OmegaMom

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

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

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

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

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

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

OmegaMom opens the door and peers into the bloghouse.  She’s carrying a feather duster, which she uses to quickly dust off the blogroll.  She tidies up the BlogHer ads, re-arranges a few Twitters, sits down on the sofa, and sneezes at the poof of dust that she stirred up.  She looks around, frowns, taps her teeth with a fingernail, and says, “Hm.  What we need are some flowers!”

“I think I’ll put some lilacs here.  It’ll make things smell so lovely!”:

“This spot here needs a close-up of some of our wild rose.”:

“Tsst, tsst, tsst…hm…what next?  Ah!  Let’s put some trollius over there.  That’ll make that spot bright and cheery!”:

“Now, to keep the wildcats away, let’s bring in the Leopard’s Bane.”:

“And I think I’ll finish the decorating by putting some sprigs of this mysterious blossoming tree right here.”:

Well!  It’s been a while, hasn’t it?!  Ahem.  I was brought back to my blog-ly duties by a plaintive email from my Unka Bill, who was wondering why every time he visited my blog and hit refresh, it was still showing May 27.  Um.  Well.  Yeah.  See, I’ve been busy enjoying the flowers and the sunlight and the rain.  And yard work.  And being chief cook and bottle washer for OmegaDad whilst he rebuilds the formerly-stable-soon-to-be-greenhouse.

Then there was the pizza party, when OmegaDotter’s friend A. came over to spend the night and we made homemade pizza.  He was a hoot (as he always is), and we had a grand time, though he and the dotter stayed up incredibly late.

Then I found a new author and series.  Um.  Seven books in about ten days?  That sounds about right.  I do love me some hot post-apocalyptic science fiction!

Then I got sick.  Not badly, but enough to put me in bed for a day and a half, sleeping it off.

And then I was turned onto Broken Picture Telephone, a game which is like the classic game of Telephone, except with notes and pictures instead.  I have been busily scribbling and writing notes for two days now.

Anyway:  HI!  I’m back!  Didja miss me?!

The blog has suffered intensely because we’ve had spectacular, wonderful, gorgeous weather.  Yesterday our local Mesonet station hit 82F; today it hit 78F; on Friday, it was in the low 70s.  These have been record-breaking temperatures.  The sun has been shining, the birds have been singing, and I have been raking.

And raking, and raking, and raking.

I am, as a result, achingly sore in my shoulder, arm, and hip muscles.  I also have a fantastic sunburn.  Wah, wah, wah.  Pity me:  We’ve had weather to die for, and I’ve been outside for three days straight, playing in the yard, and discovering that, yes, Virginia, Alaska sunlight can give you sunburns.

A week ago, the snow was all the way down the mountainsides; now, it’s melted up two-thirds of the way.  A week ago, the trees were brown and bare; now, leaves are exploding everywhere you look and our neighbors’ houses are fading away behind the greenery (as is our kitty-corner, catty-wompus sliver of a view of the smaller mountains to the north of the valley).

This time of year is called “break-up”, because the ice encasing the rivers finally breaks into chunks and is swept downhill, down to lakes and the ocean.  There are bets and lotteries based on when various rivers will break clear.  There is also the problem of ice dams–where the chunks of ice manage to get snagged on something, then snag more chunks of ice, which capture still more, until you have a jumble of ice damming up the river.  Wayfarer Scientista has a lovely description of break-up in her area; Bill Hess was up in Wainwright, helping some native Alaskan whalers prepare an ice ramp for their whaling ship; AKMuckraker, over at Mudflats, took a walk along a creek today, along with some great pics; and Hig, at Ground Truth Trekking, has been using the (lovely, wonderful, long-awaited!) sunlight to play around with Fresnel lenses.

Our lilac bushes are putting out leaf buds and what looks, to me, like the beginnings of lilac blossoms (?):

Some fresh new trees leaves catching the sunlight:

And our pasque flower survived the winter, too, and is about to bloom:

So, essentially, everyone in Alaska is making up for six months of winter weather by soaking up as much sunlight as possible.  It’s amazing just how much being able to be outside and just bask can change one’s disposition–I am practically manic with delight at the joy of springtime.  Anyway, something has to give when one is obsessively enjoying the weather and the yard and the leaves and flowers and and and…and in my case, what gave is the blog.

Git yer minds outta the gutter, dudes!

I’m not talking about sex here, dammit!  I’m talking about…

Spring!

Frost heave!

A yard that due to 3 days of more-than-50-degree weather (yes!) has been freed from a layer of snow, only to reveal…

Hummocks.

Lumps.

Hollows.

Mud.

Seriously–I think we didn’t notice last year, because we weren’t out in the yard this early.  This year, we have chickens in the coop in the backyard, so we need to be trudging across at least twice per day.  And so, this year, we have noticed that the yard on either side of the septic tank is at least a foot-and-a-half higher than the area right over the septic tank.  OmegaDad is in dire fear that this means we have a Problem with the septic tank; I am convinced that after a week or so more of 50-degree-plus weather it will subside.

When you step on certain spots on the lawn–spots that look nice and dry and solid, unlike the spots that are pools of mud–they crunch beneath you, plunging your foot four inches downward in a single instant.  WHAM!  So you’ve got these unnatural spots where you innocently stepped…and you’ve got the natural spots where the ground just sank because the ice has already melted from that one six-inch-square area, unlike the surrounds.

It is very interesting.  It has the Omega Grownups thinking seriously of purchasing a roller drum for the tractor, so that we can smooth things out once the ground has thawed more evenly.

Today we had monsoon style clouds up over the mountains, and, once again, I cursed the fate that had me out and about without my camera.  (”The fate”, aka foolish forgetful OmegaMom.)  OmegaDad and I were driving to Home Debit, enjoying quality time together because the dotter is off having a Hannah Montana-filled overnight with best bud K.  As we swept up into the parking lot, one of the clouds over one of the mountains simply…dropped.  People who live in the southwest are familiar with this activity in the summer time thunderstorms; the precipitation beneath this one, however, was bright white rather than dark grey.  It was a thundersnow dropping onto the side of the mountain, highlit by the sun, and it would have been a stunning, awesome picture.  But I didn’t have my camera with me.

Damn.

Anyway, expect to hear more about SPRING! from me as the days go on.  I am practically dancing with excitement!