Sad Teeth

Nikolai has had three teeth pulled this afternoon.  His oral surgeon (the word oral always makes me think rather tarty thoughts) was an expeditious man, busting those three suckers out in an hour, tops.  The “procedure” (a word that makes me feel as if I am in a bad medical show or perhaps a likewise bad sci-fi flick) was scheduled to start at 2:30 ( get it?  Tooth-hurty? I bet the oral surgeon had no idea. snicker)  and end at 3:30.  I was asked to collect Nikolai at 3:15, or at least return about then to get him.  I got a call as I was in transit at like, 3:20.  He was ready.  Dayum, Dr. Teeth was efficient!  I ushered a pale and ice-packed man to the car and home, flustered about getting him installed on the couch in comfy clothes and far more cushy pillows and blankets than were strictly necessary.  He managed to drool blood panache, bespeckling ojbects that would otherwise have faced to the background of my attention.  Once we corralled his numb mouth and got him settled, I set off to the grocery store for his meds, a hell of a lot more gauze, and soft foods.

First off, I have never put in a prescription at a pharmacy to be filled.  Honestly.  I have never done such a thing.  So I wandered in, trying to be honest and open, and I explained to the gal at the counter that I had no idea what I was doing.  She was sweet and directed me over to the “Rx Drop Off” counter and only rolled her eyes once, while an astonishingly attractive pharmacist-man laughed at me.  Really, dude?  I am honest that I have no idea what’s going on, and your response is to laugh?  Well thank god you only went into pharmaceuticals.  If this is how you treat people once they’re recovering, I would hate to see your bedside manner.  HA HA HA YOU HAVE CANCER WHAT A NERD WHO GETS CANCER?   I am extrapolating, of course, but I feel that this is a distinct possibility.

Anyway, I got the scrip started and set off to get soft foods and other things we needed.  In process, I managed to overfill the wee little basket I had nabbed, so I staggered up to the checkout fellow with three loaves of bread and a dozed bratwurst in one hand, and a basket with pudding leaping out in the other.  He was unimpressed.  halfway through sherpa-ing that stuff home I got the call that his meds were ready, but no way was I turning back then.  I got home, offloaded, helped him swap gauzes, got his insurance info, and pranced on back to the store for the drugs.  Lucky for me, the attractive pharmadouche was no longer on shift.  I probably would not have kept the sass to myself.  After obtaining the swag as well as far more gauze than was strictly necessary, I got home where I promptly fed Nikolai a Percoset™.  I then explained that he should have taken it with food, but whatever.

He has recently requested soup.  Granted, he has recently exploded into a flop sweat and fainted, so it’s really anyone’s game.  But he’s upright (mostly) and eating now, and has just put in a request for pudding.  This may end well, after all, given that I didn’t giggle myself into a fit when he collapsed.  I totally saved him, if you were wondering.  Busted out my three-year old first aid training and SAVED his fainty butt.

 

 

Moderately Important Update

Last week I was dozing off to sleep. Well, I did that more than once last week, but this is the particular instance I want to mention. it was my normal bedtime, normal everything. I dozed off, and began to dream. I dreamed I was eating a cupcake and it had very lovely, fluffy frosting. I jolted myself awake all of a sudden because I was moving. I realized I had the blanket in my mouth. Turns out that cupcake tasted awful.

 

A Shameful Confession

I have wondered if I ought to tell you this, but the possibility for humor outweighs my dignity.  Like always.

It was a coworker’s birthday today, and another coworker made him a pie.  She made a pecan pie, because they’re his favorite.  We all had some.  As I ate my way through my slice, I glanced at the spoon and noticed some red residue on the underside of the bowl.  I thought it odd, but perhaps I was scraping a little too vigorously and was removing paint from the plate.  I kept checking at intervals, and there was still red something on the bottom of the spoon.  The plates were dark green, so they could not be the source, and the pan the pie came in wasn’t red.

I finally got a mirror out of my purse and checked.  Yes, my mouth was bleeding.  I hoped it was spontaneously bleeding from the abundance of sugar, but alas, it was not to be.  I looked again and saw that I had cut my lip on the inside.  How had I done such a thing?  Why, with a spoon, of course!  HOW ELSE DO PEOPLE CUT THEMSELVES IN THE MOUTH EATING PIE?  Remember how people who are a danger to themselves and others are not given forks or knives?  Well, in my hand a spoon can be just as dangerous.

Now if you’ll excuse me, my mouth stings.  Still.

 

“This won’t hurt a bit” is always a lie

I went to give blood today.  I like donating blood!  It’s one of the few things I do that can have actual global significance.  I don’t like the process especially, but I do like the feeling of accomplishment at the end, the free cookies and juice, and all the sympathy I can trump up for myself.  It’s a wonder I didn’t post a picture of my bandaged-up arm to Facebook.  

This time ’round, the experience was a bit more unpleasant than usual.  I haven’t donated in I think almost two years which made most of the process fresh horror for me.  I ate a decent breakfast about an hour before the appointment, drank lots of water yesterday and today, had no caffeine, and still had the nervous shakes as I waited.  

 

I detest the prick needle that is spring-loaded to jab my finger to test my hemoglobin, so I nervous-chatter my way through that.  I passed the test just fine and I don’t have any sketchy life practices that could be problematic.  Getting to the giving bed/table thing was no problem.  I got a blanket because the room was cold.  Yay blankets!  My phlebotomist, while I’m sure a nice person, laughed when I requested a hand to hold when he jabbed me.  I’ll tell you:  the edge of the table provides no reassuring squeezing.  

 

I got to pumping and all seemed well.  I focused on taking deep breaths and not trying to feel the humongous needle in my vein, which would require me to hold my breath to try to sense in my arm.  He checked on me once, all good.  He began to set up another giver, and I called him over saying it was making a weird feeling.  The line running across my wrist felt – – bumpy.  It felt like the bag was bump-bump-bumping the leg of the table and the feeling was traveling up the line to me.  I realized he would have to twist the needle away from my vein wall (the bumpy feeling)  (guess who’s nauseated re-telling this)  and turned my head away.  I then immediately snapped my head back to say, ” you need to lay me down right now.  Right now.”  He immediately did so, and two other helpers converged.  

 

One fellow removed my scarf, asking who said it was a good idea to wear a scarf while donating?  I told him, “people with cold necks.”  He didn’t laugh.  He seemed intent on making me keep my eyes open and dude, I was closing them to focus on my breathing.  Then there was a cold compress on my throat and another on my forehead, and lots of coaching to breathe deep and keep my eyes open and cough really hard.  Why?  Well apparently a big cough shoots a bunch of oxygen to the head!  So there I lay, feebly squeezing the squoosh-ball, white as a ghost, covered in a red blanket and coughing for all I was worth, one side of my body sweating and the other ice-cold.  Luckily one of the girls there was willing to hold my hand for a minute, and honestly, PHLEBOTOMIST JIM, human contact can help!  

 

The story ends with me being fine and going home after a can of orange juice and some animal crackers.  I have to say that getting the concerned side-eye from a room full of people who are good with needles can be very unsettling.  

 

Henry the Eighth

Why do I never learn?  Why do I not recall previous experiences, and think that if I repeat them, the same results won’t occur?  It hurts, and for so much longer than it was good.

 

Stupid fatty meats.

 

Ow, my tummy hurts.

 

Preschool didn’t take

Fun Fact:  5am and 6am are totally different times.  this is apparently something I don’t know.  I say this because this morning comfortably woke, stretched, looked at the clock, swore, and dove out of bed.  No, really.  I do a sideways slide so I don’t pull all the covers off of Nikolai.  I’m an awesome bedmate, except for the talking in my sleep and the elbows to the face and the forceful cuddling.  I was out of bed with one unsteady leg in my sweats  before I looked at the clock again.  I stopped.  something was odd. . . I didn’t recall turning off the alarm.  I could see that it was still programmed to go off on time.  Was it Saturday?  No. . . then I made my great realization:  ten past 5 and ten past 6 are two different times of day (four, if you’re being picky).  I climbed back in bed, and took a few minutes of my newly discovered extra hour of sleep to recover from the adrenaline burst.  Believe it or not, I’ve misread the clock many times before, mistaking a 1 for a 7 and a 6 for an 8.

I woke up when my alarm went off, just like every other morning.  And then I almost went back to sleep.

 

Le Sigh is Internet-french for . . . the sigh

Do you ever just get weepy?  I don’t know about you alls, but I do.  I am an emotional critter but I don’t cry that often.  I save up my tears for about three, maybe four months, then I sob.  I didn’t cry during The Neverending Flight Home From Florida, I didn’t mourn my feet with the Blisters of Doom, and touching moments in shows and movies over the last months only made me sniffle a little.  I’ve been saving up my tears for a few months now, and in these final days I’ve been alerted that my time is near.  For example: everything is making me shaky-breathe.  I watch two seconds of a relatively non-emotion-inducing music video, and my voice goes all quavery.  I look over at Nikolai, and I feel a sploosh of warmfuzzy feelings, and then I choke on a sob.  We visit some old friends of mine and spend the afternoon laughing till it hurts, and I feel my face start to freeze into a crazy rictus of Greek tragedy, as tears attempt to flee my eyeball holes.  The story is funny, but not sad.  Why, eyes?  WHYYYYY????!!

I told Nick that it’s time for my quarterly cry.  He looked confused.  I clarified that I will be needing to watch a tear-jerker from my childhood, as opposed to a newer movie where everyone dies and the heroine is alone and then her dog leaves her.  I cannot handle those.  I will not be watching Where The Red Fern Grows, OR Old Yeller, betch please.  I will be watching like, Peter Pan or A Little Princess or The Secret Garden, something that is joyful and heart-wrenching and that I can cry at for the 90 minutes of running time.  No, I will not watch The Notebook.  I almost asphyxiated on my heart the last (only) time I watched it, and then I spent another week in the mournful sighs and lovelorn mopes.  I don’t need that, I need a feel-good, cry with happiness and be done movie.

Am I the only one that does this?  I can’t be.  Please tell me I’m not. . . . *sniffle*

 

Florida Part 2

In planning for this trip, and by planning I mean studiously avoiding thinking of it in any way except the murkiness of The FUTURE, I knew I would need walking shoes.  I also knew that if anyone attempted to make me wear tennis shoes of any variety in that kind of humidity and heat, I would start kicking that person and never stop.  I needed some comfortable sandals I could walk in, and I did find a nice pair that I assumed would do the least amount of damage while being affordable and cute.  I knew I would inevitably be in pain, so all I tried to do was minimize that.

The sandals did have a heel, because I prefer blisters to having hyperextended knees – call me crazy!!  After that first day in them, when I had the first blister on one foot and what seemed to be a hive on the other foot, I did think that maybe knees that bent backwards and made me walk like a chicken might be preferable.  They’re not, in case you were wondering.  After switching shoes a few days in row and buying certified Disney® flip flops, I had four blisters, one of which had started to mutate.  It began innocently enough, on the pad just as the base of my second toe.  A shoe switch and another day later, the fluid inside had managed to shove itself up between my second and third toes, and IT TOTALLY FASCINATED GROSSED ME OUT YOU GUYS.  I proceeded to show Nick my newest acquisition, and spent the rest of the trip squishing on it from both sides.  It was so gross (but kind of cool).

I snagged another two blisters in Vegas on the LONGEST TRIP HOME EVER, which helped me cement the belief that I do not like Las Vegas, and not just because of the driving winds and the dirtiness that embedded itself in my skin.

 

Stay tuned for a play-by-play of a very long trip that never wanted to end and became travel purgatory.

 

Once Daily

I have begun taking a multivitamin every morning, because that is what grownups do and I am pretending to be a grownup.  I think it’s good for me, but the mornings that I forget to eat first, I take it on an empty stomach.

Pop quiz:  What are the effects of iron and zinc on an empty stomach?

NAUSEA HOT DAMN

I do not like being grown up, I have decided.  Unless I suddenly become much more healthy feeling and my hair becomes as shining as the sun and my nails like steel, I may just glare and pout at my pills.  While I take one, every morning, like a grownup.  But I won’t like it and you can’t make me.

 

Took the starch right outta me

No really, I gave up starchy carbs.  I did it a week ago, and it’s not as bad as I thought it would be.  See, I love breads, cereals, rice, noodles, and root vegetables (POTATOES).  I love them more than any other food.  However, they do not love me back in a healthy way.  They love me back by providing me with 30 pounds of extra body that I had carefully removed over the course of a year and a half.  Apparently, when you exercise for thirty minutes everyday and then suddenly stop, your body will change back to what it was pre-regular exercise.  It’s the darnedest thing!  Anyway, after deducing that horrible fact at a friend’s house last weekend – she was in the bathroom and weighed herself and then she and her husband wanted to know how much Nick weighed because it’s a known fact he’s astonishingly weighted (he wins the lowest weight challenge every time) then her husband weighed himself to compare with Nick, then I didn’t want to be left out – I declared war.  I stopped cold turkey.  It is not as fun as normal life because I don’t get to munch my way through boredom, and I can’t just whip up a batch of pie crust to bake with cinnamon sugar on top.  However I feel more alert, and lighter inside because dense flour isn’t bringing me down anymore.

I am running out of creativity though.  My cooking genius involves using flours and noodles and potatoes, breads and crumbled cereal, and rice.  For breakfast this last week I’ve had a spinach omelet with cheddar, give or take mushrooms or tomatoes, at least five times.  I’ve had a fruit protein smoothie twice.  Lunch has been a can of tuna over lettuce, tomato, and pickle.  It’s a sammich without the bread, you see.  Dinner has been. . .whatever fit my requirements and my mouth.  does anyone have new ideas?  There are some good recipes out there, but they all call for onions or bell peppers, and I do not enjoy them.  Bells make me nauseated.  I also detest cucumbers.  Halp!