OmegaMom

The reason we were unable to see the moon-and-Venus show last night is that we had cloud cover moving in.  I thought my post was too late, but apparently I was able to get at least two people out to view the conjunction, so My Work Here On Earth Is Done.  Or something.

Anyway, the cloud cover moving in proceeded to dump snow.  And dump snow.  And dump snow.  And it is still snowing.

OmegaDad (who posted a fine rant last night) decided that now that it is almost March, and springtime is a glimmer of light in the dark tunnel of winter, he should create an ice rink in our back yard.

Ahem.

Well, okay, a mini ice rink.  A teeny tiny ice rink.  While I am dubious, at best, I admit that when it freezes up I will partake of the 12×12 icy goodness for a few turns around the ice.  So here is the mini rink filling up:

Here is OmegaDad doing more work on the mini rink:

The dotter actually helped shovel snow off the area  to be the base of the rink.  Then she played.  First, she stands straight, falls flat on her back, emerges from the snow, and looks adorable.  Note how the pinkness reflects off her PINK snow gear onto the snow…:

And then she marched on the play structure/thing we have, that was covered with snow, and did her favorite activity, creating an avalanche.  First, before:

Then in avalanche-y action:

All grand fun.

Do me a favor?

Go outside.  Right now.  Look to the west, down by the horizon.  See if you can see the slender crescent moon with Venus (at its brightest!) right next to it.  Don’t wait, don’t read the rest of this post, go check it out, then come back.

Do it for me.  I don’t think we’ll be able to see it tonight, because the sky is filled with milky clouds.  Wah!

I was able to get some (very bad) pics last night, but the two weren’t really close together.  They are tonight.  Last chance:  Venus is swinging into place so that it will be a morning star.  This was the best shot I got last night:

Check out some of these Flickr pics.

Go!  Don’t sit around!  You might miss it!

OmegaDad is a great believer in Darcy’s Law; he can find applications of Darcy’s Law everywhere.

What is Darcy’s Law?  Hm.  Well, think of lots of snow melting on a mountain.  What makes it sink into the ground and disseminate to other places?  Darcy’s Law.  In simplest terms, the movement of water through various materials is a function of pressure gradients.  (I’m sure I’m getting this wrong, and OmegaDad–or some other True Believer–will correct me.)

While doing a follow-up on yesterday’s eggsperiment, I found another site that described some things you can do with the resulting nekkid eggs.  The one experiment that caught my attention was to have two nekkid eggs; dump one in a container of water, the other in a container of corn syrup.  Seal them up and wait a few days.  The nekkid egg in the water will look pretty much the same; the one in the corn syrup will have shriveled up.  (Yes, this has something to do with the previous two paragraphs.)

So.  Last night I snuggled up with OmegaDad, and first drove him out of bed in a fit of worry that we had left our clothes shopping behind in Big City by merely asking him where the shopping bag was.  Once that was done, and we were nicely spooned once again, I started whispering sweet nothings in his ear; to wit:  A summary of the additional egg experiment.  Now, I had read the explanation of the final result, and was curious as to OmegaDad’s response.  So I waited a beat.

“Of course!” quoth OmegaDad.  “Darcy’s Law!”

Wanting to be just that extra touch sure, I coyly asked him, “How so?”

“The water inside the egg will migrate outward into the corn syrup; in the water container, there will be water migrating inwards.”

Kewl:  it was just as the explanation on the ‘net had said.  My very own snuggling science explainer.

Then he went on:  “And of course it would, because that’s how cell walls work anyway.”

“So, what–are eggs just one great big cell?!” I asked.

He turned over, and I could see him giving me an old-fashioned look in the dark, even if I couldn’t see him.

“Think.  Eggs.  Sperm.  Cells.  Think.”

“Oh.  Duh.”  Yes, indeedy-oh:  a chicken egg is one great big cell.  Duh.

There ya have it:  Mushy romantic goings-on in the Omega Parental Bed.  Sweet nothings.  Deep emotional conversations.  Darcy’s Law, cell membranes, and science experiments, all in one fell swoop.

While getting ideas for science projects, I chanced upon a mention somewhere on the Intertubes of using [some item] to dissolve an eggshell while leaving the remainder of the egg intact.  I mentioned this in passing to OmegaDad, with [some item] replaced by “baking soda”.  He scoffed at the baking soda, but thought vinegar might do.  He thought it was a really nifty idea.

He and the dotter set up two mason jars on the kitchen counter, one filled with vinegar, the other with Dr Pepper (there is no period after the “r”), thinking that soda pop might be just as acidic, and dumped two uncooked eggs, shells intact, into the jars.

This evening, I was called into the kitchen by a very excited dotter.  “Omigosh, you have to see it!  Come see the egg, mommy!  It’s all squishy!”  So I wandered into the kitchen and found OmegaDad rinsing the remainder of the shell off the egg that had sat in the vinegar…and then we played with it.  It was very pearlescent, not as fragile as I thought it might be, and very cool.

Here’s OmegaDad squeezing the egg:

Then we grabbed my itty bitty book light (not the type of trademark fame, but even itty-bittier), turned it on, placed it next to the egg membrane, and turned off the kitchen light:

Does that, or does that not, seem like something that belongs in a fantasy novel?!  “G’kark held the glowing orb in his hands with breathless awe, waiting for the Gzrk to respond to his silent call…”

OmegaDad and OmegaDotter took turns bouncing it:

Then we poked a hole in it, which was like poking a hole in a water balloon.  I have it up on YouTube, but YouTube keeps telling me it’s still being processed.  Harrumph.  I will try again in a few hours, and edit this post then.

The whole family is entranced; it is so very interesting. The dotter is going to check out water (our control), vinegar, Dr Pepper, Pepsi, Coca Cola, and orange juice. The write-ups all say cola drinks should do it; however, the Dr Pepper we tried doesn’t seem to have done anything.

It was a sunny day today, so I had to sneak out to get some pictures around the yard.  Yesterday was actually much more interesting; it was sunny and there were clouds and snippets of fog, but, alas, every time I decided I was going to ditch work for 15 minutes for some pics, a cloud or fog would filter in front of the sun, and things stopped being pretty and started being dingy gray.

But today was nice.  First up, we have bird tracks in the snow.  OmegaDad has been feeding the birds; it’s not quite time for us to be worrying about bears, and it’s far enough into the winter season that the birds are voracious when they find a feeder.  They frolic around, dive-bombing each other and bashing into the feeder, knocking seed into the snow, and then the ones who are being fought off discover the seeds in the snow and gorge themselves down there.

We circle into the back yard now to take pics of other things, such as a snow-bedecked seed head of the cow parsnip which infests our back and side yards:

A twig in the snow:

A snowy stump in the very back, up against the woodsy area:

The sun peeping through the trees on the southeast side of the yard:

All very pretty.  Alas, the coming of the sun has made me antsy for spring; as you can see, spring is still far away.  But it’s getting light before 8 a.m. and dark after 6:00 p.m., so we are making progress.  Various of my blog feeds are featuring pictures of buds, and all I can do is offer a heartfelt, mental “Pppbbbbtttt!” at them, and cling to the knowledge that in a few months we, too, will be seeing buds.

Every day, the dotter’s backpack-cum-horsie-decorated-duffel bag contains her homework folder.  Tucked into the homework folder on irregular occasions there are notes from school: 

• The official memo on what to do when the volcano blows (the Twitter feed for the volcano continually says “Volcano has not erupted. Elevated seismicity continues.”  It is interspersed with such highly notable pieces of info as “The web camera is dark”, when it’s 10:36 out on February 18.)
• The notice for the Sock Hop.
• The notice for parent-teacher conferences (the last one had the “your child is working at or above grade level, so Ms. Nicely thinks there is no need for a PT conference.  If you still wish to arrange one, the following time has been scheduled…”
• Monthly calendar and monthly foodservice calendar.
• Hockey and wrestling sign-up info.  Har.
• The science fair project packet.
• An occasional school newsletter.

Whoa.  Back up there a minnit, pardners!

“Science fair project packet”?!

Whoa.

Yes, folks, we have reached that childhood milestone:  the science fair.

This necessitated an explanation of what a science fair project is like, and a definition of the word “hypothesis”.  Oh, boyo.

So yours truly has spent the last hour exploring Teh Google to see what the Intertubes have to say about “first grade science project”.

The science fair is March 25.

We shall see.  I will keep all posted.  Any grand ideas for simple science fair projects?  Any good/bad experiences?  What have been your experiences with kiddo’s science fairs?

I won’t suggest project ideas directly; I will only give indirect ideas.  OmegaDad has already suggested a “where do eggs come from” poster board, which has its distinct merits.  There are also some neat and easy experiments with eggs online.

• Ms. Vinegar Martinis asked me what kind of floofy drinks I like.  I admit a horrendous fondness for piña coladas, blended with ice, whipped cream on top, a maraschino cherry, and a little umbrella.  Another floofy drink I like–a hangover (har!) from when I was a wild-n-crazy young 20s-ish gal living in gay-town Chicago–is the Golden Cadillac.  Flavored margaritas, such as peach or mango, get a thumbs-up from me, as well.

  When we were living in Small Mountain University Town, on hot summer days, I would take the dotter off to the local outdoor swimming pool.  After an afternoon in the sun, we would stop at Baskin-Robbins.  One day, I noticed they had a flavor called Coco-Nutty.  Nom nom nom.  The next time we visited, I combined it with a scoop of lemon sherbert.  Nom nom nom, squared.  It was the ice-cream equivalent of the piña colada, and became my staple there.

• Noreen asked what the elementary school Sock Hop was like.  Let’s see…First off, the dotter’s elementary school has a new music teacher, Mr. L., who looks like he just got out of college from getting his music education degree.  He is, IMO, quite kewl; at the Christmas concert, for instance, he had forty fourth- and fifth-graders all playing in time and in tune on recorders.  Nothing too fancy, but it was quite an accomplishment.  Anyway, he seems to be the driving force for many newer musical adventures at the elementary school front.

  The Sock Hop featured all the lady school teachers in poodle skirts.  Oh, yes!  And a few of the girls.  My fave ’50s dress-up, though, was the stocky young man in the fourth (?) grade who had greased his hair, was wearing a muscle Tee, blue jeans, and a black leather jacket.

  When we arrived, the music blasting out was 80s rock-and-roll.  OmegaDad and I eyed each other dubiously; this was not sock hop material to us.  However, soon enough the DJ (Mr. L.) was rolling out fifties and sixties faves, requiring serious Twist and Swing action.

  There were hot dogs and chips, and a malt shop featuring root beer floats.  All in all, grand fun.

• Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa:  Shortly after we returned Buffy, our formerly broody hen, to Le Grand Coop, we had to remove Angie, our Brahma, due to the other hens pecking her legs bloody.  So Angie has been in our garage for a few weeks, recuperating.  Yesterday morning we returned her to the coop.

  I had thought the peckage was the result of Angie molting, and thought nothing of checking up on her.

  OmegaDad checks the chickens late at night, before bedtime.  I was reading in the dotter’s bedroom, finishing off Godel, Escher, Bach, when I heard OmegaDad muttering, “Shit!  Shit!” outside the room.  When I emerged a few minutes later, I found him downstairs in the office, on the computer.

  “So what was all the muttering about?” I asked.

  The sad tale came out:  He had forgotten that Angie had been returned to the coop, so had not checked during the day.  When he got out there, he discovered her beaten and bloody; the other hens had pecked out all her leg feathers again, and pulled out almost all the feathers at the base of her tail.  I went out to the garage to view our poor beat-up hen, and it was just gross; she looked like ground beef.  :-(  And I felt terrible, because I hadn’t thought anything of it, and felt like it was my fault she got beat up.  Anyway, Angie is back in the garage, recuperating again, and if we can’t figure out a way to get her back into the coop without the other hens savaging her again, we are going to have to find a new home for her.

• Unka Bill grumps about the PINKage of modern-day small girls.  I totally agree.  In fact, when the dotter was a wee one, she had very little–if any!–pink attire.  She wore cute little yellow outfits, and green outfits, and denim onesies, leggings in a variety of colors, cute little dresses in bright colors.  Alas, in the past two years, she has been quite firm in what she wants to wear.  The Borg has assimilated her.  All I can say is that most girls emerge from the PINK phase at some point in time…I hope the dotter goes Goth, or Emo, because she looks mighty fine in black.
• When the weather got cold, OmegaDad retreated from the ongoing construction around the north forty, and took to experimenting with baking.  We now have homemade bread on a regular basis, and homemade cakes, and (today) homemade brownies.  Our bank account has thrived as a result, but so has my weight.  I am eagerly awaiting the return of spring, not just for the sunshine and warmth, but so that OmegaDad will return to construction and stop feeding us luscious baked goods.  All the blue jeans I purchased early last fall, which were too big on me then, are now fitting quite snugly.  This is Not Good.

Later gators.

Because you’re all pretty kewl:

1. Eat your heart out, 2. I (heart) balancing rocks, 3. Heart with Flowers Pendant, 4. Mountain Dew Heart Whole, 5. Heart no. 1, 6. M&M Heart, 7. black hearts, 8. I Heart Flickr, 9. my heart, 10. free texture . heart bokeh, 11. This heart is a stone, Acid House Kings, 12. Human Heart, 13. ~ I give you my heart ~, 14. Drops and hearts, 15. More Hearts!, 16. With my heart on my hand, 17. My burning heart, 18. Heart with Hearts, 19. The Voice of a broken heart, 20. Flickr Hearts Fun, 21. Heart of flowers, 22. Heart of Glass, 23. a lost heart, 24. Mirrored Sea Shell Heart, 25. my heart is on your hands.

All are Creative Commons items, but you do need to go and look at the originals, and check out these photographers’ other works.  Also check out the “Hearts” Flickr stream; great fun.

The dotter dressed all in pink yesterday for school.  Pink, pink, PINK.  She looked mighty darned cute, but boy-oh-boy am I getting sick and tired of PINK.  She returned with cards and candy.  Then we had to go to the Sock Hop at school.  I did not want to go; I was feeling pouty (complete with lower lip stuck out!).  But OmegaDad whispered to me, “Please come.  I’d really like it,” in a sort of puh-leeze-don’t-leave-me-alone-with-screaming-kids-and-loud-music-puh-leeze!  I gritted my teeth and went.

And had fun.  Who’d'a thunk it?!

I think.

But I’m not sure.

Dayum, the man is giving me whiplash!

Oh, no, it’s not OmegaDad!  It’s President Obama.

I’ll admit–even though I don’t think the man is the Messiah, the Second Coming, The One, and all that, I was hoping that he’d sweep into office with a full-fledged economic plan ready to go on Day One.

He didn’t.  I frowned.

The days passed.  I frowned some more.

Then the stimulus package got batted back and forth.  Things got added.  Things got taken away.  And here it is, signed into law.  It’s not what I wanted, but then, I didn’t have to try to herd 465 cats to get it put together.

But the thing that really concerned me…what I really wanted to see…was what he was going to do about The Banks.  My idea of the full-fledged economic plan ready to go on Day One included some serious housecleaning, an in-depth look at the “Too Big To Fail” banks and the next tier up, even–possibly–a bank holiday or nationalization or something that indicated that, yes, he knew it was a big bad problem.

So he and Geithner were working on Son of TARP:  Bank Bailout Two.  All the financial types were on tenterhooks, wanting to know what was involved in it.  A whole series of rumors were floated, and each one got approval or shot down immediately, and then seemed to vanish.  The plan was to be unveiled on Monday…but then, Monday, word came that it was postponed until Tuesday.  Commenters on various financial blogs groaned; surely this meant that THEY DON’T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK THEY’RE DOING!!!1!

I groaned, too; wiffling, waffling, lots of vagueness, postponements–ack!

In the meantime, a raft of economists and econobloggers and econoblog commenters were all saying WE NEED TO NATIONALIZE THE BANKS!!!  NOW!!!  None of the rumors floated about SOT had anything like that.  There was much moaning, groaning, and gnashing of teeth.  Weak!  They cried.  Wishy-washy!  OMG, he’s a failure already!  We’re circling the drain, and he’s fiddling around while Rome burns (or something like that).  We’re going to have a Lost Decade, just like Japan!  Or worse!

(Of course, they all acknowledged that nationalization would go over like a lead balloon.  And there hadn’t been any mention of such a thing in the mainstream media at all.  No articles saying it was a good idea, no articles saying it was a bad idea–just no mention.)

I moaned and groaned and gnashed, too.

But then…

Then, on Monday night, snippets of an interview of Obama to be aired on Tuesday’s Nightline started coming out.

In particular, Obama came right out and compared the current economic situation to…Japan and Sweden.  He pointed out that Japan kept pumping money into tottering banks, and the end result was The Lost Decade, an ongoing struggle to recuperate from a great crash in the early 1990s, which Japan still has not recovered from.  And then he pointed out that Sweden nationalized the banks and bounced back within years.  And then he sort of laughed and said that Sweden’s great advantage was that they had only five banks to deal with, and the U.S. has more, so obviously we can’t follow their path exactly.

But so far as I can tell, he didn’t say that the other choice was the right path, either.  And it’s the first time someone in the presidential administration has come right out and said something like this since the crisis began.  Out in the open.  Out there as a possibility.  Spoken by the president himself.  Like an imprimatur or something.

Then, on Tuesday, Geithner comes out with the much ballyhooed Son of TARP.  The thud was heard everywhere.  “That’s it?!  That’s all?!  That’s not a plan!  That’s an outline!” was the general response.  The market dropped.  The econobloggers and their commenters, and the financial writers all moaned and groaned some more.  More THEY DON’T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK THEY’RE DOING! hair tearing and shirt ripping occurred.  There was this one little item, though, that some folks seized on, the idea–written up in SOT–that the banks needed to be stress tested, so that everyone knew what the extent of the damage was.  But the moaners and groaners scoffed, saying “Get out the rubber stamps!  PASS!”

And then, on Wednesday, this little item showed up:  Bank Stress Test May Expand U.S. Regulators’ Role.  Lo and behold.  Obama had sent out the bank examiners the very next day.

And suddenly the word “nationalization” is showing up in all the mainstream media stories as a possibility.

And I am left with this impression that there is a distinct possibility that Mr. Pragmatism is crazy like a fox and has been orchestrating things so that within a few months, the nation as a whole will be on board with the idea of nationalization.

I’m not the only one; there’s a subgroup of the econoblog commenters who seem to feel the same way; and then there’s Andrew Sullivan and others at the Atlantic Monthly.

On the other hand, maybe he’s a complete noob who is going to flail around helplessly, tossing more hundreds of billions away without any oversight, just like the last administration.

Whiplash.  I’ll let you know in about a year, eh?

So Joanna tagged me with the 25 Things meme.  Right now, I am fresh out of ideas for a blog post, and this was handy, so…

1. I broke my leg in the Grand Canyon and got a helicopter flight over closed airspace as a result.
2. I wanted to write best-selling historical romances as a living when I was in high school.
3. I still bite my fingernails.
4. I went to four different colleges before I got my degree.
5. When studying higher mathematics, I got to the point where I would do proofs in my dreams.  Some of those proofs actually turned out to be solutions to homework problems I was stuck on.
6. I have lived in Chicago; Prescott, Prescott Valley, and Flagstaff, AZ; Orinda, Lafayette, and San Leandro, CA; Lubbock, TX; and here in Alaska.
7. My earliest memory is of flying to visit my grandmother in Florida with my parents.  I was very small.
8. Before I had LASIK done, my eyesight was something like 20/600 in one eye, and 20/700 in the other.
9. When I was a teenager, I wanted to have five children, like my aunt and uncle.
10. I like floofy mixed drinks.
11. I have a knot on my left arm where I was caught between a wall and some girls’ room lockers that friends and I were pushing over in seventh or eighth grade.
12. I can recite The Jabberwock from memory.
13. I hate white chocolate.
14. Yesterday I learned that the part of the guitar’s neck where you are supposed to press down on the guitar strings is not the metal bump of the fret, but between the metal frets.
15. I am supremely lazy.
16. I abruptly dumped my very best friend, with no explanation, when I was around 20 or 21, for what I still think were very good reasons.
17. I have fallen in love three times.
18. I spent three weeks writing (long-hand) in a blaze of creativity while I was in my last bout at college; I was writing so much and so fast that it gave me a case of carpal tunnel syndrome that recurs now and then.  It ended up being about ninety pages on the computer.  I still have it on a hard-drive that is currently inaccessible.
19. I am a wuss and back away from confrontation on a regular basis.
20. I have phone-phobia, which was a problem when working as a magazine writer.
21. We lived near Cabrini Green when I was growing up.  I believe it has since been torn down?
22. Our house was set on fire by teenagers walking home from school in the alley behind us.
23. I save cards and letters others send to me.
24. Sometimes I like to watch golf on TV; it’s soothing.
25. I will be fifty on my next birthday.  This is bothering me.

Your turn!  You’re tagged!  Write it up somewhere and post a link in the comments!

I grew up in a musical household.  When I was the age the dotter is now, we had a baby grand piano in the living room (with, at one point, a caught mouse in a little cage sitting on it).  My father, who had played piano from a very young age, sometimes playing hours per day, would play Beethoven and Bach and other composers.  At other times, he would pull out the banjo or the guitar and play folk or classical music on them.  And sometimes, his friend Ray would show up with his guitar, or his bagpipes, and we would get an evening of the two of them jamming.

Most of the time, I didn’t pay serious attention; it was like having background music to my life.

There was a point where I asked Dad to teach me to play piano.  This did not work out; he was very serious and intense, but his philosophy was that, if anyone really wanted to learn, that person would practice on his own.  Hah!  As you might imagine, this didn’t mesh very well with a little girl’s outlook on life.  The “lessons” lasted, if I remember correctly, about a week.  See, I wanted to immediately be able to play like he could; the very concept of starting basic, practicing, and developing into that kind of pianist was, shall we say, a wee tad beyond my seven- or eight-year-old comprehension.  And if I couldn’t play like he could, well, then, I was a failure, and we might as well forget the whole affair.

It took me an awful long time to get beyond the whole mindset implicit in that last sentence.  But finally, when I was 27, on a lark I decided to learn to play the piano at the local community college.

I loved it.  So much that–for a short while–I decided to follow the music program at the CC, including music theory (ack, so hard!).  I signed up with their best pianist for private lessons, and she was a joy and a delight to learn from.  She also had a Steinway concert grand in her living room, a piano that was made for wet dreams; the movement on the keys was buttery soft, and the sounds that came from that piano sent shivers down my spine.

But life–in the form of unpaid bills and a desire to have more money–intervened, and I moved off to the Bay Area to get a job that paid better.  The piano went bye-bye, but I still wanted Music.  One day I chanced upon an advertisement for the Berkeley Community Chorus, which proclaimed that you didn’t need to audition to join.  So I sashayed off to the first meeting of the session, and was hooked.

I can remember driving across the Bay Area to my job in SF with the practice tape in my car’s cassette player, singing alto along with Handel’s Messiah, or some arrangement of old folk tunes, or–best of all–Mozart’s Mass in C Minor.  (One of the nice things about being in a chorus is that when you practice in your car, no-one is listening, and when you sing in the chorus, no-one is listening to you; they are listening to the whole chorus.  And boy, does that make a difference.)

Yesterday night, for some reason, I wanted some Big Music, so meandered off to YouTube to listen to Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C# Minor, then Orff’s Carmina Burana, then Verdi’s Dies Irae.  The Verdi and Orff are choral music, so there were a bunch of other choral suggestions, and there was the Mozart…So I had to play some.

There is something very special about being part of a large chorus, to be one voice in a whole melange, to be part of a grand musical instrument.  The Qui Tollis in Mozart’s Mass is…amazing.  Being in the chorus when this is sung makes me break out in goose bumps.

The end result of this bout of YouTubing was that I went to bed singing in my head and realizing just how desperately I need some music back in my life.  Pop and rap and listening to classic rock with my dotter is all very well and good, but I need to be making music again.

Today I:

• Kibbitzed over the dotter’s shoulder while she played Farm Mania.
• Spent about an hour “helping” her do gymnastics.
• Snuggled with her while she read GrannyJ’s latest letter (a few weeks after we received it).
• Helped her type an answering letter.
• Played Farm Mania myself.
• Spent too much time reading Twitters.
• Got ridiculously defensive when boss asked if he and coworker could help with the website revamp.  Why?!  Partly because I’m trying to get rid of years’ worth of accreted code schmutz and I don’t want to have to explain each and every step, partly because I’m trying to develop a “style” using the stylesheet and I need to write it down before passing it on, partly because…?
• Reveled in daylight when I was driving the dotter to school–we’re gaining five-and-a-half minutes each day, woot!
• Tried very hard to keep away from depressing here-comes-the-Depression websites.
• Read the memo from school about What To Do If The Volcano Blows.  (Yes!  We got an official memo about it!)
• Spent all day in my pajamas–driving the dotter to school, working six hours, helping with homework, playing, hanging out, eating dinner–and didn’t feel guilty about it, though did make sure not to turn on the video when we had a Skype meeting at work.
• Dipped in and out of Godel, Escher, Bach, which I am enjoying immensely, even though it’s–at the same time–immensely slow going.
• Suppressed any sneaky moments of gloom-n-doom.
• Determined that Wall Street is sorely in need of a good overall PR person, or else a bunch of sadly lacking common sense.
• Tried to figure out if I agree with the various incarnations of the stimulus plan or not.
• Felt amazed, astounded, and somewhat affirmed and proud that the dotter’s recital of friend S.’s tendency to peek at her math work at school and copy it ended up with, “That’s bad.  She’s not learning it.”
• Felt equally amazed, and very happy, that the dotter said about her latest assigned book from school, “I want to keep reading–it’s like TV in your head!”

I am finding that simply getting out of the house each day, and doing a little bit of exercise, plus a heapin’ helpin’ of commiseratin’ commentary from my readers, has helped keep the blues to a minimum for the past few days.  Fingers crossed that this continues!

First order of business, a PSA:  Don’t schedule a birthday party for your kid for the afternoon of the Super Bowl.  (Unless you’re also hosting a Super Bowl party and lots of friends and their families are scheduled to show up.)  We originally invited seven kids and an eighth sort of invited herself (but it was okay!).  The end result?  Three kids, one of whom was not feeling good.  Nonetheless, we all had a good time.

First, the cakey goodness from the hands of OmegaDad:

Isn’t that purty?!

Then, OmegaDad being a monster:

Then OmegaMom as monster, sliding down:

And OmegaMom being swarmed by kids.  Can three kids be called “a swarm”?  I was a horse who had fallen over.

I can say that it is mighty damned hard to be stuck in the doldrums when one is bouncing around with screaming, giggling kids.  Which is good.  It provided a much-needed boost in the emotion department, fer shur.

Aside from the low turnout, the main problem was arriving at Le Bounce Haus ten minutes before 1 p.m. and having the young lady at the counter blink blankly when we announced we were here for our scheduled (ahem!) party.  She said there were no parties scheduled for that day, and she was just about to close because no-one had shown up in hours for free-bounce time.

W.T.F. ?!?!

Double-plus UnGood.  I was about to go into panic mode and hyperventilate.  Luckily, I had handy in my purse a copy of the contract, which I flourished in her face, she called the owner, the owner made the executive decision to keep things open, and all went well.

Then there was the large woman with her large kids who decided to just help herself to some of our supplies.  OmegaDad was most put out by this. 

Since one of the things helping keep me in my funk is that the house is constantly looking like a hurricane or tornado or earthquake hit, I have taken the day off to apply some muscle power to things.  This should count as exercise, too; as some of my (lovely!  wonderful!  sweet!  kind!  helpful!  sympathetic!) commenters pointed out, exercise is a really good way to combat the Black Dawg.  As is just writing it all out, having people read, and comment, and say, “Oh, yeah, BTDT.”  Very funny, that:  just having people say they understand and are feeling the same way, some of the black is lifted and turned to light gray.  So thanks!