OmegaMom

Won’t you take me to Funk Town was my alternative title.  Notice that’s not “funkY” town.

For the past few weeks, I have been sinking deeper and deeper into a funk.  Enough so that my lovely OmegaDad is upstairs doing kitcheny magic kinda things for OmegaDotter’s birthday party tomorrow, rather than me.  When I wandered into the kitchen and said that he was taking things over, he said, “Well, I thought I ought to, because you seem to be in a funk, so I thought I’d help.”

“I see a red door and I want it painted black.”  Everything I try to think of to cheer myself up is not working. 

My internal dialogues are going somewhat like this:

Happy Me:  Oh, look at all the beautiful fresh new snow!

UberFunk Me:  Yeah.  Snow.  Still more snow.  I am so sick of snow.

Happy Me:  And the sunshine sparkling all over the snow–isn’t it wonderful?!

UberFunk Me:  You mean the sunshine that is just now coming back?  The sunshine that isn’t warming anything up?  The sunshine that’s going to go into hyperdrive and not let anyone sleep in just a few months?  That sunshine?

Happy Me:  You could go out and play in the snow, you know!

UberFunk Me:  Ugh.  It’s cold out there.  And the snow will get in my boots and melt, and then my feet will freeze and I’ll get frostbite.  No thanks.

Happy Me:  Oh, c’mon!  In a few more months, it’ll be spring, and you’ll be able to hang out in the yard all the time, and the grass and trees will be a lovely green and the flowers will be blooming.  Keep thinking of that!

UberFunk Me:  Excuse me.  To think of that, I have to think of “a few more months” of winter.

Happy Me:  Well, at least the volcano isn’t erupting, this is good news!

UberFunk Me:  Volcano.  It’s not enough that we have cold and snow and winter for another three months; I have to worry about a goddamned volcano, too?!  Just wait until it erupts and the ash fall hits.  That’ll be fun.

Happy Me:  But it hasn’t happened yet, so it’s not likely to.

UberFunk Me:  Whoop-de-doo.  It’s gonna erupt, and we’re going to be buried in inches of ash, and we’ll have to wear dust masks and goggles and buy a dozen new car air filters and change them over and over again…

Happy Me:  … Well, if it does erupt, it won’t last too long.  Hey, look on the bright side:  When you start your new shorter hours in a few weeks, you’ll have all that extra time, and you can go exercise, or check out the yoga place!

UberFunk Me:  Yup.  That’s just ducky.  I have to have shorter work hours plus no-pay furlough days because our economy is in the crapper.  We’ll also have to keep a tighter rein on our spending, and change our eating habits, and what are we going to do about summer camp?!

Happy Me:  Um.  Well, hey, at least you’ll still have a job!  Lots of people don’t have that any more, so we’ve got it good, right?

UberFunk Me:  …

Happy Me:  Changing the subject!  Isn’t it cute how excited the dotter is about her birthday party?!

UberFunk Me:  Yeah.  Right.  I should be the one upstairs figuring out how to do a unicorn cake, not OmegaDad.  I’m letting everyone down.  I’m no fun.  I’m no good.

Happy Me:  …

UberFunk Me:  I just want to go into the bedroom, draw the drapes, lie down, and stew in my funk.

Happy Me:  … 

This is with my happy pills and with my magic light.  I’d hate to think of what it would be like without them!  So tell me what you all do when you’re stuck in a funk and can’t seem to get out!  Surely I’m not the only one who gets into the doldrums like this (though it has been a hella long time since I’ve been in a funk like this).

I have, sitting on the wainscot ledge by my computer, this:

It’s by a lady named Andrea Pratt, and it arrived this afternoon.  I love it.  The vibrant colors are just what I need in the midst of an Alaska winter.  I want to sink my teeth into the grapefruit, I want to hand some dripping kiwifruit slices to the dotter (she loves kiwifruit, I don’t), I want to be sitting in the sunlight with a plate full of fruit…It’s great.

It was the result of a sale where Andrea asked for bids.  I threw out a low bid–I knew it was low (though not how low, I’m really lousy at this kind of thing)–figuring she’d say no.  No-one else bid for it.  So there I am, the owner of this lovely painting, because for some reason it didn’t “grab” anyone else the way it “grabbed” me.

So since I’m feeling guilty about my purchase, I am asking y’all to go visit Andrea’s blog, Colouring Outside The Lines, and her online shop, Small Art, to see if there’s anything one of you might be interested in.  She also has an Etsy store, which is where I found her to begin with; the Summer/Dance/Birdland/Bloom quartet is similar to the ones I purchased a year ago, which are now hanging in our living room.

Another guilty pleasure, of a totally different sort:  Wilbur Pan, who is the Chris Brown of Chinese pop/rap.  For those of you who don’t (yet) know of Chris Brown (though you will as your girls get older) (I’m told teen girls swoon), think of a Chinese Michael Jackson-esque rap singer.  AmFam turned me on to him, though she doesn’t know it.  OmegaDotter loves his videos. 

Wu-Ha!

For your enjoyment:

This is the lazy person’s way to do a blog post:  Get her kid to do it for her!  I like how the Prins was sort of an afterthought, kind of, “Well, these are the standards of the form, so I need to get it in there…”  Also, I think the servant girl who hated her job but had to do it anyway might be a subversive form of rebellion against clearing the table after dinner.

OmegaDotter has turned seven.

We had a small birthday celebration–cake and presents–at home.  A party is to come (when lazy mother arranges it, oy!  I think it’s related to the fact that Time Is Passing Too Quickly).

The first words out of her mouth yesterday morning, when OmegaDad poked his head into her bedroom to wake her were:  “I’m seven!!!”

I don’t know how it happened so quickly.  They really mean it when they say “Enjoy it!  Next thing you know, they’ll be off to college!”  Six and seven (so far) are amazing ages, fun and silly and interesting.  I’ve heard from many parents of older children that the ages six to eleven are the best, and then you get a pre-teen/teen, and everything reverts to the patterns of toddlerhood.  And then, a few years later, suddenly you get your child back again, except all grown up and no longer snotty.

Seven.  How did that happen?!  Man!

:: OmegaMom wanders off in a daze, shaking her head… ::

We have been here in Alaska now for a year and a half.

A while back, the dotter wanted to write a love note to One And Only True Love.  Remember him?

“Dear One And Only True Love:  I will love you forever and ever, OAOTL!  Yay!  OAOTL, you are so handsome!  Yay OAOTL!  I love you!”

Ahem.  Okay; we thought it was cute.  We put it in an envelope and put a stamp on it, and then I let it sit on the dresser by the front steps for quite a while.  Because, while it was cute, it was also a little bit overboard and I wasn’t sure how OAOTL’s mom would feel about such a…overwhelming…note.

Unbeknownst to me, OmegaDad popped it into the mail one day.

A few days ago, in the mail, there was a letter to OmegaDotter.  The return address?  OAOTL’s name and address.  Being Mean Mom, I made her do her homework and help with the chickens before I pointed it out to her, but as soon as she saw it, nothing else mattered.  She ripped it open.  There were pictures (one up above, from the preschool “graduation”–aren’t they cute?!).  There was a drawing of a beautiful rainbow and hearts.  There was a note.  OmegaDotter was walking on air.  She had to tape the pictures and letter up on her wall above her bed.  I was told–rather fiercely–not to tell anyone, especially not K., her current BFF.

I hang my head in shame:  My first thought was to let all my blog readers know. 

There was also a note from OAOTL’s mom (thank goodness!) in which she made it very clear she was immensely amused by the love letter.

So:  Love lasts forever, or at least more than a year and a half.

All of which brings me to a separate topic, yet related:  Surely, even the most rabid anti-Obama people must recognize that he and his wife are (still!) wildly in love with each other–and they really like each other, too!  Every picture of them together at the inauguration, and every picture of them together from prior to that, shows two people who are constantly touching, looking at each other, whispering, sharing, caring.  As someone said in one of the comments to the (many many) pictures of them dancing at the various inaugural balls, “They look like it’s their wedding night!”  And there were a great many “Awww!  They’re so cute!” comments, as well.

I find myself hoping that the dotter will find a similar relationship, one of partners and equals and friends.

(Photo:  REUTERS/Jason Reed)

I also find myself hoping that such an obviously loving and intimate marriage is an inspiration to others, especially people who find themselves in a relationship where they feel one-down, where one person obviously is more invested in the relationship than the other.  See?  There’s hope.  There are people out there who can find True Wuv, and so can you.

So OmegaDad has had a blog for a year; he wrote one entry quite a while back, then stopped (to play Scrabulous!), and has been writing a bit again.  Go read and say “Hi!”

Why move my feeds from Feedburner to Google?  Well, because Google bought Feedburner, and pretty soon will be forcing me to move my feeds.  Right now it’s just an option, so since others in my blogroll have migrated, I thought I’d do it too.

Later, gators.

So I switched Feedburner over to Google, and everything seemed to go just fine.  But no-one has commented on my last blog post, which went out afterwards, so there’s this big question in OmegaLand:  Is anyone seeing this post?

Aside from that, I hear there was this big shingdig in D.C., some guy losing his job, some other guy replacing him?

Oh!  That would be the President of the United States?  AKA Barack Obama?  Right?

All kidding aside, OmegaDotter and I watched the oaths of office, and then scampered to get her dressed, hair combed, and off to the school bus in time.  An almost-seven-year-old just isn’t ready for more than a minute or two of speechifying, so I cut off the TV before she got too bored.  But there it is:  New president.  Yay.  (Really!)  Poor thing has to clean up the mess; I can’t imagine why he’d want the job now, and I’m sure that the picture of McCain grinning like a Cheshire Cat at the bipartisan dinner the other day is related to him thinking, “Whew!  Thank God I got out of that quagmire!”

Spare him some good thoughts; the next few years are going to be interesting.  Keep track of the gray in his hair in photos…

John Scalzi has a regular feature on his blog called “The Big Idea“, wherein writers can do a guest column about their latest books, describing the “big idea” behind them.  It’s really kewl, and allows one to peep behind the book cover into the mysterious workings of authors as they view their books.  I’ve gotten a few of the books listed, and enjoyed many of them.

One that sounded interesting was a SF book named Red, where the heroine–working for a multi-government police force in the future–was investigating the mysterious vicious murder of a girl.  The premise was, “What if Little Red Riding Hood went looking for the wolf–and discovered it was herself?”  It promised hawt werewolf sex and a mystery, and when I saw it in the airport bookstore while waiting for my flight to Phoenix, I promptly remembered the blog post and decided to give it a whirl.

Sigh.

Yannow, hawt werewolf sex can be overrated.  Just sayin’.

Red, like Snow Crash (yesterday’s post), is set in a future world where the U.S. and other governments have been rent asunder.  Whereas Snow Crash’s world was an amusing melange of corporate franchises running urban and suburban enclaves, Red’s world is a post-global-warming desert where water is a precious commodity and people live in collective apartments in domes erected to collect and hold moisture.

Or do they?  Because most of the action in Red is centered in a small, dusty desert town located near ancient Phoenix, where everyone’s living quarters seem to be in separate houses separated by streets that tumbleweeds spin down.

Then there’s the question of the “Others”, fabled genetically engineered soldiers from the Last War.  Are the “Others” a mysterious, mythical story believed by some but scoffed at by most?  This is one presentation in the book.

Do they need to hide out in a small, dusty desert town, carefully not revealing their real essence, for fear of being victims of a bloodbath?  This is another presentation in the book.

Or are they well-enough known to be the rallying cry for the election campaign of a racist pedagogue trying to gain chairmanship of the world council, as in “Let’s clean up our neighborhood and get the Others out!”?

Um, yeah.  This is, IMO, a serious problem with the book.  Either the Others (genetically engineered werewolves, vampires, and what-not) are well-enough known to be the stand-ins for the U.S. right’s illegal immigrant campaign, or they’re shadowy, mysterious, mythological, and laughed off.  They can’t be both.

Then there’s the fact that this racist pedagogue is paying (blackmailing?) a werewolf into giving in to his hunter instincts so that he can drum up the pogrom against werewolves…the werewolves who are (supposedly) just a legend.

Hunh?

He’s also got a blackmailed vampire on his staff.  At least, I think the vampire is blackmailed, because otherwise I can’t see why he’d be on RP’s staff.

To top it all off, everyone in the book talks about their “rest pad”.  Dammit, I know humanity, and know darned well that even if the gummint called the standard issue thing a “rest pad”, the citizenry would call it a “bed”.  Or, if “bed” were a verboten word, they’d come up with a slangy name, like “arpie”.  Or something.

There were some good spots, but the howlers in the overarching structure of the book just made me read with a totally snarkerrific viewpoint.  And the hawt werewolf sex scenes relied too much on phrasing like “she felt his throbbing c0ck pressing against her”, which didn’t do a damned thing for me.

Alas, I give the book an emphatic thumbs down.  If you must read it, get it from the library, don’t spend your own money.

Whenever I visit my mom, she sheds a few pounds of books on me, typically science fiction of the more “hard” variety.  I am, frankly, always amazed at what she collects, because I never see these books on the bookshelves in the stores I frequent.  Or at least, so it seems; this may be a case of selection bias: I may not “see” them because I’m not interested in them until my mom brings them to my attention.

She also often has some modern classic science fiction, which I resist purchasing for myself.  It’s akin to the “why would I want to join a club that would want me as a member??” attitude, but in reverse:  OmegaDad and I find ourselves actively turned off from bestsellers of any type when they’re on the bestseller lists.  An elitism of sorts, in that we think that any book that so many people like probably has Something Wrong With It.

All of this is preface to the fact that I finally read Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash because it was in the stack of books that mom handed off to me as soon as I walked in her door.

Those of you who have already read it–like, maybe, fifteen years ago when it first came out (whoa I’m on the bleeding edge here!)–don’t need to read further.

When I pulled it out of the heap, mom said to me, “You may find it amusing; I liked it.”

Har.  “Amusing”.  Har.

Snarky?  Hilarious?  Witty?  Cutting?  Frightening?  Silly?  Breathless?  Breathtaking?  Sucked in, wound around, turned upside down, and spit out laughing and thinking at the same time, maybe?

The world of Snow Crash is some indeterminate time in the future, not to far distant, where the U.S. and all other countries have splintered into a crazy mish-mosh of franchised corporate states crammed one up against the other.  The Mafia is a corporation that runs a national pizza franchise whose guarantee of 30 minute delivery time is backed up by an occasional hit on the failing delivery person.  Our Hero, Hiro Protagonist (har!), is a jaded hacker who has dropped out of hacking and programming to be a pizza delivery person and spends his free time in the Metaverse, the online virtual reality world that he helped program.  A buddy of his, another hacker, is tricked into viewing a computer virus called “Snow Crash” in the Metaverse, and in the real world he collapses into a coma, his consciousness wiped.

From there it’s a grand romp through this Brave New World and a trail of clues leading to the attempted global power grab of a corporate giant hiding behind a (long-since purchased) Evangelical Christian franchise that features people speaking in tongues.  The speaking in tongues is actually related to what Snow Crash is:  a meme from ancient Sumeria that plunges people back into a pre-conscious state where their actions are controlled by the priesthood.

There’s the aircraft carrier Enterprise which has been turned into a luxury yacht.  There’s a raft of global refugees.  There are secret trapdoors in the Metaverse.  There’s swordplay.  There’s an Inuit kayaker world-class assassin.  There are skateboarding message couriers.  There’s an ancient spell which is really a consciousness virus which also happens to have started all biological viruses…

This Sumerian thing/meme/virus really grabbed me, because it jogged my memory of a (relatively) recent theory of the beginnings of human consciousness.  So I consulted Teh Google and discovered I was oh-so-right.  Stephenson was quite happily playing with the ideas of Julian Jaynes’ The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.  Jaynes’ theory was that human consciousness, as we know it, didn’t really develop until about 1,300 B.C., and that prior to that time humankind lived in a world of gods giving commands–which were actually auditory hallucinations produced by the right side of the brain, based on a synthesis of an individual’s experiences.  The development of consciousness was, in this theory, an evolutionary adaptation to the mental, physical, and emotional stresses encountered by humans as the population density increased and the chances of encountering a novel situation (one which would not produce a God Voice explaining it and what to do) grew exponentially.

(Wikipedia has a succinct discussion of bicameralism, and a write-up on Jaynes himself.)

Anyway, I thought the book was a hoot and quite thought-provoking, and highly recommend it to anyone who is willing to let go within the first few pages and just be swept along into a totally new world.

Dear Sarah:

I understand that you currently have more public relations than policy people on your administrative payroll.  Perhaps it’s time to review how well they’re doing?

I know you’ve been awfully busy giving interviews lately wherein you chastise “anonymous bloggers” for spreading lies and innuendo–I’m guessing related to the whole “is she really Trig’s mom?” question, which is only being followed by hardline nutcases–but don’t you think your PR people might mention Emmenak to you?  It’s been big news in the Alaska blogosphere these past few days, but there hasn’t been a peep out of your office about it.

I would think this would be an excellent chance for you to show your “Alaska mom” instincts, being Mrs. Compassion and Mama Bear, fighting for the health and welfare of the people of your state.

Talis Colberg–interim head of your newly announced Rural Subcabinet–has said (in response to direct queries from media) that they’ll be “reviewing the situation” on Friday.  (Too bad your “rural advisor” walked out in October, and you haven’t bothered to fill the position since then; of course, given that you had left that position open for a year before you filled it in the first place, it sounds like it’s not high on your agenda.)

Tsk, tsk, Sarah.  Bad move.  You should be out there in front of the news cameras, cuddling Trig and fighting back the tears, as you talk about how your heart is breaking hearing of the people of Emmenak and other Inuit villages, forced to the point of deciding whether to heat their homes or feed their children this particularly cold winter because the cost of heating oil soared so high for them this fall.  You should be out there proclaiming that the governor’s office is doing everything it possibly can to provide help, and that you’re going to convene a meeting immediately, blah blah blah.

It was a priceless opportunity, Sarah!  You should have seized it!  You should have gotten out in front of the cameras and shown yourself in an unselfish light as soon as that piece of news hit the front page of the Anchorage Daily News!  Hell, even if you didn’t mean any of it, it would have been great PR.

Unfortunately, it seems that Hugo Chavez–you know, that dude in Venezuela, the one with all the oil, unlike us in Alaska?–heard about it right away, and has pledged help to those villages.

Dayum, Sarah!  You should fire those PR hacks right away!  They’re not doing their jobs!

The worst of it, Sarah?  While you’ve been spending your time granting interviews where you diss bloggers, who has been spending time spearheading help drives?

Um.  That would be bloggers, Sarah.  Like Mudflats.  Like Celtic Diva.  Like Progressive Alaska.

Whoops.

Girl.  You missed a golden opportunity here.  Get with the program!

Sincerely, OmegaMom

Here:  Have some big oogy squishy kisses.  Mwah.  And a hug.  And a noogie, just to keep things from getting too mushy.

Many thanks for the responses.  And while I am trying to come up with 101 uses for dryer lint (har!), as suggested by Miss Vinegar Martinis, I will take a whack at AmFam’s series of questions.  She asks:

I want to hear more about living in Alaska. Do you think you will stay there forever? Is milk $7 a gallon? How can you get your car to start in -25 degree weather? Is it even warm there in the summer? Are you glad you moved there? Do you go crazy when it is light out 22 hours a day? I want to know more!

Do I think we’ll stay here forever?!  Ack!  No!  OmegaDad has Plans, y’see.  Long-term plans, that include finding a way to get posted to China for a few years, which requires a certain level in the federal bureaucracy.  He’s thinking Maine.  Or New Hampshire.  Or one of those other New England-y states.  I, of course, yearn for the southwest.  But, hey.  He’s my One And Only True Love, and the main thing is that he enjoy his job.  He hated his job in Arizona after a while, and it really impacted his health, physically, mentally, and emotionally.  He truly likes his job here in Alaska.  My job is much more portable; I can find a techie-type job anywhere (so far).  So there we have it.  “Whither thou goest” and all that rot.

Milk is not $7 a gallon.  At least not where we live.  This doesn’t mean it’s cheap:  $5 per gallon.  But if you shop around, you can find deals.  When I go visit mom, I find myself just standing in the grocery stores drooling at the prices.  And the fruit and vegetable variety.  Then, when I come back here, I find myself just standing in the grocery stores bug-eyed in price shock.  And missing good veggies.

You get your car to start in -25F weather in three ways:  Either you’ve got a nice new battery, or you’ve got a plug-in engine block heater, or you’ve got both.  And even that doesn’t work for some folks.  So far, there has been only one day when my car sounded like it might be having difficulty getting started, on about the tenth day of meteorological brutality.  Otherwise, the Big Honkin’ Heap o’Iron just keeps going, as does Little Red, OmegaDad’s car.

Is it warm in the summer?  Well, it was in 2007; it got up into the 80s.  It wasn’t in 2008; it barely got above 70 twice, officially.  Goodness knows for 2009.  The U.S. Weather Service is promising “above-average” temperatures for the summer.  We shall see.

Am I glad we moved here?

Um.

Um.

Well, it’s an adventure.  You betcha.  I always wanted to visit Alaska.  It’s beautiful.  It’s wild.  It’s different.

Do I want to stay here?

Not much more than a couple more years, frankly.  It’s a nice place to visit, though!

Do I go crazy when it’s light out 24 hours a day?  Because, really, it is light out all the livelong day.  Or, more to the point, it’s never dark in the summer.  Just like it’s barely light on December 20th, shortest day of the year, when the sun gets about 5 degrees above the horizon, and it’s like anemic late afternoon sunlight for the entire five hours…

So:  the summertime.  I was blessed, genetically, by an ability to sleep through just about any type of environment, given that I am sleepy.  This comes from my mom, who would fall asleep if you got her out of the vertical long enough.  My husband joked that I would sleep through 76 trombones (and associated trombonists) marching through our bedroom.  Menopause has put an end to that, but I can maintain a nice sleepy haze when I am wakened, and then fall right back to sleep as soon as the disruption disappears, so the end result is about the same.

OmegaDad, however, has serious difficulties with the all-daylight-all-the-time environment.  It leaves him in a perpetual state of semi-sleep, not good.  I am considering blackout shades and one of those eye-patch thingies for him this year.

My difficulty lies with the winter lack of light; it makes me seriously gloomy, depressed, and sleepy.  My distant ursine ancestors raise their shaggy heads in my DNA under those circumstances, and tell me it’s time to EAT and SLEEP.  So I gain weight, get depressed, and sleep a lot.  And I have yet to see the Northern Lights, which seriously bums me out.

I’m sure all of you are just delighted that us Alaskans managed to send our cold snap down your way, and grabbed your nice warm weather for ourselves.  Today it was 45 degrees.  This evening’s march out to the chicken coop was…warm.  It was weird.  And our foot and a half of snow has managed to melt down to about six inches of very very soggy stuff.  I find myself wondering where all this water is going to go; we have a few more days of this kind of warmth scheduled, and while the snow is melting, the ground beneath is still frozen solid, so there’s nowhere for the water to sink in.

Anyway, we just thought we’d share.  We’re just nice and friendly that way.  No reason for us to hog all the double-digit below-zero temperatures; y’all need some, too.

I mean, aside from being Really, REALLY sick for an eternity (read: weeks).  And cooped up inside due to inordinately misery-generated low low low temperatures.  And having no brain to speak of.

But:  Yes.  A case of blogger’s block.  This is what has kept me from posting lately.  I open up LiveWriter, am presented with a lovely, pristine blank space of white waiting for my pearls of wisdom to flow forth, and…

…nothing.

Big, fat, nothing.

I have ideas.  Oh, yes!  Ideas!  Seeds of posts.  Waiting for that Divine Spark to flourish, grow, blossom, blah-de-blah-de-blah.

But it’s winter, yannow.  So the seeds of posts just wait, beneath a blanket of icy cold snow, wait for my brain to engage again.

Um.

I swear I have a brain in here somewhere.

Hi!  Did you know yesterday was Official De-Lurking Day?  I didn’t.  So can we have an Official OmegaMom’s Delurking Day?  And have some of my commenters (regular or not) just say something, anything, ask me a question, tell me “There, there, everything will be all right, the sun will come up tomorrow–Tomorrow Is A Brand-New Day!”?  Puh-leeze?  I’m feeling lonely and brain-dead and would appreciate some outside input.

Broody hen lays eggs.
Alas, the concrete floor is hard
And cracked eggs result.

Sick, whiny dotter
Rejects medicine with pouts.
Mom is now grumpy.

After frigid weeks
The temp goes to plus fifteen.
O joy!  Spring is here!

Boots, chaps, hat, blue jeans:
The dotter rushes to dress.
Saddle Club is on!

Safeway Select food
Is quick and easy to cook.
But does it taste good??

Moans and groans and moans.
OmegaDad is still sick.
Mom is still grumpy.

Motrin is Da Bomb.
One quick dose calms many fevers.
Oh no!  We are out!

Cold moonlit dawg walk.
Two moose pose in yard next door.
Quick, dawg!  Back inside!

We are going on day 12 of two-digit temperatures below zero.  While it is a cause of intense cabin fever, there is beauty in the cold.

When the breeze stirs the trees, the frozen trunks clack against each other with a hollow sound that reminds me of the sound of elk antlers crashing in the dark in mid-September during the season of rut.  Clack-clack-clackity-clack…quiet…clack…creak…quiet…clack-clack-clack…

The crystalline structure of snow changes as it gets colder; when a snowfall is new, everything is hushed, including footfalls.  When it’s this cold, the snow squeaks and crunches as you walk on it; there is no hush.  Scrunch-squeak-crunch, scrunch-squeak-crunch, scrunch-squeak-crunch.

There are times when I wish we had OmegaDad’s favorite non-existent invention, the retina-cam.  Driving the dotter to her gymnastics class on Monday–the only day this week that she’s been out–I saw the late afternoon sunlight backlight the clouds of steam coming off the fire station’s heating system on the roof, and it was beautiful.  Walking out to check on the (voracious, rabid, grape-hunting) chickens in the late night, I was crunching through a cold snowy landscape flooded with the light from the waxing gibbous moon and wished there was a way to capture that picture.  (By the way, this weekend’s full moon is the biggest of the year.)

Each of these times, of course, I have had neither recorder nor camera handy.

Vignettes of the cold:

• The thermometer broke at -80 in Tok.  The Weather Service pooh-poohs it, claiming it was only -65.  Tok is nowhere near us, thank heavens; we’ve only hit -29.
• The good thing about the deep freeze is that when it’s up around zero, it feels warm.
• When it’s this cold, it’s a Bad Idea to unthinkingly grab the handle of a grocery cart in the parking lot with your bare hands.  The cold, it burns.  Fast.
• The plumbers in this area are so backed up it’s frightening; the cold has lasted long enough that normally well-insulated houses have frozen pipes.
• The U.S. Cross-Country Skiing Championships were delayed multiple times; in protest, a group of skiers from California decided to ski in the buff, wearing only briefs, bras, gloves and hats.  “It’s not so bad!” exclaims one insane young man.
• The cold seems to draw any moisture in the house air straight to the windows, where it freezes.  I envision molecules of water doing slo-mo race sequences, a la Steve Austin (The Six Million Dollar Man?  Oh, go away, kiddies, those of us oldsters know what I’m describing), or to the theme from Rocky. 

OmegaDad and I are finally out of the woods in terms of the Illness Of Doom.  Hurray!  The dotter, however, is still sick, still running fevers, and I’m close to the “it’s time for the doctor” stage for her.

We are living in The House of Pain.

I got sick last Friday.  OmegaDad got sick a day later.  I keep waiting for it to Go Away.

Nope.  Now the dotter has it.

WAH!  She was just back to school yesterday!  The end of all the “togetherness”, enforced by the bitter cold, was such a relief!  But this morning, after OmegaDad’s dread Man Cold response woke me early, I slouched out to the living room where the dotter was, she snuggled with me, and said:  “I don’t feel good.  My throat hurts.”  So I hauled out the trusty thermometer, and OmegaDad has a fever and the dotter has a fever and I feel like throwing a tantrum.

In the meantime, I am not alone in being sucked into the Ravenhearst mystery black hole.

TeenDoc, at Welcome To the Dollhouse, posted an interesting challenge:  Write your life in 100 words, no more, no less.

I thought I’d take it on.  Now, having re-read TeenDoc’s paragraph, I feel mine doesn’t have “flavor” or “depth” or something (in other words, I liked her approach much better).  But, nonetheless, here goes:

Born in Chicago to Beatnik parents.  Father intense, musical, mathematical, gifted.  Mother calm, artsy, pragmatic writer.  Lonely, awkward geek through my teens.  In college, ignored programming in favor of writing historical romances. Dropped out to work on magazine; returned to college and dropped out again two more times. Moved to Arizona, then California. Returned to college and decided programming was okay after all. Applied to national labs internship for the hell of it. Met OmegaDad there. Moved to Lubbock. Started trying for a baby. Moved to Arizona. Endured infertility and failed IVFs, then healed emotionally and adopted OmegaDotter. What’s next?

So, it’s your turn.  Do your version in the comments here, or post on your blog and link back here.

In the meantime, some notes:

In the “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth” department, OmegaUnk commented on our record-breaking string of below zero days by mentioning it was 95F in his neck of the woods that day.  My response:  Ppbbbbttttttt!

In the “Gee, thanks, that really helped a lot!” department, Kate of High Altitude Gardening commiserated with me on my recent hidden-object games addiction, asked me to start a support group, and then told me to download Madame Fate.  Which I promptly did.  Ahem.

In the “I know it doesn’t make sense, just trust me” department, Pretzel told me where to find humidifiers.  So:  Yes, it doesn’t make sense, because all my life I’ve needed humidifiers during the icy cold months just like you suggested, but in this house, we need a dehumidifier.  Currently what’s happening is that any time we bathe or run the dishwasher or boil water, more moisture enters the air, and the house is so well sealed that it congeals on the windows and around the doorjambs, and it’s cold enough outside so that what congeals on the windows and doorjambs freezes.  This is Not Good for the house.  And frustrating for us.  In fact, it’s mighty damned embarrassing to have to thump and whack on the door from the inside when there’s a cold Pizza Hut employee with (supposedly) hot pizzas waiting on the outside, just because the door is iced shut and it’s the only way to shake loose the ice and open the door…

In the “Mem’ries” department (from two respects–first off, I should have answered this weeks ago, and secondly, it’s about our trip to China to adopt the dotter):  Yes, Elaine, I did, indeed, belong to the September 2001 DTC email list, and I do think it was me and OmegaDad you met on the bridge on Shamian Island!

In the “oh, just go check her out!” department:  I’ve been meaning to write up something about women in science, sexism, and displays of femininity, prompted by a series of posts by Dr. Isis, with associated incredibly thoughtful commentary.  But finally, my brain still frozen, I’ve decided to just point you to her blog to say “Go Forth And Read!”  She’s snarky, funny, and a rollicking good read who enjoys being a scientist and a fashionista.  Enjoy.

Our plumber, who we had to call in again because, while we had heat, it was very anemic, was afraid that our pipes had frozen somewhere.  Eeek!  But, no–whew!–it was the pump on the heating system.  Still quite pricy, but a hella lot less pricy than the alternative.  The plumber reported that they had been working endless days thawing out people’s heating systems because it’s been so cold, for so long, that normally well-insulated systems have given up the ghost.

The water in the chicken coop was frozen yesterday night.

Our kitchen door is freezing shut; we have to aim a heater at the door for a few minutes to loosen things up to the point where a few good whacks against the wood will jar things loose.

All our windows have chunks of ice at the bottom.  (We are trying to find a dehumidifier, but every store is sold out, hah!)

The poor dawg is having serious problems when he goes outside to do his thang.  It’s funny, but sad, to watch him try to poop while holding first one paw, then the next, up in the air.  By the time he’s done and we’re at the bottom of the stairs to go back to the kitchen (having thumped the ice free to open the door to let him out to…), he’s a miserable puppy limping along.  Time to go buy doggie boots and hope like hell he’ll wear them.

We’re in the fifth day of the cold snap; it’s been below zero here in Suburban Alaska all five of those days, while Big City still reached above zero on the first day.  The cold weather is forecast to continue until Friday, with “highs” of 5 below zero.

Suburban Alaska has postponed its Alaska Statehood Celebration, which was scheduled for today.  The commentary on the story was full of Rough Tough Alaskans sneering at the weeny wusses who “can’t handle a little cold!”  OmegaMom raises her hand:  that’s me!

Right now, it’s 26 below zero here.  It was 30 below zero in the middle of the night.

The end result is that my brain is frozen.  I have ideas for posts floating around in my head, but nothing coalesces.  Bear with me:  the brain will defrost sometime soon.

Yes, the heat is on again.  Yay!

It’s 25 below zero here.

Our furnace isn’t working.

The temperature in the house is ever-so-slowly dropping.  Downstairs, it is 60F, upstairs it is a bit warmer.  I figure we’re dropping a degree or two an hour.

Bahahaha!  “Happy New Year!” indeed.

Luckily, at least one plumber is at work on New Year’s Day.  (The others, even though they advertise 24-hour emergency service in the phone book, are apparently sleeping off hangovers.)  He’s getting his truck warmed up and will be on his way soon.