OmegaMom

So yesterday was the first time I was able to see the dotter at one of her gymnastics meets.  Her first real meet was two days after I headed off to Arizona to help take care of mom, and she had a second one while I was still there.  Being a doting mom, I just have to show off her beam routine:

Her handstand was a thing of beauty.  Everyone around us commented on how long she held it and how straight it was.  Alas, her landing wasn’t that good, which ended up moving her from a 9.0+ to an 8.9, and a red ribbon on the beam as opposed to a blue.  Wah!  And, yes, her split jump isn’t very good, but everything else she does on the beam is generally great.

Of course, since she had filled my camera card up with videos of Newman the cat encountering Wooly the cat, when I went to record other routines, the video card was filled up.  After gnashing my teeth at the small capacity of my memory card, I investigated, and promptly deleted two videos of yowling cats rolling around on my office floor, and was able to record her bar routine, too:

So she may be going up to Level 4 this summer, which is honest-for-goodness’-sake team level.  IF she stays focused and works hard, and doesn’t goof off with her buddy K. all the time, which she tends to do.  Doesn’t matter to me, but she and K. have been bitching and moaning about not moving up to Level 4 and how they want to and, gee, they can do their back handsprings and a Level 4 dismount, and blah, blah, blah.

In the meantime, the planet is blasting onward towards the spring equinox.  Tonight, the sun will set at 8:00.  This throws our entire dinner-time zeitgeist off—OmegaDad spends the winter with dinner being cooked after the sun sets (most often long after the sun sets), and the rapid shifting of the seasonal light takes a while to mesh with his cooking brain. 

All the light does not mean warm weather, alas.  In fact, we had well above average temps for two months—mostly while I was in Arizona—and as we move towards official Spring, the temperature has plunged below normal for the past two weeks.  This leaves me generally grumpy.  I managed to rant and rave and cry at OmegaDad this week about how I HATE Alaska and I just WANT TO GO HOOOOOME!  Um.  What can I say?  Seeing all the pictures around the intertubes of people’s swiftly growing snowdrops, crocuses, daffodils and what-not, and reading about bike rides and lovely weather…well, it just makes me mighty damned jealous.

Ages ago, while living in Small Mountain University Town, I noticed a little massage school next to the pet store we liked to frequent.  I poked my head in, and discovered that they had students doing massages every weekend, and that you could get an hour massage for very small amounts of money.

Later on, Small Mountain University’s classified employee council made an arrangement with that massage school to get an additional percentage off the price for university employees.

I was in heaven.  Maybe once a month, once every six weeks, I’d traipse off to SMUT Massage College and get myself an hour-long massage, emerging limp and noodly and relaxed.

Since moving to Alaska, however, I have been unable to indulge.  Oh, we have massage schools off in Big City, but, hey, it’s an hour-long drive there, and the benefits of the massage would be outweighed by the drive back, in my experience.

When I landed in Arizona again to take care of my mom—which included watching her like a hawk while we were snowbound, preparing small meals and trying not to cry as she barely ate anything, then getting her off to the hospital and being ready to fight anyone who claimed it wasn’t “medically necessary” for her to be admitted to the hospital, then keeping an eye on the staff at the nursing home until it became obvious that they were caring, gentle people who really wanted to help, then spending hours making appointments and visiting and touring assisted living facilities in the area—

Well.  It was, to put it mildly, making me uptight.  Really uptight.  I was finding myself unable to sleep because my shoulders were in knots, and my brain was in overdrive, producing item after item after item to worry about or to remember to take care of the next day.  Something had to be done. 

So I called one of the local massage colleges, to see if they had any student clinics going on.  Lo and behold, though they didn’t have beginning students, they had an “advanced” clinic running for the month.  I signed up.

O what a blessing is a good massage.  What a release of tension.  What a lovely hour or so of mindless bliss, melting into the massage table, feeling the horde of knots loosen—even those that I hadn’t realized were there.  It helped so much that I threw monetary caution to the winds and signed up for one a week while I was there.  I loved every minute of those three hours.

Some specifics:  This was through ASIS, in downtown Prescott.  The masseuse was named Jill H., and she was awesome.  She was gentle, asked questions, sent me a note via mail after the first massage (!!), remembered what I had told her and where all the knots had been on the second and third visits, and was, all around, a boon to me during a tough time.  I highly recommend their services, and especially highly recommend Jill.  (She is also working with a local chiropractor…I have, unfortunately, lost the card she gave me, otherwise I would say which chiropractor.)

::OmegaMom walks into the blog space, blows some dust off the furnishings, looks around…::

Hey there.  It’s been long enough for a post from me that BlogHer advertising sent me a “tsk, tsk” email and turned off the ads.  Hah!

Oh, well; I’ve been busy and tired and uptight enough that blogging (and Twitter) has taken second (third?  Last?) place in the scheme of things.

The good news is that my mom is so, so, so much better.  We moved her into assisted living yesterday; she has all the furniture she needs and today’s chores include moving some plants and paintings and photos so that her space is even more her space.

Every day in the past two weeks has been jam-packed with things related to getting her better, getting the move coordinated, packing, vacuuming, cleaning, packing, vacuuming, cleaning, vacuuming, cleaning.  Twenty-five years at one location does tend to make one accumulate stuff…and much of it, as mom says, “Nothing precious”.  My main learning point–aside from the need for retirement funds, and how expensive assisted living is–is that the investment in a weekly cleaning person is a Must for those who do not have the cleaning gene.  All the dust and the stress has combined to give me a lovely cold with a dollop of super-duper sinus infection on top.  Hah!

Arizona has been irritatingly sunny and beautiful, all the while I have been unable to rest and enjoy it.  Grrr.

My brother arrives today–yay!  Someone else to take the burden!  And I head home on Sunday, to a dotter who finally last night broke down during our nightly phone conversation to say, “I want you to COME HOME!!!”, with her voice cracking into tears on the last two words.  Oh, yes, OmegaDad wants me home, too, but he hasn’t cried–it’s been me bursting into spontaneous tearfests on his long-distance shoulder every few days.  He’s a good dude, y’know?  I’ve done something right to have the Kozmik All let me find him all those years ago.

My main focus with mom’s move–aside from, well, the move–has been to create a colorful and welcoming space for her in her new place.  One of the things I did was taken directly from a blog that my commenter and long-time virtual friend Kaz pointed me to named Attic24.  The lady who writes Attic24 is a lover of all things bright and colorful, and her January 21 post made me re-assess my inward sneer at tulips.

I have always thought that tulips are just too, too niffy-naffy and snooty for words.  Stiff, formal, upright–ptooey.  But in the midst of her posts filled with bright mixes of color, A24 showed a vase jam-packed with multi-colored tulips.  It was bright, springy, the furthest thing from “formal” you could imagine.  So I started searching the local florist shops for tulips.

Of course, none of the local florist shops had gotten the word:  tulips in arrangements meant all one color, all stiff, semi- to very formal, and very little variety in color.  Red was big.  So was white.  And pink.  Never in the same store, though!  Bah.  But Monday I was at the local grocery store, struck by the “manager’s specials” of leftover Valentine’s Day bouquets and tchatchkes, and was lured into their flower cooler.  There, in the corner, was a bucket of tulips, gathered into groups of five stems, each group one color.  But they had orange.  They had red.  They had purple.  Pink.  White.  Yellow.  A riot of colors.  So I cornered the young lady who was putting “for sale!” signs on the manager’s specials, and described what I wanted.

She came through!  One of the nicest things about the move was walking mom into her new place and having her delighted with the (beginnings of) big splashes of color…one of which was a small vase jam-packed with tulips of all different colors, sitting on her dining table.

It’s the small things that make me happy sometimes.  That vase of colorful tulips was a symbol to me, a symbol that mom’s life is not going to shrivel up into a blank nursing home stare, that she’s going to have spring and life and color for time to come.

Since I know some of mom’s regular readers are reading, here’s a quick recap of what’s been going on:

When I got here, she was not herself.  She wasn’t getting enough oxygen, was very weak and tired (couldn’t walk from the front door to the kitchen), and I was very very worried.

And we were sort of socked in by the weather, ugh.  Some parts of Small Mountain University Town got up to five feet of snow last week!  We didn’t get that much, but we did get a fair amount of soggy snow…

Anyway, when we could get out easily on Saturday, I rented a car and we set The Plan into motion.  The Plan was to call 911, get her into the hospital, and see if they couldn’t (a) figure out what was going on, and (b) help, and (c) get her into a nursing home for a month (standard Medicare limit) to rehab her.

At that time she was saying that she didn’t think she could handle assisted living, and should just be put in a nursing home for good.

Well.  At the ER, they found that she had a mild case of pneumonia, which they (luckily) admitted her to treat.  She is feeling much better, says she is breathing better than she has in months, but she is still extremely weak.  I’ve been running errands, running back and forth to the hospital, trying to make various arrangements, and trying to keep her (and my) spirits up.  The hospital is arranging with a local nursing home to take her in, but we’re not sure a bed is available yet.  If so, she’ll be moved there tomorrow; otherwise, maybe Wednesday.

Thank you all for your wonderful comments.  I’ve passed on the comments from her blog to her, printing them out in batches as they come in, and they have been so warm and wonderful and cheering for her.  Kate from HighAltitudeGardening sent her a bouquet of bright and colorful flowers, and they grace her hospital room right now, keeping things cheerful.  Catalyst from Oddball Observations phoned, and just knowing that made her feel special and appreciated (I will call back, just have been busy with family phone calls & emails!).  The outpouring of love for her has been heartwarming.

I will post more later.

Well.

When I wrote that last post, it was going to be followed up by the “And she’s all better now, whew!” post.  But I had things to do that weekend, and places to go, so didn’t write.

But I did notice that mom hadn’t blogged for a few days, and she hadn’t sent me any email.  So I picked up the phone to call her (I previously had been calling her every day, but then thought she was better, so stopped).

At which point, she asked me to come out to Arizona again, saying that things were worse.

So here I am in Arizona, with mom.  I managed to sneak in during a break between the storms that have hit Arizona (and California before that).  The airplane was delayed two hours on the tarmac in Big City due to a malfunction that turned out to be a Ghost In The Machine, and missed my connecting flight in Salt Lake City…but Delta showed how absolutely wonderful it is by automagically rebooking all the people who had missed their flights onto the next available flight.  This was very cool–all we had to do was take our existing boarding pass, run it beneath a scanner, and a brand spanking new boarding pass for the rebooked flight was printed out.

But when I got to Phoenix and got to the car rental place, a snag occurred.  It seems that we didn’t have enough money in our account to cover any car rental (if I had had a credit card, that would have worked, but they automatically block out more money for debit cards, no matter how little an amount of time you want to rent)…paychecks being deposited on Saturday didn’t help.  I was tired.  I just wanted to get up to mom.  So I parked myself on one of the chairs in the middle of the huge car rental complex and proceeded to sob my heart out.

Then I called OmegaDad.

Have I mentioned how much I love OmegaDad?  Well, okay, just thought I’d mention it again.

Anyway, he arranged for the inter-city shuttle to pick me up and get me up to Prescott.  Yay, OmegaDad!

Driving up was an adventure–but the good kind.  See, since I wasn’t driving, I didn’t have to worry about all the water crossing the road, or the high winds, and was perched up nice and high so I could peer out the windows and see over concrete barriers on bridges and wash crossings.  All of which were flooded with rushing water.  Waves.  Crests on the waves.  Waterfalls coming down the rocky roadcuts that we were traveling between.  Snow mixing with the heavy rain when we got to Prescott.

(Up in Small Mountain University Town, they have had something like four feet of snow.  Roofs are collapsing on businesses–the ice rink, the big, comfy used bookstore, the fabric store, more–and the city mayor has declared that all businesses must clear their roofs or face a fine.  The powers that be also closed the main highways around SMUT for 24 hours.)

Anyway, I am here with GrannyJ.  We are working on getting her into a nursing home for a few weeks, to see if they can do anything.  We’re talking about her maybe moving to live with my brother.  Lots of things to talk about.  She is not doing well, but she is–as ever–my sharp-witted, fun, sweet mom.

In the meantime, consider me a poster child for the Sandwich Generation:  OmegaDotter’s birthday is tomorrow, and she is in her first “real” gymnastics meet tomorrow, too, with judges and not every participant getting a trophy.  We had a little birthday dinner Wednesday, and gave her the family presents, but I wasn’t able to arrange her party in time…that’s up to OmegaDad.

I know a lot of bloggers who are having issues with their moms these days.  Kat Kaz (damn, should proofread when I’m posting at midnight!), Laurie, Lorrie, V…I’ve kept so quiet with them about their problems because…well, it’s kind of a “La, la, la, I’m ignoring things!” approach.  But we’re past the ignoring problems part here, and I want to apologize and shout out to all of you to say, “Hang in there, kiddos.”

I will keep all & sundry posted; I wasn’t planning to post tonight, but saw Anon in AV’s comment, and thought I should update.

When you’re a new parent, with a small life depending on you, you find yourself doing strange things sometimes.  One commonality that I’m sure my readers have experienced is how new moms and dads can find themselves stopping by their child’s bed in the night and watching—urgently, because you can’t hear the breathing and you’re afraid that something’s wrong.  You wait, suspended in the moment, your anxiety ramping up, until you see the slow, gentle, up and down movement of your child’s torso in tune with her breathing, and you move on, reassured.

I found myself doing that with my mother while I was visiting over Christmas.

I’d be padding into the bathroom in the middle of the night, and find myself popping in to hover at the side of her bed over her, watching, suspended in the moment, my anxiety ramping up, until I saw that slow, gentle, up and down movement of her torso in time with her breathing.  The anxiety was always there.  I’d find myself sneaking in while she was taking a nap, just to be sure.  The sound of her oxygen machine—which she’s used for years now—receded into the background, becoming part of the everyday noises of the house, but it was still loud enough so that when I’d check her, I’d have to get very close to see the small movements of breathing, to hear anything.  I hovered, just checking.

When we first got there, my brother and family were ensconced in the living room, so we made a nest for OmegaDotter by the side of mom’s bed, and I slept in the bed with her.  It wasn’t reassuring.  She was not her normal self; she was lethargic, quiet, enervated.  We were all worried.  Bro and SIL had taken her on an overnight trip down to Tucson, and from the pictures, it looked like mom hadn’t gotten out of the car much.

So there I would be, in the middle of the night, waking up with one of my infamous hot flashes, and I’d hear mom gasping for breath, with a soft moaning sound that turned into a whimper.  I would sit up and watch her, my brows furrowed, my heart aching.  If it kept on, I would nudge her slightly awake, so that she would close her mouth and breathe from her nose instead, the nose which had the cannula of the oxygen tube.  Then she could breathe, and I would be able to fall asleep again.

Her cardiologist had put her on a huge dose of Lipitor in mid-December.  My brother—at least twice her weight, and with cholesterol levels much, much higher than hers, was on 10 mg per day; she was on 80.  The theory, as we understood it, was that it was a jolt-dose, a purposeful systemic shock—but even so, it was unnerving.  Especially since the medical listings of Lipitor on the web included “enervation”, “exhaustion”, and “weakness” as possible side effects.  We made her promise to go to the doctor after we left to find out exactly why she was put on such a high dose, and see if he wouldn’t lower it.  In the meantime, I suggested that she simply halve the pills and take half the dose.

The day before we were supposed to leave—after my brother and family had left themselves—we went out on a drive to the lake, to see the (vile, mean, odious, scary) geese who had chased me and grabbed my pants legs and pecked the back of my knees in a vain search for bread while I was videotaping them.  It was chilly, but bright.  The dotter and I wandered around, she fed the ducks and geese, I took photographs…and mom stayed in the car.  Yes, it was chilly, but this was not like her.  She said later that day that every day she felt just a little bit worse.  Not a lot.  But enough.  And she was hardly eating at all.

That night, in the kicthen, as I was giving her a hug, I leaned my head on hers and whispered in her ear, “Would you like me to stay a bit longer?”  She reached up her hand to cover mine on her shoulder and said softly, “I think…yes, I would.” 

Science fairs will be in late March, so OmegaDad decided to get started with some experiments with the dotter.  Unfortunately, the experiments are daddy’s ideas, but, hey, get the kid used to doing it, right?

Firstly, she was very possessive about “MY lab!”  In other words, I had to explain to her that real scientists these days were very open about their research (see PLOS) and, if they’re excited about their experiments, they’re very happy to have people in, show them around, tell them what the experiment is about, etc.

Anyway.  Since OmegaDad has been Doing Bread this past year (and very nicely, too!), and trying out sourdough starters with wild yeast, he thought it might be fun to see if you could get a sourdough starter from varying fruits.  He selected grapes and blueberries because both fruits have a blush on them; apples, because they don’t have a blush; and then we had a control of just plain ol’ flour and water.  Herewith the ingredients:

Then there’s the scientist herself:

Note that she is wearing “goggles”.  She was very concerned that everyone in her lab wear goggles, because, as she explained, “You never know when you’re going to get an explosion!”  Then she demonstrated how things would blow up:

Please note the “lab coat”.  Folks!  Let me tell you about this amazing new costume for your kids!  It’s a chef’s coat!  It’s a lab coat!  It’s two—two!—two coats in one!  OmegaDotter received a chef outfit for herself plus a matching chef outfit for her Karito Kids Ling doll, and has since taken to wearing the pink striped black pants as pajama pants or loungewear ever since, and when time came to do the experiment set-up, she decided it would make a fine lab coat.

What followed:  Placing one cup of blueberries into a Mason jar:

Mushing grapes before putting them into a Mason jar (an action shot!):

Explaining what comes next, and how you need to be careful (note the goggles again!):

Adding flour (we got a lot of flour all over everything, including the floor.  There were also a grape or blueberry or two on the floor, sigh.  Not that I really want you to look at our floor; please edit those shots mentally.):

Adding water:

Stirring (please note that we used different spoons for each jar, so that we had no intermixing):

She has the Evil Scientist pose down perfectly—“I have created LIFE!!!  Bwahahaha!”

And then, the finale, a “Ta-da!” pose:

And then she signed off with, “Thanks for watching Weird Science!”

We are home in Alaska.  It has been an interesting few weeks, with its major ups and downs, which I may or may not discuss later.

When we got on our flight home, OmegaDotter was more than ready to be home.  I was, frankly, more than ready for OmegaDad to do some high-quality one-on-one with the dotter; she is high-maintenance at times, very touchy-feely, needing attention, bouncing, chattering, “on” all the time.  I was not looking forward to six hours of her trapped in an airplane.

We didn’t get a window seat.  We were both very sad about this.  We settled into our seats, and I was hoping (hope-hope-hoping) that the last seat wouldn’t be filled, though we had been informed that it was a full flight, so that seemed unlikely.  And then he showed up, with his tattooed arms, his leather jacket, his bald head, and jocular “I don’t follow directions very well!” comment about carry-on luggage stowage.

We took off, OmegaDotter chattering all the way.

He took out a notebook and began sketching.

OmegaDotter, on the other side of me, peered at his sketchbook and whispered, “What’s he drawing?”

I said, “I don’t know.  I think he’s trying to figure it out.”

She whispered excitedly (and loudly), “I think it’s a flower!  See how it swirls and goes around?”  I looked again, and said to her, “Hm.  It’s beginning to look like a rose…”

She got out her travel art box, and her latest version of Pippi Longstocking on her horse, then leaned in and whispered very quietly to me, “Can I show him my picture?  What is he drawing?”

“Maybe you should ask him?”

She squirmed, shyly.  I chivvied her on (I am trying to get her to ask her own questions, request her own interactions).  Finally, she leaned over me and asked, “Do you want to see my drawing?” 

He said he’d love to.  She handed it over, saying shyly, “It’s—“ and he finished, “Pippi Longstocking!  She’s the one with the pigtails that stick out, and the monkey, right?  That’s very good.  You’ve got a lot of detail going on there!”  She pointed to the sign and said, “It’s Villa Villa Coola.”  They talked Pippi for a short while, then he handed it back.  She asked what he was drawing, and he told her about using light blue as a base for sketching, then coloring over it, any mistakes in the light blue being hidden by the darker colors.  He said that he had started out drawing something else, but he heard her say it was a flower, and he went from there.

Both went back to their artwork.  OmegaDotter added a second story.  He added some wording and shaded in the rose.  She handed him her picture again.  He looked at it, and asked what was around the windows.  She replied, “Wood”.  He asked her what color the wood was.  She quickly began coloring in the window frames, then handed it back to him.  He asked what color the gate was.  She said light blue.  He handed back the picture and she quickly filled in the coloring…this back and forth went on for a few more iterations, with him asking what this area was, and what color should it be, and her making decisions and completing more.  He lent her some of his coloring pencils when she was short a color; he helped her figure out how to make new colors when she didn’t have a particular color.

When she was done, he offered a trade:  His picture for hers.  He wanted hers, he said, so that when she was famous, he could say he knew her when…

I want an art teacher like that for her.  Someone who—rather than prescribing or describing—asks questions and guides her.  She was in heaven.  He was patient and inspiring.

So, to Shane Ruggle, aka “Rug”, the Phoenix tattoo artist:  Thank you.  Thank you, thank you.  Love is a gift, yes, and so is the sharing of your knowledge of art.

Hi, all…I’m still in Arizona, and will be for a few more days.  Mom (GrannyJ) isn’t feeling all that hot, and I decided to stay on longer than planned, so I can ferry her to doctors to have her looked at and her meds examined and all of that kind of stuff.

For those who have had to change/cancel flights, a word of warning:  Travelocity customer support told me that the cheapest replacement fare (if we were to change our flights) was going to be $1500 (give or take a few dollars) per person.  At the same time, I was looking at the Travelocity search, and for the same day, I saw many flights in the range of $500 to $700.  Something was just Not Right.  So I went ahead and cancelled the tickets, and we now have a credit to be applied to the rebooking, so even with the rescheduling fee it will be much cheaper.

Later, gators.

ETA:  Oh, my!  I totally forgot:

Happy New Year!  May 2010 be a wonderful year for you all!

I bought a Very Special Gift for OmegaDotter this Christmas.  It was very small.  So I decided to do the box-within-a-box-within-a-box approach; I wrapped the VSG, put a bow on it, and a note saying it was the last box, dumped it all into another box, gift-wrapped that one with bow and note, etc.  The end result was nice and big.

I was actually rather nervous about doing this:  either she would think it was funny, or she would get horribly frustrated, and I had no idea which way she would lean.

Anyway.  Since she opened it first, I wasn’t ready with the camera, so the settings were wrong for the first box:

Second box—she was kind of perplexed:

Third box—she was getting the hang of it, and was amused.  I have a picture of her laughing, with the box already unwrapped, so we’ll use this one:

Fourth box—she’s giggling:

The VSG revealed—I think she likes it:  she screamed!

What was it?  An iPod nano, filled to the brim with songs I knew she liked.  She has since wandered the house with it connected by umbilical cord, belting out various songs—in particular, Fireflies by Owl City, which has been an earworm for both of us, as well as various Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus songs. 

Now, onto the consumer review:  OMG.  Apple has the “user-friendly”, ergonomic approach down to an art.  Or a science.  When I was setting it up for her, I pulled it out of its little box, plugged it into the computer, and *boom*, it hooked to my iTunes and started walking me through it.  Once it was loaded with music, *boom*, I was using it.  I am truly, truly impressed with the ease-of-use of this gadget—the dotter had figured out all the buttons (in particular, how to replay Fireflies over and over and over again) within a short time.  Now I want one…or maybe an iPhone, which does all the same stuff, plus.

Then:

Now:

It doesn’t seem possible that seven years have passed.  Seven years ago, right now, we were on our way to Nanning after a lovely dim sum breakfast in the Guangzhou airport.  We actually signed the papers around 5 p.m. on December 8 in China, which would be around 7 a.m. here, and we met her around 6 p.m., which would be 8 a.m. here.

She’s pretty amazing.  We’re pretty damned lucky.

The sun rose at 9:49 in the morning, and will set at 3:51 p.m., just a few more minutes.  We had a visit from the Pineapple Express yesterday; it is Alaska’s answer to the Polar Express.  Where the Polar Express is a blast of frigid Arctic air that swirls down into the Midwest following a huge dip in the jet stream, the Pineapple Express is a blast of warm air direct from Hawaii that barrels into South Central Alaska, melting the snow and ice and producing precipitation of one form or another.

First we got the melt.  You’d think this would be great, wouldn’t you?  But, alas, what it does is denude the forests of the one thing that keeps it bright in the wintertime, and leaves the skies gray.

Then we got the storm.  Where the Omegas live, it came as a day of rain–we were up to 40F.  But to the west, only about 30 miles away, the temperature was low enough that it came as snow, a huge snowstorm on the Lady River that dumped 30+ inches of snow in the hinterlands and in Small Alaskan Tourist Town That Prompted Northern Exposure.  A substitute school secretary in SATTTPNE said they had enough snow that the littlies, kindergartners and first-graders, were disappearing into the snowdrifts.

And then the weather turned cooler here, and our rain turned to snow.  So:  we had wet streets, car, trees, that iced up, then got snowed on.  Then the skies turned clear.

When I drove the dotter in to school, the full moon was hovering over the trees in the west side of the school parking lot.  The sun was just barely beginning to light up the skies to the east.  I dropped her off, ran to the convenience store, and drove home…but that lovely picture of the moon looming over the trees called to me.  At home, I ran into the office, grabbed the camera and drove back to the school, determined to get that picture.

Alas, it didn’t quite work out the way I wanted–I wanted that moon in the trees to be as crisp and clear as it was to my vision.  Since I haven’t worked out the ins and outs of the camera workings, I couldn’t figure out how to make everything in focus and not too bright.  So what you see above is what you get:  Moonlit trees slightly lighted by the first, faint blush of daylight.

It was beautiful.

That is what I live for, up here in Alaska during the winter.  Moments like that.  Because there is so much darkness at this time of year, and my annual bitchfest about the ever-encroaching darkness is revving up.  I talk to people on the phone…they say, “How d’you like the cold winters in Alaska?” with a bit of laughter in their voices.  And I talk to them about The Darkness.

It’s just a month or two that it’s bad, mind you.  I know that the winter solstice is fast approaching, and that three weeks after that, we will settle into the long cold bright time of year, where the days get longer but the chill of winter settles in deeper.  The cold is okay, really.  Because the sun comes out more and more each day, and sparkles off the snow and the mountains and the ice covering the inlet and the rivers and the waterfalls, so it is beautiful.  And behind it all is the knowledge that The Dark is Dying, the sun is coming back, spring will be here soon, and we will be into the Season of The Gloaming.

But that month and a half to two months where it just gets darker and darker?  It gets to me.  The sun was 6.8 degrees above the horizon today at its height.  That’s low.  That’s like “late afternoon just before sunset” low.

(The solstice is coming.  It’ll get here.  The dark will go away.)

I’ve got a little list of music to buy the dotter for Christmas, to go with her Big Present from me.  We’ve got some Don Henley, Elton John, Trisha Yearwood, Tom Petty, Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”, Feist’s “1-2-3-4″, Queen’s “We Are The Champions”, Taylor Swift, Kidz Bop, a Beyonce, some Chris Rock, a Sean Kingston, some High School Musical and Shrek…and to fill in the Chinese pop section, we have some Wilber Pan, Angela Zhang, S.H.E., and Jolin Tsai.

But I need some suggestions for classic or older rock, more C-pop, and new American stuff.  So, parents of 8-9-10 year olds:  What are your kids listening to?

Peach said, in response to my Dear Diary post:

I have to admit that when I read your response to her questions (maybe not given to her, but the ones you expressed ~ about it being unlikely that she could find her first parents, or her poster could get her parents in trouble?), it bothered me.
As adoptees we grow up completely believing what our adoptive parents tell us about the circumstances around our adoption. But when we become adults and find out more information (more than our parents said was available) it brings with it emotions that “just is” ~ nothing our adoptive parents could say or do will take them away or keep us from having to walk through the grief, no matter how hard they try. And it even more invalidation when we sense our adoptive parents are trying so hard to do this for us ~ to take away our pain, through their answers, honest or not.

It’s a hard balance.  I admit that I am a glass-half-empty person a lot of the time–one way of looking at it, though I prefer to think of it as “pragmatic” or “realistic”.  I do think it unlikely that, given what information we have, we could find anything, due to the fact that she was found in a busy spot in a rather big city.

Or at least, the information we were given says that she was found in a busy spot in a rather big city.  Which is one of the problems:  that information could be made up of whole cloth.  And we don’t know.

How do you carefully get this across to an almost-eight-year-old?  We don’t know.  Anything.  For sure.  How do you tell a child who hasn’t experienced a really big city just how many people there are there?  How do you explain that what information we have is a grain of sand on a big beach?  How do you say, “Even what we know, we don’t know that it is true”?

I have been very careful, all along, to say, “We think” or “we were told” or “the orphanage says” about these things.  But what one person says, another person may not hear, or may hear through a filter.  I say, “We think it must have been very hard for your birthmother to leave you.”  OmegaDotter may hear, “Your birthmother was devastated.”  I say, “The orphanage says you were left at the gates of XYZ.”  She may hear, “That is where you were left.”  How do you tell a child that adults lie about things like this?  She’s still at a stage where hearing me say “Bullshit!” accidentally when we’re playing B.S. (a card game–quite fun, taught to us by Aunt L. and cousins K. and I.) makes her gasp and say, “Oh!  You said the b…sh… word!  That means cow poop, but you’re not supposed to say it!”

Yes, I want to protect her.  Yes, I know it doesn’t help, in the end.  But the things that are wrapped around these questions are…well, more mature issues, questions of honesty and decency in adults, questions of the general ethics of international adoptions, questions of the problems of involving large amounts of money in the transferrence of responsibility for a small human being, questions of “human trafficking”.  I want her to know about these things, but in an age-appropriate manner.  So I start small.  I use weasel words, semantics…”we think”, “we were told”, “the orphanage says”…all of which are true, and all of which mean “this is information but it’s not the biblical truth”.  I have, in talking about her birthmother, told the dotter about the one child laws, and how they have changed; I have also mentioned that it’s possible her mother was young and unable to raise a child.  As she gets older, the more nuanced versions come out more.

Youngsters are concrete thinkers.  But as the dotter is getting older, she is becoming more aware that black-white thinking doesn’t always fit the world around her.  International adoption–hell, private domestic adoption, even adoption through the state–all of these have shades of grey on all sides.  So as she becomes more able to shade her own thinking about the world, so can we start offering more shades to her own story.

There are people who have searched for Chinese birthparents, with some successes.  Brian Stuy, of Research-China, has interviewed some birthmothers, and in Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son: Abandonment, Adoption, and Orphanage Care in China, Kay Ann Johnson also found and interviewed a number of Chinese birthmothers.  So birth families can be found, and some people have located their own children’s birth families.  Then I have heard tales of birth parents who have anonymously contacted people trying to locate them, pleading with them to not continue, because they are afraid of the repercussions.

There have been tens of thousands of children adopted from China in the past 15 years, and the number of located birthparents is still very small.

So:  How to say, “we will help you look” without it turning–in a child’s magical way of thinking–into “we will find your birthmother NOW”?  How to instill a realistic view of the probabilities?  How to find that balance?

The subject of international birth parent searching has also recently been discussed on This Woman’s Work and today on American Family.  Let me know what y’all think, too…

The real estate agent who helped us find our house (and is a dear, close, personal friend of our ex-governor’s) is a relentless saleswoman.  We get letters in the mail with helpful tips and tricks!  We get–at irregular intervals–a coupon to a local ice cream store or dollars off on purchases at a locally owned business.  And, this Thanksgiving, we were given a pie, apple or pumpkin.

So, we now have a store-bought pumpkin pie for free, sitting in our fridge.

We have a turkey thawing out, alternately in the sink and in the fridge.

We have lemons and rosemary and garlic to stuff the turkey with.

We have taters, parsley, and cheese for OmegaDad’s trademarked Green Smashed Potatoes.  (Om nom nom!)

Somewheres in there we have a vegetable.

All that’s left is for us to put together the feast.  I will provide chopping and dicing; OmegaDad is le chef and I will do only his bidding in the kitchen.

It is time to list the things in life that make us thankful.  Really, it would be a good idea to do this on a regular basis; maybe the world would be a better place for it.  So long as it’s quiet and private and not trumpeted to the world.  My tidbits of thankfulness wouldn’t stand up to the scrutiny of the world; they’re all small and personal and, face it, pretty damned selfish.  What I am thankful for, someone else may find picayune, and vice versa.

Number one on my list is OmegaDad.  This guy is an endless font of incredible spoonerisms and malaprops that leave me laughing at the same time as I am left in gaping awe at his inventiveness.  I have asked how he does it, and he shrugs:  it just sort of “comes out–I don’t do it on purpose…”  We have been together for almost 16 years, and I still find things to talk with him about, still find him gentle and sweet and thoughtful and intelligent.  And, dayum, he cooks up a storm, dontcha know!  This year’s focus has been bread, and we have been the recipients of yummy flatbreads, lavosh, pizza dough, challah, plain white bread, breadsticks, French bread, tortillas, and homemade hamburger buns.  Wow.

Next is OmegaDotter.  She’s just amazing.  OmegaDad recently challenged her to finally pin down her back flip, offering a differing amount of money depending on how long it takes her to get it solid.  In the course of a week, she has managed to reach the point of always flipping over and 75% of the time ending up on her feet again.  (The practice is on our bed.)  She is reading by herself, and we alternate nights when I read to her with nights when she reads to me.  Every once in a while she will bestow a piece of artwork on us that makes my jaw drop.  And she’s beginning to bring out more and more unasked-for flashes of empathy and moral grounding.  Yee-haw!

Then there’s GrannyJ.  She’s 82 and still going strong, walking her small town, taking photographs, blogging and nourishing a local blogging community, and challenging me with new and interesting science fiction authors all the time.

We have our health.  We have our house.  We have friends and family.  We have a standard of living that would make 70% of the world gasp in awe.

We had Kai for eleven years–that’s good.  We’ve discovered that chickens, though they may be pretty damned dumb, still have a lot of personality.  Our garden overflowed with vegetables, even though we were moosed at times.  We have long, lovely hours of sunshine in the summer to balance out the cold dark months of winter.

There’s a lot to be thankful for.

A very happy Thanksgiving to all my U.S. friends and readers, and generally thankful warm fuzzies to my non-U.S. followers!

One of the joys of Teh Intarwebz is that you can hover on the cusp of current culture, dip in and out like a hummingbird, and still live your own old boring everyday life.

For example:  I have taken to watching shows on Hulu.com.  Alas, I am also aware that Hulu.com is talking about becoming a subscription-only (that means $$) service come sometime in 2010; having found Hulu, I am about to lose Hulu.  Anyway, enough grief; I have found that I can watch Glee and Stargate: Universe on Hulu if I miss those shows the night before, and am happy.

In addition, when brouhahas such as Kanye West’s drunken outburst disrespecting Nice Girl Taylor Swift at the MTV Music Video awards occur, I can scour the web the day after to (a) see what actually happened, and (b) get down with all the nominated music videos.

Which leads me to my headline.  Actually, “led me to my headline”–I watched the nominated videos and found…

There’s a new Star (use your joisey accent on that:  “Stah!”) in the pop music firmament name of Lady Ga-Ga.  Lady Ga-Ga sings catchy pop songs that drip sexual innuendo in music videos that are pop art celebrations of out-and-out (::gasp!:: ::OMG!:: ::catch me while I blush and faint::) lewd sexuality.  She wears nude body suits.  She feels herself up.  She feels up guys.  They feel her up.  She wears outre makeup.  She wears outre clothes.  It is a wild Warholian act; it’s also a wild dionysian act.

And damn.  I love her.

I am aware that some of my readers absolutely positively thoroughly despise her.  (I’m talking to you, PAgent!)  I am aware that my cachet as an intellectual pseudo-counter-cultural ex-almost-hippie is tarnished beyond repair by saying it, but there it is.

I think she’s hilarious.  I love her over-the-top persona, her over-the-top hair, her over-the-top makeup, and her over-the-top music videos.  (I will admit, however, that these are music videos I do not want the dotter seeing.  When the dotter arrived home one day humming the tune to “Poker Face” and saying she had to show me a video, I practically plotzed.  Who the #@!& was showing this smutty stuff to my seven-year-old daughter?!?!  And then she started singing the words, and I realized that she was smitten by a parody video.  Whew.  Crisis averted!)

Then I discovered some interviews of her.  And I loved those–she’s snarky and snotty and playing the interviewers and leaps upon sexism.  And I discovered plenty of YouTubery where she’s doing her hit songs in live venues, small clubs or radio stations, one-on-one, just her and her piano.  I loved those, too–she sings like a torch singer, then switches off into a staccato singing silliness, then back to the torch singer.

Lady Ga-Ga is a mix of early Madonna, Elton John at his most flamboyant, and…and…oh, damn, give me a name of a torch singer from the forties, please.  She is a character and a half, and I go ga-ga over her.

Here’s the parody:

Here’s the original–no embedding, bah.

And here’s a live version:

Mid-day yesterday, my back started hurting right beneath my bottom ribs.  I have no idea what I did to it, though given the location worry about kidneys and stuff like that.  It kept on hurting throughout the day.  When the dotter came home from school, I grumped about it…the next thing I know, she brings me an ice pack from the freezer and asks where to put it.

Later that night, in bed, I was still hurting.  Half asleep, half awake, middle of the night, I sort of mumble an “ow!” or two.  The dotter has been sleeping in our bed while OmegaDad is out of town, in a nest of sleeping bag, her favorite “Chix rule!” blankie, a down comforter, her roll-up pink fake-fur kitty cat pillow, and a stuffed duck.  So there I am, dazed and asleep and hurting, and suddenly a hand reaches out, pats me three times, strokes me gently, and she whispers, “There, there.  It’s okay.”  And I go back to sleep.

Aw, man.  She’s a Good Kid, dammit.

November keeps going, and I keep posting.  But by this point in time, it starts dragging.  I open up the blogging software and stare at a blank page, thinking, “There must be something interesting to blog about!”

Oh, there is.

I have my little list of questions to answer, from earlier in the month.  There’s still the “did you ever think of a sibling for OmegaDotter?” and the “There are people who deliberately cut off the culture of heritage?!?!” questions.

There’s also the comments on my “Dear Diary” post, which I do mean to respond to.

I also have a “great ladies of the family” series of posts in mind, talking about my great-aunties and how really nifty they were.

Plus a few more book reviews.

But right now, here’s the reality:

OmegaDad is out of town, at Chena Hot Springs (very cool place, by the way!), doing a work retreat/training/study combo.  I am left at home, holding down the fort.  This makes me realize just how very nice it is to have both of us here, together, functioning as a family, each of us (including the dotter) doing different things to keep the family rolling right along.  Not necessarily a lot, mind you, but each of us contributing enough to keep the rest from feeling like there’s just too much to do and not enough time to do it.

For instance, when OmegaDad is at home, I can take an hour earlier in the evening to putter about, think about things, and have something to start with when I face that blank page.

With OmegaDad away, I have to do the whole of the parenting schtick, which takes time away from the blogging schtick.

With OmegaDad away, I have to do the whole of the pet schtick.  Right now, that means checking on the chickens to be sure none of the other girls are coming down with The Chicken Plague.

With OmegaDad away, if I have a sick headache (like I did this afternoon), there are only two choices:  suck it up and deal with things while I’m feeling like puking and crying, or else (which I did) retreating to the bedroom, napping, and (a) letting the dotter play ToonTown and (b) letting the dotter watch TV until I wake up feeling better.  The dotter was a dream, making sure that she only did ToonTown for an hour (the Rule) and making sure that, when she turned on the TV, she turned it down and closed our bedroom door so it didn’t bother me.

It all boils down to one word:  Wah.  Or a command:  Pity me!  Har.  As if.  The world is full of single moms, and I salute them, because I don’t think I could do it all on my own, all the time.

Okay, not the dark.  But definitely the cold.

The local school district had H1N1 vaccinations for registered students.  Having read tales of people waiting in lines for three, four hours to get the shot, I determined we should get there early.  We got there, not the first, but close to it, and waited inside the outer doors, but were not allowed inside the inner doors until it was Time.

In the meantime, more people came with their kids.  And more.  The airlock filled up with people.  And then still more came.

And these idiots propped the door open.

It was 2 degrees Fahrenheit.

Gah.

But once the time came, we got in and out within ten minutes.  The dotter and I went off to lunch together, then off to her gymnastics class, and then home again.

Not a sign of pain in her arm, not a whiff of fever, not a single side effect.  She was happy as a clam all day long.

OmegaDotter has been gifted over the past year or so with many, many notebooks.  Each of them has been christened “my diary”, with great plans to write in it every day, and then, usually the day after, *poof* goes the idea, floating away with the wind.

Recently she dug up one of those notebooks and started actually writing in it.  Every day.  She has been writing at bed time, after I read (or she reads), and after we play the Feeling Game.  She stashes it under her pillow, and earnestly tells me that “it’s secret!”

Yesterday, she decided to make me read her entry.  It was about how Buffy died.

Tonight, she made me read her latest entry.

It started out:

Dear Diary - I relly miss my birth mom.”

She told the story of how “I became separated from her”, how her birth mother had not been able to keep her, because in China you can’t have more than one child.  (Okay, I have told her the whole “one child if a boy, two if the first is a girl”, but I guess it hasn’t sunk in yet.)  And how her birth mother kept her for a week, then left her by the side of the “rode”, and a policeman picked her up and took her to the “orfinije”.

There was a little drawing underneath, a framed picture with “I ♥ my birth mom”, sort of scrapbooking style.

So I climbed into bed with her and snuggled and talked about how it was okay to miss her birth mom, and it was okay to talk about it.  That we would be taking her to China for a visit when she was 10 or 11, and maybe we’d try to take her there every few years.

Our little lawyer immediately tried to negotiate the visit for 8 or 9 instead.  Ahem.

Then she wanted to print out posters with her picture on them, with the Chinese for “lost girl” on it, to take with us.  At which point…sigh.  How to explain to her that something like that could get her birth parents in trouble?  Or that it probably wouldn’t do much good, because, face it, where she was found is a city, a big city with 1.34 million in the urban area?

I suggested we could write a letter to the orphanage.

Then she made me read another entry she had written, about a dream about Kai, where I had taken his bones and made him come alive again.

Deep waters.  Each of these entries has dealt with “loss” in some form or another.  I told her I thought that writing down what she was feeling in her diary was a good idea, and that she could always talk to me or OmegaDad about her feelings.  And I told her that it was her diary, and I wouldn’t read it unless she wanted me to, and that she didn’t have to let me read it if she didn’t want to.

I must point out that there was a great deal of (normal, accustomed) squirming and twisting on her part, and some teasing on my part, wherein I told her that her birthmother would make her do her chores and her homework.  Plus some tickling, and, interspersed in the midst of it all, her trying to put her ankles behind her head.

(Once upon a time, I was able to do that.  I was able to put both ankles behind my head.  I told her ages ago.  She has tried to do it ever since.)

But still.  Deep.

The dotter was “grounded” today from playing at other kids’ houses or having them over, due to yesterday’s misunderstanding.  But we did send her off to “Parents’ Night Out”, mainly because I wanted a quiet evening with OmegaDad.

We rented a movie.  He bought smoked salmon and an array of cheeses and crackers, we had grapes and home-grown carrots and sugar snap peas and dilly dip.

We watched the movie (”Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist”–sweet and odd and funny).  We ate.  We joked with each other.  It was relaxing and peaceful.

I have two or three post ideas rolling about in my head:

• In extremis - I read Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer.  There was a scene in there that made me think of this last year’s Iditarod race, and how people who choose to go into an extreme situation, a possibly competitive situation, may view “moral situations” differently.
• A slew of interesting adoption posts have hit my blog reader recently.  There’s the question of “should you adopt internationally/interracially?”  There’s the question of “should international adoptive parents try to ‘open’ the adoption/perform birthparent searches?”  There’s the question of international adoptive parents who deliberately close the door on the culture-of-origin.
• Q&A - Ask me questions!  I need post ideas!

Later, gators.

Remember this?

It happened again, this evening.

So, instead of relaxing and watching some nice dark science fiction (aka Stargate Universe), OmegaDad and I have spent the past 40 minutes dealing with OmegaDotter’s social life–or, currently, lack thereof.

Once again, she started making plans with A.–as in, “We’ll pick you up at…”–without sitting down and asking us first.

It’s not a lot to ask, I think.  I’d like to have her request that a friend can spend the night, and actually talk about it with us, before she starts making plans with that friend.

Not to mention, she had already asked a different friend to come over tomorrow afternoon.  (A friend whose phone number we do not have, by the way, so we can’t call his folks and say “It’s off, sorry!”.)

Not to mention, she had already asked me if she could do “Parents’ Night Out” at her gymnastics facility.

The result:  No friends over at all tomorrow.  No overnight.  And “Parents’ Night Out” only if (a) they have space, and (b) she behaves supremely well tomorrow.

I wanted to talk about other things in my post today, but I’m grumpy and tired and about to head off to bed to wallow in being Mean Mommy.

Our neighborhood is filled with dogs.  Big dogs.  Little dogs.  Dogs that go on walks with their humans.

On the whole, I find myself thinking of Kai less and less, though when the dotter brought home “Our Daily News” (in which the kids write a snippet, it gets compiled into a sheet, and the teacher copies the sheet and sends it home with the kids) where she had not one, but two snippets, about how our dog died…well.  That one made it suddenly come back again.

Anyway, I see the happy people walking their dogs and am wracked with jealousy.  “How come he still has his dog, when our dog died?!”

Totally irrational.  But it reminds me of how I felt in the throes of infertility:  “How come she gets to get pregnant, but I can’t?!”

The dotter’s friend A.’s mom is a veterinarian at a no-kill shelter.  The other day, she called to say they had a schnauzer that needed a home, and did we want him?

Right away, it was a gut-level, “NO!”  Too soon.  Still. 

Maybe next year it won’t be too soon.  In the meantime, there I am, jealous of people with their dogs.

When the dotter becomes a famous artist, I am going to go around being such a mom.  “Did you see that new painting she did?!  Isn’t it awesome?!”  “You need to buy that sculpture of hers.  Did you know she was making sculptures out of construction paper when she was a tiny girl?  It’s only $3,000!  C’mon!”

Really.  I am in awe of her talent.  My mom, GrannyJ, is very artsy; she was always doodling and drawing and making hooked rugs and making psychodelic creatures out of papier mache.  I, however, find drawing hard.  Hard, hard, hard.  At my ripe old age of *cough* *ahem*, I have the patience to be very careful and do an okay drawing of a horse if I really, really try.

But the dotter…give her paper and scissors and tape and pencils or markers, and she’s off in a dream world, concentrating so hard that she doesn’t hear you.  (Of course, that’s no great feat:  she doesn’t hear you most of the time, anyway, so you end up getting louder and louder until she finally gets all huffy and says, “I’m going!” or “I hear you!” or some variation thereof.)

A few weeks ago she purchased a SpongeBob SquarePants book at the fall book fair.  She’s been reading bits and pieces of it, under duress–she still hates to read on her own.  (Wah.)  (I keep saying to myself that someday it will kick in; my gorgeous niece also hated to read at this age, but now devours novels.)  But I discovered the other day that she has also been…well:

Mind you, these are copies of pictures in the book, so it’s not original work.  But, dayum.  I can’t do that!  Any kid looking at these pics would (a) know who the characters are, and (b) think that some grown-up had drawn them.  Heck, I thought some grown-up had drawn them…someone who snuck into our house, used our paper and pencils, drew them, then snuck out again after leaving the pictures behind.

Did I mention she’s only 7 years old?  And that this wasn’t tracing, but free-hand?

She is so artistic.  It is so amazing.  And it has been there from the beginning; she has always wanted to draw, color, paint, create things.  I’m leaving her to it, letting her figure her own way around–the school has no art classes (none), due to the reading, writing and arithmetic scheduling resulting from NCLB edicts.  They’re lucky they still have recess and their one rotating “special” class.  I’m hoping that middle school will include art classes, but if it doesn’t, by that time she will have full confidence in her abilities and we will have to find an artist mentor for her.

Because art is like breathing for her.

Saturday night, OmegaDad snuck into my office, opened up a plastic bag from the local grocery store, and showed me the bag of miniature Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups that was inside.  “These were on sale–half off!  Hide this!” he commanded.  So I slid it into the drawer to the left of my computer.

The plan was, of course, that he and I could share it, and it would be safe from the dotter.

In the picture above, you see the reality of things.  OmegaDad should be a pusher.  I can see him now, dressed in a trenchcoat, leaning against an alley wall…as I walk by, he hisses, “Pssst!  Hey, there.  Want some cho-co-late, little girl?!”

The only thing that makes me feel better about this is that a serving size for these little diet busters is five pieces.  So, in reality, this is only two servings.  Only 440 calories–the majority of which come from fat.

And there is still one left in the bag.

Really.

And it will still be there tomorrow.

Really.

What am I doing?  Oh, I’m just going to get my coat and car keys.  Why?  Oh, no real reason.  Oh, no, I’m not driving off to the grocery store for more Reese’s.  No, no, no!  Not at all!  Perish the thought!

OmegaDad has become quite proficient with building edifices out of gingerbread over the years.  And his dexterity with piping royal icing has become quite deft.  And, frankly, anyone who can figure out how to color icing dead black and bright orange deserves an A+ for ingenuity.

(Actually, it turns out that the way to do it is to buy the expensive food coloring at the local gourmet kitchen store.  Alas for my shattered illusions!)

He found out how to make ghosts out of fondant on the internet.  He came up with a way to make tombstones out of Pepperidge Farm Mint Milano cookies and white chocolate chips.  He is a dab hand at outlining windows and creating spiderwebs out of icing.

The piece de resistance was the roof, a square slab of homemade sugar candy, colored orange.

Behold!

We have ghosts.  We have tombstones.  We have little pumpkins on the steps.  We have spiderwebs.  We have gables.  Also, notice the way the side looks like a face…

I am most satisfied.  This one came out way cool.

A close-up of the path (made of rock candy) and front door (made of chocolate wafers):

Tombstones and a ghost:

The “ground” is Cocoa Crispies.

The “tree” is some twigs blown down by the incredible winds we have been having yesterday and today, anchored in a squished up caramel.  (We’re supposed to have gusts up to 75 mph tonight; when I took the dotter off to school this afternoon for “Trick or Treat Town” the mountains across the inlet, over by Big City, were obscured by what could have been fog, except that it was coming down through the passes, rather than up from the inlet.  The pseudo-fog was, in fact, dust being scoured from the various glaciers by the winds.  Big City was under an air quality advisory as a result.)

Some fun Halloween links:  The very best Mrs. Incredible costume…jelly jar candle jack-o-lanterns…a real-life Transformer costume (watch the video!)…an incredibly punny Halloween tale from Miss Cellania.

Enjoy your spooky day!

OmegaDotter long ago decided that she wanted to be a Rock Star for Halloween.  This would be, thankfully, a generic Rock Star, not, say, Miley Cyrus or Lady GaGa or anyone in particular.  We tossed around ideas for a while, finally settling on a long-haired wig, an electric guitar, camouflage pants, and a jacket.

All, of course, in the dotter’s favorite color:  PINK.  (Oy.)  (But, hey, someday she will decide that PINK is, like, so totally boooring–like her mother–and come to like some other colors.  There are hints that she will welcome other colors beginning to burgeon, so I have hope.  Maybe by the time she is 13 or 14…)

I had seen pink camo pants on Target.com, so assumed they would be available at our local Chez Target.  We set out for a shopping trip.  Much to my dismay, there were no pink camo pants to be found.  So we scrounged around the store and finally settled upon a pink and black leopard dress, and the Rock Star transitioned from a hard-rocker (though PINK) to a more glam-rocker.

The dotter had been hankering for months after a Barbie play electric guitar; I sniffed.  Barbie.  Humph.  Play guitar.  Humph.  So, to counteract this, I told her she had to buy it herself.  Our shopping trip was her chance; she raided her money jar and quite happily purchased this plastic faux confection.  Much to my amazement when we got home and I had liberated it from its multiple-tie-down jail, it turned out to be fairly cool–once one got past the huge Barbie logo and the PINKness and the whiteness and the daintiness.  It has pre-loaded tunes.  It has the ability to do some rockin’ screamin’ guitar noises.  And it has a “wa-waaaa” lever to emulate the guitarist sliding her hands up and down the guitar strings.  All in all, much more tolerable than I had expected.

Then there was the wig.  We purchased a wig, even though I knew it wasn’t what she wanted.  But it was blonde and it was curly and it had some Disney princess or other on the package, and the dotter oohed and ahhed.  Hey.  It was nine bucks; what harm was there in purchasing the darned thing so that she could try it on and discover it was…well, not the look she wanted.

So the question remained:  what to do about the wig.  Amazon, of course, came through with a long-haired hot-pink wig with bangs…but I forgot to order it.  The dotter kept reminding me at the wrong time–say, as we were getting out of the car at gymnastics, or as she was doing her daily homework, or while we were out shopping.  Since my mind is a sieve these days, these reminders didn’t do much good; she would tell me, I’d nod and say “Yeah, will do!”, and then, a few minutes later–Oh!  Look!  Something shiny!

Somehow I managed to remember it last week; I believe the dotter wised up and reminded me as she was falling asleep, so that I would get online afterwards.  So after getting her down to bed, I wandered down to the office and ordered the thing, paid for it, and then figured all was well.

Until I bothered to actually read the confirmation email, which mentioned, rather nonchalantly, that the delivery date was anywhere between October 27 (good) and November 3 (ooops!).  I read the email on Tuesday, when I was wondering when the darned thing would arrive.

I didn’t tell the dotter about that November 3 date.  Nope, nosirree.  I figured if it didn’t show up, we would figure something out.

But today it arrived, and as soon as the dotter arrived home from school we went into full-fledged dress-up mode.

She tried it on first, of course, in her school clothes, then I had to try it on while she dashed upstairs to get the rest of her outfit:

And then she pulled everything together, like so:

The pink flannel pants are more orange-y, so we’re considering whether leggings might work instead.  Anyway, there you have it, the Saga Of The Rock Star.

We have also carved the pumpkin, OmegaDad and the dotter have been putting together a gingerbread haunted house, we have made fondant ghosts, and it seems that A. is on for Trick-or-Treating again, thus allowing me to avoid the whole K. question.

(Oh, yes.  The dotter did deliver her apology notes this evening at gymnastics, which went over very well.  She got an approving nod from Coach John and a hug from A.  Afterwards, while she was starting her session, I saw them comparing notes and chuckling over the idiosyncratic spelling…”Couch John”, and she was sorry she “heart A.’s arm”…)

The questions that trouble a parent shift and change as the child grows.  At first, the troubles–though they seem huge and insurmountable–are actually pretty straightforward:  kiddo cries, you figure out whether she’s wet or has pooped or needs Orajel or is tired or sick, take care of things, and voila, the problem is solved.  Then you move on to “why is she waking up two or three times in the middle of the night??” and the concurrent “Oh.  My.  God.  I am soooooo sleepy I think I may just collapse right here in the hallway at work and take a little snooze; I’m sure no one will mind.  Right?”  You’ve got the kid biting…or being bit…or both.

Then it’s time to worry about just how soon the kiddo is going to realize just what the words she is singing to the song on the radio mean.  You wince when “Greased Lightning” is playing while she’s watching Grease, and hope that she never turns to you and asks, “What’s a ‘pussy wagon’?” or “That’s weird:  why would anyone say ‘the chicks’ll cream!’?”

Ahem.

(As she gets older, she will start singing more popular songs from the radio, and you’ll realize, after waxing nostalgic for the good ol’ rock songs of your yout’, that you’d have to go back in time about 100 years to find songs that you don’t find yourself casting the hairy eyeball at…It’s amazing the amount of slang devoted to sex and violence, and the amount of popular music of many eras devoted to sex and violence as well.  Just look at all those folk songs.  People are having sex and dying violently all over the place in those.)

Anyway…

To get back to my original subject:  Trouble.

These days, I find myself worrying about friendships.  The dotter has, for some reason, decided she doesn’t want to visit her best bud A.–who OmegaDad and I find absolutely charming.  She’ll hang on the phone with him for hours, playing (ugh) ToonTown, but ever since she returned from an overnight and immediately developed the Not-Flu, she has been avoiding his house.  (There is also the question of dogs.  A.’s mom is a vet for a no-kill shelter.  Their house is filled with dogs and cats.  I have wondered if she’s not subconsciously upset by all the dogs reminding her of Kai.  Then I figure I’m just overanalyzing things, and it’s just a phase.)

A. was supposed to come Trick-or-Treating with us.  Now A. is not.  The dotter immediately suggested K.  K. is the diametric opposite of A.  K. is female, a year older than the dotter, lazy, and snotty.  She’s also the girl who has her finger directly on all of the dotter’s buttons, including adoption issues.  OmegaDad and I don’t like K.

Ugh.

BUT.  That wasn’t really what I wanted to talk about; it just came pouring out in the stream of consciousness brought on by the word “trouble”.

My original point with the word “trouble” is that the dotter got in serious trouble this evening at gymnastics.  Coach Christina had given her group a water break, and they came barreling across the gymnasium floor in a thundering herd, led by the dotter, who was not looking where she was going.

At the same time, A., the oh-my-gosh-she’s-powerful-and-damned-good young gymnast whose team practices at the same time as the dotter’s, was starting a power sprint aimed at a rolling dive flip into the foam pit.

The two paths intersected right by the side of the foam pit.

The inevitable bad and painful collision was only avoided at the very last minute by some extremely quick thinking and movement on A.’s part, with the result that, rather than her normal perfect flip into the pit, she angled into the pit and came crashing down on her arm.

After the gasps of horror and brief adrenaline rush was over for everyone, Coach John (the head coach at the facility) gave the dotter quite a dressing down.  Since they were a distance away from my perch on the bleachers, I couldn’t hear, but there was finger-shaking involved.  She proceeded to the water fountain.  When she was done, I gave her quite a dressing down, of the “Don’t you ever, ever do something like that again!  You need to pay attention to where you’re going and what’s going on on the gymnasium floor!” type.  There was some “You could have been seriously hurt!” and “You could have seriously hurt someone else!” mixed in there, along with some finger-shaking on my part too.

She was suitably subdued afterwards.

On the drive home, I told her she needed to write a note of apology to Coach John and to A., who spent the next half hour favoring her arm.  This worried me; A. is really very, very good and I’d hate for her to be out of commission for a few weeks due to this…total and absolute inattentiveness.

Much to my surprise and amazement, right after we got home, the dotter retreated to her bedroom, then returned a few minutes later, said, “I’m done!”, and handed me two very contrite notes for Coach John and A.

Now all that’s left is for the dotter to deliver them to the recipients herself, on Thursday.  (She wanted me to do it.  Har.  As if.)

Damned episode scared the snot out of me.  Someone could have been very seriously hurt.  At the same time, while one part of me is still seething about the aforementioned total and absolute inattentiveness, the other part of me is just slumgustered at the immediate note-writing and the well-written apologies.  Bit by bit, she’s growing up.

(I won’t mention the zits.)  (Maybe in my next post.)  (Yes.  Zits.  Not a lot.  But, still…)

The dotter having been declared broken-toe-free via x-rays on Monday, she returned to gymnastics on Tuesday.  She wanted me there, so I took along my new toy to play with.  What I learned:  the auto-focus can often fixate on something you don’t want in crowded conditions–causing your intended target to be fuzzy, while a bystander is clear and sharp.  Hmm.  This also happens with videos.

Obviously I need to play more.

But what I mostly did was play with patterns that captured my eyes.

We have worn paint on the bleachers that I was sitting on.  There’s a message in there, somewhere, I know it!:

The HVAC system, looking very science-fiction-y:

Beams and boxes of various colors and shapes:

A mish-mash of equipment surrounding and behind one set of rings:

All in all, it was fun.

This arrived via UPS today.  I am a happy camper.  I have been fiddling with it all evening long (with a break for us going out to dinner, and having a glass of chardonnay, yum).

So…herewith are some play shots.  All have been cropped and resized.  You are more than welcome to skip down to the very last paragraph, because the pics are not particularly interesting or artistic.

First–speed of 1/3200, looking at water dripping into an aluminum bowl:

Next–A close-up of cat hair, from about 2 inches away.  The cat was moving, alas!

The dotter’s colorful “cactus”, also from about 1-2 inches away.  I am not sure what kind of “cactus” it is; it may actually be one of those African succulents instead.  Obviously I need to work with the macro shots to determine how best they work, how to focus them properly.

The sun sculpt GrannyJ sent me two years ago, when I was mourning the lack of sunlight in the wintertime.  This was shot across a dim living room, so it’s a sample of low-light photography.  There is absolutely no comparison with my old digicam; trying to get a shot like this from the old one would have been a lost cause.

A trio of shots of Wooly the cat.  The first is from a bunch of “continuous mode” shots I was taking late this evening, once again in low light.  It takes a photograph for me to realize just how darned pretty he is.  The flash shadows edging his legs are a bit harsh.

The cat in sepia tones.  He moved, of course:

The cat in black and white (the focus was on his shoulder):

Goodness!  He looks grumpy!  But he wasn’t, he was in the middle of washing himself and was in the act of looking up towards me from his paw.

So.  What I need now is a good teach-yourself-photography book.  Can anyone recommend one for me?  Preferably one that focuses on digital photography and composition, and talks about shutter speed, aperture settings, depth of field, etc.  ‘Cause I can play with all of that with this camera!  Woot!