OmegaMom

We have visitors.  One of the visitors has a camera.  She came along on my walk with the dawg to do some pics, and also took some while we all were at lunch in Town With Spanish Name That’s Pronounced The Same Way The One In Missouri Is Pronounced.

Me and the dawg, silhouetted:

The dotter, captured as she was laughing at about a photo she had snapped:

I really like it because she’s not “posing”.

What I look like currently:

And a happy, happy dawg, in mid-run:

I thought this might make a nice break from political stuff from all directions!

Bella asked for an update on the move.

Yes, I know that Bella requested it more than a week ago.

That is how the move is going.

::frenzied rictus in place of a grin::

The movers are here.  The house is like a hurricane has hit us.  Almost everything is packed, and we have four nights left.  No standard foods—though the refrigerator is full of scrids and scrads.  No plates.  No cutlery.

The beds are still here, but it sounds like they’re departing tomorrow.  Ah, well, we have inflatable mattresses.

I’ve been hauling the poor dawg off to doggie day care every day, so the movers (and I) don’t get literally “hounded” by the constant territorial barking.

I’ve been shutting the poor cats into the master bedroom, where there are heaps and piles of Things We Want To Ship Directly Or Take With Us scattered about.

The furniture in the living room has been carefully covered with wraps.  The moving guys assured me we could still sit on them.  Oh, goodie.

I’m frantically pulling together documents for our mortgage application for whatever house we decide on in Big City, NM.  (Actually, outside Big City, NM.  Preferably in more mountainous, tree-ish areas.)

OmegaDad and I are sniping at each other.  We are both sniping at OmegaDotter.  She is sniping back.  It is great fun.  Not.  I have taken to reminding myself “just a few more days, and we will be done with the omigod we are taking an airplane with three cats a dog three turtles a man a woman an almost-10-year-old and associated luggage I can’t breathe help me God whole affair.”

(The chickens and bunny rabbit have gone off to A Good Home.  Story to come.)

Then, of course, we get to settle in to a few days at a casita in a bed and breakfast in Big City, then find a local month-to-month rental, while we’re looking for a house to buy.

BUT.  Here?  It is gray.  The wind is howling off the glaciers.  The sun is rising at about 9:30 and going down at about 5:45.  It is currently in the 20s and there is snow on the ground that is being whipped into crusty small drifts by the 60 mph gusts.  In Big City, NM?  Sunny (or just clear at night).  In the 50s and 60s during the day.  It will be windy later in the week, but…the sun is rising at 7:30 and setting at 6:15.

I will be so glad when this is all over with!

(Oh, yeah, and I’m attempting [bahahaha!] NaBloPoMo, yet again.)

It has been a bad day.

We had our family meeting with the therapist.  When we got home, OmegaDotter was to do her homework before heading to the gym.  OmegaDad headed off to the bathroom.  OmegaDotter finished a couple of problems, then looked at one and started whining about how she couldn’t do it.  I got snarky.  She got whinier.  I got snarkier.  She got hysterical.  OmegaDad emerged from the bathroom.  It escalated.

I ended up shouting loudly at OmegaDad for quite a bit, then storming out of the house.

I found myself at a local bookstore-cum-coffeehouse.  I bought a book.  I got myself a hazelnut mocha.  I got a slice of key lime pie.

While I was eating it, I began to cry.

Because, you see, key lime pie was Mom’s favorite type of pie.  And today is her birthday.  And she’s not here.  And it just sucks in general.

This evening as I was driving the dotter home from gymnastics, she was talking about M.’s two sisters, who are both pregnant—one at 15 and one at 18.

Luckily, I have indoctrinated her enough so that she commented that they had made “bad decisions.”  Yo, baby, that’s what I like to hear!  She further went on to say that the younger sister, now at 6 or 7 months pregnant, was now big and ungainly (well, okay, she said “fat”, which bugs me, but let’s continue on), and I added that her back probably hurt a lot, and her legs, and she had been sick to her stomach early on…

OmegaDotter asked me how on earth I knew, since, well, I’d never been pregnant (okay, two weeks pregnant…).  I allowed as how I had gotten sick to my stomach, but that was it.

She then said that it was good that I hadn’t been pregnant, because if I’d been pregnant, we wouldn’t have adopted her.  Well, she’d still have been adopted by another family, but we wouldn’t be her parents.

And then she added the kicker:  “I’m a lucky girl.”

Ack!

So I quickly told her that we were the lucky ones, because we got her and we love her and she’s smart and funny and blah de blah de blah.

Which segued into how we didn’t have a choice, and didn’t get to choose her, which led into how (so far as I know), the folks at CCAA actually read the files on the kiddoes and read the files on the parents and try—at least a little bit—to match the personalities of the parents to the kid.  Of course, it’s hard when you’ve got nannies’ perceptions of what a little baby is like, but I occasionally read the translation of their description of the dotter, and the thing that stood out was that she was intense and thoughtful and liked music—all of which were definitely mentioned in our homestudies.

But still…”lucky girl”.  Sigh.  “Lucky” to have her birth family be forced—whether by law, by custom, by economic issues, by overbearing inlaws, or what-have-you—to abandon her where she would (hopefully) be found.  Or, possibly, “lucky” to have her birth family decide to sell her to a finding service (Brian Stuy, at Research China, has been writing about how his research seems to be leading to a great deal of baby selling earlier than previously thought).  “Lucky” to have been taken out of her birth culture…

Oh, yeah, sure:  We love her, she loves us, we’re a (generally) happy family.  She’s smart, she’s getting a good education, she’s doing great in gymnastics, she’ll have college and support, and become a fairly successful middle- to upper-class U.S.A.ian woman.  That part is all good.  But underlying it all is a basic fact:  she started out being abandoned.  And maybe it will mean a lot to her when she’s an adult, maybe it won’t.  But there are plenty of adult international adoptees out there on the internets who write about how that one basic fact forms a foundation for the rest of their outlooks and attitudes.  (Please don’t label these people “angry adoptees” or “unhappy adoptees”—typically they’re quite happy with their lives; it’s just that there’s a facet to their personalities that those of us who grew up in our birth families don’t have to cope with.)

Argh.

I am trying to get a copy of my grandmother’s death certificate so that I can close an account that has both my mother and my grandmother named as owners.

This is turning into a bureaucratic nightmare.

It seems that having a birth certificate listing my mother as…well, my mother, and a death certificate listing my mother’s mother as my grandmother does not suffice to establish that I am, indeed, my grandmother’s granddaughter.

But, nooooo.

I have to send them a copy of my mother’s birth certificate.

Which, of course, I don’t have.

I have plenty of copies of her death certificate…

My paralegal passed me on to her local “investigative services” company.  They listened to my tale of woe and said that, alas, it would be just as quick for me to order a copy of my mother’s birth certificate.

In order to get a copy of my mother’s birth certificate, I had to send a copy of my birth certificate.  And submit a “Sworn Statement and notarized Certificate of Acknowledgement”, which required a visit to the local bank to get it notarized.  And pay more money.  And wait more time.  Oh, yes, and I couldn’t upload the document…I had to fax it.

So, out of all this, some financial advice for all and sundry:

1. If you’re going to just pass your money on to your kids, put them as beneficiaries on all your financial instruments.  Alas, there was a mixup in communications with my mom, and she thought we had put me on all her accounts as “pay on death”, but it was only the accounts at one bank and none of the investment accounts.  It was so nice to have the real estate in beneficiary deeds—all we had to do was record mom’s death with the county, and her properties were automatically distributed as noted in the beneficiary deeds.
2. Another option is to do a living trust, into which you write all your financial instruments.  That way, you have dealt with all the paperwork, and your heirs will not need to do anything.
3. If you have an account that has a co-owner who has died, get that person’s name off the account pronto.  Oh, it is so easy to let these things slide—after all, don’t we all have plenty of time?
4. If you have stocks and bonds that you have purchased in small amounts, and have those certificates, you can always put them into an investment account and name people as beneficiaries, rather than having the certificates sitting in a safe deposit box.
5. Once again, if someone is named as a co-owner of your stocks or bonds and passes away, immediately remove their name(s).  Once again, this would be easier if you had them in an investment account; that’s what the investment people are paid to do.
6. If you’re going to be the executor of someone’s estate, and you’re going through various papers and see something, like, oh, say, a person’s birth certificate, or an original death certificate, grab it and put it in your ever-so-vital “estate folder”.  Do not say to yourself, “Oh, there’s mom’s birth certificate!  Wow!” and then put it right back where you found it.  Which place you will not be able to remember, and, furthermore, which place may be many many many miles away from you when you need that document again.

All stuff I have learned this past six months.  Sigh.  Now all I have to do is wait for mom’s birth certificate, at which point I can close that account, transfer it to the estate account, put the stocks and bonds into the estate account, and then divvy it all up.  It’s not like it’s a whole helluva lot of money, but the fact that it was in bits and pieces made it more difficult.

From our house to yours:

Weeks, months, years.

I am tired of it all, right now.

In addition to suddenly being bereft of all ties to the older generation, we are dealing with the younger generation in the person of our dotter.

It is, we guess, attachment issues.  And possible ADD.  The only good thing that is holding me up right this moment is the fact that the Bad Days are coming exactly 24 hours after a therapy appointment…which, when I realized it, lifted a bit of the misery and gloom and desire to just walk away, get on an airplane, and fly to Arizona where I have a house of my own, free and clear, because if there’s such a direct correlation in response, then maybe, just maybe, the therapy might be helping.

Maybe.

And, hell, what we’re dealing with here is minor, compared to serious attachment issues.  I haven’t the vaguest idea how people deal with major attachment disorders in their children; this is wearing enough.

But, to break the mood of this post, I will pass on Allie Brosh’s latest, over at Hyperbole and a Half.  I hope it makes you howl with laughter, the way it did for me.

Heh.  Every year, I try it, and every year something happens to keep me from posting one day.  Usually it’s much later in the month, but this year’s NaBloPoMo-interruptus came barely a third of the way into the month.

Nonetheless, I think I will try posting all the remaining days of the month.

What happened?  Well, there was an Epic Scene with the dotter.  OmegaDad threatened her with being taken off the gymnastics team.  There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.  And shouting.  And OmegaDad—that gentle, kind, thoughtful man—lost it to the point where he stormed out of the house.

Um.

Usually, that part of the scenes is mine.  Or at least, I try for it, but am not allowed to by the dotter.  In this case, it was more important for her to be screaming at me and trying to wrench the phone out of my hands as I called the gymnastics facility…

Anyway, she and I ended up snuggled up in the big chair in the living room while I talked with Ling and MeiMei (her Chinese dolls) about what OmegaDotter had done and why Big Scenes are happening more and more frequently and blah de blah de blah.  The end result:  she fell asleep in my lap.  And then we woke up later, and I moved us into our bedroom, and we fell back asleep.  Somewhere in there, OmegaDad returned.  I slept until 8:30 a.m.  The scene was at 4 p.m.

This morning we had a Come To Jesus meeting with the dotter.

She spent the entire morning cleaning—not at our behest, mind you; this is one of her ways of dealing with stress and (silently) apologizing.  So we got rid of all the garbage in the living and dining rooms, and in the garage, and we swept and reorganized and she vacuumed the downstairs and the stairs and cleaned the catbox and and and…

Note to all who do not have children yet:  Raising children can be extremely hard.

And then this evening I had word that a loved one is in the ICU and probably going to die in the next few days.

Did I mention that this has been a shitty year?  Oh, yeah.

While I sit here alternately reading election returns and berating myself for reading election returns (“Why are you hitting your head against the wall?”  “Because it feels so good when it stops!”), I thought I would put together a post on our Halloween shenanigans.

Mostly, our annual Halloween haunted gingerbread house.  This was last year’s version.  This year, OmegaDad decided that we needed a haunted movie theater.  It would have a movie screen, and various ghouls and ghosties and witches and whatnot sitting in the audience, and you would only be able to see it through holes in the decorated walls…

First, he and OmegaDotter decided on a movie to be playing (Monsters Versus Aliens), and then the dotter produced a sketch of what should be showing on screen  (I like the “Dude!”):

While OmegaDad was putting together the walls, the dotter worked on translating her sketch to the royal icing movie screen:

With this as the end result:

Note that working with edible ink pens on royal icing is, frankly, a pain in the butt.  She’s great with pencil on paper, and good with markers on paper, but the edible ink pens/royal icing combo was killer for her.

Then she and OmegaDad spent a while creating theater seats and various monsters to inhabit the seats.  At the front, you will see three ghosts, a Frankenstein, and a witch off to the side; behind them are tombstones and the beginnings of two Candy Corn Creatures.  OmegaDad is working on the movie house framework and, I believe, beginning to populate the theater:

The inside was completed, and before they put the roof on and finished the outside, I took a photo:

I love the candy corn wall sconces!

And then they really got to working.  I present to you—The Boojou Theatre!

This is the front.  Note the movie poster for Monsters Versus Aliens, the skeletal booth attendant, and the Candy Corn Creature.  (OmegaDad downloaded a variety of monster movie posters, shrunk them, printed them out, and then plastered them onto slabs of royal icing.)  A close-up of the front:

The left side, with "The Creature From The Black Lagoon”, “The Giant Gila Monster”, ghosts, tombstones, Candy Corn Critter, and a view inside, and the back, with a monstrous spider, glowy-eyeball black cats, and another movie poster:

A view of the right side.  The movie poster is “Beach Girls and the Monster”.  You can see the movie “playing” inside:

So, it was grand and grand fun.  On the whole, however, both OmegaDad and I preferred last year’s creation.  He is already planning next year’s, which currently is slated to be a haunted disco, and titled “BOOgie Nights”.  Har!

OmegaDotter was a sorceress for Halloween, with a grand black-and-white wig which she very carefully styled into a sixties-style hairdo.  There was purple eye shadow and purple lips, and a splendid staff made of black painted PVC with a purple/pink painted wiffle ball and glowsticks inserted inside. 

She insisted that I dress up a bit, so we scampered around Sunday afternoon and pulled together a Mama Bunny look:

We both discovered that the face paint itched like crazy after a while.

So that was our Halloween!

Now…back to reading ::sob!:: election returns.

I spent Thursday driving down to Phoenix and flying from there to Big City, Alaska.  A lot of it, I spent just feeling miserable; for some reason, the knowledge that this was the last time I’d be flying to Arizona to see Mom and the last time I’d be flying home from such a visit was just…hard.  Oh, we’ll be going back, lots, I know.  But it was just so…final.

Then I arrived home and—of course—after weeks of beautiful warm, clear weather in Suburban Alaska, it turned cold, grey, and drizzly.  And our furnace was out.  And the house was getting cold.  And—after days of doing, doing, doing, suddenly I had little to do, and the grey drizzlies outside matched the grey drizzlies inside, and it was A Very Bad Day.

But today dawned bright and sunny, and OmegaDad was working in the yard.  I ventured out there pre-shower and pottered around the yard with him, and then noticed a pair of butterflies that were…um…making little baby butterflies together in the bushes near the veggie beds.  I didn’t have the camera, and didn’t think it was possible that the S E X would continue, but every time I peered over there, there they were, cavorting shamelessly in the sun.

The dotter called out the window for something:  “Mom!  MOM!”

I called back, “Yo, OD!  Wanna see some butterflies having sex?!”

(Really, I did!)

She was intrigued, but then wanted me to come inside to see something (cat vomit—oh, my life is so glamorous!), and while I was there, I grabbed the camera and OmegaDotter’s arm, hauling both out to the backyard to see the spectacle.

The dotter had, in the meanwhile, located her brand-new good butterfly net, and determined to capture the butterflies, which neither OmegaDad nor I thought very kosher.  Y’know, there they were, very involved and all that, it just didn’t seem sporting…

She managed to (gently) get the netting over the butterflies, then scooped them up.  And, whaddayaknow, they were still at it.  And I had my camera.  So I managed to get some smutty butterfly pictures, as seen above and below.

Then we demanded the dotter release the butterflies.  This caused some consternation; she wasn’t quite sure how to do it.  So I reached into the net, and the next thing I knew, I had a pair of copulating butterflies crawling on my arm.  The dotter reached out, and they climbed onto her hand.

Right after that, they flew away.

All the time, I was doing the “Oh, wow, Mom just has to see this!” and the associated “Damn.  She can’t.  And I can’t tell her.”

So it goes.

So, yeah, I’m back home.  We’re going to scatter her ashes in early October, a good time weather-wise; Arizona has suddenly entered the very hot season, and our visit out to the place where we scattered Dad’s ashes was already hot enough that we figured all Mom’s more elderly friends would have severe difficulties if we tried during the summer.  I will be contacting friends and family about where and when the event will be…

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.” 

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.

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.)

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!

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.

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.

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.

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 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!

We got to see the dawg at the vet’s office today; he was totally stoned on pain meds, but even so looked much better than he had yesterday morning.  So we loved on him and snuggled with him, and then left, with promises of being able to check him out tomorrow morning, and maybe take him home.

Mom is out of the hospital, yay!

And I?  Am worn out.  Just plain tuckered.

It has been a bad few days.

A few days ago, I noticed the dawg wasn’t eating much, or drinking much.  Then yesterday a.m., early, the dawg started barfing.  And barfing.  And barfing.  And soon, there was nothing to barf up…but he was thirsty.  And he couldn’t keep that down, either.  At which point, dawg-worrying became intense enough to have us call the vet.

The dawg doesn’t like vets, so we needed both OmegaDad and myself to be there to calm the pup down for an exam.  Then x-rays.  Then blood work.  Then shots (an anti-emetic and an acid suppressor).  Then instructions to wait until evening, then try him on water, then white rice & boiled chicken this a.m.

We walked out having spent $380.  Ack!

The dawg stopped barfing for a bit.  Then we tried him on water later that night, which he slurped right down.

And then promptly threw right up again.

All through the night, the same thing:  drink water, throw it up.

So we called the vet again this a.m., and the vet said it was time for the barium x-rays:  fill the dawg with a barium-spiked fluid and trace the movement to see where the blockage was.  So I schlepped the pup off to the vet again, and dropped him off, with an estimate of another $300.  Ack!

Two hours later, the vet calls, saying that the barium didn’t move more than an inch beyond the end of his tummy, and the only thing to do was exploratory surgery, and here’s the estimate:  $1000 to $2000.  ACK!  ACK, ACK, double ACK!

At which point, the qualms start.  Ooookay, we’re talking serious bucks here.  Ooookay; if it were the dotter, we wouldn’t be balking at the cost, but scrambling to find ways to cover it.  Ooookay; there are people in the U.S. who need that money to get health care.  Ooookay; a dawg is worth it/a dawg is not worth it.  Oookay; there are people who would think we were nuts to even think of paying for it.  Ooookay, there are people who would think we were cruel and horrible for even thinking of not paying for it.  Ooookay; we don’t have the extra bucks right now, but we will have them when our PFD check comes through in two weeks–and yeah, we wanted to buy some toys with the money, but isn’t Kai worth it?

Et cetera.

It was a very odd feeling.

The end result:  A “Care Credit” card, a credit card offered for paying for vet bills.  You can apply over the phone.  Oh, goody.  Just what we need…

So we signed and the dawg went in for surgery, OmegaDad and I went out to lunch, and then I went home.

To be confronted with a message on our phone from a friend of my mother’s saying “She’s ALL RIGHT, but your mother is in the hospital, just released from the ICU, and here’s the phone number…”

Oh, shit.

Two days of ongoing worry were suddenly replaced with frantic panic.

Talking to my mom, and then talking to her doctor, reassured me (currently).  Seems she went in for day-surgery for a blockage in her leg; all went well.  She stayed with her friend for the night, and in the night, her leg and foot started hurting.  She couldn’t sleep, she couldn’t go out for her regular weekly breakfast with her buds, so she finally called the doc and asked is this was normal.  He immediately told her to hie herself off to the emergency room.  When she got there, the ER folk all panicked about her heart flutter and kept talking about how she needed a pacemaker right now.  Her doc finally got them straightened out on that (she has had the flutter for quite a while, and has a “strong heart” according to two cardiologists aside from the flutter), but she was admitted to ICU for observation and testing.  While she was there, some bloodwork came back indicating she might have internal bleeding, but everything else was okay; they moved her out of ICU into PCU (?!) and decided to keep her for another day or two.

The end result:  I have been on the phone now to fifty kazillion people for hours.  (I tried calling my Unka Bill in Australia, but when I got through, he couldn’t hear me, so I had to email him [Unka Bill, check your email!].)  Our finances are in a holding pattern.  I’m tired.  I want my mommy.  My mommy wants her camera and a laptop because she’s bored out of her gourd…

Oh, yeah, and mom’s friend says that she’s due to go back for roto-rootering of her other leg in 10 days…

Oh, yeah, and I finally talked to the vet’s nurse, who said that the surgery took longer than expected (that means more $$), they had to take out a piece of the dawg’s intestine, and there was a blockage which looked to be the knotted end of a rope chew toy.  At which point, I was amazed:  we haven’t given the dawg a rope chew toy for more than a year, when this incident happened.  The nurse scoffed.  She said it wasn’t possible.  Well, I can tell you that we removed the dawg’s chew toys that very afternoon, May 17, 2008, and haven’t given him one since, and he’s not allowed out unless we’re with him…sooo…where’d the chew toy come from if it hasn’t been sitting in his stomach since then???

Wah.

So.  I have taken the dotter hiking Saturday.  And Sunday.  And today.

Ahem.

Well, look.  We live in an area where when it starts to rain, it rains and rains and rains and rains.  Not hard, mind you, just a continuous dingy gray drizzle that makes everything soggy and the moss grow and mushrooms thrive and my mood sink.  So when we get Nice Weather™, I feel duty bound to actually get out and do something.

Yesterday’s hike was on a trail alongside the Mamahuska River, starting out in Small Town Alaska.  Looked easy, looked interesting, so I printed out the file from the borough recreation site.  Then things started going wrong.  Firstly, I confused north with east on the map (no comments from the peanut gallery, please), so thought that taking Large Raptor Street to the end of the road was what I was supposed to do.  We did that, parked, got out, started walking towards the river beside the high school, only to discover that the path we were on just died out at the top of a very steep bluff.

Um.

Okay, so we head back to the car.  I get out the map.  I read the directions.  It says “the intersection of Large Raptor Street with The Big One Street”.  I drive back towards the highway on Large Raptor Street.  We find The Big One Street intersection.  There is no path leading off; there is, instead, a large 2.5 acre vacant lot that is for sale.  Riiiiight.  We continue on a block, and behold, a path leading off north.  We park.  We head off that path.  It leads up and into a beautiful meadow filled with tall grass covered with sun-ripened seedheads and fireweed fluff.  But the river–our destination–is far off to our right.  Surely this is not correct?  So I march us to our right…And we find ourselves at the top of a steep hill overlooking the aforementioned 2.5-acre lot, through which a faint track wended its way.  So we slid and tiptoed and bounded down the hill to the faint track and started following it.

It led us right back up the bluff to the other side of the track which we had just been on.

Luckily, as I was standing there wondering what we were going to do, and why the #@!$*% the borough recreation department hadn’t marked the damned trail, our dawg and another dog started getting close & personal, and I was able to ask the owner of the other dog where the heck the trail was.  Once we got our trails sorted out, he pointed us in the right direction, which turned out to be on the other side of the wide meadow down where we had been.

I loved the trail.  The dotter didn’t.  We thought it would be down by the river banks and sunny; instead, it was up on the bluff and deep in the shady trees.  It was mysterious and dark and smelled damp and rich and filled with greenery and vegetation that was mouldering away, and there were oodles of mushrooms and fungus.  We could see glimpses of the river between the trees, with the sun sparkling and dancing off the lacy braids of water zigzagging across the riverbed.  The excitement of the trail was when some horseback riders came along–I pulled the dotter and the dog off to the side of the trail, to avoid the dog getting over-excited by the horses, and this turned out to be a mistake:  the horses, thinking the dawg was a bear, went into a panic.  Luckily, all we had to do was step out into the trail so the horses could see that we were not carnivorous monsters.

The end result:  dotter wanted to be down there, not up here.  Sigh.  And, since she really, really wanted to be able to play in the water–any water!–I drove us down to the Kmik River for a bit of wading around in ice-cold water.

The view from the darkness:

Some bright white berries that caught my eye:

Some beautiful bright white mushrooms popping in the darkness (they were huge!):

A clump of mushrooms displaying their undersides and looking voluptuous:

The dotter playing in the water:

Today’s hike was to Eklutna Lake.  The lake is utterly gorgeous, and this hike was bright and sunny, and easy, and fun.  There were certainly a lot more people on this hike than our other two, because it’s so near Big City.  But I think I’ve overloaded the girl with hiking.  Maybe I’ve overloaded myself with hiking?!  Anyway, I think it’s time to do other things for a while!

The lake:

Some sunny autumn color:

And some more sunny autumn color:

Playing at the water’s edge at the lake:

Many thanks for all the compliments on my weight loss pics.  I must admit, I chose the least flattering pic of me from our summer trip, so that may have helped make the difference more noticeable.  And, as Blog Antagonist asked, I am petite–5′2.5″–so a small weight loss looks bigger on me.  (The converse is also true:  a small weight gain looks bigger, as well.)  I will keep plugging away at it, but will only update once in a while on the ol’ bloggeroo.  The goal is another ten pounds, I think.

When I visited GrannyJ in Arizona back in June/early July, and hung out with my bro and his family, I realized–with a sort of bemused horror–just how much weight I had put on.  My mom took many, many pictures, and there I was in them, looking zaftig.  Or maybe more than zaftig. 

I found it wearing to climb the steps of her house, so I was out of shape, too.

The pictures, and the lack of energy, made me take stock.  Then, too, there was the fact that all of my summer clothes were just too tight–my shorts, my T-shirts, my sleeveless shirts, everything.  I felt awful.  Fat, fifty, out of shape–I felt like an archetypical Amurrikan.

So after we returned home, and after OmegaDad’s brother’s visit ended, I decided to Put An End To That.  I started “dieting”, which mainly consisted of no longer eating entire bags of Fritos at one sitting, no longer snarfing down three to four Frappuccinos each day, eating more fruits and veggies, eating more slowly at each meal, and cutting back on the multiple helpings of carbs at dinner time.

I also started exercising, using some DVDs I had lying around, always meaning to get around to doing them; I’d do cardio one day and toning exercises the next, with a day off on the weekend.

It’s been slow, but kind of steady.  OmegaDad claims he has noticed.  My “fat jeans” are now loose (one pair I can no longer wear, two pairs are baggy in the butt and loose on the legs, and one pair I can pull down over my hips while it’s still buttoned and zipped).  I was able, today, to squeeze into my old size 10 jeans in preparation for a hike with the dotter.  (Yes!  We went on another hike!  I will report on it tomorrow.)

While we were on the hike, OmegaDotter took the following picture of me:

(It really should be a picture of me in those same shorts, but while it’s been nice and warm for Alaska, it hasn’t been “shorts weather” to me.)

It’s not a lot; about ten pounds over the past two months.  But I intend to keep going.  I feel a lot better, I can run up and down the stairs without feeling like I’m about to expire on the steps halfway up, and it definitely looks like I’ve lost weight.  I especially like being able to clamber up and down steep hillsides with the dotter, and run around the back yard with her kicking a soccer ball around.  In addition, some ongoing aches and pains in my neck, arms, and hips seem to have disappeared, which is all for the good!

Here it is, the fifth of September, and we are well into autumn weather and colors here in Alaska.  This is Labor Day Weekend, three days off, and the Kozmik All has graced us with beautiful sunshine, sparkly clear skies, and (relative) warmth.  The dotter wanted to spend her time today watching TV.  I said, “No way, Jose!”, and dragged her out into the backyard to kick the soccer ball around a few times.

And then I dragged her on a hike.

Lately, she has been quite down on the idea of hikes.  All summer long, at summer camp, she avoided most of the hikes because her gymnastics class was scheduled in the middle of the day, ending after the kids were bussed off to wherever that week’s hike was.  When she did go, she pooh-poohed the experience.  My heart sank each time she did that–I love to go hiking, and she seemed to be deciding that Nature, and walking, and looking at the beautiful world around her was just BOR-ing!

Well, bah humbug, says I.  That’s no way to grow up!

So there we were, and it was a glorious day, and I pretty much told her to suck it up, we were going on a hike.

We grabbed the dawg, motored on up to Margaret Pass, where the Little Lady River runs, parked by one of the trailheads, and headed up the lower reaches of Gummint Peak.  The trail was wide and open, alongside a creek that joins the Little Lady River, with many little offshoots of the trail leading to the creek.  The dotter paused to look for rocks to throw:

The trail crossed a neat wooden bridge; I’m not sure why it was built that way, with the two parts:

Then the trail suddenly became small and narrow and steep, heading up a ridgeline very quickly.  I warned the dotter that we would have to come down the trail on our butts because it was so steep, but that only made it more attractive to her.  I tried to take pictures of how steep it was, but none of them showed it properly.  Here the dotter is clowning around on a rock on the trail ahead (and above) me:

There were oodles of fireweed in full fluff, and with scarlet leaves:

The fireweed are splendid wildflowers.  They bloom bright pink flowers all along their stalk, above green leaves; then, when they’re all done blooming, the stems to the flowers turn dark pink, the leaves turn scarlet, and the seeds covered with fluff burst open.  When the wind picks up, the fluff from the fireweed dances off into the skies.

When we got up to a bench on the ridge, we stopped, rested, rehydrated, and took pictures.  First, a vista:

I took the landscape pictures, then the dotter demanded the camera.  First she caught the dawg resting, looking Noble:

Then she did a self-portrait.  Note the faint orange mustache from her Gatorade:

She took a picture of me, but I’m not putting it in here, ’cause it shows my impending wattle, yuck.

Then we turned around and slid back down the trail.  The dotter wanted to go back up and slide back down, but I nixed that idea; the butt of her blue jeans was getting pretty damned grubby by that time, and I was afraid that any more grinding action would engrain the dirt to the point where it was impossible to ever get out again.

On the way up and back down, I was constantly clicking the camera, grabbing shots of autumn colors.  Some more fireweed:

Some berries (not edible, I think):

Purty fall colors:

Once we were back at the trailhead, we crossed the road to the Little Lady River, and played on the rocks and in the water.  The dotter collected a large number of speckled rocks, which she proudly proclaimed were river dinosaur eggs, and that the eggs needed to be right at the edge of the water to hatch, so that the baby river dinosaurs could just swim away when they hatched.

Then we went home.  On the drive home, the dotter informed me that she just loved hiking, and could we do it every weekend?  Har.  My nefarious scheme is working!

This is Ling, from Karito Kids.  Ling is very expensive, like the American Girls dolls.

OmegaDad spotted her first, at the local fancy toy store (very Waldorf-y place…lots of wooden toys, silky dress-up, fabric dolls, that kind of thing).  So he showed her to the dotter, who swooned with delight:  “She could be my little sister!”  Then came the catch:  No, we wouldn’t buy it for her.  She had to buy it, with her very own money.

Then we hammered out the list of possible ways to make money:  Sweep and Swiffer the living room and kitchen twice a week.  Unload the laundry chute and sort clothes.  Put clothes away after Mommy was done washing and folding them.  Brush the dawg.  Vacuum the downstairs.  Clean the cat box every night.

Then she came up with her very own idea.

OmegaDad, you see, has this…problem…with using his turn signal.  In other words, he often forgets.  The dotter has noticed this, and is a regular little back-seat driver about it.  (She also gives me approval, because I don’t forget the turn signal.  Ah, little victories!)

So one or the other of them proposed a deal:  If she caught him not using his turn signal while driving, he would give her…

…A DOLLAR!!!…PER WHACK!!!

Um.  Now, if I had been consulted before this little dealio went down, I would have put my foot down, and proposed a quarter per offense.  However, the first I heard of it was after the deal was pinkie sealed.

The girl is destined to be a wheeler-dealer scam artist, fer shur.  Because she made sure that daddy would pick her up from summer camp almost every day–and this was a source of $2, $3, or more per drive!  (I told you he had a problem with turn signals!)

Every night, she and OmegaDad would count up the dollars in her Mason jar.  Finally, on Friday night, she came bouncing down to the office, where I was watching a YouTube of the Chinese Brittney Spears, Jolin Tsai, shouting out, “How can I make three dollars and fifty cents before tomorrow?!”  See, that brass ring was in sight.  She wanted Ling so much she ached.  She had already created a bed for Ling in her bedroom.  She had set up her pseudo-computer (gift from Grandma Jeannie) so that Ling could sit in front of it.  She had pulled out her biggest horse, ready for Ling to ride.  And all she needed now was $3.50.

So she spent Friday evening in a frenzy–she swept, she Swiffered, she vacuumed, she cleaned the cat box.  She got her extra money.

Saturday morning, she grabbed her Mason jar of money:

…and we drove off to the swanky toy store, where she got this huge bag:

And mommy spent half-an-hour releasing Ling from durance vile (aka the packaging).  Lemme tell you, this doll is pretty cool.  Her head tilts and bends.  Her arms and legs have ball-and-socket type joints, so you can move them in more natural style than other big dolls.  And, like the American Girls dolls, she comes with a book:

At which point, poor OmegaDotter had to schlep off to her previously arranged sleep-over with A., her best bud from school.  OmegaDad and I were instructed to make sure Ling got to bed–in OmegaDotter’s bed, since she wouldn’t be there–and get her up and put her in front of her computer.

I, in the meanwhile, am hoping that we can get more chore-work out of the dotter without major whining–it’s been nice to have her so motivated!  There are plenty of accessories for Ling, so we’ll probably be able to get the dotter into the habit of doing chores for weekly allowance.

I grew up in Chicago.  It’s in the Midwest, for those of you who don’t know (har!).  The Midwest is blessed (or cursed, depending upon whom you ask) with magnificent thunderstorms.  Huge anvil-shaped cumulonimbus monsters build up, with accompanied by a build-up of oppressive humidity, until the air falls still and heavy and weighted and you feel almost like you’re swimming through it.  Typically, there’s a period of fitful breezes gusting one way and the other, before they die down, and you know IT is going to come through at any moment.  And then IT hits:  A wild burst of sustained wind coming from one direction, bending all the trees’ branches before it, tossing and turning the (ever-present) trash on the city streets.  With the wind comes an abrupt change in temperature–it can drop 20 or 30 degrees in a few minutes–and then the lightning starts, and the cracks of thunder, and the torrents of rain, and the wind always dashing it this way and that.  That’s the time to sit in your house near a window, so you can hear and see all the drama, and watch the water crashing against the windowpanes, and be happy that you’re safe and warm.

Rather than, say, walking to the El station without an umbrella, as it dumps water at the rate of an inch an hour.  Or driving, when you realize your windshield wipers aren’t up to the job, even at the top speed.

You also got tornado weather.  You knew it was tornado weather because the bottoms of the clouds, and the light filtering through, all turned an eerie greenish-gray color.  This was when you’d turn on the radio to be sure you heard of any tornado warnings–though it was extremely rare that you’d get one in the Big City; cities, it seems, tend to produce heat islands that cause updrafts that disrupt the beginnings of tornado formation.

Then I lived in the mountains of Arizona, which was blessed with monsoon season, a time when the storms would build up over the mountaintops and valleys over rivers, spreading outward, producing small thunderheads with powerful punch.  The storms wouldn’t sprawl over the countryside the way they do in the Midwest, but would produce–just like the weathermen say–”widely scattered thunderstorms”.  You can drive between them, and see the thunder, lightning, and rain being produced by one off in the distance, while being dry where you are.  But even though they’re small, compared to the storms in the Midwest, they’re intense, and filled with drama.

Then I moved to the Bay Area.  This is a place that has never seen a thunderstorm, so far as I know.  My need for weather drama went totally unquenched for years.

Then I moved to Lubbock, Texas, a benighted place where people think a row of tulips planted arrow-straight in front of their yellow-brick boxes is a “garden”, and where there’s no topography to speak of for hundreds of miles in any one direction.  BUT!  But Lubbock had three things going for it:  the spring and fall goose migration, wherein you would see, and hear, thousands of geese flying overhead, going north in the spring and south in the fall; incredible sunsets because of the dust and the aforementioned lack of topography–you could see the sunsets for an hour, a vivid array of golds and pinks and magentas and reds; and Wrath of God thunderstorms.  These were storms to conjure with, preceded by a wall of dust that would sweep through the neighborhood, covering everything with reddish loam, and then, when the storm hit, turned to instant mud spots.  Lubbock is in Tornado Alley, so not only did I get the drama of the storms, but lots of tornado weather.

Another stint in the mountains of Arizona lasted for ten years.

But here in Alaska, where we live, the rains are mostly long, slow, and dreary–no thunderstorms to speak of, normally.

This May, however…ah, it’s been glorious:  warm (almost hot), dry, clear, sunny.  And today?  Today, we are going to get rain.  Because the sky over the mountains to the north of us has been brewing monsoon clouds, like we got in Arizona, and now it is dark, threatening, lowering silver-gray and the thunder has been rumbling for an hour, getting closer and louder as the clouds build down to the valley where we live.  An hour ago, the clouds were still to the north, and I was sitting in the yard in the beating sunlight, listening to the sturm und drang behind me…now, the clouds have grown overhead and to the south.

Last year, we didn’t have any thunderstorms at all.  The first summer we were here, we had two or three; they are very rare.  In fact, the various write-ups of weather for these areas specifically mention that “even though you may have heard there are no thunderstorms in Alaska, it does happen…”

I was so excited, I called OmegaDad at work to breathlessly exclaim, “We have thunder!  And a huge anvil cloud!  And it’s coming our way!”  He laughed at me, and said, “I was just talking with M about thunderstorms, and telling him you would be so happy that we’re having one!”  Apparently, in one of those cosmic coincidences that make life interesting, I called him just after he announced that…Then, of course, he went on to claim that I was only happy when disaster was brewing, which made me pout, which made him laugh…

Anyway, I’m happy.  Thunderstorms do this Midwestern girl’s heart good.