OmegaMom

"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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