OmegaMom

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.

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!

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… ::

OmegaMom (the blog) is now three years old.  (I figure most of you will read this on the sixth of August.)  Toss me some confetti, sing a song, wish me three more years of blathering.

My first post was nothing much.  My second was more substantive.  I talked about rubber duckies in the fourth (the third was just a pointer to a cool picture).  I talk about my aunt in the fifth.  I yearn for closets in the sixth.  The topic for number 7 was “beauty, order, chaos“.  OmegaDad–aka Mr. OmegaMom–was the eighth topic.  And my bete noire at the time was elk, not moose.  Life has changed a lot.

You invited the dotter to your daughter’s birthday party.

The party was in Big City at the science museum.

WAY kewl!

Um.

But.

Um.

That’s a fifty mile drive.  One way.  It takes an hour to drive.  One way.

Sorry, we’re not going.

(Does it strike anyone else as a wee tad overboard to be having your six-year-old’s birthday party at a big science museum that is an hour’s drive away?)

The husband frosted it, and the dotter decorated it.  It says "Happy Barth Day I ♥ you"…:

There were some very pretty roses and truffles:

A hand-made card from the dotter, featuring a "pop-out" present, and, inside, a B@rnes and N0ble card:

And then we ate cake, as Marie Antoinette recommended:

All in all, it was a good birthday.  Many thanks for all the birthday wishes!  My mamasan needn’t feel G.U.I.L.T. as she proclaimed in last post’s comments, since it was her guidance that produced the nostalgic birthday cake, via a flurry of emails between her and OmegaDad.

I will have you know that all the pictures were taken at about 8 p.m. (except for the roses, which were this morning) to give you an idea of how light it is at that time…

Today, we have had more snow, and more is expected tonight.  Have I mentioned that I am sick and tired of snow?  Gah.

When I listen to Santana and Chad Kroeger rocking out on "Into the Night", or listen to Lorena McKennitt or other singers with passionate rhythm sections behind them, I imagine myself dancing in the living room in dim light, with a long, swingy skirt, swaying to the rhythms and putting the world away.

I also imagine myself as a 25-year-old with long hair.

That self-image is resilient.  It sticks to me like chewing gum to a hot sidewalk.  I look at myself in the mirror and say, "Kate.  You’re forty-mumble years old.  Your hair is going grey."  But when it comes to "seeing myself" mentally, there I am, skinny, sexy, young, dancing.

Not plumpish, lazy, and arthritic.

Sigh.

So today I am forty-mumble-plus-one years old.  "Late" forties, to be honest.  Very.

My darling geeky husband sent me a birthday email with .kmz file to pull up in Google Earth, pinpointing the spot in Los Alamos, NM, where he remembers us having our first kiss.  He and the dotter have made an orange cake and will layer it with either apricot pie filling (preferred) or lemon curd, frost it with lemon frosting, and sing "Happy Birthday" to me this evening.

As promised.  The sea scene:

I am jazzed by my fishies.  The dotter, too, was jazzed, and made sure we brought the fishies home to hang in her bedroom.

The cake:

It was expensive.  And full of gooey goodness.  And had a bracelet.

My new home-based business plan:  rent OmegaDad out to birthday parties as entertainment.  He got the kids all giggly and riled up by chasing them as a Big Noisy Monster.  Here, The Chase:

Then, he appropriated the magic wand we were using for a pinata buster and used it to magically change each kiddo into an animal of some sort.  Then, he did the "Funny Alphabet", which is where he gathers the kids around and pretends to have major problems with the Alphabet Song–always good for a laugh with the kids, who keep telling him how the song goes, every time he messes up.  Anyway, I think we could make Big Bucks renting him out.

Making jellyfish:

I like the demon red-eye anonymizing effect, don’t you??

Presents:

That box, by the way, contained the most irritatingly tied-down of girly goodness that I have yet encountered.  This was what was inside:

The whole contraption was secured with fifty kazillion pieces of scotch tape.  There were multiple layers of transparent plastic holding things in place.  The ponies were tied down with twisty ties.  The bed was tied down with twisty ties.  The frog on the second floor was tied down with miniscule transparent elastic stuff.  The teeter-totter was tied down.  The dresser was secured with the transparent elastic stuff.  The mailbox (complete with mail!) was tied down.  The dishes on the table were tied down.  I was untying this ungodly mess for a full half-hour–the entire time the dotter was trying to play with various bits and pieces, until I morphed into Evil Grumpy Mom who bellowed "DOTTER!  TAKE THE PONIES OVER THERE AND PLAY WITH THEM THERE!"

Then there was the pinata, which we discovered, after purchasing, was not a string-pulled but a whack-’em type of pinata.  Alas, the venue did not allow pinata-whacking.  OmegaDad proceeded to appall–yes, appall!–OmegaMom by blatantly encouraging the chilluns to flout the rules.  In other words, there was whacking.  Lots of whacking.  Finally, a mighty blow by K. managed to crack the shell, and then there were kids all over the floor scrambling for candy:

A good time was had by all.  The family stumbled into bed quite early yesterday as a result of all this partying, and had a deep slumber.

We’re a "go" for the birthday party.

I heart Flickr and Creative Commons.

I have managed to morph a "mermaid" party into a "sea theme" party, using streamers and tropical fish and starfish pictures from Flickr (ones with Creative Commons licensing).  So the dotter gets her Ariels, and I get to feel a bit less like a lemming following the Disney siren song.

In the process, I managed to stay up until 3 a.m. last night, cutting out pretty fish, and didn’t wake up until (gasp!) 10 this morning.  (Thus, I managed to scotch a date I had for a phone call with my bro, currently visiting OmegaGranny, which I hope to make up to him after the party.  Damn, I feel guilty.  These time differences leave me all ferschimelt.)

We have goody bags with plastic dolphins or starfish, stickers, crayons, seashells, and coloring pages.

We have purple plates, googly eyes, fuzzy balls, and purple, blue, and seablue streamers to make jellyfish.

We have purple, blue, and pink Gatorade.  We have baby carrots, celery sticks, and dip.  We have apples.  We have an Ariel cake and an Ariel pinata (which we finally figured out how to fill with cheap candy).

And we have time to shower, relax a bit, and sashay off to the party venue.

Oh, and we have one RSVP that included "some other kids".  Um.  OmegaDad took that phone call, so I have no details.  Grrr.

Pictures later.

(Oh, yeah, and I’m feeling better.  But given the way this thing has come and gone in waves, I hold no great hopes for the future.)

Another year.  The dotter is six now.  I brought the requisite cupcakes to school…it was like another world, one I don’t see very often.  It occurred to me that more and more, as she gets older, she’ll be moving out into that other world, and I will know less and less what’s going on with her life.

Gack!  What a depressing outlook!

But oh golly.  She’s six years old.  She’s 44 inches tall.  She’s about 43 pounds (pretty cool:  one pound per inch–it doesn’t work that way for the rest of your life, girly!).  She’s learning to read, bit by bit.  She’s writing lots of stuff–phonetically, but, hey, it’s readable. She’s turning to princesses and Barbie more and more, and now dots her "i"s with little hearts or flowers.  I grit my teeth silently and say to myself, "It’s a phase.  It’s a phase.  She’ll grow out of princesses, Barbies, hearts and flowers."  She’s very girly-girl right now–she brought home a book all about Barbies (a more grown-up kind of book, actually, sort of a "Barbie reference book") from school library, and buys fake makeup and fake nail polish and sparkly things when she gets money to spend.

She still, however, went ga-ga when we located her box of horsies and unpacked it.

The party is on Sunday.  So far, we still have only 4 girls total.  But I am warned by various folk that the phrase "RSVP" doesn’t mean much to people, and that we’ll have others show up who didn’t tell us ahead of time, and some that said they’d show who won’t.  I am contemplating the goodie bags and how many to make.

Still…six.  Wow.  It boggles my mind.

A vision of western pioneer spirit.  Note the pink roping rope.  This was a birthday gift to the dotter from OmegaDad.  Apparently, unbeknownst to me, OmegaDad had been teaching the dotter how to “rope” various items.  Also, unbeknownst to me, brightly colored ropes are the In Thing at rodeos.

So, for her birthday, OmegaDad sashayed on down to our local feed store to try and find her a real rope for roping, a “kid’s” rope.  And he really wanted to get her a pink rope.  He ended up having to ask a friendly sales associate–who immediately led him to the hidden-away pink ropes, which the FSA informed OmegaDad were only purchased by men.  No women ever purchased the pink roping ropes.

I suspect a great number of those men were dads wishing to please small princesses. 

Technorati: Cowgirls, roping, dads

Yesterday, while I was off ferrying OmegaDotter to a birthday party–the very first birthday party she’s been to where the parent of the b-day girl told me, “Go.  She’s fine.  Go and have fun!”–OmegaDad was having a terrible time locating makings for an Easter basket.  He confided in me today that it was hard finding anything that wasn’t “party pack” size.

So, while I was worrying about the dotter–would she be okay there by herself?  Would it be okay that she only knew the birthday girl?  Would she drop the bowling ball on her foot?–OmegaDad was building the basket.  (You’ll be happy to know that the dotter did just fine, loved the kiddie bowling, ate pizza, cake, and soda pop, played games, and had a grand old time.)

And last night, while the girlchild and I slept, he made pawprints out of flour.

So after the basket was opened and shared, the dotter leaned up against me in the office and said, “That Easter Bunny sure is messy!  Why would he be messy like that?”  Then she thought a moment or two, and said, “He must have put some flour on his feet.  It looks like flour.”

Earlier, while she was digging through the basket, I turned away into the kitchen to grab some zippies for the spillage of jelly beans, malted milk balls, and chocolate eggs, thinking to myself, “One of these years, she’s going to wonder why the Easter Bunny only brings baskets for kids…”

When I returned to the living room, zippies in hand, she asked, “Daddy?  Why does the Easter Bunny only bring baskets to children?”

Um.  Aside from the eerie reading-my-mind trick, it looks like we have only a year or two more before the dotter corners us and asks us if we’re the Easter Bunny.  Much too sharp.

We still have eggs to color, and then…

Well.  It’s my birthday.

Woohoo!  Another year under my belt.

Unexpectedly, OmegaGranny emailed me yesterday to say that Great Grandma, who recently purchased her a fancy digicam because she has been in the mood to share her money while she’s alive so she can see how everyone enjoys it, has kept asking her what I want.  Mom gave me a price range of $500-$1000, and said, “What do you want?”

Whoa.  So I thought.  And today, I get to buy myself another laptop, a wireless router, and a wireless card, and we’ll be able to set up a home network, with the wireless card going into our old, old computer, which goes into the dotter’s room.  Eeek!  A computer for the dotter!  OMG.  I swoon, thinking of things like hideous internet predators and accidental clicks on links to porn pages. Looks like I’ll be figuring out how to limit her to places like Nikolodeon or Disney or Barbie. 

Technorati: Easter, birthday

The dotter, having had a quick bout with the cold, handed it off to me.  Thus, I spent the weekend id a haze ob bizery.  OmegaDad, having lured the Geography Gals to our house for a Sunday evening birthday dinner, spent the weekend alternately patting me on the head, thrusting various cold nostrums my way, cleaning house in a frenzy, and dealing with the dotter.  By the time the GGs showed up, Banana Split Birthday Cake (a decadent, cholesterol-laden delight from, I am sure, the ’50s or ’60s) in hand, I was at least alert enough to socialize and eat some of the cake.

In the meantime, OmegaGranny had evilly emailed me a link to The ESP Game, which randomly partners you with someone else (never seen, heard, or named), randomly tosses up a bunch of thumbnail pics, and asks you to label them.  So, while I was dealig wid de code ad de stuffiness, I whiled away away a few hours mindlessly typing in descriptors of pictures.  It’s something to do with Carnegie Mellon University and labeling unlabeled pics on the web, supposedly…Anyway, I soon found that even though I could neither see, hear, nor talk to my partners, I got some definite likes and dislikes very quickly.  Some partners were worthless.  Some–wow!  It was like we would zing*pow*zap get the same descriptors over and over again.

What can I say?  I found it addictive.  Bad, bad OmegaGranny!

In the news, we had a Texas legislator whipping up some ill-thought-out plan to pay women $500 to decide to adopt their children out rather than have abortions.  He did, at least, make sure to include verbiage that would keep anyone who did so from being charged for selling babies…No word on fathers, of course.  No procedure for getting the kiddo into foster care, or finding agencies, or anything like that.  Not a word about prenatal care.  Nothing about coercion.  Just *bam*, sign this paperwork (available only at abortion clinics, by the way) within one month after the birth of the kiddo, and voila, 500 smackeroos.  I can’t collect the words to properly describe how idiotic I think this is.  I hope this is the kind of throw-away legislation that never makes it out of committee, like the legislation that some of our own state legis-critters have produced.

No great thoughts here, alas.  I’b sdill drying do ged by doze do clear up.