OmegaMom

Today we had ice.  Early in the morning, OmegaDad headed out to work, made it up to the mailboxes, decided to turn back home, and says he had a grand old time spinning around and around at the top of the hill.  We got three calls from the school district—the first saying, “Use your discretion”, the second saying goodness-knows-what, since OmegaDotter got the phone that time, and the third saying “Core schools are closed”.  We didn’t care:  After OmegaDad returned home, we weren’t going to let the girl out onto the streets.

So while I was working (there are times when telecommuting is not good), OmegaDad and the dotter made cupcakes, and then we all finished up the pumpkin turkey.

…Whoa!  Say what?!

Oh!  Well, yes.  Yesterday, OmegaDad was about to sacrifice the un-carved Halloween pumpkin to make pumpkin pie filling.  The dotter was distraught that we were not going to have a jack-o-lantern at all at all.  OmegaDad, being the creative crafty genius that he is, come up with the idea of—rather than carving a jack-o-lantern—making a pumpkin turkey.

The creative crafty genius contemplating his blank canvas:

The first step—drilling a hole for the neck using the all-important Dremel tool:

The neck was an Indian corn cob.  OmegaDad and I were guffawing at each other (I’ll admit it:  we can be quite juvenile), and the dotter had no idea why.  I’m sure my readers do:

The first phase of the tail feathers was individual wheat stalks stuck into Dremel-drilled holes (there’s that damned turkey “neck” making me think juvenile thoughts again!):

Then we used the red husks from the Indian corn as a front layer for the tail feathers:

We did another layer of corn husk “feathers” behind the wheat stalks.  (While I was editing these pics, OmegaDad walked in upon this one and said, “What’s my daughter doing to that turkey to give it an erection?!?!”  Then he added, “You need to censor that picture so no-one gets any perverted thoughts!”  I considered a little rectangular censor icon across the front of the turkey, then figured…naaah.):

Somewhere in there, we added little wings to the side, but I got no picture of that.  Next: time to drill the hole for the head.  The head was a turban squash:

Turkey head installed:

The final product…googley (googly?) eyes, dried apricot comb, and all:

Here’s a close-up of the head:

I think it’s way cool.  I’m also very glad that we got that head on, and that it stayed on (we had to do some seriously glue-gun work to keep the stalk from…drooping…damn, I’m still feeling juvenile about the whole thing!).  It will become a centerpiece for the Thanksgiving dinner, sitting at one end of the table so that we can all see each other instead of having it LOOM in front of us.

School is already closed for tomorrow.  I’m hoping they close OmegaDad’s work…for two reasons:  Firstly, for his safety, and secondly…well…much better to have him around for the dotter to pester, instead of her wanting to pester me while I’m working.

The dotter now has two parts in the Christmas play, Becky Elf and Oliver Elf.  She didn’t get a singing role, which I actually think is a Good Thing, as she needs some experience on stage performing before anyone goes overboard (including herself).

Molly asked if I had ready Elizabeth Moon’s Ky Vatta series; indeed I have, and I liked it very much!  I also like the Heris Serrano series.  If you’re not into military SF, the first few books of the Heris Serrano series is actually much less military and much more…well…fun.  As in “funny”.  As in “SF romps”.  The later ones get darker and more military oriented, as the political scheming behind the romps in the first three books suddenly turns serious and deadly.  Or, at least, more deadly.

Spacemom and Georgene—Yes, the Kindle battery lasts longer with the wireless turned off.  Unfortunately, it’s still not lasting a long time for me, dunno why.  This means charging it up once every week or so, which isn’t a game-changer in the long term scheme of things, it just makes me envious of people who talk about not needing to recharge for six weeks or so.

Georgene—laid up with a broken leg (!! How’d you do that, lady?!)—says that her Kindle has become her “bed buddy”, and she is romping through old classics that are available free of charge.  I will have to check and see if Dickens is available; I have, in amongst our boxes in the garage, a complete set of Dickens that is about a hundred years old, and started working my way through it at one point in time…

Noreen says that she will never desert real live books, and I can certainly understand that.  There is something so…tangible about books, the smell, the way you can flip back and forth between spots in the book quickly (not do-able on the Kindle, unless you set a bookmark, and even then it’s unwieldy), the fact that you can actually read the ending of the book when you’re a third of the way in…Why, no, I’ve never done that, why on earth would you think so??? 

Kris wanted to know what version of Kindle I got.  This is the cheapest one, the $139 model with Wi-Fi but no 3G connection.  It is lightweight; you can, indeed, change the size of the fonts easily (though, alas, you cannot magnify any graphics, unless you’re doing their [excruciatingly useless] web browser or a PDF file, so anything like, say, maps or family lineages or fine line drawings are just pretty ornaments without any useful communication); you can collect books into collections, add bookmarks, add highlights, add notes; and it has a (small) QWERTY keyboard.  I looked at a few others, but the Kindle just felt best in my hands, and gave me the best reading experience in my quick in-person reviews.

Mrs. Jones says that her online acquaintanceship is filled with people who are having tough times now, with deaths and disasters and what-not.  I think that part of it may be that we are all of somewhat similar age, and so we are all facing similar problems.  (You should go check out the absolutely lovely afghan she made!)

More later!

Last week, the dotter brought home yet another of the endless reams of handouts you get from school.  Science Fair coming up in March!  Elocution contest!  Tryouts for hockey!  Early release day!  Election bake sale!

This one was for auditions for the school Christmas play.

OmegaDotter wanted to try out.

She was nailing it at home—speaking with expression, hitting the loud points, varying the voices.  And she sang her heart out for her dad and me.  She wanted to do the singing audition, too.

There was the obligatory lecture about how if you audition and get a part, then you have to be responsible for the part.  How she needed to know the lines pat days before the audition and then practice daily.  I also emphasized that the handout said that anyone who memorized the lines and did the audition would get a part.  (Hey, it’s elementary school!)

The audition was today, after school.  I cleared the snow off the car and drove (very carefully) the few blocks to school.  I located the dotter in her classroom and escorted her to the music room.  There were fewer kids auditioning than I had expected—for some reason, I thought there would be lots and lots, but there were only about ten kids trying out.  As each child came up, the dotter wiggled and mouthed the lines with them and (alas) gleefully whispered to me about where each one skipped lines.

She had decided during the week that she wasn’t going to audition for the singing part.  Now, when she tries, she can sing quite nicely, and I figured it would be a good part of an audition for her to do, so I kept encouraging her (quietly) to try the singing part.  The first few, she kept repeating that she wasn’t going to.  Then she decided maybe she would.  Then she decided she definitely would.

Then she got up to do the audition and decided she wouldn’t do the singing part.

When she sat back down next to me, she thought maybe she should have, after all.

I said she could always raise her hand and ask to do it now.  It was difficult trying to be balanced, to push gently for her to stretch her wings without PUSHING overboard, if y’know what I mean.

She dithered.  I reminded her that if she got a singing part, she would have to sing in front of people, and maybe it would be better to start practicing now.

Then she waited until everyone left, went up to the two teachers and asked if she could sing for the audition, too.

Which she did, and much, much better than all the other kids.  (Ahem.  I am not being partisan here; she really is a good singer when she tries.)

But Ms. Firmhand, the librarian, asked if there might be a problem with stage fright.  On the side of my body away from the dotter, I flipped my hand back and forth.  Once she gets going, she’ll do well, but it’s passing that point that is the hard part.

So:  Tomorrow, we find out what part she got (remember, the handout said anyone who memorized the lines was IN.)  In two weeks, I’ll be ferrying her back from school to gymnastics or home as she spends the 1/2 hour practicing until December 2, when the performance is.  Part of me hopes she gets a singing part.  Part of me hopes not.

So OmegaDotter is starting third grade today.  Ah, me!  How the time is flying!  We recently looked at some pictures from just two and a half years ago, and she looked so much younger.  Now she’s swiftly moving into the “tweens”.

We finished her new bedroom look, and she is thrilled.  Zebra stripes, bright pink, orcas everywhere, and her most favorite stuffed animals clustered by the headboard of the new bed: 

This is probably the last year I’ll be taking her into her classroom on the first day of school.  I asked her on the drive in (all four minutes of it!) whether she wanted me to keep doing it, and she was rather firm on the subject.  So we marched in, meeting her teacher from last year acting as traffic cop in the hallway; Mr. Snows was pleased that she got the particular teacher she got and amused that her partner in crime and best friend A. was in her class but carefully placed at the opposite end of the room.

Here she is, all dressed in her new teal outfit (it’s more teal-y in person):

You can’t see it, but she is sporting brand new pierced ears.  I had been saying she could do it when she was twelve, but this past weekend, when we were buying new school clothes, we stopped into Claire’s as usual, and another girl about her age was getting her ears pierced, and…well…there you go.

But, while she’s getting bigger and more grown-up by the day, she also still likes to play hard.  She spent the other day “sneaking” around the house as a ninja.  As she’s wearing a pair of my sweats that she begged to have as hers, she looks like a droopy-bottomed gangster:

It’s been a busy few weeks.  Lots of things going on.  I may pull myself together to post on a current “hot issue” over at the Rumor Queen.

Then again, I may not.

This week, the dotter announced before the weekend that she had been spending too much time with her friends on weekends, and she wanted to Do Nothing this weekend.  This was okay with us, of course—it was, in fact, very gratifying; you mean you want to spend time with your boring old Mom and Dad?!  Well, okie dokie, then!

Yesterday being sunny and warm and beautiful, we did things outside (I picked up a winter’s worth of garbage revealed by melted snow, and began the unending raking of the lawn) and ran errands.  Today being chillier and cloudy, I promised her we’d go to the movies.  So she and I headed out this afternoon to catch “How To Train Your Dragon”.

I loved it.  I thought it was sweet and funny and uplifting, and I do so like movies that have the nerdy type being the hero.  I even—towards the end—got a bit weepy-eyed.

Then we went off to Cold Stone Creamery for a goodie, and then back home.

I settled down at the computer for a bit of late afternoon computing.  An hour later, OmegaDad came in and said, “You have to come see this!  She’s made a dragon.  It’s splendid, and 3-D.  Bring your camera!”

Herewith the dragon, sans wings and rider:

Later, when she was done with the wings and the rider, she brought it down to me in the office, where I was doing laundry.  She asked me to put it on the internet, so here it is:

And another view:

Coincidentally enough, I had been researching local art classes for her.  I think, now that she’s eight, garnering “most creative” votes from her classmates, willing to freak freely with her art, and getting more and more elaborate with her creations, it’s time for her to get a little bit of more formal instruction.  Neither OmegaDad nor I have much—if any—artistic ability, and definitely neither of us has any training in techniques.  And, with the NCLB mandating Readin’, Writin’ and ‘Rithmetic, there’s no funding or time for such frivolities as art; we’re lucky to have a music class (of sorts) once every three days, rotated with library and phys ed.  Which means we’re on our own when it comes to art work.

In my research, I happened upon a listing of local teachers of various sorts who are willing to accept contracts with homeschoolers (local homeschoolers can sign up with the school district for vouchers), and what a goldmine that was!  Listings of art teachers, music teachers, tutoring, Greek teachers, Russian teachers…and on and on.  (Alas, no Chinese teachers, bah, even though Big City has a thriving Mandarin immersion program at one of the public schools…)

Too late for now, but I will definitely be looking into at least one of the art teachers for next school year.

Okay, not the dark.  But definitely the cold.

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

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

And these idiots propped the door open.

It was 2 degrees Fahrenheit.

Gah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Because art is like breathing for her.

The scene:  OmegaDotter picks up the phone, dials a number.

“Hello?  This is OmegaDotter, who is this?…Can I please speak with A.?”

“Hi, A.?  It’s OmegaDotter.  I blew it.”

“I made a poor choice.”

“You can’t come to the fair with us tomorrow.  I’m sorry I said you probably could.”

The backstory:

A.–OmegaDotter’s current best buddy–is coming over for a sleepover tomorrow night, as a result of some parental badgering on the dotter’s part.  The Big Fair is running from yesterday through September 8.  We were planning to go tomorrow.  The dotter asked us prior to dinner–while on the phone with A.–if he could come to the fair with us.  We said we’d make our minds up later, but it was dinnertime and time to get off the phone.

During dinner, she asked again.  And again.  OmegaDad said that he had been wanting a “just family” day.  I personally was leaning towards saying, sure, why not, let’s bring A. along, it’ll be fun, but said we needed to decide later.

Dinner was over, the dotter cleared the table, I stepped out for a smoke, OmegaDad stepped out with the dawg to do the dawgly duty.

When we got back inside, the dotter was on the phone with A., telling him that yes, he could almost certainly come to the fair with us.

Oops.  Big mistake, kiddo.  Don’t go making plans with someone else based on no decision from your parents.  We told her to say goodbye to A., that she’d call him back later, and to get her cute little butt back to the dinner table so we could Talk To Her.  At which point, we laid out the fact that (a) we had not made the decision yet, (b) she called A. and told him we had, (c) as a result, our decision was that he was not coming with us, even though I had been leaning towards taking him along, and (d) she had to call A. back, tell him she was wrong, and apologize.

Oh, lordy.  Y’know, sometimes being a parent is just a plain old pain in the ass.  Damn.  Chores need to be supervised, so it’s more work than just doing it myself.  We need to remind her to do the chickens.  We have to explain that not everything is going to go her way.  We have to explain courtesy, and patience, and junk like that.  (We also have to explain that talking in class is a Bad Idea, that while it’s polite to listen to someone who is talking (!!!  Yes!  She claimed she was listening and talking to A. in class because he was talking to her and it was the polite thing to do!), the teacher talking takes precedence, and quiet time in class takes precedence, and, and, and…)

Bah.

On the good side, though, we applauded her phone call (she was saying it all very quietly, in another room, so it wasn’t for show), we all played five-card draw, and B.S., and Crazy Eights, and I read another chapter of her Karito Kids book to her before bedtime.  I guess it all balances out.

I have had a cold.  It laid me low Thursday and Friday, and kept me from re-starting my (new) exercise regimen on Saturday and Sunday.  Worst of all, I had this goopy cough, wheezy breath, and found myself getting tired just going up the stairs.

Ew, yuck.  Time to hie myself off to the doctor, I said.  So I hied to the doc-in-a-box.

And at the doctor’s office, I waited.  And waited.  And waited.

While I waited, I saw parent after parent leading a child in–or out–for a shot.

Today, by the way, is the first day of school.

The first day when the new varicella vaccination rules are in place.

The “new” varicella vaccine rules which were communicated to me (a parent) multiple times waaaay back in March.  And April.  And May.  With handouts.  With notes from the school nurse.  In the newsletter.  There was even a special mailing, also from the school nurse.

All of which said:  No varicella vaccine, no school for your kid.  Period.  End of statement.

The nurse who was taking my vitals had to quickly leave the exam room to go help administer a shot to an eight-year-old who was screaming his head off in another exam room.

The doctor told me–when he finally got to me, two hours after I got there–that he was cross-eyed from seeing the kids and getting them their shots.  He estimated he had already seen twenty kids.

Helloooooooo!!!!

Folks!  Get a grip!  You’ve had plenty of notice!  Months of notice!  You’ve had a whole summer in which to get this thing done!  WHY ARE YOU WAITING UNTIL THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL TO TAKE CARE OF IT?!?!?!

Gah.  Twits.

OmegaMom wanders off, muttering darkly to herself and shaking her fist in the air.

The chores proceed apace, which is making me happy.  OmegaDad discovered the Internet Bonanza of American Girl doll accoutrements, and the dotter is agog.  And eager to buy, buy, buy!  Which, of course, means money, money, money!  Which leads to chores.

Ahhhh.  So the dotter is sweeping, and vacuuming, and cleaning the catbox, and sorting laundry, and carrying laundry back upstairs and putting it away (I know I mentioned every single one of these things before, but it’s so damn nice to have it done, even if I do have to follow around and give pointers and make sure she does more than a seven-year-old’s slapdash job).

OmegaDad has been making bread.  He recently made two loaves of challah, one for us, one for our next-door neighbor, who just got married.  The late afternoon sunshine just made the warmth and goodness pop out in the picture.  Aren’t they purty?

Also enjoying the afternoon warmth was one of our cats, Wooly.  Piggy, the scaredy cat, rarely (if ever) ventures upstairs, but Wooly is everywhere.  Including on our laptop.  Which means that, after I took this picture, I spent five minutes closing obscure Windows windows and making sure he hadn’t accidentally switched screen resolutions, or turned on Armenian language, or shut off all the keyboard shortcuts.  For reference, this was what he looked like a few years ago, when he was only five or six weeks old.

Our new chickens are laying eggs now–yay!  So we get a wide variety of egg sizes.  The big one is from one of our older girls; the little one is from one of the new layers.  Our Silkies lay eggs only a bit bigger than the little one, but the new girls’ eggs will end up as big as the one on the left in a few months.

Another shot of Cinderella, posing:

She starts second grade tomorrow.  She’s been wandering the house shouting excitedly about school starting; that excitement will disappear very soon.  Right now, she’s upset that her second-grade teacher is male:  “A dude?!  I don’t want a dude for a teacher!!”  There is an implied “WTF?!” in there that she hasn’t taken to using.  Yet.  (I, of course, am quite aware that she tends to get ferocious crushes on young men who are coaches or counselors or teachers, so fully expect her to be [occasionally] sighing about Mr. Snows.  When she’s not complaining about the homework.)

Oh, yes, and in the midst of all the early/mid August stuff, I totally spaced out that OmegaMom, the blog, is now four years old.  Whoa.

It’s August, and–as every parent of a school-aged kid knows–that means it’s time for registration.

Registration for school, for gymnastics, for dance or ice skating.  Checking to be sure the shots are up to date.  Perusing the school supply list.  Time to check winter coats and boots for fit.  Eyeing schedules.  Considering how to transition to “school year” bedtime, as opposed to happy-go-lucky summer bedtime.

I schlepped over to the elementary school this afternoon to do the annual signature-fest, and was just as irritated this year as last.

See, for returning students, the school has you check a printout with a variety of information on it (name, DOB, address, parents’ names, phone numbers, emergency contacts, ethnicity, yadda yadda yadda).  And then you have a sheaf of additional paperwork to fill out–still more emergency contact information, permissions for Internet use (or not), permission to use pictures (or not), permission to dispense ibuprofen/tylenol/cough drops/etc. (or not), signatures that you’ve received (and read and agreed to) the school’s student handbook, and the borough’s student handbook.

And on and on.

The thing that makes this database programmer’s stomach churn is that you get that printout, which has name, DOB, student ID number, and a variety of other information…all printed out, spit out straight from the belly of the Great Database in the Borough School District Offices.  But all those other forms?  The endless sheets, in the endless array of colors?

Those you have to fill out by hand.

Including all that information that is already on the printout.

Twenty sheets of info.  (Well, okay, ten.)  All with student name, DOB, student ID number.  Some with parent name and phone number.  All of which could be generated by a mail-merge using the data direct from the Great Database in the Borough School District Offices.  None of which are.

So folks, there you have it:  Here we are, in the year of our Lord 2009.  We have to fill out forms about Internet permissions–Internet permissions!!!–by hand.

We’re lucky in that we have only one kid to do this for.  When I sat down at the array of tables with my sheaf of color-coded paperwork in my hand, girding my fist to do battle with the pen, next to me was Mike, parent of A., OmegaDotter’s best bud from school.  He has four kids.  One is in middle school, so he has a different sheaf of paperwork to do for her; the middle two were returning students, and the last is going into kindergarten this year.  He had three sets of paperwork he was filling out mindlessly.

We commiserated, swapped names and phone numbers as emergency contacts (he and his family arrived in Alaska after us, and they are about as sociable as we are, which is to say, not very), and wrote.  And wrote.  And wrote.

Gah.  What century are we in now?  Why are universities and community colleges all set up to do this stuff by web, and the local schools aren’t?  I know it’s expensive, but surely the borough school district has an IT staff, whose job it is to do things like this?

Grumble, grumble, grumble.

Answers to questions and comments from yesterday’s post:  Mamasan–We had totally forgotten the camera, so no need to feel guilt!  Tonggu Mama–We haven’t read the book yet, so don’t know whether it’s any good or not.  There is a website with games and what-not, and the games emphasize different cultures, different countries, and the “tokens” you win (passport stamps) can be redeemed for $$ to go to charities.  VinegarMartini–I’d like to claim that the dollar-a-missed-turn-signal was all the dotter’s idea, but am not sure.  She was, however, relentless in catching the misses!  Also, thanks for the tip on Target vis-a-vis the outfits; that will help immensely!  Jean–Alas, I think OmegaDad did not miss any turn signals on purpose.  He truly has a problem with being distracted by conversation or the radio, and howls with frustration when he is caught.

OmegaDad joked that, between us, we have “a glass”.  That’s because he sees the glass as half full, I see it as half empty.

As an example:  This evening I have been doing the annual round o’ gifties for various teachers and what-not at OmegaDotter’s school.  Tomorrow is her last day of first grade (OMG!).  But this year’s gift round is bittersweet, because we are losing two people at her school who I think are Just Awesome:  the principal, and the music teacher.

Before the dotter got into school, I mainly thought of a principal as just an administrator–someone who made the decisions and got things done, but who wasn’t really important in the grand scheme of things.  But Mr. Big, the current principal, has made me aware of just how much influence the principal has in creating and maintaining an environment, an atmosphere, in a school.  OmegaDotter’s school, under Mr. Big, has been warm, caring, nurturing.  It’s a good school (even if I find myself irked that the front-desk workers have [gag] Thomas Kincaide screensavers with Bible quotes on their computers).  There are ongoing “fun” things being done, that make the kids feel part of a large family, like the sock hop and the family movie nights and the welcome and farewell barbecues.  There is good communication with parents.  (Mr. Big endeared himself to me forever with his response to the “Chinese girls are mean!” incident last year; he knew just how much that would hurt the dotter and her family.)

So he’s going.  A new school has been built, and he gets to start it up next fall.  We’re getting a new principal, who seems like a boring Marine type.  We’ve met him, but had no real interaction; in my typical “glass half-empty” way, I’m sure he won’t be as good as Mr. Big.

The music teacher, Mr. L., came to us last fall fresh from his music education graduate degree.  He’s young, cute, enthusiastic, and he has a true gift for teaching children about the joys of music.  He instituted school-wide concerts, one in the winter and one in the spring.  He taught beginning band to fourth- and fifth-graders.  He started a special chorus for those who wanted to join and do the work.  The dotter came home after her music days humming and telling us about digeridoos and drums and trumpets.  In the concerts–well, it was amazing how well he did with the fourth- and fifth-graders playing recorders.  The younger kids all sang in tune and together.  The older kids demonstrated that they could sing multiple parts and fortissimo and pianissimo.  And the tunes he selected were just plain fun.

Then there was the time he challenged the school kids to bring in their coins for a special charity by saying that he was going to shave off his long locks and the kids who brought in the most money would be able to do the shaving.  Four of the dotter’s classmates were amongst the kids who got to do the shaving, and it was great fun for everyone.  (I did miss the long hair, though; sigh…)

He’s going too, to follow Mr. Big to the new school.  It’s a fabulous opportunity for him, to be able to set the tone for the school music program and make it his own.  And I, being “glass half-empty”, am feeling like there’s no way on earth to find a music teacher as good as he was.  OmegaDad, of course, regales us with tales of the new music teacher in his elementary school, and how the new teacher was So Much Better than the old one.  The difference here being that, in his case, a new young teacher was replacing an old, worn-out teacher who was retiring…

So it’s bittersweet.  Tomorrow the dotter goes off to her last day of first grade, then we swing into summertime activities, and the fall lurks ahead like a great unknown…

I am seriously going to miss Mr. Big and Mr. L.  They were part of what makes the dotter’s school so good.

Who is this?  I told her she looked 18 years old.  Then I told her she wasn’t allowed to look 18 years old again until she actually was 18 years old.

I also told her that my school pics were nothing like this.  Not a thing.  We had the ol’ stand in front of a beige canvas, be told to smile, click, and then the mugshot.

Sunday I spent with the dotter, pulling teeth interviewing her so we could get the egg-speriment down in (pretty much) her own words.  At one point, I had her doing her own typing, but that swiftly became a case of flibbertigibbet-ness wherein she was typing gobbledegook while I was backspacing over it and we were having a race and it kept going and she was giggling wildly and I was giggling and getting frustrated…

So I ended up typing it up.  But still, most of it, as I said above, is in her own words.  After I gave her very pointed questions.

And then I printed the typing out carefully overlaid on a large egg shape.  She cut out the typing eggs.  I traced and cut out bigger egg shapes of various colored construction paper.  We searched (in vain) for glue sticks.  We found old Elmer’s Glue containers.  She tried de-booger-ifying them, but we still couldn’t squeeze out glue.  She located some paintbrushes.  We had a grand old time painting glue on various pieces and pasting them down.

There was glue everywhere.

There was enough glue to soak through the pictures, so that you could see the carefully looped streams of glue that had dribbled off her paintbrush in the middle of the backs of the pictures.

At some point I gave up, drove off for glue sticks, and returned; this also served the purpose of giving her a break.  We then attacked things with glue sticks.

Glue sticks, if you don’t know, don’t stick as well as dribbled-on Elmer’s glue.

Anyway, here’s the finished project:

We trekked off to school with this behemoth this a.m., and encountered many other kiddlies bringing in their science projects.  There were many clay volcanoes being hefted by parental units; very timely, given our neighboring smoking mountain’s antics this weekend.

And there was the kiddo lugging in the poster board with a great big artsy “TNT SODA!!!” banner slashing diagonally across his project.  I am assuming that this is evidence of what is the science project du jour:  Sodas and Mentos, mixed explosively.

The science fair is Wednesday evening.  I informed the dotter that people would be asking her questions about her project.  She blinked at me in a panic, and asked me, “Can you give me the answers?!”  I further informed her that she should be able to answer the questions about her project.  She promptly called me a meanie.

Yup.  That’s me:  Mean Mommy.  Har.

Every day, the dotter’s backpack-cum-horsie-decorated-duffel bag contains her homework folder.  Tucked into the homework folder on irregular occasions there are notes from school: 

• The official memo on what to do when the volcano blows (the Twitter feed for the volcano continually says “Volcano has not erupted. Elevated seismicity continues.”  It is interspersed with such highly notable pieces of info as “The web camera is dark”, when it’s 10:36 out on February 18.)
• The notice for the Sock Hop.
• The notice for parent-teacher conferences (the last one had the “your child is working at or above grade level, so Ms. Nicely thinks there is no need for a PT conference.  If you still wish to arrange one, the following time has been scheduled…”
• Monthly calendar and monthly foodservice calendar.
• Hockey and wrestling sign-up info.  Har.
• The science fair project packet.
• An occasional school newsletter.

Whoa.  Back up there a minnit, pardners!

“Science fair project packet”?!

Whoa.

Yes, folks, we have reached that childhood milestone:  the science fair.

This necessitated an explanation of what a science fair project is like, and a definition of the word “hypothesis”.  Oh, boyo.

So yours truly has spent the last hour exploring Teh Google to see what the Intertubes have to say about “first grade science project”.

The science fair is March 25.

We shall see.  I will keep all posted.  Any grand ideas for simple science fair projects?  Any good/bad experiences?  What have been your experiences with kiddo’s science fairs?

I won’t suggest project ideas directly; I will only give indirect ideas.  OmegaDad has already suggested a “where do eggs come from” poster board, which has its distinct merits.  There are also some neat and easy experiments with eggs online.

• Ms. Vinegar Martinis asked me what kind of floofy drinks I like.  I admit a horrendous fondness for piña coladas, blended with ice, whipped cream on top, a maraschino cherry, and a little umbrella.  Another floofy drink I like–a hangover (har!) from when I was a wild-n-crazy young 20s-ish gal living in gay-town Chicago–is the Golden Cadillac.  Flavored margaritas, such as peach or mango, get a thumbs-up from me, as well.

  When we were living in Small Mountain University Town, on hot summer days, I would take the dotter off to the local outdoor swimming pool.  After an afternoon in the sun, we would stop at Baskin-Robbins.  One day, I noticed they had a flavor called Coco-Nutty.  Nom nom nom.  The next time we visited, I combined it with a scoop of lemon sherbert.  Nom nom nom, squared.  It was the ice-cream equivalent of the piña colada, and became my staple there.

• Noreen asked what the elementary school Sock Hop was like.  Let’s see…First off, the dotter’s elementary school has a new music teacher, Mr. L., who looks like he just got out of college from getting his music education degree.  He is, IMO, quite kewl; at the Christmas concert, for instance, he had forty fourth- and fifth-graders all playing in time and in tune on recorders.  Nothing too fancy, but it was quite an accomplishment.  Anyway, he seems to be the driving force for many newer musical adventures at the elementary school front.

  The Sock Hop featured all the lady school teachers in poodle skirts.  Oh, yes!  And a few of the girls.  My fave ’50s dress-up, though, was the stocky young man in the fourth (?) grade who had greased his hair, was wearing a muscle Tee, blue jeans, and a black leather jacket.

  When we arrived, the music blasting out was 80s rock-and-roll.  OmegaDad and I eyed each other dubiously; this was not sock hop material to us.  However, soon enough the DJ (Mr. L.) was rolling out fifties and sixties faves, requiring serious Twist and Swing action.

  There were hot dogs and chips, and a malt shop featuring root beer floats.  All in all, grand fun.

• Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa:  Shortly after we returned Buffy, our formerly broody hen, to Le Grand Coop, we had to remove Angie, our Brahma, due to the other hens pecking her legs bloody.  So Angie has been in our garage for a few weeks, recuperating.  Yesterday morning we returned her to the coop.

  I had thought the peckage was the result of Angie molting, and thought nothing of checking up on her.

  OmegaDad checks the chickens late at night, before bedtime.  I was reading in the dotter’s bedroom, finishing off Godel, Escher, Bach, when I heard OmegaDad muttering, “Shit!  Shit!” outside the room.  When I emerged a few minutes later, I found him downstairs in the office, on the computer.

  “So what was all the muttering about?” I asked.

  The sad tale came out:  He had forgotten that Angie had been returned to the coop, so had not checked during the day.  When he got out there, he discovered her beaten and bloody; the other hens had pecked out all her leg feathers again, and pulled out almost all the feathers at the base of her tail.  I went out to the garage to view our poor beat-up hen, and it was just gross; she looked like ground beef.  :-(  And I felt terrible, because I hadn’t thought anything of it, and felt like it was my fault she got beat up.  Anyway, Angie is back in the garage, recuperating again, and if we can’t figure out a way to get her back into the coop without the other hens savaging her again, we are going to have to find a new home for her.

• Unka Bill grumps about the PINKage of modern-day small girls.  I totally agree.  In fact, when the dotter was a wee one, she had very little–if any!–pink attire.  She wore cute little yellow outfits, and green outfits, and denim onesies, leggings in a variety of colors, cute little dresses in bright colors.  Alas, in the past two years, she has been quite firm in what she wants to wear.  The Borg has assimilated her.  All I can say is that most girls emerge from the PINK phase at some point in time…I hope the dotter goes Goth, or Emo, because she looks mighty fine in black.
• When the weather got cold, OmegaDad retreated from the ongoing construction around the north forty, and took to experimenting with baking.  We now have homemade bread on a regular basis, and homemade cakes, and (today) homemade brownies.  Our bank account has thrived as a result, but so has my weight.  I am eagerly awaiting the return of spring, not just for the sunshine and warmth, but so that OmegaDad will return to construction and stop feeding us luscious baked goods.  All the blue jeans I purchased early last fall, which were too big on me then, are now fitting quite snugly.  This is Not Good.

Later gators.

Because you’re all pretty kewl:

1. Eat your heart out, 2. I (heart) balancing rocks, 3. Heart with Flowers Pendant, 4. Mountain Dew Heart Whole, 5. Heart no. 1, 6. M&M Heart, 7. black hearts, 8. I Heart Flickr, 9. my heart, 10. free texture . heart bokeh, 11. This heart is a stone, Acid House Kings, 12. Human Heart, 13. ~ I give you my heart ~, 14. Drops and hearts, 15. More Hearts!, 16. With my heart on my hand, 17. My burning heart, 18. Heart with Hearts, 19. The Voice of a broken heart, 20. Flickr Hearts Fun, 21. Heart of flowers, 22. Heart of Glass, 23. a lost heart, 24. Mirrored Sea Shell Heart, 25. my heart is on your hands.

All are Creative Commons items, but you do need to go and look at the originals, and check out these photographers’ other works.  Also check out the “Hearts” Flickr stream; great fun.

The dotter dressed all in pink yesterday for school.  Pink, pink, PINK.  She looked mighty darned cute, but boy-oh-boy am I getting sick and tired of PINK.  She returned with cards and candy.  Then we had to go to the Sock Hop at school.  I did not want to go; I was feeling pouty (complete with lower lip stuck out!).  But OmegaDad whispered to me, “Please come.  I’d really like it,” in a sort of puh-leeze-don’t-leave-me-alone-with-screaming-kids-and-loud-music-puh-leeze!  I gritted my teeth and went.

And had fun.  Who’d'a thunk it?!

Every Monday through Thursday, the dotter brings home a folder.  In that folder is a page or two of math homework each night.  Every Tuesday, she gets a new book to read out loud (courtesy, though she does not know this, of a nefarious scheme concocted by OmegaMom and Ms. Nicely at the last parent-teacher conference).  Every Monday, she gets a packet of spelling words to spell multiple times, alphabetize, place in “word boxes”, use for fill-in-the-blank sentences, and–bonus!–a few sentences made up by herself using those words.

Being a mean mommy, my routine is:  I meet the dotter at the bus stop.  We walk home.  The dotter kicks off her boots, drops her jacket, dashes up to the bathroom, and begs for a snack.  I strike the Mean Mommy Pose and ask what’s next.  She mutters “chickens”.  We go check the chickens for eggs.  We return.  She begs for a snack.  I strike the Mean Mommy Pose and ask what’s next.

Homework.

I get her a snack.

We pull out the folder.

I collect the “graded” work (”Wow!” “Awesome!” “Super!” and suchlike, with here and there a 33/35 with circled blank answers).  I try to toss some out, but these days, she insists on going through them and keeping the majority in her “school box”. 

I read various notes from the school.

She asks where her erasers are.  I say I don’t know.  She looks for them.

I wait.

She comes back.  She asks where her pencils are.  I say I don’t know.  She looks for one.

I wait.

She returns.  She grabs some markers and writes her name in alternating orange and green letters.  I clasp my hands under the table.  She asks me to sharpen her pencil.  I cock an eyebrow at her.  She asks me to please sharpen her pencil.  I sharpen the pencil.  She has started coloring in turtles on the math homework with her orange marker.

She starts her homework.  “What am I supposed to do?”  I shrug and say, “I dunno.  Read the directions.”  She reads the directions.  “Oh, that’s easy!”  She counts the turtles and the butterflies that are in problem 1 and 2, carefully sorted into groups of tens and ones.  “Is this right?” she asks.  I shrug and say, “What do you think?”  She checks again.  (Har!)

She bounces in her chair.  She turns her math homework sheet upside down.  I strike the Mean Mommy Pose and suggest she focus.  She reads the story problem (”There are 6 boys in the tent.  There are 8 boys outside the tent.  How many boys are there all together?”).  She starts drawing six tents.  I mention that it’s boys she’s supposed to be counting.  Oops.  She erases the tents.  She draws a boy.  She writes “boys” above the boy, and “6″ beneath the boy (thank heavens–a few weeks ago, she would have insisted on drawing every.  Single.  Boy.  Differently.).  She climbs up onto her chair and squats on the seat.  She draws another boy and writes “boys” above that one, and “8″ beneath.  She puts a plus sign between them, an equals sign at the end, a blank box to hold the answer, and the word “boys”.  She counts.  She draws in “14″.  Then she puts “14 boys” in the (provided) answer space.  She grabs the orange marker to color in some more turtles.  I strike the MMP again and announce, “No more coloring turtles until you’re done with your homework.”

Now it’s time to draw ten-lines and one-dots to a specified number.  She asks what she’s supposed to do.  I shrug and say, “Read the directions.”  She reads and thinks.  She has three problems, stacked on top of each other.  She draws a ten-line all the way down and giggles.  I ask what problem that ten-line goes to.  She looks at it and giggles again.  She erases the bottom part.  She turns around in her chair.  She erases the second third.  She bounces off the chair and grabs the orange marker to color some more turtles.  I ask, “Are you done with all your homework?”  She giggles and says no.  She erases the rest of the ten-line.  She says, “Now what was I supposed to do?  I forgot.”  I tell her to read the directions again.

She draws another ten-line.  She dots it with ten dots.  I ask her what she’s doing.  She says she’s making a pretty line.  I suggest, somewhat wryly, that the whole idea behind ten-lines and one-dots is that it’s much quicker.  Oh, she says.  She finally draws six ten-lines and 4 one-dots to represent 64.  I clutch my hands together beneath the table again.  She jumps off the chair and runs off to get something.  I holler, “Focus!  Homework!”  She runs back.  She climbs on the chair.  She whips out the remaining two problems.

I pull out the spelling homework.

She grabs the orange marker.

I give her the hairy eyeball as she quickly sneaks in two or three orange turtles.

She starts to work on the spelling.  But first she puts checks in the checkboxes for Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Bonus.  I object, saying that she hasn’t done that work yet, and she can put checks in after she does that part.  She erases it.  She gets back into a squat up on the chair seat, and bounces up and down.  She finishes the spelling parts and re-checks the boxes.  (Yes, I know it’s anal of me, but she doesn’t necessarily do the stuff she’s planning to do, and I want her to get used to marking it off when it’s done.)  (Harrumph.)

Now it’s time for reading.  She swivels on her chair and drapes a leg over the back of it, with the other foot on the floor.  She bounces on the floor foot.  She reads a page.  She turns around to show me the page, teacher-style.  She turns the book sideways and reads another page.  She points out some funny things in the picture.  She slides out of the chair and backs into me while reading.  She starts climbing up on me.  She climbs off.  She climbs onto her chair.  She turns the book upside down and reads a few lines and laughs.  She turns it right-side up, reads some more, and goes “WORMS?!  Ewwwwww!”

She finishes her reading for the day.  I heave a sigh and roll my eyes and start putting her homework back into her folder.  She shrieks, “My turtles!”  Oh, dear, my bad:  yes, she must color in the turtles.  And the butterflies.

All told, this routine takes an hour.  Or an hour-and-a-half.  This is something that could take fifteen or twenty minutes.

Please give me my halo and wings.  I deserve it.

(For those who wonder why I don’t make her sit still and focus focus focus…Um.  Hm.  Well.  It’s a sort of philosophical thing with me.  She is a very physical child, very sensory oriented.  She has been this way from Day One, with the foot thing.  The bouncing, the spinning, the turning things this way and that–it all seems to help her.  Also, I don’t want to make homework a horrid dull chore.  So long as she’s doing it, getting the concepts, and (generally) having a good time with it, I will grit my teeth and practice patience.  Intense patience.  The patience of saints.)

In the meantime, today is our Metcha Day.  Yup, six years ago.  Whoa.  It doesn’t seem possible.  That little girl–up above–is now this little girl, staging a rolling-pin fight with OmegaDad.

Over the snow-covered valleys of Alaska, as the sun begins to rise, they gather.

Mist wreaths the peaks as the fog rises, and the half-moon glimmers overhead.

A wind collects the top dusting of snow and scatters it joyously in the air, where it sparkles and shimmers, then falls to the ground.

This…this is the morning ritual.

The harbinger of change is heard in the distance, chains rattling and brakes squealing.

Join us as we watch…The Running of the Moms.

The small fry circle around the nest.  The mother patiently watches for the signal that it is time, time for the migration.

The swift, the brave, the leaders:  they will catch the signal early, and their young will be waiting.

The slow, the sloth-like, the sleepy:  Their young will be left behind, to struggle to their destination and arrive late.

This leaves the ones in between, neither swift, nor sloth-like.

They are the ones who watch for the signal, ready to run, but not quite realizing that the signal they are paying attention to is delayed, or that the gathering, the preparation for the migration, will take too long.

They wait.  They see the signal.  They gather their young.  They prepare the small ones.  They dart here and there, collecting necessary items.  They chatter their warning cries, and their young, being young, dawdle and delay.

Finally, they are ready.  They emerge from the warm, safe nest, where they have bedded down for the night, and peer out into the slowly lifting darkness, eyes blinking, breath frosting the air.

The entrance to the nest is barricaded again.  The mother and the offspring swiftly move to the gathering place.

Or, at least, the mother swiftly moves to the gathering place; the young, in this case, dawdles some more.

The messenger, the leader of the group, is heard approaching, like the thunder of a herd of buffalo.

The adult picks up speed, protected feet crunching rapidly through the days-old snow.  The young follows behind, distracted by the glittering snow, by the ice-covered branches, by…who knows what.

The time is coming, fast, and they must make it to the gathering place in time, or be left behind.  The adult, hearing the leader, breaks into a run, feet sparkling, breath huffing, galloping up the hill to the meeting place.

The young one drifts behind.

The adult calls out, an urgent noise, beckoning forward.

The young one dawdles.

The monstrous beast comes to a halt at the top of the hill, and–miracle of miracles–waits!  The soft rosy pink of the dawn gleams through the windows and silhouettes the driver of the bus.

The adult, worn and tired by its journey, staggers to a halt by the lumbering messenger, and waves a limb in greeting.

“Hah.  It’s always the moms who run; the kids, they take their time,” says Carmina, who is used to this.

And the dotter, suddenly realizing that, oh, maybe she should be moving her feet a little bit faster, breaks into a run at the very last possible minute, and climbs onto the bus.

I sometimes wonder if salmon are the same way.  If mother salmon are darting to and fro around their young, off to spawn in the streams, urging, “Do you have your eggs?  No?!  Where are they?  I told you to get your eggs ready!”  And then swimming before their offspring saying, “Are you sure you have everything?  C’mon!  We need to get going!  It’s time!  No, you don’t have time to poop, dammit!  We’re late as it is!”

Har.

Six years old.  You can see her tooth gaps.  I like it.  Tomorrow we are told to show up at the first quarter school general assembly because the dotter is supposed to be getting an award; I suspect it’s something like “perfect attendance” or something like that, but we’ll be there.  Then there’s the “lice letter” that showed up from the school nurse.  Ahem.  Eeek?  I have to call her to find out more info; it merely says there “was a lice concern” about the kids in the dotter’s class, and that all the kids were examined and “cleared for school”.  However, a question or two put to the dotter revealed some info that makes me really want to talk to the nurse…

A big thank you to all my commenters; your long and thoughtful replies have made me feel a bit cheerier.  I will write more substantive stuff tomorrow; tonight I’m just pooped and have a headache and want to go to bed.

Which science fiction character are you?

Jean-Luc Picard

An accomplished diplomat who can virtually do no wrong, you sometimes know it is best to rely on the council of others while holding the reins.

There are some words which I have known since I was a schoolboy. “With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.” These words were uttered by Judge Aaron Satie — as a wisdom, and warning. The first time any man’s freedom is trodden on, we’re all damaged.

Jean-Luc is a character in the Star Trek universe.

Onto “real” things:

I want the election to be over with.

The dotter and I spent a few hours this afternoon making jack-o-lanterns, ghosts, witches, cemeteries, etc. to hang in the windows.

I have the first parent-teacher conference of the school year this Thursday.  Ms. Nices is…well, nice enough…but I’m not so sure I’m thrilled with her as a teacher.  Not dismayed, either, but not thrilled, the way I was with Mrs. Shoelace (who could Do No Wrong).

Soooo…is the economic mess “contained” yet?  Wanna place bets?

I was sitting at the computer tearing my hair out, trying to figure out just why a test web form wasn’t posting.  (I still haven’t figured it out.)  The phone rings.  I let it ring once, so I can see who is calling.  Plumber?  OmegaDad?  Someone else?

Someone else:  T. Biggle, sayeth the little LED screen.

T. Biggle just happens to be the principal of OmegaDotter’s school.

Instantly, the worrier in me rose up full force.  OMG, the dotter’s been sent to the principal’s office!  OMG, the dotter is hurt and they’re letting us know!  OMG, it’s yet another recorded message about school spirit!  We have been getting message after message from Mr. Biggle related to school; there’s a before-school barbeque, remember to register this week, first day of school is tomorrow and we’re all excited to see you again, join the PTA, blah, blah, blah.  I mean, yeah, it’s nice that they communicate, but maybe they could communicate just a leetle less?  Or do two–two–two messages for the price of one?

Anyway, there it was:  T. Biggle on the phone.

I punch the button.

“Hello?  Is Mrs. OmegaMom available?”

“This is she…”  OMG, it’s not a message, what’s wrong?!

“Nothing is wrong with OmegaDotter–”  Obviously, he’s used to parents panicking when they get the phone call from the principal. “–and she’s done nothing wrong.”  Obviously, he’s used to parents thinking their kids have gotten into trouble when they get the phone call from the principal.

“But there was an incident that we thought you should know about.”

So, out of the blue (apparently), while the dotter and this other kid were putting things away, he tells her, “I don’t like little Chinese girls!”

I don’t think I’ve ever felt quite as much like someone kicked me in the guts as I did when I heard Mr. Biggle tell the story.  He said that OmegaDotter was very upset, her feelings were hurt, she was crying, and that he thought I should hear about it so that we could give her some extra lovin’s when she got home.  He assured me that The Perpetrator was reprimanded, and that the school takes things like this seriously.  (Well, hellyeah, when they actually call me about it, I’d say that was “taking it seriously”, which actually makes me feel pretty damned good about the school.)

So, still feeling like someone had kicked me in the guts, I posted.

And I called OmegaDad, who promptly wanted to boil someone (The Perpetrator) in oil.

And we both agreed that I should do a little something with the dotter when she got home.

And we both worried that she wouldn’t say anything about it, and how the hell do you open up a conversation like that, and what do you say?

So I waited at the bus stop, wondering if she’d be a limp, noodly crying child, or would need a hug, or just ignore things.  The bus arrived, she got off, she barreled into me with a hug, we walked off down our street holding hands.  I’m racking my brain for a good way to start the conversation, and she says:

“Mr. Biggle is going to call you.”

Well!  Whaddaya know!  I didn’t have to start things off at all!  And she wasn’t a puddle of tears, just matter-of-fact.  So I allowed as how he had already called, and did she want to talk about things.

“No.”  She darted off to grab a brilliant red leaf from a shrub, then said, “Oh!  I need to give you a note about the bad thing I did in music today.”  “Bad Thing”?  What’s this?!  I haven’t heard about this! I think to myself.  She stops dead in the middle of the street, pulls her backpack off, requests that I hold it, and starts rummaging around in it.

Oy!  One thing after another!

She hands me a “Thinking Page” which shows a drawing of a little girl bouncing about, a written “I wuz takking”, and a drawing of what she was supposed to be doing (sitting still and listening).

I’m supposed to sign this thing and return it.  In the meantime…

Of course, the plumber appears right then, so while she was rummaging about the garbage disposal, the dotter did homework, and finally the plumber leaves (no fixed disposal, but a new one coming tomorrow a.m.) and I say, “Let’s go get ice cream.”

So we went to C0ld St0ne Creamery, had ice cream, and she told me the story pretty straightforwardly.

Seems that she and Jay were working with their pattern blocks (?  don’t ask me.) and they started arguing about something.  And arguing.  And finally Jay said–fed up–”I’m going to tell everyone that Chinese girls are mean!  I don’t like little Chinese girls!”

So:  The Perpetrator is a six-year-old boy who has been in class with OmegaDotter for a year, who said this in the heat of an argument.

My stomach feels a lot better.  It wasn’t out of the blue, it wasn’t something learned at home, it was something in the heat of the moment.  Still not nice, but hellalot better than I thought.  However, we have re-iterated to the dotter that (a) she should be proud to be Chinese and American; (b) if anyone says something like that to her, here are some things she can say; (c) it was a mean thing to say; and (d) if anyone says anything like that to her again, she should tell us.

(My contribution was she should say, out loud, “I’m proud to be Chinese.  It’s better to be born Chinese than to be born mean.”  OmegaDad’s contribution was she should say, out loud, “I’m sorry you feel that way.  You’ll miss out on getting to know lots of cool and interesting people–like me–if you feel like that.”  For what it’s worth.)

Someone told OmegaDotter this today at school.  I don’t think I can talk about this right now.  Give me time to calm down.

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.

When the dotter was two, three, four years old, I would tell her stories at bedtime.  That’s when bedtime was Mommy-only, a long, drawn-out affair that left me (brutal honesty here) seething, because I wanted my time and she wanted me and she was desperately afraid of being alone.

There were just a few stories, the same ones again and again, just like a favorite book or movie or song.  I got very tired of the same stories, but if I varied them–oh, heavens, that never would do!  Somehow or other, though, our bedtime ritual evolved and changed, slowly but surely, and it’s been quite a while since I’ve told those stories. 

For some reason the other night when I was lying in bed trying to get to sleep, I flashed on the beginning of one of our stories.  Perhaps it was because our girl is going into first grade (tomorrow!), and is so excited and nervous about it, which led me to reminiscing, which led me to…

Once upon a time, in a magical kingdom in the forests by the mountains, there was a princess.  She had long, straight, silky brown hair with red highlights that sparkled in the sun, a cute little nose, and a cute little mouth.  She was very pretty. 

But all princesses are pretty, so that’s not what was special about her.  What was special about her was that she was smart and kind and gentle and cared about other people.  Her name was Princess OmegaDotter Middlename Chinesename Lastname, and she lived in a castle with her father, King OmegaDad, and her mother, Queen OmegaMom. 

Now the king and queen were usually busy making sure the kingdom ran right; they’d make sure the trains ran on time, that the garbage was picked up, and that there were flowers in the park gardens.  So when there was a problem, the people in the town would come to Princess OmegaDotter and ask her for help…

Her favorite of the Princess OmegaDotter stories was the one with the rude pink (or purple or blue–she got to choose the color each night) dragon that was eating the cows and sheep in the meadow behind the town.  The lonely giant trampling the town, and the big whale terrorizing the town fishermen sort of got lost along the way; the dragon won out.

I realized as I flashed on that story that I could visualize the meadow…and the town…and the dragon picking up the cows, chewing, and spitting out the bones with a “Ptui!” sound…and the road to the cliff where Princess OmegaDotter would coordinate an effort by townsfolk to push the dragon over. 

(Sometimes the dragon was conquered by tangling it up with Silly String, then loaded onto a cart and hauled off to the cliff; other times, the dragon was led on a chase through the forest, ending up at the cliff.)

These stories had a series of points that I wanted to ingrain in her:  Be Nice.  Be Polite.  Use Your Brains.  Help Other People.  Don’t Be Scared.

Another story was the Monkey Man and the Baby Elephant.  This was actually her favorite, and she still asks for it now and then, at very odd moments, such as when we’re driving to the gymnasium and I can only get a paragraph or two out before I park the car and we get out.  The main point about this one was:  Don’t Be Afraid, Mommy Will Always Find You.  You see, Baby Elephant was out eating breakfast with her mother, and there was this beautiful butterfly, and Baby Elephant chased the butterfly here and there, until suddenly Baby Elephant realized that mommy had disappeared.  She wandered lost and alone until she found Monkey Man and other friends, who helped her find her mother again.

He lived in a teeny tiny house at the very tippy top of the tallest tree in the rainbow forest, and that house was just the right size for a Monkey Man.  It had a little kitchen, with a little sink and a little stove and a little refrigerator, and all the refrigerator had in it was lumpy-dumpy.  It had a little bed which was just the right size for a Monkey Man.  It had a little table, and little chairs, and a little window, and a little door which Monkey Man would lock every night. 

Lumpy-dumpy was something that the dotter and her best friend would chant to each other, and I was required to include it, as well as the door that was locked at night.

I could probably continue both of these stories from memory right now, all the way through, all the verbal flourishes and special set points included.  And the “Once upon a time in Guilin, China, there was a woman who had a beautiful baby girl…” story, as well.

It’s been a long time.  The dotter sleeps in her own bedroom now, and these days asks us to turn off the light.  Today, when OmegaDad hauled her off to the grocery store, she insisted that they buy a card for her new teacher, and when they got home, she corralled me and got my help in writing a “Hi!” to Mrs. Nices.  Tomorrow, I deliver her to school, along with the school supplies and the special card, and she starts first grade.

So, let’s see:

Mamasan and Anne suggested Gloria Vanderbilt.  Mamasan also suggested low- or mid-rise jeans, which Wendy, Anne,  and Mrs. Figby seconded.  There were a trio of mentions of “Not Your Daughter’s Blue Jeans” from Nordstrom’s (Noreen, Carol Anne, and Anne), and a couple of mentions of the “curvy” jeans at the Gap (LisaC and an email).

So I decided to try one of the NYDJ’s from Nordstrom’s, one of the curvy’s from the Gap, and one of Lands End’s custom jeans.  Much to my horror, my measurements plopped me into a size 14, since you’re supposed to be ordering by the hip size mostly.  Aaaaccccckkkkk!  I halfway expect them to arrive and fit perfectly through the hips and–as usual–gape like crazy at the waist.  Or maybe just not fit at all–either being too tight or being too loose.  We shall see.

Why am I doing all this?  Well, to be honest, I just hate trying on clothes.  I can handle about an hour, and then I go batshit crazy, start foaming at the mouth, chewing the walls in the dressing room, feeling like ants are crawling all over my skin, and turning into Uber Bitch.  What’s worse is when I do that and there’s no payoff:  Nothing fits, I don’t like any of the jeans I’ve tried on, or there’s a great pair of jeans that just happens to be half an inch too tight, and none of that model in my size.

It’s just an exercise in frustration and aggravation to me.  So I am seeking out the Holy Grail on the intertubes.

(Waving “Hi!” to Wendy and Anne, who delurked.)

As for readership, as one of my long-time readers noted in an email, my RSS feed shows the whole post, and I’d get more hits if I switched to a partial feed.  Now is when we edge close to an ethical question:  Do I provide convenience for my readers (whole-post feed) or do I provide a much-needed ego-boo (partial-post feed prompting click-throughs)?  And the fact that my ego-boo would also provide views on my BlogHer ads is additional ethical fodder.  I happen to know of some people who claim that as soon as a blogger they read switches to partial posting, they immediately drop their subscription as a matter of principle.

The whole readership question is pure narcissism anyway.  It’s a revealing chink in my oh-so-bluff self-confident armor that the drop has made me stick out my lower lip and whimper, “Why is everyone going away?!  Don’t they like me any more?!”  At these times, I have to sit myself down and talk sternly:

“Self.  Quit being a whiner.  You know damned well why your hits have dropped, and it’s called ‘not updating your blogging software and pissing off Google’.”

::sniff::  “But I’m not suuuure!  Maybe it’s not that!  Maybe it’s because I’m getting boring in my old age!  Maybe what I think is good writing, or fun stuff, just plain isn’t, and it’s all been ‘pity’ reading, and they’re just clicking through because they’re sorry for me, and I know they’re all talking behind my back and laughing at me!“ 

Segue into my Self curling up in a quivering heap in the corner of the bedroom and having serious flashbacks to the anguishing angst that is “being a nerd in high school”.  I begin speaking even more sternly:

“Girl, get a grip!  You know that Google blacklisted oodles of blogs who hadn’t upgraded, because Teh Hackers were siphoning off Google search results and gaming the system with invisible SEO terms.  Your Google hits are beginning to pick up again, slowly but surely.”

Self just rocks and moans and nervously curls hair around a finger.  This is difficult, because I have short hair, but Self does it somehow.  This is also a flashback to high school, when I had hair halfway down my back, but the hair beside my face was always filled with split ends and half of it was broken off around chin length because of the constant hair twisting.

BUT!  There is always a “but”:  I’ve read about three or four other bloggers whimpering about readership lately, and they seem like hawt, trendy, interesting gals to me, so maybe it’s all a function of summertime.

At which, Self pops open a suspicious eye, peers at me, and decides that possibly–just possibly–I might be right and Self can come out of the semi-catatonic state and focus on more important things, like the fact that Crayola 24-pack crayons were a smokin’ 49 cents each at the local store, along with other good deals, so the back-to-school shopping was not as frenzy-making as it could have been…

I have a whole slew of news aggregators and what-not that I visit on a regular basis:  Technorati’s Popular News list, which collects news stories that bloggers have linked to; Nielsen’s BlogPulse top news stories listing; ScienceBlogs for what’s new in science; Will Femia’s Clicked column in MSNBC for off-beat items that have hit the national zeitgeist.

In a very strained segue, the title of my post has nothing to do with Will’s column.  Har.  Will’s column is named "Clicked" because…well, it’s what he clicked on today.

"Clicked" has many different meanings.

One of the ones I like the most is related to learning.  There’s a stage in learning something new where suddenly what was previously strained and a conscious process becomes subconscious and easy and flowing.  I personally think of this as moving from the front of the brain (consciously thinking of the steps to take) to the back of the brain (knowing the steps to take so well that it is ingrained).  It’s like when the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle have fit together to the point where the overall picture is suddenly visible; it’s no longer a series of discrete color blobs.

The "clicked" analogy is related to keys and locks.  You put in a key, or (if your path is a less legal one) a lockpick, turn it, hear the "click" of the lock tumblers as they fall into place, and suddenly the key can turn and the door is unlocked.  What was previously a barrier is now wide open.

The dotter knew her letters ages ago and was able to write her name at age 4.  In preschool they began devoting some time each day to a letter of the week.  In kindergarten, phonics was the name of the game…each week, a new letter sound was added, and the kids were introduced to the concept of the phonemes behind the letters and how to sound them out.  Starting in January, the teacher would send a small book home each Monday as homework, asking them to be returned on Friday.  Oh, it was agony; the dotter would sloooowly sound the words out…she’d fidget and wiggle and read a sentence or two…then she’d want to stop and hop around, or dance, or jump up and down…then she’d skew the book this way and that way and slooowly sound out a few more words…

Of course, they were dreadfully boring "books" to me, filled with sentences like "Nat has a pal.  His pal is sad.  Nat is sad for his pal.  They hop on the rug.  The rug is tan.  They hop off the rug.  His pal is glad.  Nat is glad."  The end.

Oy.

But we have persevered.  I have had the dotter (slooowly) read some of her small science-y books, which she loves; things like "The Ladybug Life Cycle", or "Hurricanes!" or "Cool Penguins", or "Awesome Walruses!"  And for months, it has been a struggle, with the same fidget/wiggle/read/hop/jump/read/skew book/wiggle/read cycle.

We have a routine for bedtimes where we alternate one night of daddy playing with the girl with one night of mommy reading a story.  Tonight, as we were heading up to bed, she reminded me, "It’s story night tonight, Mommy!"  And I said to her, "Okay.  But I’m going to start making you read to me sometimes, too!"  She caroled out, "All right!" as she took the stairway two steps at a time.

I read "Froggy’s New Sister" to her, and then she held out her hand.  I handed the book over to her.  She began to read.

She read quickly and easily.  She stopped only a few times, at works like "know" or "taught" or "wrestled" or "Pollywogalina".  She kept reading.  She didn’t wiggle and fidget.  She didn’t get frustrated and thump the book down, saying, "I’m tired!"  She didn’t have to slowly sound out words all the time, just some of the time.  She kept going.  And going.  And we both started getting really excited, because it was easy for her to read, and she was on page 17.  And then she was on page 21.  And then she was done with the book.

It’s finally "clicked".

Oh, I know there will be setbacks.  There will be times when it’s a pain in the butt to get her to read anything.  But this is a Big Deal to me, and to her, and to OmegaDad…because it’s that "ease" in reading, that "no longer in the front of the head, but in the back of the brain" mental activity that makes reading something fun and useful and exciting.  And reading…well, it’s the basis of just about everything in education from this point forward.  And there’s a helluva world of entertainment waiting for her now, a universe of new worlds imagined by other people that she can dip into now by opening up the pages of a book.

And it’s damned exciting for me.

OmegaDotter’s last day of school was yesterday.

This is what she looked like on the first day, departing from the porch of The Shoebox:

And this is what she looked like yesterday afternoon, standing on the porch of our house:

How on earth did one whole school year pass so quickly?!

Yes, life is a circus around here.

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

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

He’s home, but still very unhappy.

Onto the real circus, the kindergarden circus.

To get you in the mood, clowns abound:

The kiddies do their songs, en masse:

Dancing bears:

Prancing horsies:

The mighty elephants:

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

Send in the clowns:

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

The dotter afterwards:

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

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

The newsies are agog at the notion that Miley Cyrus has (gasp!) revealed herself (gasp!) in a truly artsy pic by Annie Leibowitz, and by (gasp!) a picture of her lounging against her boyfriend that (gasp!) shows her midriff (o the shock, o the horror!).  Stories are written saying that she is setting foot on the primrose path to ruin that has been taken by other teen stars lately–specifically Britney and her ilk.

Our culture is totally schizophrenic.  On the one hand, we’re practically drowning in pictures and videos of scantily clad females doing all sorts of things that one might expect scantily clad–or unclad–females to be doing.  Licentiousness abounds.  On the other, a 15-year-old has a few pics taken and suddenly Moms Of Pop Culture Unite to prostrate themselves upon their chaises longues, hands to their foreheads, having the vapors that the Queen of Pre-Teen Clean is allowing herself to be defiled.  The hordes of teeny tweeny Hannah Montana fans are suddenly going to transform into an army of mini-Lolitas, and it’s All Miley’s Fault.  Prudery rears its ugly head.

OmegaMom is rolling her eyes here, big time.

OmegaMom is also rolling her eyes at an article about "When Young Teachers Go Wild On The Web".

Kozmik All help us:  22-year-old teachers have MySpace pages.  And they…and they…omigawd, how can my trembling fingers write this??  They have pictures on those pages!  Pictures of (gasp!) themselves holding (gasp!) bottles of tequila!  Or, even worse, paintings they have done showing women’s lingerie peeping out from under upflung skirts.  Or (shudder!) paintings of frontal nudes!

(One does wonder if those paintings were anything like these…)

And they say things!  Like "rocking out with some deaf kids.  It.  Is.  Awesome." 

Or talking about bl0w j0bs.

Or showing posters about cartoon sperm.

What is wrong with these teachers?!  Have they no decorum?!  No reserve?!  Aren’t they aware they are molding young children’s minds?!  How dare they have lives of their own!  How dare they have thoughts of their own!

Now, granted, each and every one of the things mentioned above could be taken too far.  Let’s not show pictures of orgies featuring oneself in the buff.  But in and of themselves, my opinion about the examples in the article is…well…um…hell, these are 20-something teachers.

I was party-hearty girl until I reached my early 30s.  Well, not as "hearty" as some, but I went out, I drank, I partied, I danced, I stayed up all weekend long, I had hangovers, I talked sex with all my buds, I toked joints, I had sex, I listened to rock-n-roll.  And if the web and blogs had been around then, I’d probably have blogged about all of the above.

It might have been drearily boring.  I have to admit that my overwhelming response to most blogs or MySpace pages put out by folks in their late teens and early 20s is that they are an appallingly vacuous, inane collection of stream of consciousness gossip, in conjunction with angsty poetry.  This is why, when I use the "next blog" button on Blogger, I go through about fifty blogs before I find something I would consider even vaguely interesting.

I can’t imagine Mrs. Shoetree, the dotter’s kindergarten teacher, having a webpage with a poster about cartoon sperm, or paintings of frontal nudes, or talking about "rocking out" with anyone; she is, after all, older than me, and more staid.  But if she did I wouldn’t care, because she’s a damn fine kindy teacher who my dotter adores.  Which is, after all this bloviating, my main point:  Folks, teachers have Real Lives.  Yes!  I know it’s a surprise, but, hey, there it is, and it’s my pleasure to pass this piece of arcane knowledge on to you.  Teachers are Real, Live Human Beings who, amazingly enough, have been known to go to parties, or fall in love, or be indiscreet.

In a refreshing departure from administrative powerhunger, some administrator actually said that webpages should be handled case by case.  (What, no standardized testing?!)  On the other hand, another administrator type had this to say:  "We all understand the importance of living a public life above reproach…"

Dear lord.  We are doomed; the only people who will go into teaching or politics twenty years from now are people who are upright, humorless prigs…