the age reference to “no more than 3 days old”.  But it may take a special session to do it, since the legislature is on recess and doesn’t meet until January.  In the meantime, rather than call a special session, the governor has authorized $100,000 (and up to $200,000 more if that’s not enough!) for the department of Health and Human Services to spend on a special hot line for troubled parents.  They’re also sending a letter to adoptive parents and foster parents with information on how to get help if they are having problems with their children.

Though it has absolutely nothing to do with the housing bubble, I can’t help but be amused by the similarities:  numerous people saw the unintended outcomes, specifically warned those in power, and were ignored.  And what happens?  Exactly what the naysayers said was going to happen…

Which science fiction character are you?

Jean-Luc Picard

An accomplished diplomat who can virtually do no wrong, you sometimes know it is best to rely on the council of others while holding the reins.

There are some words which I have known since I was a schoolboy. “With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.” These words were uttered by Judge Aaron Satie — as a wisdom, and warning. The first time any man’s freedom is trodden on, we’re all damaged.

Jean-Luc is a character in the Star Trek universe.

Onto “real” things:

I want the election to be over with.

The dotter and I spent a few hours this afternoon making jack-o-lanterns, ghosts, witches, cemeteries, etc. to hang in the windows.

I have the first parent-teacher conference of the school year this Thursday.  Ms. Nices is…well, nice enough…but I’m not so sure I’m thrilled with her as a teacher.  Not dismayed, either, but not thrilled, the way I was with Mrs. Shoelace (who could Do No Wrong).

Soooo…is the economic mess “contained” yet?  Wanna place bets?

Miss Cellania passed a Proximidade Award on to me; it is, it seems, to thank another blogger for being there as part of one’s circle of blogging buds.  The rough translation of the description is “This blog invests and believes, the proximity. [meaning, that blogging makes us 'close' -being close through proxy]. They all are charmed with the blogs, where in the majority of its aims are to show the marvels and to do friendship; there are persons who are not interested when we give them a prize, and then they help to cut these bows; do we want that they are cut, or that they propagate?

“Then let’s try to give more attention to them! So with this prize we must deliver it to 8 bloggers that in turn must make the same thing and put this text.”

So…of course, I can’t give it to Miss C., because she gave it to me.  I’ve known Miss C. online for…oh, lordy, at least (OMG can it really be?!) six years.

I found PAGent on one of my cruises through the “next blog” button on Blogger, waaaaay back when, about three years ago.  But I can’t give it to PAGent, because she gave it to him, too.  Bah.  PAGent, consider yourself Proximidade’d squared, okay?

I’d give the award to Lizard, but even though she had a blog that she used to write on now and then (Grumpy Old Bitches), she hasn’t written there in an age.  But I’ve known Lizard for at least six years, too.

Soooo.  Moving on to folks who haven’t gotten the award, and who do have blogs:

GrannyJ.  Of course.  Hi, ma!

Johnny.  He won’t do anything with it, ’cause it’s like a meme and he doesn’t “do” memes.  But I want to give him props for just being himself, and always having an interesting perspective on things.

Lorrie at Clueless in Carolina.  She’s had a lot of stuff going on lately, but she’s always entertaining to read.  And she’s part of the Miss C./Lizard/Carol-Anne/etc. group that I’ve known for six or seven years.

Speaking of Carol-Anne…Yet another from that group…

Blog Antagonist, at Blogs Are Stupid.  I’ve known BA online for seven or eight years; we started off at iVillage’s Current Debate board, moved to another board which blew up in a horrendous, awful mess, and then she started a blog to sneer at blogging.  Much to her surprise, she enjoyed it.  Much to her surprise, she got readers.  Much to my pleasure, she’s less likely now to use $10 words when $2 words would do.

Kate, over at Escaping Suburbia.  Kate hasn’t been posting a lot lately.  Bad, bad Kate.  She does awesome photos, one of which is finally framed and hanging on my office wall, a blast of color to help me combat the drear of winter.  I’ve known Kate online for eight years; we started out on the iVillage Adoption Debate board, which, at the time, was awesome.

Julie, at Using My Words.  Julie is another of the iVillage escapees.  She is passionate and compassionate, and always strives for justice.  I still remember the help drive she set up for the Katrina refugees who had ended up in her area.

Ms. Vinegar Martinis.  VM is tart and funny.  Yet another from iVillage.  VM, you need to just ditch the PTA, girl!

PretZel, at Pretzel’s Place, is a crazy lady.  I think it’s seven years for PretZel.

Jozet, at Halushki.  OMG, you must, must, must read Halushki.  What, you don’t?!  Well, do.  She just did this thing on eggs.  With a video, no less!  It’s great.  She’s great.  She needs to post more, but I think she’s not feeling funny too much these days.  Another iVillager.

One more!  One more!  (Oh, yeah, it’s supposed to be eight and this is number ten.  But hell, I just have to do another.)  YouKnowWhereYouAreWith is a poet.  With a daughter from China.  Who happened to live in Arizona, while I was living there.  We hung out together a few times, and I was looking forward to more, but then she moved away from Arizona.  :-(  Oh, well, I know she had very good reasons for the move.

Oh, blast.  Let’s make it eleven, why don’t we, ’cause I’ve got to mention Kate over at High Altitude Gardening.  I found Kate, too, while doing a “next blog” sweep of Blogger.  Her philosophy is that her blog is her “happy spot”, so it’s always cheering to read one of her posts and admire her flowers.  And now I’ve got yellow hollyhock seeds to help brighten up my summers here, thanks to her.

Do you ever have those moments of total paranoia?  The kind where you’re sure everyone else has telepathy but you, and you just know they’re laughing at you and pitying you?  Or where you finally settle down to sleep for the night and then all the dogs in the neighborhood start barking, very loudly, for a long, long time, and you’re sure that Someone Is Out To Get You?

You don’t?

Oh.

It’s just me, then?

Oh.

Well, yeah, sure, I knew that all along; I was just joshin’ witya, y’know?

Ahem.

Anyway, one of my ongoing paranoiac sureties in life is that when I have a Great Idea, somehow or other I am really subconsciously broadcasting it nonstop over the Jungian undermind.  That’s why, when I started plotting a really way kewl science-fiction-y novel based on the idea of a previously unknown disease spreading like wildfire through the industrialized modern world, bringing it to its knees, six months later that very same novel came out and raced up to the top of the New York Times bestseller list.  And my idea for a totally useful and helpful device for the kitchen (which I can’t remember now), which showed up at our local fancy kitchen store six months later…

Well, now it’s time for yet another one of my ideas–my abso-damn-lutely fine ideas–to be stolen by someone else via that pesky Jungian overmind.  Or undermind.  Or whatever it is.

For years, I’ve had a fantasy of owning a store, a very specialized sort of store.  One with one large room separated into four bays.  Targets at one end.  A table or rack at the other end, laden with cheap old dishes, china, and crockery purchased at the local Goodwill or Salvation Army.  One with an entrance at which I would stand by the cash register, ready to take money and hand out safety goggles and industrial-strength earmuffs to deaden the noise and direct the customers to one of the four bays.  My customers would be able to pay me…oh, I dunno, say $20?…and then spend the next half-hour enthusiastically working off all their angst and fury by throwing the dishes as hard as they could at the target at the other end of their selected bay.

I thought it was a winner.

Well, so did Sarah Lavely.

Ooooooh!  I so know she’s just been dipping into that under/overmind, looking for the Right Idea, and my idea was floating around there and she found it and she stole it, dammit!

Grrrr.

One of these days…one of these days, I’ll actually use one of my very own ideas, and be rich, I tell you, rich!

Bwahahaha!

(OmegaMom shuffles off into the distance with an Igor-like crouch, rubbing her hands and cackling about how she’ll take care of those people who steal all her ideas, yes she will.)

…and my brain is fried, and I just think it’s neat.  Shamelessly taken from Miss C Recommends:

Also, just FYI:  OmegaDad did not design the Grand Edifice himself; it was a kit.  But he worked hard and did a good job, and the kiddo likes it, so that’s what counts.

(Edited three times because I am tired and my brain is fried…)

“Dear diary:  Today I did a lot of things, and da worked on my playhouse.”

Many years ago, OmegaDad told OmegaDotter that if she saved her money, he would match her money and they would buy the materials for him to make her a playhouse.

This summer, GrannyJ presented us with a check, a nice sum to do with as we pleased.  One of the things “we pleased” was to use some of it to buy a Grand Edifice for the backyard.  The dotter’s savings amounted to $125 or thereabouts, and we used that as part of the money to purchase the Grand Edifice.

Or to purchase the parts to a Grand Edifice–the construction that I have been calling the “Taj Mahal”, a grandiose frivolity for a dearly loved one.  I knew that the Taj Mahal was built by an Indian rajah to honor his wife; what I didn’t realize that it was a mausoleum to house her remains after she died.  Oops.  But that’s what I named it in my mind, and that’s what it’s going to stay in my mind from now on.

OmegaDad has been working on this creation for weeks, in and around bouts of bad weather.  Yesterday he took the day off work and worked on the Grand Edifice, and he worked on it today as well.  So now the Taj Mahal is now almost complete.  It is definitely complete enough that it can be played upon by an eager and excited OmegaDotter, who at bedtime, after her hug and kiss from daddy, said to him, “Daddy?  Thank you for my playhouse!”

Behold, the edifice:

The pink and purple blob you see in each picture is the dotter gamboling upon this construction.  The glowing white spots are the hey-it-works! light-reflecting strips from her winter jacket.  Alas, the light was fading, so the picture of her and me swinging is too dark to be lightened up without becoming grossly grainy, so you don’t get that picture.

All I can say is that she’d damned well better play on the damned thing every single day.  Harrumph.

(I, myself, may end up playing on it every day.  It’s quite grand.)

The rough geographic area where we live is shaped like a funnel.  There’s the Inlet, which is long and thin, and opens to the ocean to the west.  Then there are the mountains, to the east, south, and north of the inlet.

The inlet, being water, stays warm a lot longer than the ground inland.  (This is also why we’re a lot warmer here than, say, two hundred miles away in Little City.  We get -30F in January and February; they get -60F.  God bless the water, I say!)  The mountains, being high, are colder and covered with snow much earlier than lower elevations; there are also glaciers.

The topography ends up with some interesting–and massive–differences in temperature between the inlet and inland, which can stir up winds.  The funnel shape can take winds off the ocean or down from the mountains and intensify them; think of how a stream is slow and gentle when moving across a wide area, but becomes rapid and forceful when squeezed between narrower banks.

So we regularly have “high wind warnings” at “higher elevations” along the inlet.  The higher elevations can get 85 mph winds and the lowlands 50 to 60 mph winds.  We here at Chez OmegaMom are lucky in that we’re in a small depression, a cup in some rolling hills, so we rarely get the truly high winds.

Last night, the wind started whipping up early in the evening, and by the time we went to bed the trees, hidden in the darkness, were thrashing and tossing about.  Sometime in the night the power went out.  The wind was still blowing when we woke up in the morning, and it had completely stripped all the remaining golden and brown dead leaves off the trees in the intervening hours.  The extent of the damage in our area was extensive twig litter on the lawn, a piece of plywood flung from its original resting spot, and some errant tarps blown against trees here and there in the neighborhood.

But in Big City, this was a Big Wind, of up to (or higher than) 100 mph.  Trees were uprooted and flung against houses.  Power lines were pulled down.  People’s fences were gone.  Roofs were ripped off, lawn equipment migrated down the roads, and boats were tossed upside down.

I mentally moan and groan about being in the characterless suburbs where we are, and wish to be closet to Small Town Alaska, closer to the inlet and the mountains, but I must admit that I’m glad we don’t get subjected to the ferocious winds that other areas around here get.  I’ll take our 40 to 50 mph gusts and be glad we are spared the higher intensity stuff.

But:  Have you looked at your 401(k) recently?  Or your gummint equivalent?

Mine has dropped 26.9% since the start of the year.  So far.

(OmegaDad’s, thank heavens, is actually up for the year, because I had him stash it in bonds ages ago.)

This is a picture of the past year on the Dow Jones Industrial Average:

See that steep drop-off over at the right?  That’s the past few weeks.  The Dow Jones has lost something like 20% in two weeks.

MSNBC is now showing some sort of figures purporting to be the FTSE (British stock exchange) and Nikkei (Japanese stock exchange) averages on the front page.  Though, since they’ve got the wrong figures, I haven’t the vaguest idea what the numbers are supposed to be in reality.  Anyway, this seems to be a Sign Of The Times, since normally those aren’t shown on the front page at all, but are buried deep in the business section.

Every morning I think, “Oh, it can’t get worse–surely today there will be a rally!”  And every morning, there’s yet another piece of hideous financial news–or BushCo gets on TV telling us things will be okay, really!–and the market dives again.

I just worry about people who are retired, or retiring soon, and what this is doing to them.

It snowed today.

Oh, we’ve already had “snow”, some quick flurries of big, fat flakes drifting down, but today was a real snow.

In the dim early morning light, the dotter and I went out to check the chickens.  It was foggy–or so I thought–hazy, gray draping the trees, the neighboring houses.  But as we were traipsing across the back yard to the coops, the dotter claimed it was snow.  I scoffed, and then heard–oh so faintly–tiny patters of microscopic snow flakes spitting onto the grass, onto my jacket.  Still, it was nothing like the four inches we had been promised, so I shrugged it off, and we went back inside.

Half an hour later, as we headed off to the dotter’s school bus stop, it was truly snowing.  The dotter happily trailed a bamboo twig from the porch behind her as we walked, leaving a line of boot prints and a black skein where the bamboo touched the ground.  We stopped at the mailbox and pulled out a small pile of mail (including–woot!–an envelope of hollyhock seeds from Kate at High Altitude Gardening, woohoo!), I tucked it into my arms, and we crossed the street to wait on the corner.

Almost immediately, the nooks and crannies in my elbow, and the layers of the small pile of mail, began being loaded with lacy, puffy flakes.  Flakes gathered on the dotter’s backpack, on my arms, on my hat.  The dotter, delighted, used a finger to collect snow and hold it to her mouth; I joined her by scraping small mounds onto my own fingers and feeding them to her.

When I returned to the house, it was still snowing.

An hour later, I stopped out onto the kitchen porch to take a break, and was struck by the silence.

We live in suburbia.  The national media calls it a “rural town”, but to those of us who live here, it’s suburbs.  Oh, we’re not right outside Big City, but we are a “bedroom community” for Big City, and it’s built like all those fancy-schmancy new suburbs in California or Arizona or Texas…it’s just older.  Lots of one-acre lots, lots of strip malls, no real town center (unlike Small Town, in between Suburban Alaska and Big City, which does have a town center).  Anyway, there’s almost always a hum of traffic as a background noise; not a lot, mind you, but it’s there.

This morning, though, it was utterly silent.  Muffled.  Quiet.  You could hear the snow falling on the leaves still remaining on the trees, pattering them gently, but the acoustics of the snow seemed to have put a lid on the traffic sounds.

It was hushed.  And beautiful.

Of course, even though it’s Alaska, we haven’t hit “winter” yet, so the temperature hovered around freezing all day and the snow, while accumulating, was also melting.  When the snowfall ended, the melting took over.  What was probably six inches of snow quickly melted down to three.

When the dotter returned home, I postponed doing homework for a chance to get out into the back yard to throw snowballs at each other and built a small snowman.

The first snowfall of winter is always magical.

So in the midst of relishing a child-free evening and morning (YES!!! She spent the night away from home!), I totally forgot that there was a big Obama rally in Big City on Saturday, which I had been thinking of attending.  Reports are that 1200 people showed up, while 300 people showed up at a McCain/Palin rally.  Some pics are here, here, here, and here, with a grump from Mudflats about the comparative coverage in Big City’s newspaper.

Then, having reveled in sleeping inordinately late, I foolishly agreed to a double-sleepover:  I would pick up the girls, bring them home, and K. would spend the night here.

So there was referee-ing to be done, and careful measuring of soda pop into equal amounts, and much popcorn made, and lugging of kid tents up into bedrooms for the night, and then back down to the family room for the next morning, and watching while they managed to drain the Barbie Jeep battery to nothing, and then being rolled around in the kid tent as they attempted to hold me hostage so K. didn’t have to go home…

Then I had peace and quiet while OmegaDad took the dotter out and about.  Yay!  And, to put me into a cheerful mood, I watched the Asian and European stock markets plummet.

Tonight, we’re supposed to have a real snowfall, with 2 inches by tomorrow a.m. and another 4 inches by this time tomorrow afternoon.

(A quick note:  Are you guys seeing my RSS feed in Bloglines?  I know a number of my regular reads are showing up as the li’l ol’ red exclamation point, bah.  Anyway, I’m seeing a serious drop-off and trying to figure out if it’s a technical glitch.)

OmegaDotter drawing a picture for Grandma Julie:

“I’m putting the sun up here…Now I need some clouds, but not a lot, because I don’t want to hide the sun.”

“Grass…I need grass down here.”

“And a spider!  I like spiders.  In pictures!  It has one…two…three…four…five, six, seven, eight legs.”

“This is a tree.  I need a tree to hang the web for the spider from.”

“Oops!  Two branches for one apple!  Oh, well!”

“That’s a bee hive.  And these are bees, and they’re flying to the apple.”

“Oh!  And I need a flower here.  The bees are flying to the flower, too.”

“This is Grandma Julie.  She always has a pony tail.  I’m drawing her with a dress and high heels because that’s how I always draw women.”

“And this is me, next to her.”

“Now what should I draw?  A house?  Okay!”

“I think I need another flower over here!  And the bees are flying over to this flower, too!  And they’re flying over Grandma Julie’s head, not behind it!”

“We need an envelope.  No, Mommy, I used up all my envelopes.  What should I do?  I know!  I can get a piece of paper, and we’ll make an envelope!  No, I’ve used up all the paper up here…I’ll go get one from the printer!  Here it is, Mommy!  Oh, the scissors are to cut the paper–”

“Oh, okay.  I guess I don’t have to cut it.  Yeah, we’ll fold it like that!  And then we have to tape it up the sides, like this.  Oops, I need more tape.  Mommy, can you untangle the tape for me?  Okay, now we need another piece.”

“How do we fold up the letter, Mommy?  It’s not going to fiiiiiiit!”

“Oh!  Yeah!  Let’s do it that way!”

“How do you spell ‘Grandma’ again?”

“Puh…lllll…ay….essss.”

“How do you spell ‘Prescott’?”

“I’m going to draw a label here.  I’ll put our phone number on it!”

“Why not?  I want to put our phone number on it, for Grandma Julie!”

“Oh, okay…I know!  I’ll put Oh…em…ay…guh…ah…duh…aw…tuh…r in there.  See!  And some hearts.  No, no, Mommy, I need to put more hearts on it!”

“I’m going to draw a stamp right here.”

“Why not?  Oh, okay, but let me put the stamp on.”

“Now don’t forget we have to take it to the mailbox!”

Note and drawing on its way to Grandma Julie’s house.  Although I seem to recall that I forgot to put a zip code on your address, so it may take a while…

We haz it.

I watched the debate (of course) (sigh) (when did I decide to become a politics junkie?).  I thought that Biden came across better, but that’s because I’m on his side.  Palin’s constant reiteration of “maverick”, as though it were a magic charm, made me roll my eyes; her misunderstanding of what an “Achilles heel” is makes me worry about my dotter’s education here in Alaska; her co-opting of a series of Reagan’s catchphrases, including “There you go again, Joe!” was noticeable; and the last I heard, it was the mess on Wall Street that is impacting Main Street.  But, in the end, she redeemed herself by not repeating her gaffes from various carefully prepped interviews.  She sounded, in general, nice.

But I’m not looking for “nice” in my presidential or vice-presidential candidates.

So I came away thinking Biden “won”–whatever that means.

Then we went to dinner at the local Indian restaurant.  Mixed grill–yum!  Tandoori chicken, shish kebab, lamb, curried chicken.  Mmmm.

There was another group at the restaurant, talking vivaciously about the debate, and about the current economic situation.  I first noticed them when they were talking about the debate; one guy shouted out, “She really nailed it when she said, ‘I’m not one of those Washington insiders who says I’m for this then says I’m not for it’!  BINGO!  I want someone who’ll say what they mean and mean what they say!”

So, there ya have it:  Confirmation bias.  I thought Biden came out better; these folks thought Palin came out better.

And then the older woman in the group–who seemed to be a real estate person–started talking about the economic situation and the bailout bill.

She said that a friend had offered on a house, had the mortgage all set up, everything was going swimmingly…and then, the day of closing, the loan offer was withdrawn.  She said that these people had great credit.  I’ve heard similar things online; this was the first I had heard it “first-hand”.  She said that credit was frozen, and she talked about a few businesses she knew that were running on credit and weren’t going to be able to meet their payrolls if it kept up.  She wanted the bailout, even though she thought it wasn’t very good, because it was the only thing going right now.  She mentioned 401k’s that had taken huge hits during the stock drop on Monday and how people who were close to retirement were getting hammered.

All of which is true (except I wasn’t for the bailout).

Then they talked about not living on credit.

Which seemed a bit of cognitive dissonance to me; the entire notion behind the bailout is, in essence, that we should go back to borrowing money like crazy and spending it like crazy and the economy will just go on chugging along, growing and blossoming, tra la, tra la.

So this afternoon the House of Representatives voted for the bailout–the expanded bailout, with $100 billion of pork tacked on to make it appetizing to a wider variety of senators and representatives.

And the stock market, which had been up some 200 points prior to the vote, dropped.  And kept dropping.  And ended the day below where it ended on Monday…the day the bailout vote failed.

Say what?!  Isn’t the bailout supposed to…oh…”save 401k’s and retirement accounts”?  Aren’t we all happy campers now?  Isn’t Great Depression II averted?  Wasn’t the stock market going to heave a great sigh of relief?  The bailout certainly hasn’t saved Wachovia Bank, which is currently being fought over by Citibank and Wells Fargo, like a pair of vultures over fresh road kill.

I’ve been saying it for a while, and I’ll say it again:  This mess is too entrenched, too intertwined, too highly leveraged, for this bailout to stop the unraveling.  Oh, it may end up slowing it down a bit.  But firms that are leveraged 30:1 or more aren’t going to become solvent with a wave of the magic Federal Reserve/Treasury/bailout wand.  And those firms are global in scope; just read a bit about what’s happening in Iceland.  Or see how the Greeks today passed a blanket deposit guarantee bill after runs on the banks, emulating Ireland, which did the same thing yesterday.  Or read about the Dutch government taking over Fortis NV, a portion of Fortis, which is one of the largest financial companies in Europe, today.

I’m gettin’ a heapin’ helpin’ of confirmation bias about the economy these days…

Oh, yeah, and it’s snowing here:  Great big fat flakes.  Holy moly.  Our first snow of the winter season.

Many years ago, when the dotter was three, she and OmegaDad went on a daddy-daughter date to Jackson’s Grill, a fairly nice restaurant back in Small Mountain University Town.  Of course, being “fairly nice” means it’s also “fairly slow”, and after they had ordered, and eaten all the bread and rolls, and were waiting for dinner, the dotter, being three, got antsy.  OmegaDad did this, that, and the other to try to keep her occupied, but she was still fretting, and still hungry.  In a moment of desperate inspiration, he grabbed a big linen napkin from the table, wrapped it around his hand and tied a knot, leaving the extra fabric standing straight up as ears, and said, “Hello…” in a nasal voice.

The dotter was entranced.

Thus was Sheepie born.

Think of Sheepie as a low-rent version of Lambchop.  If you don’t know who Lambchop was, I don’t want to know:  it means you’re way too young.  He has a very distinct personality.

Sheepie was just between the dotter and OmegaDad for quite a while, but then he started making an appearance now and then at the dinner table, and became quite the standby attraction during Eleven Minutes, the flexibly-timed daddy-daughter playtime between dinner and bedtime.  (Why is it “eleven minutes”, and not, say, a nice even number such as “ten”?  This is one of OmegaDad’s little quirks [just like Sheepie]; he doesn’t like “nice even numbers”, and insists on programming the microwave for 53 seconds, rather than 60 seconds.)

Nowadays, we find ourselves talking to Sheepie everywhere. 

Let me rephrase that:  I find myself talking to Sheepie everywhere.  My husband, of course, is Sheepie, but he converses with Sheepie also.  Sheepie will pop up to make silly commentary at odd moments, such as while we’re shopping, or when we’re at restaurants, or driving.

Sheepie has taken to making risque asides to me while playing with the dotter.  I can kiss OmegaDad, and Sheepie gets jealous.  I can kiss Sheepie, and he swoons gracefully onto the nearest flat surface, while OmegaDad rolls his eyes.

What can I say?  We’re weird.

Anyway, while OmegaDad was being prepped for his colonoscopy, he was flirting with the nurse, and somehow they got off on the subject of chickens.  Somewhere during the conversation, he managed to mention that he’s a relaxed kind of guy because he talks to chickens.  And everyone should talk to chickens; there would be a lot fewer wars and ugliness if everyone just took some time to talk to chickens.  The nurse took it all in stride.

That evening, Sheepie poked his head over my shoulder and started flirting with me while I was working on the computer.  Both OmegaDad and I had the same thought at the same instant:  Just imagine the nurse’s response if he told her he held conversations with his hand all the time?

She thought talking with chickens was weird enough.

Have I mentioned I love my husband?

I have crawled from my death bed to scrawl this note.

(Okay.  It’s not a “death bed”.  Really.  It’s just a “bad back bed”.  An “I can’t bend over” bed.  An “If I twist this way, a jolt of fire goes down my leg” bed.)

So yesterday, while congresscritters were voting down the bailout and the stock market was crashing (only to resurge again today), OmegaDad had to have a colonoscopy in Big City.  Which meant I had to drive him there and back again.  But it was at 2 p.m.–a very awkward time, to be sure, because the dotter gets off her school bus at 3:45 p.m., and there was no way on Gawd’s green earth that we would be back in time.  And our next-door neighbor, rescuers of choice in such situations, aren’t there in the afternoons, because Mama Neighbor is now working three jobs.  Ack.  So I called on M., mother of H., in a panic yesterday morning, and M. agreed to pick up the dotter and help her do homework, have a snack, play with H., all the good things…

And, oh, by the way, was the dotter invited to S.’s birthday party?  Because it was that night at 6:30, and H. was going.

Um.  Noooo, the dotter was not invited to S.’s birthday party.

But, aside from the “I’m not invited to S.’s birthday party!” woes that this would bring up, no problemo, because we surely would be back home before M. had to drive H. off to the party.

Right?

Wrong.

Because there was an accident.  On the other side of the highway.  Which caused both directions to close down.  Starting at 5:20 p.m., right around the time we were headed towards the highway.  Which we got onto at 6:45, because the feeder road we were on was also backed up, because no-one could get onto the highway.

When we drove by the accident site, OmegaDad growled about rubberneckers backing up traffic.  I said surely the accident was on both sides of the highway. 

Surely?

Nope.  When we finally got home, after picking the dotter up and apologizing profusely, up and down and left and right, I bopped onto the local newspaper’s site, and, yup, the accident was on the other side of the road.  Grrr.

Which, of course, made me think about a lot of scientific research being done on turbulent flow and the psychology of traffic jams, none of which I feel like researching on the internet right now and posting links about, but trust me, it’s there, and both types of studies are highly relevant.

Anyway, driving all that time with a bad back has ended up making me feel like shit today.

Wah.

Pretzel asks why we don’t see stars here very often.  That’s because during the summer we simply don’t have night at all, just a long, bright twilight.  And when we do have night, we often have cloud cover, so no stars.

Mrs. Figby (now at Halcyon Mama) accidentally hooked into my self-doubt with her comment “You are such a good mama.  Challenging her, and then letting her off the hook.” about the hike.  Lemme tell you, I didn’t feel like a “good mama” at all.  At the time, I was almost panicking, because I was afraid that me pushing her to try the higher part of the butte was going to End Up Very Badly.  It was looking, at one point, like the only way we were going to get the both of us down was by me carrying her.  I shudder at the thought (and not just because my back hurts like hell).

Del posted a grand story about getting stuck in the mud delivering a bobcat to a customer, long ago and far away, when the world was young…I just thought I’d make sure people saw it!

And GrannyJ commented that the first pic in the Walk in the Woods post was very similar to one of me at the same age, also in the autumn.  Mamasan, I have to say that I took a much more reminiscent photo (and I was thinking of that exact same picture), but, alas, it was blurry.  Bah!