OmegaMom

We like to play “The Animal Game” at dinnertime.  It’s a variation of Twenty Questions “made up” by OmegaDotter.  Her buddy A. enjoys playing the game when he’s spending the night, which he is doing tonight.  Thus, we had a round of The Animal Game to enjoy.

A. started off, but the dotter guessed his animal in record time—an owl.

“It’s a screech owl!” quoth A.

“Oh, then it’s Lady Gaga!” quoth OmegaDad.

I slapped OmegaDad on the arm.  “She doesn’t screech,” I said.

“She does too!” was the response.

Next up was OmegaDotter.  She always starts with, “This animal has eyes.”  Which makes OmegaDad and I roll our own eyes, because it’s useless as a clue.  But we moved on…does it live on land or sea?…is it bigger than A.?…does it have fur?

“Yes,” answered the dotter.

“Oh, then it’s Lady Gaga!” shouted OmegaDad triumphantly.

I slapped him again.  OmegaDotter rolled her eyes.  A. fell down laughing.  (Hey, it doesn’t take too terribly much to amuse 8-year-olds.  Or fifty-year-olds, for that matter…)

The dotter stumped us with that one, because we forgot to ask if it was extinct or not; it was a mammoth.

She went again, starting—of course—with “this animal has eyes.”  There was a question as to whether it ate other animals.  A. wisely recited their teacher’s rhyme about how to distinguish predators from prey (“Eyes on the side, they like to hide; eyes to the front, they like to hunt”).  Then he took to helping the dotter, because she wasn’t very sure about aspects of her animal.

Somewhere along the line, of course, OmegaDad had to ask if it was Lady Gaga.

OmegaDotter got very frustrated at this point, and proclaimed that he was no longer allowed to use those words together for at least two hours.

OmegaDad won that one, at which point the dotter and A. both grumbled, because they knew his animals are hard to guess, mostly due to tricksy initial clues that send you haring off in the wrong direction.  Luckily, because my husband’s mind is an open book to me, I was able to guess his animal—a pine bark borer beetle.  Both the dotter and A. were disgruntled at this, saying that they had no idea what that animal was.  So OmegaDad got to go again.  But he passed his turn on to me.

I took a cue from the dotter:  “This animal has eyes.”  Hah!

So they asked if it lived on land or sea—land.

They asked if it was a mammal—I said yes.

They asked if it was a wild animal—I had to think about this, but eventually said no.

Did it live in trees?  No.

Did it have fur?  No.

Did it have hair?  Yes.

Was it bigger than A.?  Yes.

Do people own it as a pet?  I answered no.

Are people allowed to own it as a pet?  No.

At which point, OmegaDad, having seen my slight smile while I was debating the “wild animal” question, asked, “Is this animal a human being?”  Yes.

And A. burst out, loudly, “Is it Lady Gaga?!”

Yes.

Har.  That’s my tale of our brush with the Fame Monster, and a slice of (silly, pointless, fun, and boring to those outside the family) life around our dinner table.

So what is the family doing with our spare time now that the dotter is back in school, in the second grade?  Are we doing Quality Time Things with her?  Teaching her great moral truths?  Helping her understand the principles behind basic mathematics?  Discussing the political situations of the day?

No.

We are teaching her to play poker.

At, I might add, her request.  I have no idea where she came up with the idea, but while OmegaDad was out of town on the East Coast, I gave it a (lousy) whirl.  When I concluded that I couldn’t remember it very well, and certainly couldn’t remember the ranking of the various hands, I copped out:  I told her to wait until Daddy came home, and ask him to teach her to play.

Which she did.  And he did.  And we’ve been having a grand old time playing five-card poker, not Stud, for pennies from the zippy full of one hundred pennies that the dotter took to school last year for the 100th Day festivities.  At the end of the game session, we check to see who has the most pennies to declare the winner, and then the pennies go back into the zippy.

Our first night, the dotter won just about everything, and wiped out OmegaDad’s funds.  Beginner’s luck!

The second night, OmegaDad won.  This will probably be the default, because he has been playing poker for many years.  (”Weyall…the boys and I was playin’ poker in Nebraska City one night…”, said in one’s best Western drawl, is one of our favorite family lines, because he was playing poker with the boys in Nebraska City one night, whilst on a business trip…)

Hopefully, one of these days the dotter will learn what a “poker face” is.

TeenDoc, at Welcome To the Dollhouse, posted an interesting challenge:  Write your life in 100 words, no more, no less.

I thought I’d take it on.  Now, having re-read TeenDoc’s paragraph, I feel mine doesn’t have “flavor” or “depth” or something (in other words, I liked her approach much better).  But, nonetheless, here goes:

Born in Chicago to Beatnik parents.  Father intense, musical, mathematical, gifted.  Mother calm, artsy, pragmatic writer.  Lonely, awkward geek through my teens.  In college, ignored programming in favor of writing historical romances. Dropped out to work on magazine; returned to college and dropped out again two more times. Moved to Arizona, then California. Returned to college and decided programming was okay after all. Applied to national labs internship for the hell of it. Met OmegaDad there. Moved to Lubbock. Started trying for a baby. Moved to Arizona. Endured infertility and failed IVFs, then healed emotionally and adopted OmegaDotter. What’s next?

So, it’s your turn.  Do your version in the comments here, or post on your blog and link back here.

In the meantime, some notes:

In the “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth” department, OmegaUnk commented on our record-breaking string of below zero days by mentioning it was 95F in his neck of the woods that day.  My response:  Ppbbbbttttttt!

In the “Gee, thanks, that really helped a lot!” department, Kate of High Altitude Gardening commiserated with me on my recent hidden-object games addiction, asked me to start a support group, and then told me to download Madame Fate.  Which I promptly did.  Ahem.

In the “I know it doesn’t make sense, just trust me” department, Pretzel told me where to find humidifiers.  So:  Yes, it doesn’t make sense, because all my life I’ve needed humidifiers during the icy cold months just like you suggested, but in this house, we need a dehumidifier.  Currently what’s happening is that any time we bathe or run the dishwasher or boil water, more moisture enters the air, and the house is so well sealed that it congeals on the windows and around the doorjambs, and it’s cold enough outside so that what congeals on the windows and doorjambs freezes.  This is Not Good for the house.  And frustrating for us.  In fact, it’s mighty damned embarrassing to have to thump and whack on the door from the inside when there’s a cold Pizza Hut employee with (supposedly) hot pizzas waiting on the outside, just because the door is iced shut and it’s the only way to shake loose the ice and open the door…

In the “Mem’ries” department (from two respects–first off, I should have answered this weeks ago, and secondly, it’s about our trip to China to adopt the dotter):  Yes, Elaine, I did, indeed, belong to the September 2001 DTC email list, and I do think it was me and OmegaDad you met on the bridge on Shamian Island!

In the “oh, just go check her out!” department:  I’ve been meaning to write up something about women in science, sexism, and displays of femininity, prompted by a series of posts by Dr. Isis, with associated incredibly thoughtful commentary.  But finally, my brain still frozen, I’ve decided to just point you to her blog to say “Go Forth And Read!”  She’s snarky, funny, and a rollicking good read who enjoys being a scientist and a fashionista.  Enjoy.

Or, alternatively, “Help me, Obiwan Kenobi!  You’re my only hope!”

What OmegaMom has been doing for the past two days, while sorting and washing laundry, is quickly becoming addicted to puzzle games on the computer.  Specifically, “hidden object” games.

Let’s back up a year or two.  At one point, OmegaDotter wanted (gag!) La Casa de Dora, a computer game.  We had a trial version, which lasted an hour.  So I signed up with BigFishGames–the “Jumbo Club” option–thinking that we would be downloading games on a regular basis, and downloaded La Casa de Dora.

Then I promptly forgot about my Jumbo Club membership.

So…OmegaDotter has gotten more mature, more able to figure things out, more deft with a mouse, and a month or two ago OmegaDad downloaded trial versions of some other games for her, specifically SuperCow, The Scruffs, and Feeding Frenzy.

Once again, the trial versions expired.

The dotter really liked SuperCow.  I really liked The Scruffs, a hidden object game with a sense of humor.  I decided–o brilliant idea!–to buy her these games for Christmas.

But when I went to BigFishGames, I tried signing up with my regular email address, and The Powers That Be told me I was already registered.

Whoops!

But!

But!

I now had 9 game credits!  Woot!

So rather than spending $10 per game (with the super-de-duper holiday game savings coupon), suddenly they were free!

I promptly downloaded the three games, and then spent hours the night before Christmas working my way through The Scruffs.

And then I decided I wanted another “hidden object” game, so I went to the game site and found “Mystery Case Files:  Ravenhearst”.

And then on Christmas day and the day after Christmas, I went through Ravenhearst.

And then I decided I wanted another Ravenhearst game (because I had seen it on the front page of the game site) and I downloaded it.

And I have been playing these damned games for days on end.

This is not good.  I need a magic word (like “Xyzzy!”) to transport me away from this sudden addiction.  Or I need a rescuer, like Obiwan Kenobi, to fight off the Dark Side of the Force.  I have a real life, dammit.  I have a dotter (who is enjoying working the puzzles with me, at least, so we’re doing a Family Fun Time Activity).  I have a husband.  There are errands to run.  There are stairs to shovel, because we’ve had a foot of snow on top of older snow, and 45-mph winds blowing the snow hither and yon.  We have a broody hen segregated in the garage (more on that later).  I still have laundry to do.

…but I still need to free the twin girls’ ghosts and find all the objects and figure out all the puzzles, and it’s calling me.  (Cue ominous music.)

Pool.

OmegaDad discovered an online quick-fire pool game the other day.  As a result, he and I have, at varying times, been found in front of the computer at odd hours, trying to beat the clock shooting virtual pool.

Step with me back to the days of yesteryear.

When I met OmegaDad, back in the mists of time in Los Alamos, we spent a lot of time hanging around Ashley’s Pub with the kids.  As we were, at 34 and 29, the oldest of the group–the rest were all dewy-eyed fresh-faced college kiddies–and we were wildly in love, we spent all our time together there.  We’d all drink beer and shots and mixed drinks of varying foofiness, eat burgers and chips from the restaurant, and crowd into the pool room, shooting pool.

OmegaDad was short and scrawny and wiry and lean, with a tight little ass, a lop-sided chin, a blonde mustache, and below-the-ear wavy blonde hair that was whitened by the sun.

He was hawt, guys.  Oh so hawt.

And he could play pool.  Dayum, could he play pool.

He’d swagger around the pool table with a cocky little strut, glance around, and suddenly lean over the table, cue in hand, pop off a shot with arrogant ease, and sink that puppy into the pocket while he was turning around and laughing at something someone else was saying.  He always seemed to vibrate, like a plucked violin string, sizzling and fizzing with life and zest and interest.

It was a mighty fine sight to see.

I hadn’t played much pool prior to our getting together, but so much of our time was spent there that I soon was enjoying myself greatly.  Let’s not mention that, since he was ostensibly “teaching” me to play pool, I often found myself wrapped in his arms as we leaned over the table edge, his head next to mine, his mustache tickling my ear, his hand on mine, guiding the pool cue…

Um.

Excuse me, is it getting warm in here?

Anyway, this cute little computer time waster has brought some memories rushing to the forefront.  These days, we don’t play pool; we haven’t been to a bar or pool parlor in umpty-ump years, and we’re staid old married folk.  But when he sits down at the computer to play him some pool, he’s still got that nonchalant ease.  I struggle to get an accuracy rating of greater than 50%; he regularly hovers around 83%.  I have managed to get a score up to around 3,500; he has managed to get a score up around 12,000.

What can I say?  The boy obviously has pool in his blood.

Okay, I have a few posts in mind, but right now I just want to pass on something that Pretzel passed on to me.  It’s in the spirit of earworms:  Once you pass it on, hopefully it’s not stuck in your own mind anymore, eh?

Boomshine!  A bubble-bursting chain reaction game.

Go forth and waste time.  I just want you to know that I made it to 336 points.  Woot!

(Posts in mind:  OmegaDotter builds a house…A review of a kid’s sex ed book…fear and loathing on world equivalents of Wall Street…cold weather…)

OmegaDotter was sick, then OmegaDad got sick.  Now it’s my turn.

My head feels fuzzy and I can’t think.  I hate it when I can’t think.  Gah!

OmegaUnk pointed out in the comments to my previous post that Hasbro is getting huffy about Scrabulous.  As the article I link to says, why on earth don’t they just buy Scrabulous, and keep it running?  Though I suppose they’d get all snarky about paid subscriptions and stuff like that.  Maybe they could do ads, and make it pay that way?

After all, it’s the rare family that’s going to use Scrabulous to play Scrabble™; it would require a computer for each person, or an insane amount of people switching seats and swearing up and down and left and right that they’re not cheating by looking at the other person’s tiles while the other person is playing.  In other words:  people will still buy Scrabble™ for playing at home or with friends, so they’re still going to be getting their money for the game anyway.

Grumble, grumble, grumble.

More later, dudes.

OmegaDad is not what you would call the most macho of men.  He is, in fact, a sweetheart, kind, thoughtful, generous, intelligent, and totally, totally funny at times.  He sniffs at football.  Sneers at racing.  Used to hunt, but claims it was only for the socializing, the male-bonding bit.  He seems to find most male posturing something to look at askance, mock gently, and imitate wildly (for that totally, totally funny part). 

Definitely not your typical Oklahoma redneck dude.

But lately…lately the man has gotten me worried.

He’s found a pursuit–a sport, if you will–that has him posturing and gesturing and uttering manly-man crows of victory and macho snarls of aggression.

It’s a totally new side to him.  It leaves me gawping in amazement.  And amusement.

I’ll be wandering downstairs after getting the dotter off to sleep and enter the office only to hear him yell, gleefully, "HAH! I’ve got you now!"

What, you may wonder, is the pursuit in our office that has roused the prehistoric male in my quiet husband?

Scrabble.

Online Scrabble.

Specifically, Scrabulous.

Now, I have sung the praises of Scrabulous previously, have my own account, and do, occasionally, dip in.  But OmegaDad has become obsessed.  He has become quite snooty about who he will play; he will only play folks whose history shows that they’ve been around for a while, people who have a rating similar to his, he challenges people to "put up or shut up", he has the arcane two-letter combos practically memorized, he prides himself on getting bingoes (seven-letter words that use up all the tiles) at least once per game…

There’s an arcane formula that Scrabulous uses; all beginners start off with 1800 points, and usually drop precipitously from there to bounce around about 1200.  A good player will have a higher score coupled with a long history, because if you win enough games, you gain points.  A really good player will have a long history with 1800 points or more.

OmegaDad has become one of those players.  In the process, he’s become a spectator sport for me, because it’s just so fun watching him bounce about, letting out shouts and groans and snarky comments like, "Well, buddy, are ya gonna open it up for us, or am I gonna have to do it?!"

So if you’re at Scrabulous and want to check him out, look for wannallamanow.  If you play him, realize that you are just feeding a sad, sick addiction–my amusement at this oh-so-macho side of him which is devoted to…a word game!

This weekend, I purchased Uno for the dotter and me to play.

We’ve been non-game-players for quite a while, with a few forays into Go Fish and Candyland.  But I thought it was time to introduce the dotter to a slightly more complicated game, and figured she had reached the point where we would actually spend time playing the game, rather than me stripping it of the finer points so that she comprehended how to play it.

I was right.  We spent an hour playing Uno this evening, she and I, while OmegaDad cooked a delicious dinner of grilled cheese sandwiches and carrot and celery sticks with peanut butter.  Yum.

Anyway, the dotter thought it was great fun.  But I had reached a point where I wanted a break.  She kept pleading for “just one more game!” and I did my stock model firm “No.”  No yelling, no storming, no frustration, just plain, “No.”

And when she realized that (as is my norm when I use that “No”) I actually meant it, she said:

“Oooooh, dammit!”

My eyes bugged out.  OmegaDad’s eyes bugged out.

OmegaDotter put a shocked hand up to her mouth, with bugged eyes of her own, then hid her head in my shoulder.  Giggling.  But, yes, she realized it’s a “bad word”.

It’s the first time she’s used a “bad word” with full intent, in the right context, and with feeling.

I don’t know whether to be appalled or proud.

The OmegaFamily has a nightly routine.  We eat dinner (usually late, sigh), then, between the end of dinner and the beginning of the bedtime ritual, is OmegaDotter’s “eleven minutes”.  This is her time to play with daddy all by herself.

(”Eleven minutes” can be anywhere from an actual 11 minutes to an hour, depending on the night.  As for why it’s 11 minutes and not, say, 10 or 15–well, OmegaDad has an interesting quirk.  When he uses the microwave he refuses to use any number divisible by five or any of the standard time divisions.  Thus, you find him firing up the nuker for 31 seconds rather than 30, or 6 minutes and 2 seconds.  OmegaMom rolls her eyes at this.)

Sometimes the “eleven minutes” is spent playing with horsies, sometimes watching a video, sometimes hide-and-seek, sometimes a big Bad Guy roaring, “WHERE IS SHE?!?!” as she giggles and flees, or sits on his shoulders giggling as he whirls around “looking” for her.

Last night, for whatever reason, they decided they needed a tunnel.  OmegaDad was stumped for a minute or two, then had a light-bulb moment.  They marched out to the garage, and returned with OmegaDad carrying a bunch of flattened Home Depot boxes.

I deduced that the boxes were being made into a tunnel, and heard much hilarity for a few minutes (”My butt is stuck!” quoth OmegaDad), then the dotter dashed in, grabbed my arm, and started pulling me back into the living room, saying, “You have to see this!”

The boxes marched across the living room, flaps overlapping and taped here and there.  OmegaDotter vanished into one end, boxes bumped and jumped, and she emerged from the other end. 

Then she demanded I do it.

Erm.

I gave the boxes the hairy eyeball.  They didn’t look really large enough for me to do what the dotter was doing–scamper through on arms and legs.  And I feared I would end up saying, as the dad had said, “My butt is stuck!”

But I gamely squirmed in one end and proceeded to do a Marine-style crawl through the boxes, pulling myself by the elbows and wiggling my lower body as I progressed.

(Hallelujah, ladies and gents!  I have discovered the be-all and end-all to tummy exercises!  I’m sure if you did this ten or twenty times every night, within a few weeks you’d either have a hellacious bad back or else a svelt new figure…)

And then OmegaDad and I watched as the dotter chased the Wooly cat through the tunnel, and he, in turn, chased her.

And then it was time for bathroom and toothbrushing and bed.

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

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

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

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

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