OmegaMom

So we put up the tree this past weekend.  Since we rearranged the living room a few months ago, we had to make a new place for the tree—rather than in front of the window, as in past years, now it is in a corner by the stairs up from the entryway.  It’s very pretty.

This is the tree:

Here are OmegaDotter’s ballet slippers (the ornament):

A nutcracker:

A snowman:

OmegaDotter’s horsie ornament, given to her by GrannyJ a few years ago:

The pickle:

Another snowman:

And many more eclectic ornaments, gathered over the years.  A pineapple, a strawberry, mushrooms, red-and-white striped balls, tapestry spindles, an artichoke, an onion, a garlic, a collection of glass petit fours, stacked glass presents with a bow on top, cowbells, wooden apples, horns…

This is the new cat:

He looks the very picture of innocuous innocence.  Sweet, kind, unassuming, loving, overweight.  He is the cat I brought home from Mom’s house in February, when I returned after moving Mom into the extended care facility.  She didn’t want the responsibility at that point—she didn’t even want more than a couple of her immense collection of plants, because it seemed like too much to take care of them.  So the cat returned to Alaska with me.

He likes to lick people.  He has the teeny-tiniest purr, barely audible.  So he purrs, and licks, and drools, and then starts nipping, all very gently, but quite persistently.

We think he has never experienced a Christmas tree before.

O, the delight!  O, such glittering goodness!  O, such tinkly bells!  O, such rustling needles when you bat at the ornaments!  Truly, a Christmas tree is a heaven-sent gift for felines!

Right?

Worst of all, this innocent cat has been leading Wooly, survivor of many Christmases at our house, astray.  Newman bats at the ornaments, they sway and jingle and glitter, and Wooly has to bound over to see what’s going on, slither around the base of the tree, and bat at an ornament or two himself.

I have spent every evening since we put up the tree hunting down ornaments, or sweeping up broken ornaments.  So far, thank heavens, the only ornaments that have been broken are the boring ones, the plain glass balls of various ho-hum colors.

At least we haven’t had any cats climbing the tree.

Yet.

I leave you with a shot out my office window, a “this is Alaska” moment.  Today, while I was working, I heard a crunch-thump very close by, and caught a glimpse of a large shadow; I turned and there was the moose, and then there was the mooselet.  They sauntered stilt-legged across the backyard, nosed in the snow-covered raised beds for a bit, then cruised past the (long dormant) ornamentals and flowers by the greenhouse wall.  So of course I had to catch a picture of mama and baby:

We were rumored to get northern lights last night…alas, I did not see any.  Maybe tonight.

The moose have been tromping around our yard since twilight.  When OmegaDad went out to the garden to gather some thyme, he found that we had had a visitor who had very carefully removed all the fall flower garden detritus and stomped footprints into the moist soil.

(Yes, “moist”.  We have been frolicking in balmy weather; it has snowed, but the snow is wet and slushy, and the temperature has been regularly in the forties—FORTIES!!—here in mid-November.  The past month, temperatures here have been far above normal, as evidenced here:

The dark gray band is the “normal” range of temps; the red marks are what our temps have been for the past few weeks.  Let us not mention the dread words Gl0bal Warm1ng!  So, rather than slowly freezing solid, as should be happening now, our ground has become slurgy and saturated.)

Then OmegaDad heard thumps and bumps in the front of the house.  Peering out the living room windows, he saw Moose by the front porch.  So he went to investigate…

…and discovered that our flower boxes, normally perched upon the porch railings, had been knocked off, and that Moose had actually been upon the porch landing, and dragged a flower box down the stairs and over by my parked car.

That is one tenacious Moose!  No doubt, he found the remnants of our petunias to be particularly tasty.

I had been kicked off my computer by the dotter, who wanted to play ToonTown with her best bud, A.  For hours.  This does not please me, mainly because it consists of the dotter getting on the phone and talking with A. and playing ToonTown and hogging my computer.  The other computer, upstairs, is too slow.

Anyway, I was reading upstairs, when I heard an uproar.  Slowly it was decoded as “Mommy!  Mommy!  Come quick!  Come and see!”

So I ambled down the stairs to see OmegaDad at the office window and OmegaDotter standing on the office chair and the moose above, right outside the office window.

He was eating our yarrow.  Great big honkin’ mouthfuls.

And our black-eyed Susans.  And our Shasta daisies.  And…and…and.

So I dashed upstairs to get the (old) digicam and the dotter and I quick shot some pics while OmegaDad barrelled upstairs to grab a cherry bomb and a lighter.

I was so outraged at the moose-alicious munching going on that I opened the window to yell.  The moose moved off a few yards:

The OmegaDad got to the bottom of the stairs and started chasing the moose off.  It ambled, gathered some steam, and then stopped at the edge of the grassy area, turned around, and laid its ears back.  At which point OmegaDad decided that just shouting and chasing wasn’t going to do the job, that the moose was about to charge, so he lit the cherry bomb and tossed it.  The moose ran off.

The toll: 

• My forsythia!  Chowed down to a foot from the ground!  Argh!
• The aforementioned yarrow, black-eyed Susans, and Shasta daisies.
• All the new leaves on our lilac bushes–though none of the stems, thank heavens.
• Our sunflowers by the greenhouse.
• All our almost-ready-to-harvest brussels sprouts, also by the greenhouse.  Wah!

Harrumph.

For the past few years, OmegaDad has raved to me about “his” sandhill cranes showing up in the spring and fall, his special viewing place, ooh-ing and aahhh-ing about being able to go out during his (short) lunch hour, drive a few blocks, and eat his lunch while communing with nature, aka the cranes, and how pretty they were.

Today, he called me from work.  “I’ve got a very flat tire.”  Instantly, Super OmegaMom springs into action:  faster than a speeding bullet, she whizzes through the garage, grabs the battery-powered air pump, leaps into the car, and–

…waits for OmegaDotter, who had no school today, to collect all her worldly goods and chattels in preparation for an overnight with A., her best bud.

At which point, Super OmegaMom grabs the Halloween artwork done by OmegaDotter for donation to A.’s Halloween decorations, flips the back seats down, rolls out the bicycle, manhandles the bicycle up into the car, schleps the dotter and all her worldly goods and chattels off to A.’s house…

…and then goes to rescue OmegaDad.

As I delivered the air pump, I suggested we go visit the dawg at the hospital…

Oh!  Didn’t I mention this?!  One night home, and the dawg was once again throwing up everything, we couldn’t get any meds to stay down, we were worried yesterday morning, we called the vet, we took the dawg back to the vet’s, we got a call from the vet mid-day, we drove back to the vet’s office under a low, black cloud of gloom, anticipating that we were going to be told that he needed to be put down…Only to find out, once we were there, that the vets had made a mistake during the first surgery, and they wanted to do a third surgery to correct it.  The good news was that the dawg was not needing to be put down.  The further good news was that they were going to do the surgery for free.  The bad news was…well, three surgeries in a week is an awful lot, and the vet wasn’t sure that this would do the trick for our poor puppy.

But, anyway, the dawg is recuperating from his third surgery, and I suggested we go visit the dawg, which we did.  And then OmegaDad was hungry for lunch, so we grabbed a burger for him from DQ.  And while we were there, he said, “Let’s take a drive!”

“Turn right here.  Turn left here.  Drive straight here.  Turn here.  Slow down.  Slow down.  Just beyond those trees–can you see them?”

See them?!  Holy moly, there were some of the prettiest birds I’ve seen in a long time, and they were right by the road.  We could practically have reached out and touched them.  They had red crests on top of their heads, perched on long, graceful necks.  Their bodies were mottled brown and cream from one angle, an iridescent blue-ish from another angle.  They were just…beautiful.

And I didn’t have my camera.

After taking the husband back to work, I drove home (12 miles), grabbed the camera, and drove back (another 12 miles) just so I could get pictures of these beauties.

Of course, by the time I got there, they had moved much farther back into the field, away from the edge of the road.  This meant I had to zoom in with my point-and-shoot’s all-of-3x-optical-zoom.  Which meant that all I was getting was lousy pictures.  I got out of the car, moved into the greenery by the side of the road–

–and the birds very quietly and gracefully moved an equal distance further away from the road.  It wasn’t like they were scared, or really noticing at all; it was almost as if it were a force of nature, like gravity or magnetism, except repelling rather than attracting.  I move forward, they drift backward.

Bah.  The pic at the top of the post is the very best I could manage.  I ache to have better pictures of those birds.

Obviously, I need a new camera, one with more oompf.  None of this twiddly, pixellated digital zoom, thankyewverramuch.  I want some STUDLY OPTICAL ZOOM, dammit!  So this is my new quest:  cruising CraigsList for a nice used 10x digicam.  The dawg has eaten up a lot of our PFD check, but I think I can swing a 2nd-hand good digicam…Just so that next year I can get better pictures of these guys.

After dinner, I was heading out to the kitchen porch for a smoke whilst the dotter cleared the table and chatted with OmegaDad.  While I was lighting my ciggie, I heard a crunch-crash-crunch noise; I poked my head out to peer in the direction the noises were coming from.  Lo and behold, we had a Mama Moose and Baby Moose chowing down on the cow parsnips in our front yard.

Of course, I had to alert the dotter and OmegaDad, and we spent much time “ooh”ing and “ahh”ing, and OmegaDad managed to dash down to the office, grab the battery charger, run upstairs with it, reload the batteries in the camera, and snap off a few pictures.

The colors are off because it is cloudy and dim right now; the second shot, I believe OmegaDad managed to get some flash into the ambient environment.

So we were delighted and amused (baby doesn’t look too very old to me).

But then…

…then…

THEN OmegaDad decided to check the veggie garden:

The moose had knocked off our veggie garden covering on one of the veggie beds (you can see the pipes and [just barely] some of the netting behind the bed), and they had mown our chard and beet greens down like machines.  Sigh.

They were very luxurious, leafy plants only a few hours ago!  The beets themselves are still okay; the moose and baby didn’t eat those.  But boy howdy, they really liked the greens!  And the big lettuce that we were letting go in the next-over veggie bed.  They didn’t touch the celery and carrot greens, though–the devastation stopped where the chard stopped.

I guess it’s time to get out the firecrackers again…

We now have a wild duckling in the garage.  It’s name is Rhubarb, Ruby for short.

I arrived home late from the morning trip to Big City, having dumped the girls at China Camp, dealt with Miss Emily telling me about coping with OmegaDotter and others who were…shall we say, enthusiastic, with the kung-fu instructor, to the point of being annoying.  “Enthusiastic” means climbing all over him, swooning on him, teasing him, following him–you name it; Miss Emily did not have to tell me in any detail, because I immediately knew what it was like.  OmegaDotter still has a lousy sense of other people’s personal space, and when she likes her instructors, she hangs on them.  Literally.

Anyway.  OmegaDad had planned to take the day off to attack painting the interior of the greenhouse, so that we can put up the poly-plastic sheets that will let the sun shine in.  I fully expected to get home & find him off in the back yard, doing his thang.

Instead, when I drove up, there he was in front of the garage, with heaps and piles around him, and making strange faces at me through the window of the car, gesturing for me to get out ASAP.

I thought he had decided to remove the last of the detritus from behind one side of the villa complex.  I was vexed, because I thought the plan had been for him to wait to do this until Sunday.  I was all prepared to grump at him as I emerged from the vehicle.

At which point, he informed me he needed help, and did I notice that all the various boxes, pieces of wood, etc. were making a makeshift corral around the rhubarb plant?  (Um, no.  But now that he mentioned it…)

“Oh, by the way, there’s a baby duck in the rhubarb plant.”

…

I knew, immediately, what this meant.  This meant that we were now the proud owners of a duckling.

As soon as we could get it out of the rhubarb plant.

For those who think this is an easy matter, let me remind you of the effects of 20 hours of sunlight and 4 hours of twilight upon vegetation.  This is not your ordinary rhubarb plant; there is no such thing in the state of Alaska.  This is a monster plant, a jungle unto itself, with leaves the size of an HDTV, rearing up taller than the dotter and almost as tall as me.

ONE rhubarb plant.

Anyway, I stood guard outside the OK Corral while OmegaDad rummaged in the rhubarb jungle for the duckling.

The tale was that he had heard the dawg going nuts while he was in the shower.  He emerged to hear all the neighbor dogs going nuts out front.  He peered out the living room window to see what the ruckus was (usually a moose).  He saw Bad Dawg, from next door, pestering something on the ground while an adult duck fluttered and squawked and attacked it.  He went bounding out the front door, snapping out a loud and firm, “LEAVE IT!”  Bad Dawg retreated, and lo and behold, a duckling rocketed up our driveway and into the rhubarb forest by the corner of the house.  So he quickly began making the OK Corral out of whatever he could lay his hands on from the garage, and waited for me to come home.

So we could capture the duckling.  Which was supposed to be about so big (hold your hands two handwidths apart).  Which turned out, when OmegaDad captured it, to be practically newborn with its egg tooth still on, and about the size of the palm of my hand.

Newborn wild ducklings, let me tell you, are quite jumpy.  As in, at a day old, they can escape from Chicken Prison in the garage, and we find ourselves searching through the garage for small, dark hiding places.  Chicken Prison has now been turned from a minimum strength leisure spa into Mad Max maximum security as a result. 

Here’s a lousy picture–she won’t hold still for pictures at all.

OmegaDad was painting the trim on the villa/chicken coop/shed/greenhouse.  I was watching him up on the ladder whittling away at an old nail that was sticking out of the trim beneath the roof.  Something on one of the beams caught my eye, so I switched my attention…it was a dragonfly, happily sunning itself right at eye level.

I, of course, didn’t have my camera.

So, sending a quiet prayer up to the Kozmik All, I dashed across the yard, up the stairs to the kitchen, grabbed the camera, and came back.

The dragonfly was still there:

And then, as I was fiddling with my macro settings, worried that my original picture was fuzzy, he flew off, straight into my face.  Which, of course, resulted in a high-pitched squeak from me, which resulted in an alarmed “WHAT WAS THAT?!” from my husband, which required a certain amount of conversation to reassure him that all was well.

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

Gratuitous video:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Broody hen lays eggs.
Alas, the concrete floor is hard
And cracked eggs result.

Sick, whiny dotter
Rejects medicine with pouts.
Mom is now grumpy.

After frigid weeks
The temp goes to plus fifteen.
O joy!  Spring is here!

Boots, chaps, hat, blue jeans:
The dotter rushes to dress.
Saddle Club is on!

Safeway Select food
Is quick and easy to cook.
But does it taste good??

Moans and groans and moans.
OmegaDad is still sick.
Mom is still grumpy.

Motrin is Da Bomb.
One quick dose calms many fevers.
Oh no!  We are out!

Cold moonlit dawg walk.
Two moose pose in yard next door.
Quick, dawg!  Back inside!

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.

Yesterday afternoon, OmegaDad came to me as I was folding clothes, and said, in an urgent, worried voice, “Come upstairs and listen to this!”  I grabbed some clothes on hangers, planning to drop off the jackets in the coat closet, listen to his mystery noise, and then drop the remainder in our closet.

He was very perturbed, and almost wouldn’t let me stop at the coat closet.  “Do you hear that noise?  In the corner?  Over by the TV?”

I listened, and smiled, a world-weary, tolerant smile.  Tap.  Tap, tap, tap.  Tap.  Tap.  Tap, tap, tap, tap.  Tap.  Tap, tap, tap.

“It’s our woodpecker.” I said.

“Our what?”

“Our woodpecker.  He’s pecking the house.”

“Our what?  We don’t have woodpeckers!”

“Yes, we do.  I swear I’ve told you about it before.  We get woodpeckers who peck at the house, up by the eaves.”

“Nooo!”  He sounded astonished.

“Yes!”

So he had to go outside to look, and the dotter had to go with him, and sure enough, just like I’d said, there was the woodpecker.

Now, mind you, I’m not happy about a woodpecker pecking at our house.  We’re going to have to have the eaves inspected next summer, just to see what sort of damage the beast has been doing.  But I certainly wasn’t surprised.

What I was surprised by was the woodpecker decided to move to the other side of the house, and then move over to the birdfeeders.  And then stay there as the dotter and I oh-so-carefully opened up the kitchen door, and I oh-so-carefully aimed the camera, and I oh-so-carefully got the picture before the bird flew off due to the blinding of the flash, which I had not oh-so-carefully turned off.  Oh, well; at least I got the one good picture.  He is, I think, a hairy woodpecker; the downy woodpecker has some black spots along the outside of the tail feathers which this dude is missing.

So that’s the nice stuff.  Onto other things:

My post yesterday stirred up a bit of emotion.  The first commenter was a regular reader and commenter who was offended by my characterization of those who believe in the Rapture and in the anti-Christ as “bat-shit crazy”.

Sigh.  I have never hidden my lack of religious belief.  I have actually written posts about it in the past.  I may not say things like what I wrote in yesterday’s post except once in a blue moon (or, more accurately, once in three years and three months), but I have to admit, I think it on a regular basis.  I typically avoid discussing religion for that very reason; it is worse than politics, in my books, because some of the nicest, friendliest, smartest folks just go…daffy…as soon as religion raises its head.  Magical thinking takes over, and rational thinking flies out the window.  People who believe “other” are suddenly seen as “less than” simply because their magical over-being is different or because they don’t believe in a magical over-being at all.

I said that it was not tolerant of me.  It’s not.  The mindset baffles me.  It baffles me that groups that profess to follow a set of “loving” precepts use that belief as an excuse to hate others.  It bothers me that there are people out there that believe, since I don’t follow any religion, don’t believe in any religion, that I can’t be moral.  Or good.  Or kind, thoughtful, gentle, blah, blah, blah.  And, believe me, there are plenty of folks of religious bent who actually write columns that get published in national newspapers that say exactly that, and additionally say that the only thing that holds all of humanity back from being greedy, rapacious, murderous, thieving, vile, sociopathic, psychopathic bastards is religion.  This has been written multiple times, in multiple columns and magazine articles, from followers of different religions.  It is, to be blunt, a bunch of horse hockey and a sad commentary on people’s viewpoints of humanity in general.

I think humanity is much, much better than that.  I don’t think we need an omnipotent magical parental figure overseeing our every waking and sleeping moment to keep us moral and striving to do the right thing.

Furthermore, I feel there are plenty of existing things that hold people apart without adding belief in mythology into the stew.

If any generic reader feels that knowing this about me means you can’t read my blog any more, I certainly accept that, and wish you well. 

Dear Very-Distant-Coworker:

When I sent you the email asking you a whole list of questions about how many copies of a particular document you received, I didn’t want a reply of “Yeah, I received a bunch.”  I asked you who you received them from, how many copies you got, and when you received them because (whaddasurprise!) I wanted answers so that I could track down the problem at our end.

Sincerely, OmegaMom-the-support-person

Dear Coworker-of-OmegaDad’s:

When he sent you the email stating that he would be in your town to do training, that he needed all people there for training, and asking what would be a good week for this, he did not need a two-page reply outlining all your difficulties, listing everyone’s schedule for two months, and a request for special trips to train Joe, Moe, and Schmoe.  Please don’t get angry when he replies quoting his original email and repeating that he needs all people there for the training.

Sincerely, OmegaMom-the-spouse-who-likes-to-see-her-husband

Dear L0we’s:

Please train your cashiers to use the L0we’s part number, rather than the manufacturer’s part number, when entering data.  That way, we won’t be told that parts that we know are in stock are out of stock and now on special order.  Oh, also, you won’t charge us for special ordering.  And we won’t have to deal with the front desk or the head cashier to get a credit.  Which we can’t use anywhere else.  Which might have been nice to have in our bank account, instead.  Hey, maybe you can start offering, say, checks to people for such overcharges?

Also, this time around, please be sure to deliver when you say you’re going to deliver.

Also, this time around, please be sure to deliver everything we ordered, which was in stock when we ordered it, rather than surprising us at delivery time by not having everything we ordered.

Does this make sense?  Good.

Thank you, OmegaMom-and-OmegaDad-about-to-embark-on-another-chicken-coop-for-smaller-birds

Dear Fruit Flies:

This is a declaration of war.  Die, die, die!

Sincerely, OmegaMom-the-lousy-housekeeper

Dear Kozmik All:

What have I done that I should deserve this ongoing itchy scalp?  The doctor’s antibiotics are not helping.

Sincerely, OmegaMom-the-itchy

Pssst…Come over here.  Shhhhhh!  Don’t tell anyone!

Especially the dotter.

Those Orcas we saw Saturday?

Um…

They weren’t Orcas.

They were Dall’s Porpoises.

OmegaDad was skeptical about Orcas riding the bow wave.  His first thought was some type of conspiracy theory which I couldn’t quite figure out, but anyway, he kept insisting that Orcas don’t do that, and that little Orcas (i.e., babies) stay with their moms for two years, and we should have seen big Orcas around if we were seeing babies.  There was some discussion about maybe painting porpoises black and white…

So he consulted The Google.  He came up the the Dall’s Porpoise.  At bedtime, as I was snuggling down with my book to read a bit, he sat down on my side of the bed, leaned towards me, and said, “This is a secret.  You are not to tell the dotter!”

And he Revealed All.

My response:  Damn, I’m bummed!  Oh, it was magical, yes, but now it’s not quite as magical as I thought it was.  Wah.

Yesterday’s picture?  It’s apparently a classic; if you scroll down to the Dall’s Porpoise part of this page about Monterey Bay, you’ll see almost exactly the same picture.

Please don’t tell the dotter!

The good side:  We’ll obviously have to go out again next year…

When OmegaDotter was a small thing (she’s not small to us, anymore, though everyone exclaims about how tiny she is, hmmm), she loved Free Willy.  It was, in fact, the first “real” movie we ever purchased for her, in a boxed three-movie set containing all the Willy movies.

Free Willy was the movie that inspired her to want to play the harmonica (the “carmonica”).  It also inspired a great love of all things Orca, so she has a collection of Orcas that, while in no way even approximating her horsie collection, is still pretty good.  Stuffed Orcas of all sizes.  Orca magnets.  Plastic Orcas.  Puzzles featuring Orcas.  Stretchy rubber Orcas.  One or two T-shirts with Orcas on them.

When we moved to Alaska, OmegaDad promised the dotter that we would take a boat upon the ocean and see Orcas.

While GrannyJ was in town, we wanted to actually do the touristy cruise thang.  OmegaDad, being the sort who worries, kept pestering me to make the reservations, because everyone knows that the cruises fill up fast.  I kept waving him off, assuring him that I’d do it, and to for Gawd’s sake stop pestering me!  In the meantime, we’ve been checking out cruise ship costs and itineraries and locations off and on for a while.

There were all these scrumptious “glacier” tours.  See 27 glaciers in one day! proclaimed one company.  See the fjords and glaciers of Kenai Fjords National Park!  Park rangers!  Narration!  Go here!  Do this!  See that!

I kept returning, however, to one cruise that really caught my attention–a wildlife cruise.  Y’know, when you’ve seen one glacier, you’ve seen them all.  (Okay, not really, but I didn’t want to do “just” glaciers.)  It started from a town that was further away than some of the others that I was looking at.  I sat there weighing the question:  one-and-a-half-hour drive to “see 27 glaciers!” or a three-hour drive to “see wildlife”?

After dithering and thinking and scrunching up my forehead in Deep Thought, Friday I made reservations for Saturday (so much for that “all booked up” worry) for the Resurrection Bay Wildlife Cruise, a noon departure with a stop at Fox Island for lunch.

We woke up at 6, we were out of the house at 7:20.  All the sunshine that GrannyJ has brought with her had disappeared–of course–so we drove through bouts of rain, oohing and aahing at lovely cloud sculptures and low-lying fog slipping in between mountain peaks.  We drove.  And drove.  And drove.  Large lakes.  Above the treeline.  Below the treeline.  New mountains.  Peeks of sunlight.

We arrived in Seward with plenty of time to spare, and enough time to let the dotter get bored and whiny.  We got on board.  We waited.  Any glimpses of sunlight started being covered over again.  The sky was leaden, the sea leaden as well.  And then we headed out.

I’d like to claim that the clouds parted, rays of sunlight fell upon us like melted butter, and a chorus of angels were singing, but, alas, no:  it remained chilly and grey.  Nonetheless, it was grand.  We motored out to the island at quite a clip, the wind picking up.  We arrived at the island, we ate, we wandered around the beach covered with The Very Best Skipping Stones, we skipped stones, we took pictures, we got back on the ship.  So far, the only wildlife we had seen was from afar, but we were all still enjoying it.

And then, as we motored further out, I caught sight of something breaking water.  I grabbed at OmegaDad, who was with me (the dotter and GrannyJ were inside the cabin on the lower deck), pointed, and we watched as something porpoise-like leaped out of the water a few times.  We couldn’t really tell what they were.  Then they were gone…we were past, there had been no chance to get the dotter to see, but OmegaDad went in and grabbed her “just in case”.  The captain hadn’t said anything about it, though he had been pointing out various birds as we cruised on, so OmegaDad and I figured that no-one had seen them.

And then the ship slowed down.  And then the ship started turning.  And then the captain came on the PA to announce that “we’ve sighted some small Orcas and we’re going to circle back”.  And the ship circled back.

And there they were.  Three to six small Orcas (really small).  The dotter was in the very bow of the ship–a perfect spot.  The Orcas spent five to ten minutes playing with us–swimming underneath the ship, swimming alongside the ship, breaching the water just in front of the bow of the ship over and over again.  We tried and tried to get pictures, but they were moving fast and this is the best we got.

It was wonderful.  It was grand.  The dotter was in heaven.  See this look of pure bliss?

There was lots more to the cruise–some absolutely spectacular wildlife sightings and groovy scenery.  Thousands of birds (puffins, cormorants, gulls, murres (?)) in huge rookeries.  Sea lions basking on the rocks.  Glaciers.  Rocky islands thrusting out of the sea.  The dotter, with her sharp eyes, found the jellyfish swimming in the ocean beneath us, and the purple and orange starfish clasping to the rocks at the shoreline.  GrannyJ caught some amazing bird pictures, with her amazing camera, and now I have a bad case of camera envy, because our little snapshot digicam doesn’t do birds or sea lions or long shots worth a damn.

Sooo.  If you ever come out to Alaska to the Seward area, and want to take a cruise, I highly recommend the Resurrection Bay Wildlife Cruise put on by Kenai Fjords Touring.  It is awesome, spectacular, wonderful.

And you get Orcas.

And if you’re the OmegaParents, you get to fulfill a long-time promise.

Last night OmegaDad and I finished watching our movie at 12:30 a.m. (there was a break at 11 p.m. to go pick up the dotter; she couldn’t quite do a full night away from home).  When I turned off the light in the office, which we were using as indirect light for the family room where we were watching the movie, it was dark.

Holy moly.  When did that happen?!

So here we are, a month past solstice.  At solstice, the sun set at 11:42 p.m. and rose at 4:20 a.m., and the sunrise/sunset calculator at my favorite site showed “light” for the start and end times of all forms of twilight.  Now, in last third of July, the sun is setting at 11:09 p.m. and rising at 5:02 a.m.  And we now have official start and end times for “twilight”, with “light” showing for civil and astronomical twilights.  According to this calculator, we will get civil twilight starting on August 6.

(The U.S. Naval Observatory has a nice discussion of the difference between “twilight”, “civil twilight”, and “astronomical twilight”.)

Anyway, the gloaming was noticeably less gloamy last night, which means we may actually get to see some stars in, oh, two months.

After the movie ended, we headed upstairs and piddled around, clearing away used dishes, turning off lights, closing blinds, and I went outside to the kitchen porch to have my last smoke of the night.  I leaned on the railing, and gloried in the dimness, then glanced down at the rose bush beneath me.  And there, flitting about in the twilight, were moths.

Flittering back and forth, silver, white and gray.  When had those moths appeared?  I didn’t remember them from a few weeks ago.  Did they need the dimness to avoid being eaten by birds?  If so, what did they do when there was more light around, just a few weeks ago?

Ahhhh…

All of these questions were prompted, actually, by my recent reading of a gem of a book called “In A Patch of Fireweed“, by Bernd Heinrich.  A few weeks ago I was left bereft by having read all my new science fiction books, re-read all my old SF and fantasy books, and needing something to keep me entertained while I sat by OmegaDotter’s bed when she fell asleep at night.  I started with OmegaDad’s copy of John McPhee’s “Coming Into the Country” (a great read, and very descriptive of the type of mindset that one finds amongst Alaskans), and then found myself needing another book.  So I browsed OmegaDad’s bookshelf and found this one, purporting to be an autobiography of a biologist.  It was a slender volume, so it seemed to be a fairly quick read, and the mention of fireweed appealed to me as the fireweed are beginning to bloom here.

It’s a lovely book.  It’s lyrical, it’s gently humorous, it describes a boy’s journey from a childhood in a war-torn Europe to adulthood as a biologist who spends his time studying insect thermoregulation by sticking thermocouples up the ass of hornets and bees.  And it does a splendid job of describing the constant babble of questions that prompt a biologist (or any scientist, I would think) to pursue his or her studies.  A glance at some ants emerging from a nest raises a quick question, which raises another, which leads to some study on a few consecutive days, which leads to yet more questions and some answers.  A few months later, looking at some bees foraging on a hot summer’s day leads to another set of queries, which circle back to the original questions.

It’s hard to describe how wonderful the book was.  I loved it.  It was his description of his endless curious observation of the world around him that led me to looking at those moths and asking those questions.

Later, as OmegaDad and I laid in bed trying to sleep, I mentioned the moths to him, and shared some of the things I had wondered, and we had a great little discussion, then snuggled up in spoon fashion, closed our eyes, and fell asleep.

There is something profoundly satisfying about being able to toss a small bomb at a living creature and feel righteous about it.  It gives me a teeny tiny glimmer of understanding about people who are willing to subsume themselves into hatred and prejudice; it’s visceral.

In other words:  I threw a firework at a pair of moose who were in the yard and felt a warm glow of achievement as these huge critters went barreling off through the woods.  Into one of our neighbors’ back yards.  Oh, well.  They’ve lived here a long time, surely they already have the moose thang sussed out, unlike us hapless Alaska newbies.

Aside from that, nothing is roiling my brain right now.  OmegaGranny sent me a link to a blog post about kids books and end-of-the-world catastrophism, prompted by a write-up in Newsweek.

Eh.

Frankly, the majority of stuff that kids read right now is so fluffy and frilly and substance-less that a few more meaty books here and there don’t bother me.  After all, we’ve got Barbie and Bratz and My Little Pony and CareBears and sweetness and light all over the place.  (Speaking of “sweetness and light”, have you seen JibJab’s take on the latest presidential campaign, in particular the very amusing part about Barack Obama?  And you should read their blog about pulling it all together, too.)

Good old-fashioned disaster lit just takes one back to an earlier, more gritty age, when Cinderella’s stepsisters cut off their toes and heels to try to fit into the glass slipper, and one princess’s evil stepmother was forced to dance at her wedding in iron-hot dancing shoes.  It’s not like catastrophe, disaster, vengeance, killing, and what-not is anything new.  Bambi’s mother, for instance, is shot.  And Disney movies are run through-and-through with dead or absent moms.

Anyway, if the disaster lit wasn’t written specifically for juveniles, you can be assured that the juveniles will just find grown-up disaster lit to read.  Or movies to watch.  Poseidon Adventure, anyone?  Towering Inferno?  On The Beach?  Godzilla?

I think that humans are hard-wired to want drama.  Humans against humans!  All against the backdrop of war! or disaster! You’ve got yer Ulysses.  You’ve got yer Beowulf.  You’ve got yer Bayeaux Tapestry, Don Quixote, Les Miserables, Gone With The Wind, The Day After Tomorrow…  Probably those ancient humans who did the cave paintings in Lescaux had their own version of the disaster/drama/horror story while sitting around fires and eating freshly slain bison.

Right now, my personal desire is for a rockin’, sockin’ disaster novel that ends up with the End Of All Moose, and the Flourishing Of All Veggie Gardens.  I’ll settle, however, for a few books that are due to show up in my mailbox within a week or so, good old-fashioned escapist fantasy and science fiction, replete with–of course–catastrophic end-of-the-world shenanigans…

(ETA:  Ack!  I forgot to mention Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog!  You must check it out within the next two days, before they make you pay for it!)

(Thanks to Jeb for the word!)

This is how I feel about moose right now:

Yes, the moose returned, as Jean said it would.  Even with the PlantSkydd.  It’s time for the recommended moth balls, Irish Spring, marigolds, maybe a bazooka or a nuclear warhead.  OmegaDad, when we were wakened at 4:30 a.m. by the howling dawg, barreled down the back stairs (this time wearing shorts, rather than just tighty whities), lit the fuse on one of our leftover fireworks, and sent it flying.  The moose ran, most satisfyingly.  But not before it had eaten the broccoli, win win choi, mei tsin tei choi, and goodness knows what else.

My boss, when I signed into IM and messaged that I was going to do Something To The Moose, suggested “moose burgers…”  We back-and-forthed for a while with:

Moose kebabs.

Moose steak.

Ground moose.

Moose sausage.

Moose a l’orange.

Moose fricassee.

Moose a la king.

I can think of more.  Give me half a chance.

Let’s just say that it was bad enough being roused at 4:30 a.m. by the dawg, let alone the firework (only one!), let alone the realization that our SuperSized not-a-Pet had chowed down on our veggies yet again.

In other news:  The dotter’s feet have grown six inches in the past two weeks.  Okay, that may be a bit of an exaggeration.  Maybe she’s grown six inches taller in the past two weeks?!  Whatevs.  The end result:  a dotter whose shoes are suddenly too tight throwing a mini-fit at having to wear them to Bike Day at summer camp, no matter how much OmegaDad and I reiterated that the folks at summer camp–no liability fools, they!–would insist on the shoes in addition to the helmet, and that all of her other shoes were too tight, and no, she could not wear the flip-flops.

Oh, yes, and she’s no longer an inch beneath the midline of my bust, but an inch above the midline of my bust.  (Okay, let’s be vulgar:  She’s an inch above the nipples.)  Now she’s showing large amounts of ankle and shin when wearing her pants that fit her just fine about four weeks ago.  I am left contemplating some big time shopping for basics, so she is not razzed for flood-waders when first grade starts.

In the wide world Outside:  President Bush says the “Banking system is basically sound.”  Given his track record, that’s not exactly confidence-inspiring.  Nor is the contrasting testimony of Bernanke before Congress.  Nor is the fact that IndyMac bank was taken over by the FDIC this last weekend–the second largest bank in U.S. history to get that honor–and that the government also had to prop up Fannie May and Freddie Mac at the same time.  Rumors are a-swirlin’, as is the SEC, which has subpoenaed more than 50 hedge-fund managers and analysts, looking for evidence of market manipulation.  Good luck with that; from my reading, the rumors are popping up like mushrooms, and not (seemingly) as manipulation, but as frantic “OMG, is my stock going to tank?!” as the Dow Jones keeps deflating, one step forward, two steps back.

In political news, Chez asks whether the Left has lost its sense of humor.  Or, actually, he asked a month or so ago, and now feels that he has confirmation.  I’m with Chez on this one.  I mean, c’mon, folks, one look at that New Yorker cover and you can tell it’s a cartoon, right?!  And, um, correct me if I’m wrong, but cartoons are supposed to be…um…funny, right?  I thought it was hilarious–it was a perfect send-up of all the fear-mongering.  You might also check out his dissection of the recent Jezebel.com hoorah.  Chez is interesting; very New York, very acerbic (sometimes too much so), often narcissistic, and a good source of new or obscure music.

On the science front, Scienceblogs has a concerted pre-release review fest of the new “mockumentary” about global warming, Sizzle.  The reviews are quite mixed.  There’s a certain amount of backstory here, wherein communications specialists say scientists need to “frame” issues properly to get their concerns/ideas/beliefs before the public in a persuasive manner.  In the old days, we used to call this “PR”.  The “framing”, I mean, not the review fest.  Even these days, people would call the review fest “PR”.

In the meantime, I’m going away to find me a guar-an-damn-teed method of moose eradication.  Ya, you betcha!

ETA:  Well, dayum.  I totally forgot about this one:  Disgruntled S.F. city IT dude locks entire IT administration out of computer system, and is currently in jail for this.  I’m trying very hard to ascertain whether it’s just the IT admins who are locked out, or if everyone is locked out–the story doesn’t quite make that clear.

Yesterday evening, we thinned out the spinach and pak choi and hong tsin choi and Swiss chard and beets, and had a whole mess of baby greens.  This, of course, cooked down into a small mess of baby greens.  They were awesome to eat, tender and tasty and lovely.

So today I was going to wax rhapsodic about our veggie garden.  There was a planned chortle about how nice and big our broccoli plants were getting.  A close-up or two of our tender tiny carrot plants.

Earlier this morning, the neighborhood dogs were going nuts, howling and barking and generally being noisy.  I couldn’t see what had set them off, so marked it off as a puzzle.

Then, later, I was sitting in my office, reading my blogs, and OmegaDad wandered in to tell me, “Keep an eye out for any moose; I saw one up the hill at the neighbor’s house.”  Aye, aye, sir, I responded.  He headed off to take a shower, and I popped out the kitchen door for a smoke.

Then…Then my eyes alighted on our veggie garden.

Things looked…different.

I thought to myself “Moose?  Garden?  Time to check things out,” and headed down the back stairs towards the garden.

As I got closer, I could see evidence of the massacree.

Moose tracks and shorn plants:

A discarded plant:

A row of cabbage plants with the tasty tops munched off (they were not yet “heading”):

Cropped and dumped brussels sprout plants:

Now, I’m aware that it could have been worse.  We still have lots of tiny spinach, beets, chard, lettuce, etc.  Our peas, in the back, were undisturbed.  There were some plants that had been pulled up, roots and all, so they have been replanted.  And most of the plants that were eaten can regrow.

But I was just damned angry.  If a hapless moose had been anywhere in sight at that moment, I might have done something stupid, like charged it in a red haze.

Damn moose.

While I was out taking inventory of the damage, I heard loud, angry shouts and stomping and thumping from the neighbor across the street, so I am assuming that the moose made the rounds and visited other yummy plant buffets.