OmegaMom

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

University of Alaska-Big City recently opened a branch of Major Chinese Philosopher Institute, whose mission is to foster Amurrikan-Chinese relations and promote Chinese language learning for K-12 schools.  This means that we have more Chinese events to go to, put on by MCP Institute, if we’re willing to drive an hour each way.  (It also seems that we may end up having Chinese lessons here! in Suburban Alaska! coming up after January 1!  This is majorly exciting; the classes in Big City run from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Friday nights, which doesn’t work very well for kids that have bedtime at, say, 8:30 p.m., and also doesn’t work well when you have parents who are unnerved at the thought of driving on icy, snowy highways, in the dark, both ways, for months on end.)

MCP Institute’s latest event-with-a-capital-E was a performance of snippets of Chinese opera.  For free.

Well!  That certainly piqued my interest.  So I ran it by the dotter, whose response was an enthusiastic “Yes!”

Since OmegaDad is out of town for a few days (bummer), it was the two of us, motoring into Big City, dining on exotic food at the student union, and figuring out how to get into the parking lot at the theatre.

I had figured, with the six snippets, it would be about an hour, maybe an hour-and-a-half.

No.  It included the director of the opera company introducing each vignette, explaining what was going to happen, instructing the crowd on how to indicate approval and when (”Hao!” shouted out–enthusiastically–when the performers held a strategic pose now and then, or whenever you felt like the performers warranted it), all translated by a nice young Chinese lady who did a fairly good job of keeping up with him.

And!  There was audience participation!  After each segment, the director invited anyone who wanted to try something from the vignette.

One of the great things about getting older is that you lose a great deal of self-consciousness.  It seems to start around the age of 35, and increase to the point where you’re willing to do just about anything if it sounds fun, and not even notice that there’s an audience fer Gawd’s sake!  Staring at you!

At least, that has been my experience.  Last year, I danced with Native Alaskans at the Native Alaskan Center; this year, I happily scooched up onto the stage to pretend to be a dainty Chinese nun trembling in fear at getting into a boat.  I didn’t care that my hair was smashed down from wearing my winter hat, or that my jeans were lopsided from not being pulled down over one of my boots.

Anyway, with all the intros and the audience participation, we made it to two and a quarter hours–leaving while the last come-and-join-us portion was running.  The dotter was pretty game throughout; there was a certain amount of snuggling down into (my) jacket (not hers), an “I’m booored” or two, but every time I asked if she wanted to go, she would reply that she wanted to see the last performance, which was supposed to be very acrobatic and very funny.  So we stayed through the entire performance.

The first scene was the aforementioned dainty Chinese nun asking a boatman to help her chase after her One and Only True Love.  It was very funny; they did a splendid job of miming climbing into the boat and the movement of the boat; the old boatman was a flirtatious goat who tried to get the nun to give up on her OAOTL and run away with him…The Chinese nun:

The boatman:

The next scene was a young maiden feeding her chickens and then sewing.  Having had chickens for a year and a half now, I have to say you could almost see the chickens.  And her sewing was very delicate!

Then we had a face-painted general proclaiming his studliness to all and sundry.  Alas, he was moving so much that I couldn’t get a good picture of him–suffice it to say that he was quite grand.

Next up was some true opera drama:  Yet another general was on the losing side; he escaped and hid away, changing his name, marrying, settling down, and living a quiet life for 12 years…only to discover that his mother was leading an army against his new family.  He was full of lyrical Chinese misery.  He was also quite grandly costumed–get a load of those pheasant feathers in his headdress!

Next was another lyrical piece, wherein a young princess, who has been locked away for years as she grew up, is lured out into the palace garden by her maidservant, and discovers the wonders of nature:

And then, the piece de resistance, the reason the dotter wanted to stay:  a soldier is following his general–incognito–to protect him.  They stay the night at an inn.  The innkeeper notices the soldier, and fears that the soldier is an assassin out to get the general.  The innkeeper sneaks into his room in the darkness, and tries to kill him, but fails–and then there is a comic and very acrobatic fight, where they keep missing each other, then finding each other, then fighting, then losing their opponent in the darkness.  It was hilarious–and spectcular.  The soldier is resting for a moment, after–he thinks–chasing away the bandit; the innkeeper is hiding under his bed, waiting for his chance to get the assassin:

It was amazingly grand fun.  They had subtitles projected above the stage, which made following the stories much easier–though much of the physical action was stylized and very recognizable.

If you get a chance like this, by all means, take it!  It was a really worthwhile evening.

(And, of course, the audience was sprinkled with many families like ours…)

Oh, and all these pictures were taken with my new camera.  The old one would have been worse than useless!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then she pulled everything together, like so:

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

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

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

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

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

Ahem.

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

Anyway…

To get back to my original subject:  Trouble.

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

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

Ugh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

She was suitably subdued afterwards.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Obviously I need to play more.

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

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

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

Beams and boxes of various colors and shapes:

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

All in all, it was fun.

Yesterday was spent ferrying the dotter off to a “Fun Meet” at her gymnastics place (what the heck do you call it?  “Gymnasium” doesn’t quite work.) for the entire morning.  Everyone who participated got a trophy (at least the ribbons were awarded based on points).  Oy!  None of my photos turned out well.  Oy!  The dotter had fun–hey!  And even though she needed prompting as to what came next, her floor routine was the best of her group.

Gratuitous video:

Today…today, OmegaDad and I spent scaring ourselves by removing the old wall to the outer part of the “stable” and framing in the new wall.  Why bother?  Well, just as a quick graphic showing the reason, we have the “foundations” of the two pieces on either side of the “door”:

It’s a miracle that thing has actually stayed upright (note, I do not say it has actually been plumb, or level.)  Not to mention that the cross-bracing on the back of these pieces of wall were cribbed* to within an inch of their lives by the previous horsie tenants.

Anyway, tomorrow’s post is going to be a pictorial history which will no doubt bore my readers to tears, but it’s history, dammit, and we have a very bad habit of taking dumpy stuff and turning it into nice looking stuff, and having no “before” or “during” pictures to point to.

While we were doing this (by “we”, I mean that OmegaDad did all the manly-man work, while I climbed ladders, held boards, helped measure, and fetched and carried pens, hammers, crowbars, drills, nails, and screws), we came across a surprise inside the upper portion of the wall–to wit, an ancient, dried-up hornet nest:

It was so pretty that I had to take close-ups:

Inside this splendid creation were dead old yellowjackets, mummified eggs, and the honeycomb-shaped cells:

I thought it was fascinating.  Believe me when I say I do not find a live hornet or wasp fascinating; they terrify me.  Yellowjackets I can cope with, and a long-abandoned nest filled with wasp-y cadavers actually makes me feel very good:  they are dead!  DEAD!  AND GONE!  Bwahahaha!

The dotter was very patient and hardly whined at us at all (it’s that maturity thang coming into play), so I rewarded her by hauling her off to the local lake for an hour.  Unfortunately, while it was toasty warm at our house, sheltered from the breeze as it is, the lake area was breezy and a bit cool, and the lake itself was still icy cold.  Given that three weeks ago, there was still ice there, this is no surprise.

*Non-horse folk:  “Cribbing” is when a bored horse chews whatever it can reach with its mouth. 

The daffodils OmegaDad purchased for me last week are still going strong; this is what they looked like the day after he got them:

OmegaDotter made my birthday cake all by herself, with coaching from OmegaDad.  It was my favorite from my childhood, an orange cake with Solo apricot pie filling in between the layers (OmegaDad searched all over for that stuff, and finally located it, and informed me that this was a once-in-a-great-while cake because the one can of Solo pie filling cost about $5.00) and a lemon buttercream frosting.  Yum.  Yes, the picture is blurry; all the pics OmegaDad took that day were blurry except the one where my eyes look sunken like I’m strung out on heroin or something.

You note the red dress above?  OmegaDotter wore it twice.  She wore the purple stripe dress below to school on Tuesday and Friday, and all day on Saturday and Sunday, and I had to promise (pinkie promise, up, down, left, right) that it would be cleaned this very night and ready to be worn again tomorrow.  Note how old she looks in this pic.  Doesn’t she look like she’s 11 or 12?  It’s scary.

The Easter basket.  Last night, OmegaDotter informed me, in a surreptitious whisper as we were doing our bedtime ritual, “Mommy!  I think Daddy does the Easter Bunny footprints!”  I responded with an aghast, “NO!“, and she assured me that it must be so.  She did not, however, add two plus two to get “OmegaDad is the Easter Bunny”.  That will happen next year, I am sure.

The basket had, actually, very little candy.  OmegaDad has been carefully collecting small tchotchkes that cost about $1 each, such as an assortment of cute Easter-themed erasers, a set of mini-cookie cutters, a bead necklace set, a little bunny-shaped bottle of bubble-blowing stuff, plus a horsie and a set of spring/Easter themed chef wear, which the dotter is wearing below as she prepares to help daddy cook dinner.

Our new chicks have names now–the Australorp is named Adelaide (Addie for short), and the Buff Orpington is Serafina (Sara for short).  They are utterly adorable.

I really do have a serious post or two planned, which I’ve been noodling about in my head for a while, but today was a day of marathon laundry plus starting the taxes, so what you see is what you get.

Once upon a time at the dotter’s elementary school, the science fair was an “official” science fair, with formal judging.  But then, Fifth Grade Teacher (name unknown) informs me, things just got too…unpleasant.  It seems that there were parents who were doing most of the work for some of the kids, and that some of the parents were competitive and/or defensive, and things got Ugly.  So the elementary school just ditched the idea of formal judging entirely.

Which is why our cruisin’ and perusin’ of the science fair last night, during “public viewing” hours, revealed to us that it was yet another instance where everyone gets a ribbon.

There were some cool projects–like the one where the kid tested his dog’s intelligence by freezing vinegar, water, and beef mush into ice cube trays, then presenting the dog with one of each arrayed at a random distance.  Alas, the boy reports, his dog just went for whichever one was closest, whether it was (ew!) vinegar or (yum!) beef mush.  Then there was the project where the kid experimented with whether listening to rock and roll or classical music would help her do homework better.

But we also had pretty lame projects.  The kid whose mummy poster session was printed out direct from the internet, for instance.  Or the poster project where the thing was done in PowerPoint printed on high-gloss paper, using words that no third-grader would use.

And hanging off each one was the little blue ribbon…

I left feeling somewhat grumpy that our culture requires everyone to get a trophy.

But then, when I picked up the dotter this afternoon, she was all aglow:  she not only got the “participation” ribbon–she got the honkin’ big “Master Scientist” ribbon (woot!) plus a recommendation that she enter her project in the state science fair in Big City this weekend (double woot!).

And then, as she was leaving her gymnastics class this evening, her coach was handing out packets to selected kiddos in the class, and one was handed to her, too:  an invitation to join the Level 3 Pre-Team.

And then, at family night at the school book fair this evening, OmegaDad managed to put in the highest bid in the silent auction on a huge stuffed horse, which is now ensconced on the dotter’s bed and graced with the name of Zoe.

A big day for the dotter.  I am fairly bustin’ with pride.  She done good.

In other news, the volcano blew up again and sent up a big plume this morning.  The ash fall went south, instead of north like last time; so far, we have been blessedly free of ash fall here in Suburban Alaska.  OmegaDad’s agency closed the Homer office for the afternoon, as one of the guys phoned in and said it was raining ash there.  This is a groovy cool satellite picture of the ash plume extending out into the edges of the atmosphere, and this is just a purty picture of the volcano smoking.

The dotter is not on the team anymore.  No biggie; we really had doubts about the whole thing, given her maturity level.  Too long, too hard, too “boring” doing the same things over and over, longer than in a class.

So we’re switching her to an intermediate class, and we’ll see how that goes.

It was rather embarrassing, though–she wasn’t listening to the coach, she was lying down, she was distracting one of her buddies who is on the team, and poor coach Jay obviously got…um…frustrated with the attitude.  But a lot of that was really a reflection of the above:  her maturity level.  And a reflection of an incredible ability to be unfocused, scatter-brained, flitting from one thing to another.

She focuses very well on some things; when she gets into a particular drawing, or a creation of some kind, she sticks with it and comes up with creative solutions on her own.

One problem is that she catches on quickly to some things, so that when something is hard and she doesn’t do it right, she gets frustrated quickly and starts putting herself down:  “I can’t do it.  I’m no good.  I’m doing it wrong.”

Sigh.  Oh, do I know that feeling!

On the other hand, she is showing flashes of emotional maturity that surprise me.  (Flashes, mind you, not ongoing, steady emotional maturity!) 

She was the one who wanted to make a card for her new teacher, asked OmegaDad to buy it, and asked me to help her write it when she got home, and kept focused about remembering to take it in to school on the first day. 

She pulled OmegaDad aside to talk privately to him about something that was bothering her, because she knew talking about it might hurt me and someone else, and she didn’t want to upset us.

And in a spectacular combination of creativity, scatter-brained-ness, and emotional maturity, she decided that her new tie-dyed hoodie, with sleeves that were too long, needed to have holes for her thumbs so she could have the cuff as a sort of mitten.  All well and good–a cool idea.  The application of the idea, however, left a great deal to be desired.  When I woke up after OmegaDad had gone to work and snuggled with her in her bedroom, I noticed two huge holes cut into the sleeves of her hoodie, down by the cuffs.  Somehow or other, I didn’t blow my top (it was a somewhat expensive hoodie) but let her know in no uncertain terms that (a) it was a very bad idea, (b) daddy would get just as angry as me, (c) she needed to talk to him about it, and (d) it would be a hella lot better telling him than him discovering it on his own.

She tried to get me to not tell him and keep it a secret.  Har.  As if.  Not only would I not keep something like that a secret (which I let her know), but…well…it was pretty damned obvious.

That night, when OmegaDad got home, the first thing she did was to drag him into the bedroom, close the door, and tell him all about it.

Frankly, that amazed me.  That she would remember it on her own, first off.  And that she would do it on her own, secondly.

Ah, the first day of first grade:

Much to my dismay, the picture is blurry, goodness only knows why.  Here’s the first day of kindergarden, as a contrast.

It was also her first day on the gymnastics team, three hours of which wore her out completely.

It was also the day of the first…

Eggs!  Yes, we now have hens that are laying!  Here’s the egg in the nesting box:

And here’s the dotter discovering the egg (okay, it’s a re-enactment, but, hey…):

And here’s the dotter showing mom the first eggs:

All in all, a very momentous day.

In the meantime, OmegaDad is sick and miserable.  We thought he had pulled a muscle over the weekend.  I hauled him into the doctor, and we decided to do a two-fer:  him for the pain, me for my horribly itchy, scratchy head, which I feared might be lice.  But according to the doc, it’s a staph infection.  Um.  This is good, right?  Rather than lice?  Anyway, OmegaDad got progressively worse over the course of the day, and when we returned from the gymnasium, he was running a fever of 102F.  Which does not sound like he pulled a muscle, after all.

The first reply to my angsting about OmegaDotter maybe joining the gymnastics Tiny Team was Johnny’s:

But….if it’s her DESTINY?

Johnny being Johnny, I can’t tell if he’s being serious, or commenting on some people’s tendency to think in terms of DESTINY, or just poking fun at my angst.

Seriously:  I don’t think it’s her DESTINY.  Frankly, I think her DESTINY is to become a chef or an artist.  Or maybe just a salesman.  Or something.  ;)  But I do think she has a talent and a love for gymnastics.  But I don’t want her to end up like Z:

I was your daughter back when I was that age. And I joined the team.

20+ years later: I have had 10 surgeries, one for a broken back, all for orthopedic issues caused by or exacerbated by gymnastics. When I look back, it is not fondly.

As a child, I loved jumping and flipping and tumbling - and I was good at it. I could do a backhandspring by myself at the age of 6, a back tuck less than a year later. I chose to join the team, and become a “serious” gymnast - it was not something my parents forced on me. But once in, things changed. Gradually, but inevitably. Gymnastics changed from something I loved and looked forward to, into something I had to do - every day, for hours on end. It became my life, and though I grew to hate it, I didn’t know how to stop it because it was all I knew. My parents, I know, would have supported me no matter what, but I just didn’t know how to tell them I wanted to stop. After all, I was good. And I’d chosen it. And it would get me a scholarship and an education, so… I couldn’t just quit, could I? (I remained a gymnast until my injuries sidelined me at the age of 18)

And then I broke my back. On top of the foot and knee injuries I’d already been suffering through. And that ended it. And as much as it sucked, I was relieved, too. It was over.

So: my admittedly completely biased perspective? I’d try to keep it as fun and light as long as possible. Then let her choose. And always keep checking in on her to make sure the choice remains the one she wants… (I wouldn’t advocate taking her out mid-way through a season she’d adamantly committed to in the beginning, but at the end of each one, have a serious discussion about the next one)

Also? Every gymnast I know got injured. Some more seriously than others, but I don’t know of one yet who hasn’t spent a good portion of time on crutches. Yet another thing to consider…

Trust me–I consider it!  A lot!  (Angst.  Lots of angst.)  I worry about pushing her into something she really doesn’t want to do, but she does it because she thinks we like it, and keeps quiet about her anxiety because she wants us to be happy and love, love, love her, and blah, blah, blah.  I worry about her getting injured, and Z’s tale is eye-opening.  I worry about the cultural pressure in gymnastics to stay tiny and lean towards anorexia (like YouKnowWhereYouAreWith says) (which is, of course, another angst-y thing).  I worry, like Blog Antagonist did, whether putting her on a “team” will turn something she loves into a chore.

In terms of “destiny”, though…well, what if she is really good?  What if she keeps on loving it?  What if she keeps getting better and better?  What do we do then?! 

And on the other hand–well, there’s Johnny maybe poking fun, quietly saying:  Hey.  It’s not like you’re setting her life in stone by doing this.  She joins the team, she has fun, she learns stuff, and maybe it works out, maybe it doesn’t, and in the end it’s no big deal. 

To top it all off…well, this is all foreign territory for me.  Truly foreign.  I am about as athletic as a three-toed sloth hanging in a tree, slowly peeling a banana and munching on it while staring off into space.  My preference has always been to just hang out on a sofa or snuggled in bed and read.  My experience as a child was being the one who was always chosen last to be on the team; my only inkling of athleticism was in early high school, when a buddy and I discovered that you could play badminton hard, and we took to pairing off during phys ed and running across the court and slamming birdies over the net at each other while most of the other girls were tip-toeing around and daintily bouncing birdies oh-so-gently off the racket.  I have no experience at, say, being on a team.  Or being the mother of someone who is on a team.  It’s a time commitment, is what it is, and probably a you’ve-got-to-volunteer kind of commitment, and there may be driving off to kiddie gymnastics meets and what-not.  (Trust me, I’ve read BA’s posts on being a baseball mom, and my main response is “omigawd, that’s a lot of work!“)  I’m lazy at heart.  In the middle of winter, I want to be curled up on the sofa reading (see?), not coping with icy roads on the way to Big City for gymnastics meets.

Angst, angst, angst.  Trust me, Johnny, I’m rolling my eyes at myself about this navel-gazing.

We’ll probably give it a whirl for a year, see how it goes.  At least it’s not too terribly expensive; it could have been horses.

I’ve been fairly quiet about the dotter and gymnastics.

I originally put her in a beginning gymnastics class last fall because it was one of the things her occupational therapist had strongly recommended as a channel for her need to bounce, thump, tumble, move.  Before we left Small Mountain University Town, one of her buddies had hauled her along for a “friends’ day” at her gymnastics class, and the dotter seemed interested.

Shortly after I put her in gymnastics, it was obvious she loved it, so I decided to add a second class per week.

Last spring, her teacher approached me and strongly suggested that I move her into an intermediate class.  It was late in the teaching year, so she didn’t think it would be good to just move her then and there, but as soon as the summer session started, in she went.

It’s been pretty obvious to OmegaDad and me that the dotter has a natural talent for gymnastics.  When she focuses, she’s “on”.  And fellow gymnastics parents, watching from the sidelines with me, have made comments.

Then there was the time that one of the main coaches substituted for the dotter’s beginning teacher and shepherded her out to manage a nosebleed in the bathroom.  While we were there, she stooped and murmured to my dotter, “OmegaDotter?  You’re really good at this.  How’d you like to be a star?”

To be honest, that really freaked me out.  Fer cryin’ out loud.  She’s only six, dudes.

It so happens that the Tiny Team trains at the same time she’s taking her intermediate class; the TTs are 5, 6, 7 years old.  They had a tryout a few weeks ago, and I thought about having the dotter try out for the team, but decided that I’d wait.

Well, maybe that waiting is over with…Mr. Jay, coach of the Tiny Team, cornered me after the dotter’s class.  “You’re OmegaDotter’s mom, right?”  I allowed as how I was.  “Have you ever considered having her join the team?”

Um.  Yeah.  So.

He made it pretty clear that I could just put her in; he emphasized that even though the kids are doing a lot of work (we’re talking three three-hour long practices per week), they have fun and goof off and are silly; he suggested that we might consider “trying it out” for the remainder of the summer session, or just join up in the fall.

On the one hand, I really think it’s good for her.  It helps her focus.  She loves it–she’s always tumbling and doing cartwheels and practicing handstands and begging for help doing bridge-overs and backwards bridges at home.  Being able to do it on a regular basis, getting the confidence that being able to do the more complex things–these are good.  The discipline would be good.

On the other hand…damn.  She’s only six, dudes.