OmegaMom

Ah, spring!  When the pussywillows start popping, when the temperature hits 60 degrees, when yours truly spends days upon days upon days raking the yard to remove last fall’s dump of dead leaves and a winter’s worth of dawg poop.  What?  Surprised about us not picking up the poop during the winter?  Hey!  YOU try spending the extra few minutes to pick up dawg poop when it’s 20 below zero, there’s snow on the ground, and the dawg poop sinks into the snow because it’s so warm in comparison and it suddenly becomes a major excavation project to pick up the poop.

Just sayin’.

Anyway, I have been raking and soaking in the sunlight and warmth (we almost broke into the top ten highest temps for April today!), and loving it.  Oooh, yeah, gimme that Vitamin D, bay-bee!

OmegaDad, on the other hand, has rediscovered the one bad side to spring/summer in Alaska.

The Gloaming.

Last night, the dotter needed to snuggle with me in bed because she had watched something ER-esque on the TV at the neighbor’s house.  Apparently, there was lots of surgery, requiring lots of blood, lots of shouting, and generally unnerving stuff for her.  So I settled into bed with her and a book, and then fell asleep.

This left poor OmegaDad seeking another place to sleep.  (The dotter is too big now for all three of us to sleep well if she sneaks or is invited into bed with us.)

So he trotted out to the living room, blankie and pillow in hand, and snuggled up on the sofa.

Only to get all of about four hours’ of sleep last night, because of The Gloaming.

Yes, we have entered the time of year when we have lost all deep darkness at night; the time when the sunrise/sunset calculators that display twilight times now show “light” for astronomical twilight.  In two weeks, the calendar suddenly displays “light” instead of twilight times for nautical twilight.  Then, in the first weeks of June, civil twilight suddenly disappears and the calendars display “light” for that interval.

So The Gloaming is just beginning.  (Ooooh, a cute little itty-bitty baby Gloaming!)  It doesn’t bother me one bit; I can sleep through just about anything.  But any hints of light around OmegaDad make him sleep poorly; it’s just the way he’s built.  Our bedroom curtains block a certain amount of light, so it won’t bother him there for another month, but in the living room/kitchen area, we have three windows that have no coverings at all, and The Gloaming creeps in on crepuscular feet.

(Isn’t that a great word?  “Crepuscular”.  It, and “gloaming”, are actual real live words that are actually applied to this exact situation.  One thing I have loved about living in Alaska is that I get to use these words to refer to Real Live Environmental Conditions!  Woot!)

We spent the weekend doing weekend-ish types of things, including OmegaDad replacing the tree swing out front (it had an untimely demise due to rotting rope, which resulted in OmegaDotter being dumped and getting a small rope burn on her fingers).  And while this was going on (and laundry and cleaning and luvvin’ on chickens and stuff like that), I was watching the flood of information on swine flu on the Internet blossom and spread like fungus spores.

Watching the Twitter feed on the search term “swine flu” has been fascinating. 

Some utterly baseless rumors and misunderstandings (these are all things I have personally read on Twitter):

• Since this new version contains elements of avian influenza, swine influenza, and human influenza, it can’t possibly be natural; it’s been cooked up as a biowarfare weapon.  (Flu viruses swap DNA all the time, it’s why they mutate and we need new vaccines every year.)
• It’s a plot by Barack Obama to take attention off of the economy.
• It’s a plot by Barack Obama to force through his national health care agenda.
• It’s a plot by the libruls and Barack Obama to extend government control.
• The meeting between Barack Obama and Felipe Solis, director of Mexico’s National Anthropology Museum (Solis died the next day) was an attempt to assassinate the President.
• Sasha Obama has the swine flu.
• The reason the swine flu has shown up in the U.S. is because of illegal immigrants.  (Let’s just ignore the fact that the majority of the cases identified so far have been due to–eek, gasp!–tourists returning from Mexico.)
• It’s a plot by Big Pharma to drive up medicine sales.
• It’s the result of a slow news week and all media hype.
• It’s the END OF THE WORLD!!!!!!
• You can get swine flu by (eating/fucking/looking at/smelling) pork.
• The governments of the world are overreacting.
• The governments of the world are underreacting.
• It’s the fault of big, bad factory farms.
• I am sick–it must be swine flu!
• I am sick–I wish everyone would stop saying it’s swine flu!
• OMG, I am afraid to leave the house because of swine flu!
• Dudes, just chill out–x people die each year because of ordinary flu/because of car accidents/because of poorly prepared medications/choose your pet issue–so we don’t need to worry.
• Fifty kazillion riffs on the xkcd web comic related to swine flu and Twitter.
• Another fifty kazillion bad swine flu jokes (oinkment, kids kissing pigs, when pigs fly, etc.).

The psychology of the Internet rumor mill is just amazing to me.

Now, I have been reading the blogs of people who are actually involved with epidemiology (in particular, Effect Measure and H5N1), and they are confronted with two choices:  Either react now, or react later.  If they react later and the flu fizzles, hey, it’s okay.  But if they react later, and the flu doesn’t fizzle but turns into a pandemic akin to the 1918 flu, we’re all in deep kimchee.  If they react now, and the flu fizzles, well, it’s like the boy who cried wolf.  Do it too many times, and the one time it’s needed is the time that everyone will yawn, go “Ho hum, another flu panic…”  React now and the flu is a baddie?  Then everything is in place to stage quarantines, border closings, flu meds, and more when and where it is needed.

Right now, it’s really too early to tell.  The reports from Mexico are not good.  What I’ve read is 1600+ sick, with 150-200 deaths so far.  (Actually, what I’ve read in some places is 1600+ hospitalized, which is a major difference.)  By the end of this week, there should be much better data, including how fast it is spreading outside Mexico.

And, of course, maybe by the end of the week, they can figure out just what the major differences are that are causing fatalities in Mexico, but mild cases elsewhere.

Who is this?  I told her she looked 18 years old.  Then I told her she wasn’t allowed to look 18 years old again until she actually was 18 years old.

I also told her that my school pics were nothing like this.  Not a thing.  We had the ol’ stand in front of a beige canvas, be told to smile, click, and then the mugshot.

I was going to use some weird pun on “tendon”, but I couldn’t think of one.  So I figured I’d just indulge in some early ’80s music to say:

All is well with OmegaDad.  The doc says he was very, very lucky in that he missed everything that could have caused problems–no damaged tendon, no damaged nerves, no nicked vein or artery, just straight through.

Whew.  Of course, it will take weeks to heal, but, hey–it gave me the chance to make tonight’s dinner tortillas.  Now I know that you need to roll them tissue-thin, instead of paper-thin.

(For the purists out there:  Yes, I am quite aware that this is not Falco’s original version…)

A PSA:

If you are interested in sharing the wonders and intricacies of the kitchen with your seven-year-old dotter, and you want to demonstrate to her that mango pits are hard and woody and stringy and stuff like that…?

Don’t use a dull-ish kitchen knife to jab at the mango pit.

Especially if that dull-ish kitchen knife has a nice sharp point.

Especially if your index finger is somewhere behind the mango pit.

Because what will happen is you will exclaim (loudly) (in front of the seven-year-old), “OH, SHIT!!!” when the knife rebounds off the mango pit and slices through your finger.

And then you will have to send your seven-year-old haring off for your wife, who is blissfully, quietly, peacefully sitting on the front porch soaking in the sun.

There will be a frantic interlude in the bathroom, with blood spurting everywhere and your dotter offering her hand-made first-aid kit as help.

And then the whole fam-damily will spend the next two hours getting you off to an (open) urgent care center, where the doctor and nurse will put you into a surgical room, clean and examine the wound, and let you know (by the way) that you actually went all the way through the finger and you might have severed your flexor tendon.  And here’s the number of the orthopedic surgeon you need to call tomorrow morning.  And here’s the splint for your finger, which you may need to wear for up to six weeks.  And if you don’t wear the splint and bend your finger wrong, and you have harmed the flexor tendon, it will snap and retreat up the inside of your arm and the surgeon will need to stick a wire up your arm and fish around looking for the tendon, and, and, and…

At which point, your wife will flinch and hunker down and cover her ears because, dayum, she so does not want to hear this graphic detail, thankyewverramuch.

And then the whole family will wander off to the nearest pharmacy that is still open to get pain killers and antibiotics ASAP.

And then the whole family will go off to IHOP for dinner and have the worst dinner possible.  (I had something that purported to be chicken crepes florentine.  There were, somewhere inside these things, small pieces of spinach.  There was, on the outside, a drenching of some coagulated yellow gravy stuff.  There were many pieces of chicken and onion.  Isn’t spinach much cheaper than chicken?!)

Anyway, this is your PSA for the day:  Mangoes are dangerous.

Git yer minds outta the gutter, dudes!

I’m not talking about sex here, dammit!  I’m talking about…

Spring!

Frost heave!

A yard that due to 3 days of more-than-50-degree weather (yes!) has been freed from a layer of snow, only to reveal…

Hummocks.

Lumps.

Hollows.

Mud.

Seriously–I think we didn’t notice last year, because we weren’t out in the yard this early.  This year, we have chickens in the coop in the backyard, so we need to be trudging across at least twice per day.  And so, this year, we have noticed that the yard on either side of the septic tank is at least a foot-and-a-half higher than the area right over the septic tank.  OmegaDad is in dire fear that this means we have a Problem with the septic tank; I am convinced that after a week or so more of 50-degree-plus weather it will subside.

When you step on certain spots on the lawn–spots that look nice and dry and solid, unlike the spots that are pools of mud–they crunch beneath you, plunging your foot four inches downward in a single instant.  WHAM!  So you’ve got these unnatural spots where you innocently stepped…and you’ve got the natural spots where the ground just sank because the ice has already melted from that one six-inch-square area, unlike the surrounds.

It is very interesting.  It has the Omega Grownups thinking seriously of purchasing a roller drum for the tractor, so that we can smooth things out once the ground has thawed more evenly.

Today we had monsoon style clouds up over the mountains, and, once again, I cursed the fate that had me out and about without my camera.  (”The fate”, aka foolish forgetful OmegaMom.)  OmegaDad and I were driving to Home Debit, enjoying quality time together because the dotter is off having a Hannah Montana-filled overnight with best bud K.  As we swept up into the parking lot, one of the clouds over one of the mountains simply…dropped.  People who live in the southwest are familiar with this activity in the summer time thunderstorms; the precipitation beneath this one, however, was bright white rather than dark grey.  It was a thundersnow dropping onto the side of the mountain, highlit by the sun, and it would have been a stunning, awesome picture.  But I didn’t have my camera with me.

Damn.

Anyway, expect to hear more about SPRING! from me as the days go on.  I am practically dancing with excitement!

Tea parties have been in the news; they were organized to occur on April 15–Income tax day.  “TEA” in this case stands for “taxed enough already”, and the intent was to riff off the Boston Tea Party.  There’s been lots of discussion in the ol’ blogosphere, so I thought I’d just chime in.  (Those of my readers who have already read my post on the subject on the debate board can skip this, even though I’ve fleshed it out considerably.)

A bud on a board wanted folks to view the protestors’ views as “equally valid”. 

Some (most) of the folks at these “tea parties” were protesting bailouts. I happen to agree with this, thinking that the big banks, financial companies, and insurers were allowed to grow too big in an unregulated manner, and it’s a cryin’ shame that these companies are now considered “too big to fail”. I also think the banks that were teetering on the brink should have been allowed to go over that brink.

Unfortunately, if that were done, a helluva lot of people would be seriously hurt as a result, much more seriously than the general populace is hurting at the moment.  Pretend that Bank of America went under.  And Citibank.  And Goldman Sachs.  And some others.  These are big financial institutions; the FDIC would be paying out boatloads of money to depositors; there would be panic in the streets and riots and disruptions of trade in basic staples and OMG NO DEBIT CARDS WORKING–EEEK!  Much though it pains me to say it, I think throwing the TARP money at the banks and financial institutions has smoothed the disastrous results out.

So right now, what we’re getting is a lot of smoke and mirrors that claims the banks are profitable, but then you take a look at how much they got in TARP $$ (which began under Bush) and you realize that the “profit” is illusory.  One example:  there’s this cute and funny little thing about assets and liabilities where you can either “mark-to-market” (i.e., assume in your spreadsheets that these various assets and liabilities are worth what the current market says they are) or you can “mark-to-the-future” (i.e., assume that your assets and liabilities are worth…oh…whatever you think they should be worth).  Seems that the Financial Accounting Standards Board “eased” the rules early in April, allowing banks and other financial institutions the ability to track the market more closely when things are going well, but less closely when things aren’t going so well.  Which means, in the end, that the banks and financial institutions can decide that their devalued assets aren’t so devalued after all.

Another example:  Wells Fargo rejiggered its fiscal year, and just dropped December–it’s worst month ever–from its calculations for first quarter results.

The bailouts began under Bush, as I noted…No-one was organizing big protests then. Small protests, yes, and a groundswell of emails, phone calls, and letters stopped Congress from agreeing to Paulson’s attempt to run a three-page, oversight-free bailout bill past them–thank heavens. But no more protests after that until now; why when Obama does it, but not when Bush did? Our kids will be paying for this for a long time.

Some (most) of these folks were protesting the stimulus dollars.  I think the stimulus bill was either too much (it should have been zero) or too little (it’s not gonna be enough to accomplish what it set out to do).  In any case, once again, I think our kids will be paying for this for a long time.

Some (most) of these folks were protesting higher taxes.  It leaves me wondering why, because from everything I’ve heard, ninety-five percent of the people out there will get lowered income taxes as a result of Obama’s tax plan, and it’s only businesses that make a profit of $250,000 or more  and people with incomes of more than $250,000 that will see higher taxes.  I have read commentary from folks who are trying to curtail their earnings so they don’t go over the $250,000 threshold, and it just baffles me that they’d deliberately take a (in some cases) steep pay cut to avoid paying a little more in taxes.  Kinda like cutting off your nose to spite your face, IMO.

Some (most, it seems like) of these folks got angry only when the bailouts started including assistance to people who were getting foreclosed on. It appears that to them it was okay that corporations got bailed out, that’s okay, but when you start talking about your next-door neighbor losing his house, well, gosh-darn it, that’s socialism!  Or, perhaps they’re not thinking it’s their next-door neighbors, but “those people” in the poorer parts of town.  I gots news for them:  latest reports in California say that foreclosures are moving up the market ladder, hitting higher-priced areas of town.

Some of these folks are wanting to “go Galt”.  Oy.  Let ‘em.  If they were providing an essential service and made lots of money from that, if they go away, some other bright-eyed, bushy-tailed entrepreneurs will step up and take their place.  I mean, really.  Let’s be realistic here.  They think that they are irreplaceable.  No-one is irreplaceable.

And then…Some–not a lot, but enough–of these folks paraded around with signs that say things like:

• “Stand idly by while some Kenyan tries to destroy America? Wap! (in comic-strip style POW cloud) I don’t think so! Homey don’t play dat!”  The birthers are insane.  Really.  Or just dreadfully deluded.  Seriously:  Do people think that the Republican Party wouldn’t have been all over that if it were true?!
• “My tax dollars pay for illegal immigration”…um…and for that hundreds-of-miles-long border fence, but, hey, let’s not confuse people.
• “Constitution = Liberty Not National Socializm” and “The American Taxpayers are the Jews for Obama’s Oven” and “The new face of Hitler”  These are the Obama-is-Hitler-born-again folks.
• “Obama Bin-Lyin Free The Market Not the Terrorists”  Guantanamo was A Good Thing, dammit!
• “One nation–UNDER GOD!!”  “Speak for yourself OBAMA - We are a Christian Nation!”  Let’s just ignore the Jews, the atheists, the Muslims, the Hindus, the Ba’hais, and the rest.  They (we) don’t count.
• Bitching about Obama (eek!  gasp!) bowing to the Saudi king.  Let’s not mention Bush kissing the Saudi king, y’know.
• The ones who want to secede from the union.
• The ones who claim that Obama is going to take away their guns and ammo…which he hasn’t done yet, surprise, surprise!  (News flash!  Obama “will not seek the reinstatement of a U.S. assault weapons ban“) 

So. Some of these experiences and grievances are, in my mind, “equally valid”.  SOME. But I’ve got a helluva lot of scorn for many of these folks who are protesting. Especially since they were all yelling and cheering when the framework of all the disastrous economic policies were being enacted towards the end of Clinton’s presidency (with a Republican Congress–remember that?! In 1994?!) and the regulations were being cut to the bone early in Bush’s presidency and the SEC was gutted by Bush’s administration and the FBI was told it was more important to investigate terrorism than organized, systemic mortgage fraud and on and on and on…

Let’s put it this way: Eight years of Bush’s policies helped fuel this grotesque economic meltdown.  Where were all these tax-party protestors when it all started?  I’m so glad they’re protesting the guy who got voted in to clean things up.  Gosh, golly, he’s only been in office for 96 days and hasn’t solved things and we’re still spending billions upon billions of dollars to prop up the banks and financial companies and insurance companies that got into this mess…when did things start to fall apart? Oh, yes.  Starting in late 2006.  That’s when the folks who had been told that they could afford half-a-million dollar shacks in California by using no-down, Alt-A, pick-a-payment loans and then selling in a year or two when their property value went up (because everyone knows property values always rise)–that’s when they suddenly discovered that they couldn’t sell their houses and, oh, by the way, the bank is about to jack up your payments.  Which sent the whole stupid deck of cards tumbling to the ground.

But, yeah, for some it’s all Obama’s fault. That damned Kenyan socialist Hitler-wannabe.

Look.  When the Omega Family went to wave signs on a busy highway in Suburban Alaska to support Obama, we made damned sure to not make signs that denigrated the opponents.  I’d appreciate it if the new-wave protestors did the same.  Protest the policies, please.

Some asides–I note that in all the pictures I’ve seen (Flickr, blogs, etc.) I have seen a noticeable dearth of people of color, remarkable considering where some of these protests were held (D.C.?  Atlanta? Memphis?).  Folks…yeah, I know you’ll say I’m “playing the color card”…but Jeez Louise, it’s pretty hard to miss, kinda like the National Republican Convention was.  Just sayin’…The folks in Oceanside actually purchased real bags of loose-leaf tea and dumped them into the ocean.  Woot!  Now that’s authenticity!…I liked the folks whose signs indicated that it was both Democrats and Republicans who have voted for the bailouts.

While I recuperate from the dread Wading Through Of Documents for the taxes (only to discover that this year we made out better with the standard deduction!), compose a mental post about Empowerment and another about tea parties, I have been reading blogs and what-not.  On one of those blogs, SciCurious’s Neurotopia, I encountered a music video that made me remember that I have been collecting science rap and pop music videos.  What better time to dump them all on you at once than now?

I do this for your own good, so that you can learn obscure scientific trivia the same way I did when I was young…I still remember the difference between a meteor and a meteorite from this:

A shooting star is not a star
It’s not a star at all
A shooting star’s a meteor
That’s heading for a fall

A shooting star is not a star
Why does it shine so bright?
The friction as it falls through air
Produces heat and light

A shooting star, or meteor
Whichever name you like
The minute it comes down to Earth
It’s called a meteorite

Alas, the friction part is apparently a fiction; the latest explanation is that it is the shock-wave compression of the air in the atmosphere that causes the heating and light.

So, without further ado, let us explore the wonderful world of modern science music.

First up–The awesome rap “Regulatin’ Genes”, complete with subtitles, which teaches you all about HOX genes:

Regulatin’ Genes is the product of a Stanford biology instructor; read about it here.

Next up, mathematics–Harm N Phirm talkin’ ’bout Pi.  If you listen to it often enough, it is rumored you will learn Pi to 200 decimal places:

This is supposed to be a parody of Kate Bush’s song p. 

We move on to the world of high-energy physics, with the “Large Hadron Rap”:

Yeah, it’s a little long, but, hey, this is high-energy physics we’re talking ’bout here.  It takes a while to get into all the nuances; remember, folks study for years to understand this stuff!

My next three are produced by manufacturers of biological scientific equipment that happen to be corporate possessors of a sense of humor.  First, a soulful rendition of “The PCR Song”, from Bio-Rad:

I particularly like the guy who sounds like Bob Dylan…Alas, I can’t figure out whether these are real scientists or not; I think so, but am not sure.

Then we’ve got “It’s Called The EpiMotion”, a paean to avoiding carpal tunnel syndrome while using pipettes to do…well, whatever you need to use thousands of pipettes for…from Eppendorf:

To wrap things up, another entry from Bio-Rad, a lovely take-off of The Village People’s YMCA, “GTCA”:

I hope you’ve enjoyed this foray into –>SCIENCE!!!<– as much as I did.

In lieu of anything substantive, here is a pic of Adelaide:

And one of Serafina:

They are just too damned cute.  Sara is an escape artist and we have had to modify the garage coop to contain her:  she flies!  She’s not even five inches long, and she flies!

Back to taxes.

The daffodils OmegaDad purchased for me last week are still going strong; this is what they looked like the day after he got them:

OmegaDotter made my birthday cake all by herself, with coaching from OmegaDad.  It was my favorite from my childhood, an orange cake with Solo apricot pie filling in between the layers (OmegaDad searched all over for that stuff, and finally located it, and informed me that this was a once-in-a-great-while cake because the one can of Solo pie filling cost about $5.00) and a lemon buttercream frosting.  Yum.  Yes, the picture is blurry; all the pics OmegaDad took that day were blurry except the one where my eyes look sunken like I’m strung out on heroin or something.

You note the red dress above?  OmegaDotter wore it twice.  She wore the purple stripe dress below to school on Tuesday and Friday, and all day on Saturday and Sunday, and I had to promise (pinkie promise, up, down, left, right) that it would be cleaned this very night and ready to be worn again tomorrow.  Note how old she looks in this pic.  Doesn’t she look like she’s 11 or 12?  It’s scary.

The Easter basket.  Last night, OmegaDotter informed me, in a surreptitious whisper as we were doing our bedtime ritual, “Mommy!  I think Daddy does the Easter Bunny footprints!”  I responded with an aghast, “NO!“, and she assured me that it must be so.  She did not, however, add two plus two to get “OmegaDad is the Easter Bunny”.  That will happen next year, I am sure.

The basket had, actually, very little candy.  OmegaDad has been carefully collecting small tchotchkes that cost about $1 each, such as an assortment of cute Easter-themed erasers, a set of mini-cookie cutters, a bead necklace set, a little bunny-shaped bottle of bubble-blowing stuff, plus a horsie and a set of spring/Easter themed chef wear, which the dotter is wearing below as she prepares to help daddy cook dinner.

Our new chicks have names now–the Australorp is named Adelaide (Addie for short), and the Buff Orpington is Serafina (Sara for short).  They are utterly adorable.

I really do have a serious post or two planned, which I’ve been noodling about in my head for a while, but today was a day of marathon laundry plus starting the taxes, so what you see is what you get.

We are busy doing such things as ditching Comet the chicken (picked up today by a gal in town who is busy setting up a new flock), purchasing new chicks (a Buff Orpington and an Australorp, both less than two weeks old and the cutest little balls of fluff), dying Easter eggs, filling Easter baskets, socializing with school buds and what-not.  I hope to produce a post of some more substance tomorrow, but I had to pass these tidbits on.

First off, we have Ground Truth Trekking, a young couple who hiked across the northwest to their new home, a yurt in Alaska with a grand view of the volcano, and promptly had a new baby.  They have some lovely time-lapse photography of the volcano, plus some composite pics of the lightning during the nighttime volcano eruptions; go take a look.

Then we have a very nice slice-of-life blog featuring Sarah Palin’s own hometown, Wasilla!  It’s called “Wasilla Alaska, by 300…and then some“, published by a guy named Bill Hess.  I found him while looking at pics of volcanic ashfall from the Big City newspaper.  Those who like OmegaGranny’s blog, Walking Prescott, might like his.

Many moons ago, when I was a young lass in Chicago, I dipped my toes into the outskirts of science fiction fandom.  Alas, I was at the time too shy and uptight to let myself be sucked in further (it would have been easy, but I think I was wildly in tragic love at the time, which distracted me).  Anyhoo, I encountered Phil Foglio at a party or two, and got to know folks who knew him and said he was Going Places.  But…he did comic strips.  Ugh!  I thought, and promptly made sure to avoid all of his stuff since then.  But a few weeks ago, I decided to do a websearch.  Allow me to introduce two excellent web comic timewasters that are courtesy of Phil Foglio:  Girl Genius (set aside about five hours) and Buck Godot, Zap Gun For Hire (you will need fewer hours for this one, as it started in 2007, whereas Girl Genius started in 2002).  The latest volume of Girl Genius in print was nominated for a Hugo this year…

And, for your time machine needs, this handy-dandy posterized list of general scientific principles which will allow you to RULE THE WORLD!!!! BWAHAHAHAHA!!!

I am no longer “forty-mumble” years old.  Today I hit the official half-century mark.

I can remember years ago, when I hit twenty-five, having a phone conversation with my dad.  I told him I didn’t feel like it was possible that I was twenty-five.  At the time, it seemed “old”…He told me that he couldn’t imagine being in his fifties, and that all the time he felt like he was still in his 20s or 30s.  Now I know how he felt.

What has gone on in those years?

In no real particular order:  Sputnik.  The JFK assassination.  Martin Luther King Jr. being shot.  The Civil Rights movement.  The Apollo program and the moon landing.  The Summer of Love.  Riots.  Woodstock.  Kent State.  Watergate.  Gas lines.  Jimmy Carter sitting in the White House wearing a cardigan sweater.  Huge computer rooms filled with spinning tapes morphing into 8-1/4″ floppy drives morphing into boxy 10-MB hard drives morphing into the first Apples and PCs morphing into desktops and laptops and netbooks; cabling turning into wi-fi.  IBM Selectrics being perfected and then *poof* disappearing into the mists of time.  Reagan being shot.  The first shuttle take-off and landing.  Saturday Night Live.  The Iran hostage crisis.  Northwestern University, Loyola University, community college in Arizona, California State University.  The Blue Angels performing in Chicago, and San Francisco.  Three loves and one husband.  MTV.  A shuttle exploding.  Another shuttle exploding.  The Loma Prieta earthquake.  The Oakland Firestorm.  Usenet.  Mosaic.  Netscape Navigator.  The Internet.  Bulletin boards.  YouTube, Twitter, blogs.  The dot-com crash.  Bush I.  Dubya.  Clinton.  9/11.  Weddings.  Births.  Funerals.  Amazon.com.  Chicago, Arizona, the Bay Area, Lubbock, Arizona, Alaska.  The invention of in-vitro fertilization.  The Beatles, the Who, Jefferson Starship.  Heavy metal.  Punk.  Rap.  Hip-hop.  Grunge.  Us trying IVF.  Adoption from Korea fading, adoption from China growing.  Us adopting from China.  Gay rights.  The first black president of the U.S.  The Segway.  Hybrid automobiles.  Hubble telescope.  Katrina.  Glasses, contacts, LASIK.  Mini skirts, maxi skirts, the Marcia Brady look, tunic sweaters with legwarmers and straight-leg jeans.  Star Wars.  Cell phones as a status symbol turning into cell phones in the grocery store checkout line.  Mix tapes turning into Walkmen turning into iPods.  Sushi, tapas bars, Pop-Tarts and GoGurt.  The Food Network, Bobby Flay, Rachel Ray.  Congresscritters Twittering.  Three hundred and forty four extra-solar planets known so far.

It’s a weird, wonderful world.  I wonder what the next 50 years will bring?

My mom blasted me with a series of “happy birthday” YouTubes in my email today.  She was born shortly after TV was invented.  I have a seven-year-old; who knows what she will see in the years to come?

Fifty years ago, a long-distance phone call was expensive.  Yesterday, I was able to share a scary moment with friends across the world, and they were able to reply to me in seconds, minutes, hours. 

It didn’t start that way.

In fact, it started really nicely.  It started yesterday afternoon, when I went to meet OmegaDotter at the bus stop and stopped at the mail box congregation on the way only to find a Big Box from Ms. Lizard (an oft-time commenter here).  I deftly made the dotter think it was for me, and she only realized that it might be for her when I had it open on the kitchen table and started pulling out clothing from the Hanna Andersson Mothership.  Oooh.  Oooh, yeah.  A red velour dress, a purple and lavender striped day-dress/play-dress, and a poofy multi-colored skirt thing.  The dotter was in girly heaven; she wore the red velour dress all evening long, and this morning she couldn’t wait to pull on the purple striped dress (”It feels like pajamas!”).  (Note to Ms. Lizard:  VERY greatly appreciated!  VERY!)

And last night OmegaDad went on a late-night run to the grocery store and surprised me upon his return with a clump of cut daffodil buds.

That’s the nice start.

Then there was the earthquake around noon.

That’s our earthquake showing up on the Redoubt volcano monitors.  I was sitting in the office, shortly after ending my (short) work day, when I heard a bang (?) and definitely a rumble and the dog started to bark.  I thought it was the garbage truck picking up our roll-off box.  But then everything started to roll and sway.  Just when I was beginning to think “Now is the time to duck under my desk!”, it stopped.  Shortly thereafter it showed up on the volcano seismometers and OmegaDad called to ask if I felt it.  It was initially labeled a 4.7, now a 4.6.  They’re calling it a “light” earthquake.

OmegaDotter was frustrated that she missed the earthquake; the kids were coming in from recess right then, so no-one noticed.

Then there was the homework fuss.  Things have been very quiet on the homework front for months now, since I last vented about it, but today was a Bad Day.

But what made it a no-good, very bad, terrible, horrible day…

OmegaDotter and I went out for a walk with the dawg before dinner.  We went walking down the street that has her favorite horses.  We were having a grand time.  The dawg was well-behaved.  The horses were great.  The dotter was skipping and laughing and bright and cheerful.  But then came decision time:  Turn around and do the long block back, or go around a longer block in a circle?  She wanted to turn around and walk back past the horses.  I wanted to go around the longer block. 

We’ve been talking about her maybe being able to walk to friends’ houses this summer, by herself.

She said (or I said, I can’t remember at this point) that she could walk back down the street, I could do the long block, and we’d meet back at the end of the street.

She thought we should make a race of it.

I asked if she was sure.  She was.

I was a little dubious, but we’d been talking and talking about her walking the neighborhood by herself.  I know that many of my readers are probably gasping in horror at this point, but dammit, we live here, we are familiar with the people, there are fifty kazillion kids who run wild in the area when it’s nice out, the kids are allowed to walk to school in April/May and September/October, and I’ve been influenced by FreeRangeKids…

We head our separate ways.  I walk as fast as I can, knowing that my route is longer.

I get there, and there’s no OmegaDotter in sight.

I think she’s lingered too long at the horses.  I walk down the street (remember:  rural/suburban area; 1- and 2-acre lots; dirt roads; no traffic to speak of and all the traffic that is there takes wide detours around kids and dogs).

No OmegaDotter.

Not at the horses, either.

I am hyperventilating at this point.

I walk very fast back to the corner where we’re supposed to meet, hoping that she was “hiding” to try to surprise me.

No OmegaDotter.

I start shouting her name.  Loudly.

Oh God.  What if she was too bouncy around the horses and got trampled?  What if she ran into an aggressive moose?  What if she was climbing one of the little hills in the woods to hide from me, and fell down, and hurt herself?  What if some freakazoid just happened to come across her, kidnapped her, raped her, killed her, and we would never know?!

But maybe she decided to walk all the way home.  KILL HER MYSELF if she did!

I start walking the rest of the way home, calling her name, very loudly, getting more and more panicky.

And just as I turn the very last corner before our street, there’s the car with OmegaDad and OmegaDotter in it.

I am about ready to KILL HER; she must have walked home by herself, she must have forgotten to wait for me, OMGWTFBBQ I am going to KILL HER for scaring me so badly…

I climb into the car and start the “OMG I AM SO GOING TO…” when OmegaDad, in a fury, informs me that she had gotten scared, started crying, some nice lady stopped to help her and let her use her cell phone to call home and he went to pick her up…

…and on and on.  I felt (and feel) lower than the lint in a worm’s navel.  I also still feel scared.  I also felt (and still feel) angry at OmegaDad for even thinking that I had just abandoned her to walk all the way home by herself.  This had the salutory effect of making him angrier because I was making him the Bad Guy.

Oh, yes, and after collapsing in hysterical tears just after I got home, I went upstairs to grab my little coffee and smokes with some vague idea of running off somewhere so I could recuperate, and hit a box that hit the kitchen island that made the shelves in one of the sets of cupboards in the island come tumbling down, complete with many containers of coins.  (We think the shelves were loosened by the earthquake.)

So.  It was very bad.  I don’t think I’ll be repeating that little experiment for quite a while.  I spent quite a while snuggling the dotter, realizing that it could have been much, much worse.  Gah.

ETA:  Just in case it’s not apparent:  I am horribly guilt-stricken.  I have apologized numerous times to the dotter for scaring her like that.  I have been wandering around wondering what the fuck I was thinking, and realizing that the only thing I can say is that she seems such a big girl these days that it just went *poof* out of my head that she’s seven, she’s still a little girl, she still has serious problems with being alone and being abandoned, and I can kick my own ass quite enough.

This morning, OmegaDad and I girded up our loins (figuratively speaking), and hauled Angie back out to the chicken coop after weeks in the garage recuperating from her last experience of being returned to the coop, whereupon Some Unknown Monstrous Chicken took it upon herself to beat Angie into bloody bits of ground beef.  Fearing a reoccurrence of the same, OmegaDad and I spent an hour leaning on the walls of the chicken coop and snatching up Some Unknown Monstrous Chicken, who turned out to be Comet (the bitch).

I have decided that chickens are visible evidence of evolution, obviously having evolved from dinosaurs.  Carnivorous dinosaurs.  Velociraptor type dinosaurs.  Lean, mean, fighting machines.  That like blood.

(Cue zombie sound:  ::Blooooood::)

What was happening was a disruption of avian psychodynamics.  New hen in the coop (okay, okay, so she’s not “new”, but it’s been weeks, and she seemed new) means establishing a new pecking order.

In general, establishing the pecking order means that dominant bird pecks at lower-status bird, lower-status bird squawks, lowers herself in a submissive posture, and then runs like hell away from the pecking bird.  A quick flurry, and all is over and done with, no harm, no foul, especially no blood.

But Comet’s a chicken bitch.  And Angie’s stubborn. 

Within minutes of Angie being reintroduced to the coop, Comet had drawn blood on Angie’s feet.

Then comes the creepy part:  Comet and Winnie spent the next hour wandering around very carefully hunting down and eating every single speck of blood they could find.  With sinuous and sinister darting heads with beady eyes looking sidelong at Angie, calculating when she was looking away, so that more pecking could be done.

Okay, it was mostly Comet doing this action.  Winnie was alternately pecking at chicken feed, hunting down a few bloody spots of chicken fluff, and running away from Angie’s desultory I-have-more-status-then-you pecks.

Comet was out for blood.  Literally.  Comet was looking for a violent confrontation.  Comet was trying to provoke a violent confrontation.

And Angie wasn’t backing down.  She wasn’t fighting back, but she wasn’t backing down.  Comet would dart in and peck at her then fluff up and posture and threaten, and Angie would put her head down, but she wouldn’t assume the submissive pose (crouching down parallel to floor); her body and tail were still up.  This kind of reminded me of a kid stubbornly refusing to do chores and being sullen:  You can’t make me! read her body language.  Which, of course, drove Comet even more into a frenzy.

So we finally gave in and removed Comet from the coop.

Lo and behold, hours later, no bloody Angie, no bloody Winnie, two eggs laid. 

We will attempt reintroducing Comet to the coop in a few days.  If that doesn’t work, we’ll farm Comet out; we like Angie better (Comet is a bitch).

Other than that…The volcano blew big time on Saturday, dumping lots of ash on Homer (check out some of the pics!), southwards.  Saturday was a glorious, sunny day, and everything was melting, with lots of rivulets and streams of water pouring out from under slabs of packed snow.  I took the dawg for a walk and had a lovely time; I meant to do it today, as well, but then I got struck with either pleurisy or costochondroitis or (crossing my fingers and knocking on wood that it isn’t this one) pericarditis and spent the afternoon dreading every deep breath I took.  Bleah. 

In a few more days, I hit a birthday, a big one.