OmegaMom

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

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

“It’s a screech owl!” quoth A.

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

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

“She does too!” was the response.

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

“Yes,” answered the dotter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Did it live in trees?  No.

Did it have fur?  No.

Did it have hair?  Yes.

Was it bigger than A.?  Yes.

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

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

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

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

Yes.

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

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

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

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

We took off, OmegaDotter chattering all the way.

He took out a notebook and began sketching.

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

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

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

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

“Maybe you should ask him?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

We have returned.  We had a lovely time visiting with GrannyJ and OmegaBro and family.  We swam, we walked, we visited, I worked (multiple days, bah, but it was mostly my own stupid fault), we hung out, we got lots and lots of sun, and OmegaDotter now is no longer scared of bugs but is busy collecting them (courtesy of OmegaBro and Niece and Nephew).  I got lots of dark nights (yay!) and some stars (yay!) and lots of clear electric blue skies, ponderosa pines, and monsoon storms.

But I will discuss those things in more detail later.  Maybe.

The most important thing, though, was that I managed to locate and contact One And Only True Love’s family in secret and managed to get the dotter up to Small Mountain University Town for a visit with him without her knowing what was going on.

I lied my head off to do this.  I told her I had looked them up in the phone book and couldn’t find them.  I told her the surprise I was working on didn’t work out.  When I said we were going up to SMUT, with a stop at Slide Rock State Park, and she asked if we could please, please, puh-leeze find a way to meet up with OAOTL, I shook my head with a sad smile and reminded her that I couldn’t get their information and didn’t remember where they lived.

Hah-hah!

So we did Slide Rock, then motored on up the hill to SMUT, and she fell asleep–worn out from playing, and I had to drive out one of my favorite roads hoping I could time her rise from her nap to coincide with us getting back into the right neighborhood at the right time.

Which I did.  (Picture OmegaMom with a smirky, triumphant grin right now.)

At which point–she was awake and excited to be back in SMUT–I said, “Hmmm.  Now I think I can remember where he lived–wasn’t their house down this way?” and turned off the road onto another, and then another, and she started recognizing things and got excited.  I pulled the car to a stop across the street from their house–which had been painted so I couldn’t recognize it when I went scouting–and she said, with great excitement, “That’s it!  That’s his house!” 

I said, doubtfully, “Hmm.  I’m not sure, love, it doesn’t look the same to me.  But maybe we could knock on the door and see if they know where he lives now.”  We went across the street, up the deck stairs, to the door, and before I could even ring the doorbell OmegaDotter was trying to open the screen door, and OAOTL’s mom was there, and OAOTL was barging out saying, “OMEGADOTTER!“

At which point, OmegaDotter became quite suddenly still and stiff and shy, which she has been doing lately.

Um.

Now this I had not expected.  I had expected her to swarm all over him like a crazed monkey.  I had expected her to stand with her hands clasped at her waist with a particularly goofy grin that she has when she’s over-the-moon happy.  I did not expect awkward silence.

At this point, I was terrified that everything was Going To Go Wrong.  But she pulled my head down and whispered into my ear to ask if this was my surprise, and said, quietly shocked, “You lied!  Oh, you bad mommy!”

So she and OAOTL sat, awkwardly, on different spots on the sofa while OAOTL’s mom and I made small talk.

OAOTL produced the most lovely, sweet drawing with “I LOVE YOU OMEGADOTTER!” written on it, and huge hearts, and two pictures of two kids holding hands, one in a boat.  OMG.  It was simply not the sort of thing you’d expect from a seven-year-old boy.  (OAOTL’s mom tells me that all of his “girlfriends” have looked just like her, and his latest had said something like “OmegaDotter, OmegaDotter, OmegaDotter!  I am so tired of you talking about OmegaDotter!” shortly before she stopped being his friend…)

The kids, however, were still not smiling or touching or anything at this point.  It was…just plain awkward.

Luckily, we had made arrangements to take them off swimming at the swanky new aquatic center.  By the time we got there, the awkwardness had evaporated: the dotter and OAOTL were chattering their heads off, and once we were in the pool area, she and OAOTL sprinted off to the waiting line to go down the immense water slide.  We hung out there for an hour, and then headed off for pizza at the cheap Chuck E. Cheez clone, and then back to OAOTL’s house for trampoline jumping and playing, and then it was time to go…

Both kids swarmed into OAOTL’s bedroom, scampered up onto his bunk bed, and started bouncing onto and off of each other and shouting “NO!” and “Can’t I spend the night?!” and “When can she come back?!”

OmegaDotter later told me I was the very best mom ever, and it was the greatest surprise ever.

Here are the kids towards the beginning of the visit, just beginning to warm up again:

And here they are when trying to avoid her going back to GrannyJ’s:

I now have address, phone number, and email address safely sent–via email–to all three of my email addresses, so there is no way we can lose them now.

Our (green)house is a very, very, very fine (green)house

So the greenhouse is complete, except for some trim work, as of today.  We happily lugged our two “baby” chickens into the greenhouse to provide a contained greeting spot for old hens and new chickens to get accustomed to each other, in preparation to migrating the new birds into the large coop.

I have to say, the greenhouse is awesome.  OmegaDad did a wonderful job.  It’s neat, tidy, sunny, light and warm inside, roomy, has lots of beams to hang plants from, and looks like it may provide a very nice spot to hang out on chilly days that have some sunshine.  Not that I’m thinking of lazing about there in the dead of winter, mind you.  But it’s really, really nice.

To refresh the memory, here’s what it looked like before:

And this is what it looks like now:

(Pay no attention to the detritus in the foreground of the second picture–there’s a pair of sawhorses with plywood making a work surface, which is covered with paint cans, tools, scrids and scrads of lumber and foam molding, and it provides a nice place to lean rakes, shovels, brooms, etc. while they’re in use.  The whole affair is due to be removed Very Soon Now.)

I am most satisfied.

The bunny…the bunny…oh, I love the bunny

The day after our baby duckling died (I am still sad about that), OmegaDotter went off to play with some neighborhood friends.  An hour later, one of the girls poked her head around the back of the house to ask if we, by any chance, had some carrots?  Why?  Well, see, there’s this bunny that we’re trying to catch…

So I provided some carrots, and figured they’d have a grand time unsuccessfully trying to attract one of the wild bunnies that hang out in the neighborhood (some of them are very interested in our veggie garden, but we have netting over it to deter moose, and it seems to deter the bunnies as well).

An hour later, three girls show up in our backyard lugging the world’s most enormous bunny.  OmegaDad and I take one look and know it’s someone’s pet bunny, but whose?  So we stash the bunny in our downstairs bathroom, animal refuge par excellence, I print up a bunny flier with a picture, and we send the girls out armed with fliers and tape to attach same to mailbox clusters around the neighborhood.

This is the bunny:

You can’t tell, but he’s HUGE.

A day later we get a call from Kelsey, who says she thinks it’s her bunny.  Since at that point I had no idea where the bunny was–A. and G. had taken it home, then A2 and her sister had taken it to their home–I asked her to call later when the dotter was home, so we could return the bunny.

A few hours later, she called and asked if we wanted the bunny.

So now we have a bunny.  His name is Copper.  He’s 7/8ths Belgian giant, 1/8 satin, three years old, and “frisky”, according to Kelsey’s dad.  “Frisky” means he’s not neutered, and thinks people’s legs are sexay female bunnies.

He, too, is moving into the greenhouse as soon as we get the (utterly gross yucky stinky peee-yew) bunny cage and shelter that we got from Kelsey’s family cleaned up.

Fame!

In my last post, I talked about Michael Jackson’s death and how I thought it was tragic.  Please understand, I am not trying to make him out to be any sort of hero.  To me, “tragic” does not necessarily correlate with “heroic”; I was thinking more on the lines of “tragic waste”.  I just think of a boy star who grew up surrounded by people who wanted a piece of him, and not having the maturity to realize that your friends are the people who will pull you up when you’re doing something stupid and say, “What on earth are you thinking, man?!”  There you are, young and rich and talented, and you’ve got people who call themselves “friends” who are not “friends”, but enablers, and they poison your mind against the ones who want you to stop and think for a few moments…to the point where all you have around you are the sleazebags, the sycophants, the wimps who *do* like you for yourself but aren’t strong enough to pull you back.  That is the tragedy to me, that someone with so much promise went off into La-La Land.

Oh, it’s not a new story; it’s so old it shows up in fables and folk tales and (no doubt) the Bible.  But it’s still a sad story, to me.

I’m leaving on a jet plane

The dotter and I board a plane very late this evening to head off to visit GrannyJ for a few weeks.  We leave poor OmegaDad behind to cope with introducing chickens to each other, figuring out how to make a bunny hutch out of the plywood and lumber we have left over, and being left alllll alooooone.  Right now, I’m in that state of semi-frantic obsessive list-checking.  Alas, some things on the list were destined to not get done.

I’ll try to post some entries, but am not sure how often.  The first week coincides with a visit from my bro and his family, so you’re more likely to see stuff after the end of the week.

• 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?!

First order of business, a PSA:  Don’t schedule a birthday party for your kid for the afternoon of the Super Bowl.  (Unless you’re also hosting a Super Bowl party and lots of friends and their families are scheduled to show up.)  We originally invited seven kids and an eighth sort of invited herself (but it was okay!).  The end result?  Three kids, one of whom was not feeling good.  Nonetheless, we all had a good time.

First, the cakey goodness from the hands of OmegaDad:

Isn’t that purty?!

Then, OmegaDad being a monster:

Then OmegaMom as monster, sliding down:

And OmegaMom being swarmed by kids.  Can three kids be called “a swarm”?  I was a horse who had fallen over.

I can say that it is mighty damned hard to be stuck in the doldrums when one is bouncing around with screaming, giggling kids.  Which is good.  It provided a much-needed boost in the emotion department, fer shur.

Aside from the low turnout, the main problem was arriving at Le Bounce Haus ten minutes before 1 p.m. and having the young lady at the counter blink blankly when we announced we were here for our scheduled (ahem!) party.  She said there were no parties scheduled for that day, and she was just about to close because no-one had shown up in hours for free-bounce time.

W.T.F. ?!?!

Double-plus UnGood.  I was about to go into panic mode and hyperventilate.  Luckily, I had handy in my purse a copy of the contract, which I flourished in her face, she called the owner, the owner made the executive decision to keep things open, and all went well.

Then there was the large woman with her large kids who decided to just help herself to some of our supplies.  OmegaDad was most put out by this. 

Since one of the things helping keep me in my funk is that the house is constantly looking like a hurricane or tornado or earthquake hit, I have taken the day off to apply some muscle power to things.  This should count as exercise, too; as some of my (lovely!  wonderful!  sweet!  kind!  helpful!  sympathetic!) commenters pointed out, exercise is a really good way to combat the Black Dawg.  As is just writing it all out, having people read, and comment, and say, “Oh, yeah, BTDT.”  Very funny, that:  just having people say they understand and are feeling the same way, some of the black is lifted and turned to light gray.  So thanks!

So in the midst of relishing a child-free evening and morning (YES!!! She spent the night away from home!), I totally forgot that there was a big Obama rally in Big City on Saturday, which I had been thinking of attending.  Reports are that 1200 people showed up, while 300 people showed up at a McCain/Palin rally.  Some pics are here, here, here, and here, with a grump from Mudflats about the comparative coverage in Big City’s newspaper.

Then, having reveled in sleeping inordinately late, I foolishly agreed to a double-sleepover:  I would pick up the girls, bring them home, and K. would spend the night here.

So there was referee-ing to be done, and careful measuring of soda pop into equal amounts, and much popcorn made, and lugging of kid tents up into bedrooms for the night, and then back down to the family room for the next morning, and watching while they managed to drain the Barbie Jeep battery to nothing, and then being rolled around in the kid tent as they attempted to hold me hostage so K. didn’t have to go home…

Then I had peace and quiet while OmegaDad took the dotter out and about.  Yay!  And, to put me into a cheerful mood, I watched the Asian and European stock markets plummet.

Tonight, we’re supposed to have a real snowfall, with 2 inches by tomorrow a.m. and another 4 inches by this time tomorrow afternoon.

(A quick note:  Are you guys seeing my RSS feed in Bloglines?  I know a number of my regular reads are showing up as the li’l ol’ red exclamation point, bah.  Anyway, I’m seeing a serious drop-off and trying to figure out if it’s a technical glitch.)

Sort of a this-n-that thing.

OmegaGranny is coming to visit, arriving in Big City at about midnight tomorrow night.  As a result, we have been cleaning.  This means I’ve been busy busy busy.  Lots of reading and thinking, but no late night posts forming in my brain fully written, sort of like Venus rising from the sea.

Let’s see:  Since the weather’s been so bad, it got written up big time in Big City’s newspaper, and the anti-gl0bal warming crew have seized upon that article, saying, “See?!  See?!  Why haven’t the gl0bal warming believers been waving this about?  Could it be they have Something To Hide?”  Or words to that effect.  To which I say, it may have been a cold summer, but it’s still in the top quarter of the past hundred years of weather records.  (Which makes me think:  Ack.  You mean we could be having a colder “summer”?)

(Note to Lisa:  There is no set time for us to leave Alaska.  OmegaDad loves his job, which is really a Good Thing, compared to how he felt about his job back in Small Mountain University Town.  So there’s no calendar I can cross days or months off, looking forward to a move to warmer climes.)

Anyway, in the midst of all the cleaning and laundry and what-not, we purchased a volleyball/badminton kit.  Can I just say that (a) my eye-hand coordination has been shot to hell, and (b) I haven’t been running back and forth like that for a while?  Aside from that, though, it was grand fun.

I do have a couple of what could be considered “controversial” topics noodling around in my head, based on incidents on other blogs, but am trying to figure out if I’m too wussy to tackle them, or just too tired from all this cleaning.  I also have a few pics, which I will toss onto another post.

“There was a farmer who was a weak man.  His wife was very rich.  They bought a farm and they named it ‘Harry Butt’.  A few years later, they had a son who they named Crack.  One day the farmer couldn’t find his son, and he called the police, and he said, ‘Hello?  911?  I’ve looked all over my Harry Butt and I can’t find my Crack!’”

At which point, the dotter busts up laughing like crazy.  For a few minutes, she can’t speak, she’s so giggly.  And I get giggly just listening to her giggle.

A joke.  A real life (old and hoary) (and somewhat discombobulated) joke.

Then there’s:

“I know a song that gets on everybody’s nerves,
Everybody’s nerves,
Everybody’s nerves.
I know a song that gets on everybody’s nerves,
And this is how it goes:

I know a song that gets on everybody’s nerves…”

Which goes on and on and the musical theme never resolves and it’s like fingernails on chalkboard, all of which amuses the dotter to no end.

Then there’s:

“Did you know that the man who is the president made us get into a war?  And there wasn’t really a reason?  And people died?”  (This led to a quick recap of 9-11, thousands of people dying, Afghanistan, Iraq ["A rock?  Why'd we take a rock to war?"], why people would do such a thing, and presidents that systematically gut constitutional checks and balances, all in terms a six-year-old would understand.)  “I don’t think he’s a very nice president.”

(I have to admit I was extremely surprised that she got this version of GWB, especially hereabouts.  I would have assumed that GWB would be portrayed as heroic.  It was interesting.)

Then there’s hopscotch, jumprope, four-square, a wild variety of clapping games that have variants I don’t know but that I’m learning as quickly as I can, dissecting owl pellets (”Did you know that owl pellets are owl vomit?!  Ewwwww!  But I found a whole jaw bone!”), gold rush stories, mosquito bites galore, learning to shoot a bow and arrow, and the latest crush, a boy named C., though Mr. Zane, one of the 18-year-old camp counselors, is almost as good as C.

It’s not often you hear those words.

The chickens are growing apace and have become quite familiarized to people.  I am calling myself "The Chicken Whisperer", though perhaps it should be "The Chicken Clucker" instead.  I go "buck buck buck" to them and cuddle them and they have become tame enough to sit on my shoulder:

…or, in this case, the dotter’s head:

As you can see, Buffy has gotten kind of big.  Comet, the bitchy bird on my shoulder, is not as big, but Winona and Angelina are as big as Buffy.  The silkie chicks (still nameless) are no longer little itty bitty balls of down and now have the cutest little dandelion fluffs poking out of their heads and tails at random intervals. 

Anyway, they are all still living in the makeshift baby coop in the garage.

They are getting peckish.

In other words, "pecking order" is becoming the word du jour.  We have had to segregate the silkies for fear that the bigger gals will get into their box and peck them to death.

The Grand Coop is being built.  I am hoping it will be complete by this weekend.  (OmegaDad, the poor deluded dear, thought he would be able to get it done all in one weekend.  When he passed this thought on to me, I kept my mouth shut; 14 years with the same guy makes you know when to speak up and when to keep quiet.  Even if he does sing Carpenters’ songs.)  We have a nice 8-foot square floor with linoleum in a faux wood pattern, and one of two walls halfway framed in.

The birds need their space.  We need our garage back.

In other news, I was treated to a late lunch or early dinner by my regular commenter Noreen, who is in town visiting relatives.  It was great fun–we yakked about adoption and foster care and social work and Alaska and how amazingly conservative this area is (I joked that I don’t dare say anything bad about GWB, or put any bumper stickers on my car…not that I’m the type for bumper stickers, but I’d be afraid to put certain ones on…I am chicken, hear me cluck).

Thanks to all my commenters who have left me with the tunes to various Carpenters’ songs stuck in my head.  All I can say is:  I’ll get you all, my pretties!  And your little dogs, too!

"Make new friends,
But keep the old,
One is silver
And the other gold…"

Anyone who’s been to Girl Scout camp knows that song.  I remember singing it (among others much less uplifting) while we hiked from our area of platform tents to the main mess hall for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  (I also remember that the much-sought-after reward for doing clean-up at mess hall was to get the "cows", the huge plastic bags that held milk for the milk dispensers, which made very nice inflatable pillows for the camp cots…)

Today I got a call from an old friend.

The sun is out, the day is warm, and I got a call from a good friend–what more can I ask?

Like many of my blogging buds, I am rather introverted.  It takes me a while to make friends, and I usually only have one or two "good" friends at a time.  Some were friends for long periods of time, some for shorter; I’ve lost touch with a bunch, which makes me sad.

I had lost touch with J–life being life, small kids occupying one’s mind and time–and hadn’t talked with her for about two years.

But last week, she called OmegaDad at work, having heard via the network that we moved to Alaska, and using her mad Internet research skillz to locate him.  He gave her our phone number and various email addresses, we coordinated times through email–me being out here in the Final Frontier, she being on the East Coast, and many hours of difference dividing the two.  And today, her being out and about on her own to go shopping and me being home after work hours coincided.

A good friend is the kind of friend who you can talk to for an hour on the phone after a lapse of two years and it’s like you haven’t been away from each other at all.  Sort of like my faux Ugg boots, or a good armchair–comfy and cozy and…well, friendly.

We have, of course, been making tentative social moves here, reaching out and getting to know people.  We’ve hung out with A’s mom and dad (A being adopted from the same area of China, one day older than OmegaDotter, and also in her gymnastics class), and it seems like there might be potential with S’s mom, too (another gymnastics bud).  It’s nice to start feeling less isolated.

But still.  Still, having an old friend call, and falling into the old, comfy conversational back-and-forth…ahhh.

(I can’t, for the life of me, remember the name of the camp, but it was in Virginia, we paddled canoes on the Potomac, learned to carve rudimentary artwork in redwood, hiked through forests, had sing-alongs around the campfire, and collected shark’s teeth.  All was good.)

Gazing back into those misty, halcyon days of college, I dimly seem to remember something called "study groups".  At the beginning of the semester (or quarter), you’d collect names and phone numbers of other folks in your class who were interested in studying together, then you’d set a time, and someone would be tagged as the person to glom onto the first good study room or carrel at the university library.  You’d meet, everyone would have their textbooks and class notes, someone would bring noshes, and you’d spend a few hours going over the notes and exchanging answers and ideas about the homework.

"Y’know, I tried number 48, but I kept getting hung up!  Did anyone figure that problem out?!"

In my Numeric Analysis class (one of my favorites, really!), our prof gave us take-home tests for the mid-term and final.  He fully expected us to work in groups.  They were some of the hardest–and most fun–exams I had in my college experience.  Our study group met for hours in the library, in the break room in the basement of the math building, out on the lawns.  We worked hard.  We worked our butts off.  We thought deeply.  My mid-term response was 20 pages long; my final response was 30 pages.

We also had classes where it was probably assumed by the professor that we were working alone on homework and studying.  But even in those cases, hammering out the answers to more difficult problems with other students helped all of us understand the basic concepts better.  And those who got answers easily explained to those who didn’t, and gained from that aspect as well.

These days, it seems, such study groups often convene on the intertubes.  Specifically, at places such as Facebook.

One professor at Ryerson University, who apparently had a requirement that students were to work on assignments alone, discovered that a student had set up a Facebook study group for his class.  That student is facing expulsion and 147 counts of academic misconduct, one for each member of the study group.  His B grade was changed to an F by his professor after the Facebook group was discovered.

So many different ways of looking at this.

The professor didn’t want students working out answers to problems together. 

If that is the sole issue here, why weren’t all the other members of the study group equally penalized?  Why didn’t every student who was a member of the online group have his or her grades reduced/revoked?

As I understand it, each student was assigned different questions; since they were all different, was requesting help cheating?  Is the requirement to work on homework assignments alone a good requirement or a bad one?  Do students learn better by sweating through the problems on their own, or by helping each other find ways to reach the solution?

Different students respond in different ways to different approaches.  Some students do not like to work in groups at all.  Some students like to work in groups for some classes, but not others.  Some students work in groups all the time.  Some students work in groups to get off easily–but how does that help them when it’s time to take a test?  Some students who work in groups learn that they do all the work and others take the credit.  Some students learn better through reading, some through working through problems on their own, some through discussing, some through teaching others.

Questions of pedagogical approach aside, there are those who think that in this case it’s an open-and-shut case of cheating.  Others say that no-one posted specific answers to any problems and that mostly it was an ongoing session of tips and tricks on how to approach the problems. 

One blogger said that someone knowing they were getting the wrong answer indicates that they were cheating, because otherwise how would they know the answer was wrong?  Well, hell, I could always tell when I was getting the answer wrong–because nothing would check out when I worked the problem backwards.  Or else it just "felt" wrong.

I don’t know.  I think requiring college/university students to work alone on homework assignments is not the best approach; I think that by that age the student knows whether s/he wants to collaborate or work alone.  I also feel that the students who are actually getting specific answers from others without doing any of the work are cheating mostly themselves.  They’re the ones who will end up doing poorly on quizzes and tests.  They’re the ones who won’t be able to do the basic work when they get into a more advanced course.  They’re the ones who will constantly be scrambling to keep up or cover up as they move into the workforce.

What say you?

For a very spirited discussion on this subject, from both sides, check out The So-Called Facebook Scandal at A Blog Around The Clock.

As promised.  The sea scene:

I am jazzed by my fishies.  The dotter, too, was jazzed, and made sure we brought the fishies home to hang in her bedroom.

The cake:

It was expensive.  And full of gooey goodness.  And had a bracelet.

My new home-based business plan:  rent OmegaDad out to birthday parties as entertainment.  He got the kids all giggly and riled up by chasing them as a Big Noisy Monster.  Here, The Chase:

Then, he appropriated the magic wand we were using for a pinata buster and used it to magically change each kiddo into an animal of some sort.  Then, he did the "Funny Alphabet", which is where he gathers the kids around and pretends to have major problems with the Alphabet Song–always good for a laugh with the kids, who keep telling him how the song goes, every time he messes up.  Anyway, I think we could make Big Bucks renting him out.

Making jellyfish:

I like the demon red-eye anonymizing effect, don’t you??

Presents:

That box, by the way, contained the most irritatingly tied-down of girly goodness that I have yet encountered.  This was what was inside:

The whole contraption was secured with fifty kazillion pieces of scotch tape.  There were multiple layers of transparent plastic holding things in place.  The ponies were tied down with twisty ties.  The bed was tied down with twisty ties.  The frog on the second floor was tied down with miniscule transparent elastic stuff.  The teeter-totter was tied down.  The dresser was secured with the transparent elastic stuff.  The mailbox (complete with mail!) was tied down.  The dishes on the table were tied down.  I was untying this ungodly mess for a full half-hour–the entire time the dotter was trying to play with various bits and pieces, until I morphed into Evil Grumpy Mom who bellowed "DOTTER!  TAKE THE PONIES OVER THERE AND PLAY WITH THEM THERE!"

Then there was the pinata, which we discovered, after purchasing, was not a string-pulled but a whack-’em type of pinata.  Alas, the venue did not allow pinata-whacking.  OmegaDad proceeded to appall–yes, appall!–OmegaMom by blatantly encouraging the chilluns to flout the rules.  In other words, there was whacking.  Lots of whacking.  Finally, a mighty blow by K. managed to crack the shell, and then there were kids all over the floor scrambling for candy:

A good time was had by all.  The family stumbled into bed quite early yesterday as a result of all this partying, and had a deep slumber.

We’re a "go" for the birthday party.

I heart Flickr and Creative Commons.

I have managed to morph a "mermaid" party into a "sea theme" party, using streamers and tropical fish and starfish pictures from Flickr (ones with Creative Commons licensing).  So the dotter gets her Ariels, and I get to feel a bit less like a lemming following the Disney siren song.

In the process, I managed to stay up until 3 a.m. last night, cutting out pretty fish, and didn’t wake up until (gasp!) 10 this morning.  (Thus, I managed to scotch a date I had for a phone call with my bro, currently visiting OmegaGranny, which I hope to make up to him after the party.  Damn, I feel guilty.  These time differences leave me all ferschimelt.)

We have goody bags with plastic dolphins or starfish, stickers, crayons, seashells, and coloring pages.

We have purple plates, googly eyes, fuzzy balls, and purple, blue, and seablue streamers to make jellyfish.

We have purple, blue, and pink Gatorade.  We have baby carrots, celery sticks, and dip.  We have apples.  We have an Ariel cake and an Ariel pinata (which we finally figured out how to fill with cheap candy).

And we have time to shower, relax a bit, and sashay off to the party venue.

Oh, and we have one RSVP that included "some other kids".  Um.  OmegaDad took that phone call, so I have no details.  Grrr.

Pictures later.

(Oh, yeah, and I’m feeling better.  But given the way this thing has come and gone in waves, I hold no great hopes for the future.)

One of the things I forgot to mention in the "How is Alaska?" post is the prevalence of young moms here.

Small Mountain University Town was, of course, a college town.  There were hordes of professorial types, with their professorial spouses, and the median age of the parental units in town were in their 30s or early 40s.  So, not only did I fit right in in terms of outlook (liberal) and interests (eclectic), but I also fit when it came to parenting.  Half the moms picking up kids at daycare were near my age, and I only got, "Oh, are you OmegaDotter’s grandma?" a time or two.  And the norm in terms of how many kids was…two?

Also, I got my info on good daycare/camps/schools/etc. from the moms I worked with–all of whom were in their 30s or early 40s as well.

Hereabouts…well, heck, it seems as if there’s something in the water.  Dudes, the landscape is littered with moms in their early to mid-20s with three kids in tow.  Or more.  So when I see older moms, I glom onto them, like a drowning man would clutch a life preserver.

And hereabouts, I get the "grandma" comment a lot more–because, well, I could be a grandma to most of the kids I see.

Ack!  That’s a fearsome thought to me.

Right now, we’re gathering RSVPs to the dotter’s birthday party, to be held next Sunday.  She has fully drunk the Kool-Aid by now:  the party is going to be mermaid-themed.  Am I a bad mom if I say that I really liked the horsie theme better?  But I am doing my momly duty, printed out mermaid-themed invites, am going to do the pink and purple and sea-blue stuff with (ack!) mermaids on it, and herd a horde of girls (and a boy or two) for a couple of hours at the local health club, which has a play area for rent.

Let me digress here:  Back at preschool, I knew what to do in terms of birthday party invites.  I just slipped them to Miss Emmy with a whispered, "Can you slip these into people’s cubbies?" and knew everything would be taken care of.  I didn’t know what to do this time; if I handed the invites to the dotter to parcel out, there would be Drama.  The dotter would make a production of it.  There would be Girls Not Invited pouting and sad.  There’s no way on God’s green earth I was going to invite 18 kids, plus the kids the dotter wanted from after-school-care.

So, eyeing the invites with a puzzled look, I stuffed them into the weekly envelope that shepherds homework and school announcements and notes and what-not from school on Fridays, and wrote a note to Miss Shoebox asking her to–essentially–slip them into the kids’ cubbies.

The dotter returned with a downcast face.  Miss Shoehorn hadn’t divvied out the invites, according to her.

The same the next day.

The same the next day.

I was panicking.  Had I Done Something Wrong?  Was it a faux pas to ask Miss Shoetree to do it?  Is it different in kindergarden??

But.  Slowly I am getting responses.  We now have three responses, so I know the party won’t be a bust (whew!).

What does this have to do with young moms, you ask?  That’s a good question!

I just got an RSVP from H’s mom.  H’s mom talks a lot.  H’s mom just moved here last summer, too, from Massachusetts.  H’s mom is 40.  H’s mom volunteered that omigawd-aren’t-the-moms-here-so-young?!  H’s mom had the delightful experience of meeting the parents of some of her new friends…in other words, H’s friends’ grandparents–who had just turned 50.

It was an instant bonding thing.

I’m trying to write a post–or multiple posts–about a variety of topics/issues that are on my mind this week, but every time I try to compose a paragraph, or start a mental outline of how to approach the post, my brain short-circuits.  Like a hamster on a wheel, or a car stuck on the ice, the ol’ brain just seems to keep spinning in circles.  So, rather than do anything substantive, I’ll just do some meandering.

First: my computer access has to be shared with my mom, as I have returned the work laptop to work.  ACK!  Then there’s the fact that we’ve been going hither and yon, visiting with folk and checking up on Great Grandma.  This means that my time on blogs and what-not has been severely curtailed.  Every time I pop into my Bloglines feed list (thereby having to log OmegaGranny out, which means she has to keep re-remembering her own log-in and password), there seem to be fifty kazillion new posts.  The end result is I’m tempted to hit the "mark all blogs read" button right now, and just glaze over.

We went off to the mall this a.m.; read OmegaGranny’s post on the subject.  I will merely say that the Hannah Montana wig was lusted after by the dotter.  The dotter has never seen Hannah Montana; her desire is fueled solely by her classmates’ and after-school cohorts’ discussion about how cool HM is.  That and the fact that HM has long straight blonde hair.

We met Singing Bird and the Bee for lunch out and playground playing and home socializing.  It was a lovely afternoon, and I am in love with the Bee.  The dotter is also in love with the Bee, so I expect to hear more about having a sister in the future.  I foolishly have told the dotter that I miss my little baby oh-so-much, and mentioned it once again today in the throes of Emme-Lu-lust; the end result is that the dotter decided that she should act like a baby, "Because you want a baby so much, Mommy!"  This is problematic:  I don’t want OmegaDotter to act like a baby–I want her to be herself.  And she’s just plain pestiferous when she uses baby-talk.  It is all, of course, in desire to make mommy happy, but ack!  This kid is so much fun right now, at this age, and I don’t want her to be a baby again, I want another little baby.

OmegaGranny has given me another new sun to grace the Alaska house.

Great Grandma was much better yesterday.  It made my spirits soar to have her crabbing about people whose children don’t mind, and sniffing at people who let their hair grow shaggy; it was like having her back to normal.  This evening, she wasn’t as peppy.  The dotter told OmegaGranny and me, in the car, "Great Grandma was okay tonight…not as good as last night, but much better than she was."  Fleeting glimpses of her future emotional maturity…

Yesterday, I took advantage of lovely sunny weather, and hauled the poor dotter all the way up Thumb Butte trail and back down again.  And she did it.  And there was hardly any complaining.  And when we got to the overlook at the top of the trail (not at the top of the butte–that requires rock climbing skills and a mom who won’t have her heart stop if the dotter’s hand slips), she looked out at the town and the never-ending view and sighed and said, "Oh, it’s so beautiful!"  Which made the coaxing required for the fourth fifth of the climb all worth while.

I’m trying to come up with a discussion of RAD (reactive attachment disorder), how it is different than any other horrible chronic illness, adoption disruptions, how biological parents are not all paragons of perfection who never relinquish their children (as if anything like an adoption disruption is something that never, ever happens with biological children), and how having a family member turn your life into such misery that simply turning down your street to go the last block or two home makes you feel like you might as well just cut your throat might be similar to how it feels to be dealing with a child with RAD, but, like I said, my brain isn’t working well and it may have to wait for days.  Maybe weeks.  We’ll see.

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