OmegaMom

I found a thing called Wordle via Unhindered By Talent.  Wordle allows you to create word clouds in lots of pretty colors, fonts, and styles, of any web page or chunk of text you are interested in.

So go and play with it!

Tomorrow I might just inflict the titles of papers at the permafrost conference upon you.  I thought they sounded fascinating.  OmegaDad’s quick-down-and-dirty summary of the conference:  “We know it’s warming; that’s old news.  All the new news is how much, how fast, and how to measure it.”

Otherworldly pictures of bubbles by photographer Jason Tozer.  Here’s how he did it.

I said "No" to the horsie idea.

I said "No" to the plan to get goats.

But OmegaDad recently read Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: A Year of Food Life and was charmed by the tale of Kingsolver’s daughter, who became a wheelin’, dealin’ nine-year-old mini-entrepreneur when presented with the idea of raising chickens and selling eggs. 

Now, I will tell you a great secret.

I have wanted chickens for quite a while.

Yes!  Really!

I swoon for Silkies and Sultans.  I wist for Gold-laced Wyandottes.  I pine for Polishes.  I yearn for Yokohamas.

Fifteen years ago, I wouldn’t have known one from the other.  But then I met up with OmegaDad.  And he started hauling me off to county and state fairs.  And I discovered these way kewl fluffy chickens.  All of them owned by darling gap-toothed ten-year-olds who would cuddle them on their laps (when they weren’t cuddling their equally adorable flop-eared bunnies in the bunny barns).  The chickens were soft and fluffy and friendly (lots of handling!), and I wuz sunk.

So when OmegaDad broached the subject of chickens to me, I said…yes.

Behold.  OmegaDotter with two (yes, TWO!) cream-colored silkie chicks:

OmegaDotter putting the Buff Orfington into the makeshift chick coop in the garage:

"Mommy" proprietarily gazing upon her flock:

The Sign:

So.  The Omega Flock consists of two cream-colored Silkies, one buff Orfington, a gold-laced Wyandotte, a Brahma of some sort, and a Comet (?) of some sort.

The plan is that OmegaDotter is to take care of these creatures (with assistance, of course), and when they start laying eggs, she is to gather the eggs.  We will pay her $2 per dozen.  She is welcome to sell any more than one dozen per week to the neighbors for whatever price she can get.

There is also a thought of a gap-toothed six-year-old maybe entering a hen into the state fair.  First, though, we need to make sure they (a) live and (b) lay the eggs.

The dotter was absolutely beside herself with delight.  Last night at bed time, she kept bouncing up and saying "Chickens!  We have chickens!  I’m so happy!"  We will see how long that lasts!

Yes, life is a circus around here.

The new vet, who was doing emergency surgery on a bird when OmegaDad arrived at 10:30 p.m., immediately dissected the lumpy thing the dawg had thrown up.  It turns out it was a piece of toy rope.  A large chunk of toy rope, actually.  They did x-rays, they hooked the dawg up to an IV, and kept him overnight.

The thing is, the chunk of toy rope was all white; the latest toy rope we have is blue and white.  The last time we had a white toy rope was many years ago back in Small Mountain University Town.  We are stumped as to where the dawg got this thing.

He’s home, but still very unhappy.

Onto the real circus, the kindergarden circus.

To get you in the mood, clowns abound:

The kiddies do their songs, en masse:

Dancing bears:

Prancing horsies:

The mighty elephants:

Roaring lions, who also jumped through "flaming" hoops and went "RAWR!":

Send in the clowns:

I missed pictures of the strong men and the acrobats.  The strong men lifted "weights" made of aluminum-foil-covered paper plates attached to picture tubes.  The acrobats did (dreadfully lousy) cartwheels and walked across a balance beam.

The dotter afterwards:

Too bad you can’t see her truly elegant mane and tail!  Note her horsie shirt, claiming "Best Friends 4-Ever".  If I remember correctly, this was a Christmas gift from OmegaGranny.  Also note the gap-toothed grin; her two front top teeth are missing.

A good time was had by all.  I decided not to blur out features because all the kiddlies were covered in make-up and not really recognizable at all.

An important question, brought to my attention by Whatever:

Created by OnePlusYou

The utterly hilarious "An Engineer’s Guide to Cats", copped from Miss C Recommends:

We were discussing nicknames over dinner the other night.  I mentioned that my mother calls me "Katya" and that my dad called me "Puddin’".  The dotter said:  "Awwwww.  That’s sweet."  Then she thought for a moment.  Then she said, "He’s dead, y’know."  Cause–>effect.  Or something like that.

Makronee

Ol it tac for makronee is nootls and sos

Spgedeey

Ol it tac for spgedeey is nootls and meetdls and sos

(Translation:

Macaroni - All it takes for macaroni is noodles and sauce.

Spaghetti - All it takes for spaghetti is noodles and meatballs and sauce.)

Bon appetit!

Or, more properly, the eggs and us.  Or we.  Or something.

Today was egg-dying day.  This year, OmegaDad read the instructions before preparing the dye (as opposed to after), so this year’s pink was…pink.  Rather than last year’s watery, pale, washed out color, it was deep and rich and dyed the eggs quickly.  Which, of course, suited OmegaDotter just fine, as she is still deeply into the Pink Phase of life.

Note the predominance of pink. 

This year’s egg-dying kit was a bug-themed thing with lots of unnecessary plastic objects.  OmegaDad had previously purchased a Princess egg-dying kit.  I am utterly, thoroughly, completely, absolutely over the Princess Thing.  Luckily, OmegaDad showed me his score late at night after the dotter was asleep.  I took one look at it over the top of the book I was reading, sighed, and said, succinctly, "No.  No more princesses.  Let’s find something else."  Bless his heart, he found something else last night, just about the only egg-dying kit left in all of suburban Alaska.

The dotter and I set to coloring eggs.  Note my dubious expression.  (Please do not look at the bags under my eyes.)  Note the dotter hamming it up.  (Please do not look at the holes in her OMG favorite T-shirt.)  (Also note the blue dye around the lips.  I have no idea how that happened.)

Some egg-cellent results (with pink):

The bugs were actually quite fun, once I decided to squelch my inner wet-blanket, which was snarling at the obsessive use of petrochemicals and the overpackaging of all U.S. consumer products, and join in the fun of decorating with stickers and plastic and wings and stuff.

The bugs posing:

The bugs at rest around our table centerpiece:

The dotter really wanted to hide the eggs immediately.  OmegaDad and I, thinking of the dawg and the cat that comes upstairs, and considering waking up to half-eaten eggs around the house, or considering waking up to an Awful Smell sometime in the future, nixed this idea.  We will hide them for her tomorrow, she will find them, then she will hide them for us, and we will be sure to find every last one of them.

The Easter Bunny is set to show up this evening.  The dotter has been asking me, multiple times and in multiple ways, if OmegaDad and/or I are/am the Easter Bunny.  "S. thinks that it’s the parents!" she informed me.  When she asked me if I were the Easter Bunny, I was quite happy to say "no".  Not a lie:  OmegaDad is the Easter Bunny.  He’s also Santa Claus.  I am the Tooth Fairy.  Anyway, I gave her one more year of ambiguity.  Maybe next year The Truth Will Out, but I hope that by that time she is in the frame of mind to love the magic even though it’s her (gasp!) parents doing it…

One of the Great Truths about me is that I never mastered Big Hair.  The only time I came close was when I had my poodle perm (see this post).  My hair has always been, and always will be, fine, straight, thin, silky hair that loses any hint of a curl when the relative humidity goes past 20%.  Since I grew up in Chicago, and lived there during the majority of the ’80s, perms were the only path to curldom.

Then there was the fact that, if one really wanted it, one could get Big Hair by spending inordinate amounts of time in the bathroom, fiddling with curlers, curling irons, hair spray, and teasing.  I had more important things to do, such as read.  Or write.

Anyway, I muddled through the ’80s as best I could.

Another Great Truth:  the dotter, though totally genetically unrelated to me, has that same hair:  fine, straight, thin, silky.

So last night, as you know, I subjected the dotter to soft curlers all over her head.

Of course, some came out during the night.

But!  The rest stayed in, and when they were unrolled, her hair was quite bouncy and curly.

I combed.  I sprayed.  I curling-ironed her bangs.  I didn’t do any hair-teasing because I am morally against such things.  So here’s our ’80s cowgirl, looking sassy (i.e., making a face):

It actually was big!  Here’s a close-up (the color is off and I couldn’t figure out how to correct it):

In which you can immediately tell that the bang curls didn’t do what they’re supposed to, and you can see some straight hairs that escaped the entire curler fiasco.

But the sad thing is that the dotter’s hair, like mine, immediately began to go flat.  Obviously, even though I applied what I thought was a dreadful amount of hair spray, lifting locks and spraying under them, holding them up so they’d dry a bit fluffy, it was all for naught.  By the time I haul her off to gymnastics this afternoon, the curls will be a sad, sorry shadow of themselves.  All that will be left is sticky residue.

Sigh.

The good news is that she will not be subjected to an entire decade of trying to do this every morning.

There were no shoulder pads (how could I forget shoulder pads?!  But I did!).  There were, however, jean legs tucked into the boots, and a hair pick in the back pocket.

When the hits on OmegaMom were at 100 at 6 a.m., I knew something was up.

That something was Miss Cellania, running a post called "Manly Men", which (amongst other things) pointed to a post I did back in October about magazines for manly men.

I’m now up to 278 hits for the day, with 45 minutes to go; this is the highest I’ve ever gotten.  Woot!  I know that some of you have much higher hit counts, but it’s nice to have a record like this.

She also featured me as "best friend" in a fill-in-the-blanks, generate-your-own romance novel.

What to take from this?  Men are lured in by manly-man-ness.  Women are not lured in by romance novels.  I was going to say that this is because women have read too many of them, and know what’s going to happen, but you’d think that would apply to men and manly-man-ness, too.  Right?

I thought I’d just return the linky loooooove.  Thanks, Miss C.!

"Hi!  I’m Rachael Ray!  Today, I’m not going to be teaching you about food–I’m going to teach you about farms!"

She flourishes a pink cowgirl hat…whispers, "You’re a teenager…"

"Now!  You’re a teenager!  And you have a job.  And you want to be a cowgirl.  And you want to be married.  And you want to be a teenager."

Mommy:  "Hi.  I want to be a cowgirl."

"Okay!  You want to be a cowgirl.  And you’re a teenager!  And that’s okay.  Now, after you get married, you can become a cowgirl!  And go to your job.  And come back and be a cowgirl!"

She pushes the cowgirl hat onto mommy’s head.

"You need a cowgirl hat to be a cowgirl!  Now you’re a cowgirl!  But you are still a teenager.  And you’re getting married!  Cowgirls can be married!"

She gestures to the "stable".

"You have horses!  This is Kayla and this is Spot.  Kayla’s kind of shy, so be gentle!  You need to feed them some oats.  And some hay.  This is how they eat!"

Kayla (formerly Frankie) nibbles from her hand.

Mommy suggests that maybe they need a feed bucket.

She grabs a box from Lands End.

"Now!  This is for their food!  What are the oats?  The purple socks are the oats!  And the white–orange–socks are the hay!  And now we’re going to feed the horses!" 

She grabs a bright orange plastic school bus and drags it in front of "Spot" (the wooden rocking horse).

"Now, Spot is a pony, a shepherd pony.  But that’s okay!"  (For the uninitiated, "shepherd" is a confused Shetland.)

"Now we’re going to give them some treats!"

And on and on from there…

Rachael Ray, I have to say, is everywhere.  A few weeks ago, I had no idea who Rachael Ray was, or that she was everywhere.  However, a few weeks ago, we lugged the second TV upstairs to the living room and plugged it in to the cable.  The first station that showed up?  The Food Network.  The dotter was mesmerized. 

We haven’t bothered to figure out how to change the station.

She laughs at and with Paula (just watching Paula puts pounds on your hips, trust me; I think Paula could deep-fry everything), but she adores Rachael Ray.  And now, when we go out shopping, she sees Rachael Ray on everything.  There are Rachael Ray Triscuits.  Rachael Ray on cereal boxes.  Rachael Ray on magazine covers.  Rachael Ray being interviewed on TVs in department stores.  Trust me, this woman is everywhere.  And, trust me, the dotter sees her where-ever she is.

The dotter also announced this morning that Hannah Montana was "the grrrreatest rock star ever!"  We quickly disabused her of this notion.  Or tried to.  OmegaDad claimed Elvis.  I said The Who or Eric Clapton or anyone else but HM.  The dotter promptly said:

"Okay!  Elvis is number two!  Hannah Montana is number one!"

Ahem.  No, that’s not what we said…

So right now, the dotter wants to be a cowgirl/rockstar/cook/girl who does hair when she grows up.

In other news.  The doc-in-a-box xrayed me, did the blood test thing, tsk-tsked over my cholesterol levels, said my blood sugar was just fine, told me about his lead sled dog whose name is Paxil, wrote me some painkilling prescriptions and sent me on my way.  (Can I just say how neat is it that the doc-in-a-box has a sled-dog team?)

He kept insisting it was arthritis pain, and when I’d say it was an electric shock would repeat back to me that it was a stabbing pain.  No, that’s not what I said, dammit!  I know a stabbing pain and I know an electric shock type of pain, and I know the difference.  And I sure as heck know the difference between arthritic pain and nerve pain.  But, hey, I’ll give the prescriptions a try and rest reassured that I’m not about to explode with hypo- or hyperglycemia.

And in the biggest news…

The best news…

Today?  Today on the weather page?  Where it says how much daylight there is hereabouts?

Today, rather than a "loss", it was a "gain".  Of 2 seconds.

WOOT!!!  Yes, folks, today marks the solstice.  From here on out, until June 21 or thereabouts, we’ll be gaining sunlight.

OmegaMom does the Snoopy Dance out the door.

We’ve been having drizzly rain here, and snow up on the mountains.  I took a few pics so you could see what we see down the street (alas, not from our house) and near OmegaDad’s office.

This is down the street that our cul-de-sac opens onto:

This is a view of the same mountains from OmegaDad’s office, about eight miles closer:

And a more panoramic view:

Dig those craggy peaks!

Onto the ethnic princess saga.  First, check out Richard Querin’s version of Miss Kenya, looking like an exotic belly dancer.  Then there’s my feeble attempt at an Asian princess.  Please note that it is a work-in-progress, that I am quite aware that the proportions are off, I realize the dress needs to be longer and flowy-er, and I don’t want to hear any commentary on the hands.  Do y’hear me?!  NO commentary.  And I don’t want to hear any sniggering from the peanut gallery, either.  I have a problem with hands, and think that I will just end up splicing on some model’s hands, a la Frankenstein.  I will simply say that I think that, right now, my AP is a cross between John Travolta (Stayin’ Alive) and a cheerleader:

Oh, yeah, and she needs feet.  And a crown or tiara.  And a magic wand or scepter.  And new hands (but we’re not talking about hands).

This evening, after I read a chapter from Jack and Annie to the dotter (The Magic Treehouse #9,357,381,220) and she was snuggling into her little pallet by the side of our bed, we were talking.  Someone is telling her she’s a “lucky girl”, and I tried to pry more info out of her, which didn’t succeed.  But I did tell her I was a lucky mommy.

Anyway, the conversation then veered off into:

OD:  I’m a rock star!
OM (skeptically):  Well, you’re not a rock star now, but you can be one when you grow up.
OD:  I want to be a cowgirl when I grow up!
OM:  You can be both!  A cowgirl and a rock star!
OD:  Oh.  I want to cook when I grow up.  And see the world!

So there ya have it.  A world-traveling chef-rock star-cowgirl.  Hey.  It works for me.

 One of the things about living in Small Mountain University Town was that we were surrounded mostly by evergreens (Ponderosa pines) and there were fewer deciduous trees (oaks and aspens).  The aspens would put on a golden show in the autumn, but you had to drive to where there were lots of aspens to see the best show.  The oaks–eh.  The leaves would turn kind of muddy brown and drop off, and that was it.

So autumn wasn’t a visual stunner, like those of us who grew up in the midwest or east are accustomed to.  The stunning you would get was the vibrant blue sky and the vivid white sun, which was, admittedly, a jazzy combination.

Now here we are in the Final Frontier, and encountering an entire new ecosystem.  The majority of the trees, shrubs, bushes, and weeds here are decidedly deciduous.  And they’re showy.  Oh, oh, oh-so showy.  Reds.  Golds.  Oranges.  Greens with red spots.  Burgundies.  Yum.  And we still have some yellows, but they are put to shame by all the rest.

We aren’t having a grand blast of everything turning at once–yet.  But so far, we have lots of individual plants and trees turning color and dropping their leaves.

Many years ago, a cousin of mine took her 3-year-old daughter out one autumn to collect leaves.  They took clear plastic contact paper, laid the leaves out on it, and then put another layer of clear plastic contact paper on top.  GrannyJ still has the resultant banner hanging on the back of her office door.

Taking a tip from cuz J., I decided the dotter and I should collect some leaves and maybe make some placemats out of them.

So here are some autumn leaves:

Pixelating out, again, bah.  But, nonetheless, maybe giving you an idea of just how varied and colorful things are getting.  When we make the placemats, I will present a pic of one of them, too…

Thanks for joining me in a world-wide WOOT on word of our closing!  As GrannyJ suggested, we are visiting the furniture and boxes now & then and petting things and crooning happily.

OmegaDad has been sending pictures from the Al-Can highway.  Right now, I’m using a chintzy, cheesy “easy” picture editor from Microsoft, so the end result for the pictures is ell-oh-you-ess-why, lousy.

But I thought I’d share them with you anyway, and when I have access to my own laptop again, I’ll re-do the pics and re-upload them.

Firstly, we have road signs. 

Welcome to the Northern Rockies:

Moose crossing:

Sasquatch crossing:

Caution!  Buffalo on the road!

Then we have the real things:

A Sasquatch (alas, wooden):

Another piece of high human artistry, the Big Beaver:

A couple of “awwww”-worthy babies:

(a fox baby, then a baby moose…note the car window at the bottom of the picture.  OmegaDad says that he could have swatted the baby moose on the bottom, he was that close…)

The buffalo, apparently, is much bigger than the Plains buffalo OmegaDad is accustomed to; he estimated about a third bigger?

A trio of bighorn sheep.

And, in closing, some just plain drop-dead gorgeous scenery…Muncho Lake:

An unnamed river:

My cousin, also visiting GrannyJ, when viewing these pictures told me, in a dire, warning voice:  “You’re going to be there a loooong, loooong time!”

OmegaDad wants me roadtripping with him.  I want to roadtrip with him.  Looks like a lot of fun!

(Coming–The Long Goodbye:  Hippy Dippy Enclave in the Woods; Interlude:  A Surprise; a report on the experiment with the cats and how to ship turtles via FedEx, and more!)

But there were many categories where the just perfect pic didn’t show up…

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