Daily Adventures

There was mixed news at the dentist. The bite is just fine, it's that this is at least the third time this particular molar has been drilled into and there is some chance that the nerves and veins, the pulp in the tooth, is just going to die. There is some chance it will just heal on its own, but the experienced dentist here said that he thought it less likely than it failing eventually. The good news was that the X-Ray showed no deterioration along those lines, yet, and I've done this before, where the dentist was sure it was going to die, but it came back with time and being careful to not mess with it too much. It was oddly good to know that there really wasn't anything I could do for it other than wait. And it was really good to get confirmation that my dentist at home is entirely competent and that I can trust him with whatever does happen next.( Read more... )

Huh.

When I left it at that cliffhanger, I didn’t think that would come back to bite me and give me two other medical things to “deal with” in the interim.

So. I’d best write before anything ELSE happens on top of all the house stuff.

Best of good news with the house things: we closed on the old house! The new owners met with us for the signing with their adorable baby boy and it was a blast. The new house is going well, and John’s checking every day, there’s a photo album of the daily progress here.

( Read more... )

Lots of things have been happening, some of them looked bad when they happened, but some of it has turned out all right.

Our 20-year-old Passat died a complete death, I've had periodontal problems, and my old overuse problems with my hands and arms have come back with the competitive video gaming. None of those things were particularly surprises, per se, but they haven't been that much fun.

( Coping has had a few good side effects... )

"... To live in this world

you must be able
to do three thing: to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go."

-- Mary Oliver, "In Blackwater Woods"

It's a gorgeous poem. I bought a book it's in to simply have it and then another copy for my Kindle as the imagery at the beginning is so evocative...

On Monday, I went to visit a friend of mine who is in the very last stages of ovarian cancer. She's in hospice, now, and weak enough she mostly stays in bed. It was a visit that she and I have been planning for nearly a month, with one not-quite happening just before Thanksgiving. One of my low-level dreads has been that she'd die before we could come face-to-face again, and I live so close to her.

( More about Thanksgiving, how I got my crown fixed again, and how well the visit eventually went... )

I had a crown that had a hole in it and I was NOT looking forward to replacing it. At all. But I went into the dentist this morning and they took off the old crown. There was a small cavity underneath it, which they quickly removed. They built it all up again, and then took an impression of both the inside and the outside, and then made me a temporary crown and put it on.

It hurt doing it, for all the doctor did a great job of applying the novocaine, to the point where I couldn't feel my tongue or that side of my mouth; but now it hurts a lot less than I thought it would. They adjusted everything beautifully, and for all that they tore up my gums pretty good getting it in and clearing out all the old stuff, the tooth itself doesn't hurt as much as it used to or nearly as much as it did when the old, badly made crown was put in place. I suspect that the cavity was starting to affect it a little, and having it covered up well, now, makes it happier.

( There were a lot of small things they did... )

I was up too late last night.

I don't usually say that. As the Horde can well tell. But, for the first time in a while I was up until 2 am doing the last of the plying, shocking, and blocking of the last few ounces of the camel down I am spinning for Crown Mountain Farms. I'd promised it by early this week, and even though they haven't held me to my promises at all, I do.

( Read more... )

I had a really full day today, and I'm not getting around to another chapter. I'm MAKING the time tomorrow, come hell or high water or even the Kings of Israel...

( Read more... )

I used to have a series of assassination dreams.  Dreams where I'd go out and kill those that needed killing.  They'd show up the most when I was working really, really hard and doing a lot of work.  Now I wonder, kinda, what they might have meant to me, or what it was I was trying to subconsciously balance back then?  I'm taking a dreams and art class as my adult Sunday education class, and it's just bemusing to think about.   There was no fear or distress in those dreams just an even more sharpened sense of the types of efficiency I have always had in sections of my life.

I had a dream this morning with Jet's younger brother in it.  He was just a two-year-old, curled up in my arm, after the four of us went swimming in a crystal clear, hot spring warmed pool in the depths of a blue-black crystal cave.  He was doing great at swimming, chasing his older brother around, and was as sweet as Jet.  His swim diaper was actually better at protecting his butt from the hardness of the rocks when we were sitting and resting a bit.   A very calm dream.  Only sad after I woke up.

Which was when Jet jumped on me and said, "Mom!  Mom!  Wake up.  Breakfast is ready."   Then he lay on me and rocked and rolled until I grunted, "I'm awake.  I'm awake..." and then he fled down the hallway yelling, "Dad!  Dad!  Mom's up!"

( Read more... )

So we went to Dr. Ladd on Mountain View this morning and I was very impressed.

He asked quite a few questions for data I hadn't thought to volunteer at first, and they were very relevant. It was cool to have him *ask* questions that were intelligent. He also tested a lot of things. He took and x-ray, he did the contact paper test, and he showed me all the data that pertained to what he thought was going on. He was also very interested in Dr. Snyder's toothguard and wanted to know more about it and asked for contact information for him as he was interested in other dentist's techniques!!

It wasn't long before I realized that I really would rather go to Dr. Ladd on a regular basis than my old dentist.

He did answer my questions. The crown is 'good', i.e. it fits in the ways it needs to. It isn't the impact site. And it pretty much works given how much was carved from the top teeth. The amount taken from the top teeth was acceptable as well.

My bite is mostly even on the back teeth on that side. There isn't anything that can just be adjusted to fix it. Rather than accepting my opinion and just "fixing things" he asked me to come back next week with my tooth guard still on from the night and we'd check the whole bite problem right at its worst rather than giving it a couple of hours to adjust as much as it could.

He doesn't just react to my emotions, he takes real data to figure out what's going on, and I think that's the biggest difference for me. Eventhough Dr. Walgast at Perfect Teeth seems to do acceptable work, he really seems to work off my emotions and doesn't do the data check that I really need to feel secure. So I'm likely to just go with Dr. Ladd from now on. Even if the answer isn't an easy one and it isn't just a "fix" to get things 'right'... so...

He also said that most people have some bite problems. That it's not actually that uncommon. That helped a lot in an odd way.

No answer for today. Nothing's fixed but my emotional turmoil about what's going on, but that's such a huge thing....

We celebrated by going to the Daylight Donuts and I'm cheerfully working my way through an apple fritter even as I write. *laughter*

It's 100 on the thermometer in the sun. Ugh.

I was out in the OUR Center's garden for a long time. Ugh. I am drinking gallons of cold anything just to make myself hydrated enough to function.

It was good to get out there again. See everything all grown up and producing like mad. Nearly all of it I planted, too, so I'm very happy about that. The tomatoes are coming along, the peppers are flowering, the raspberries are going mad, the strawberries are still going. The peas are all out of the ground already, which is a good thing. The lettuce has been cut at least once and is nearly back again with all the sunshine and water and food Charles is giving it.

Charles was doing well, but finding it hard to get volunteers to work in this heat. I don't blame them.

I went to the garden after going to the dentist to get my permanent crown in. That... hurt. *sigh* But the tooth feels mildly less sensitive than before, and I think I'm going to be able to brush it. Plus, best yet the dentist said that it should take a long time for the ligaments and the jaw joint and all the tendons and things around it to feel normal again. Especially since I grind my teeth something fierce, it's going to stay a problem for a while and not to worry about it. Just take the painkillers that I need and get on with life.

So I have confirmation that what I was doing was the right thing. Plus, I stuck with the fitting long enough for it to finally feel *right*, which is a first. Usually, I've just bolted from the chair as I hate being there, and paid for it with pain afterward. This time I stuck it out until my bite felt *good* rather than "uhm... that isn't *bad*... uhm..." Hopefully it'll pay off. He said that it's fine to just call and get thing adjusted again, any time. So I'm glad of that.

Jet's off to his super soaker camp again, and he's having a blast with all the other kids and the running around and everything. Better than waiting for his other friends at home. We get some time, he gets some time with kids, and it's all good. MUCH better than the two weeks we were home and he was driving both John and I a little nuts by not just asking us to play with him but asking us how long until the other kids were home so he could play with them? He wanted kid-time. Entirely understandable, and he's getting enough of it, now that, in the evenings he's really happy to just be with us or in his house and playing with his toys. All to the good.

There's a lady at the church who is going to Peru to meet up with her daughter who is doing volunteer work over there. She asked me for extra knitting needles, and it was a real revelation for me to go to my knitting needle collection and realize that I haven't used ANY of my aluminum long needles for over a decade. So I gave her a whole bundle of them, along with some plastic ones, some double-pointed ones in both aluminum and plastic that I don't like at all. It was nice to de-clutter and get rid of those things I just don't use anymore. I said good-bye to the needles, took a picture of them, and wished that they would get good and used by people that needed them now.

Nice to have the ritual cleansing.

I'm reading Jim Butcher's Proven Guilty and it's obvious Butcher has gotten better with time and practice. Juggling dozens of relationships and histories from the previous books, it's even more fun than the previous books. It's still all mind-candy, but it's fun mind-candy. Mmmm... sweet. Plus, it was an excellent distraction from that moment when the dentist put room temperature cement into the real crown and put it on my exquisitely sensitive stub. Ow does not even cover it. He laughed and said, "Well, if you can even see straight after that, you might want to pick up your book."

I think all good dentist have to be mildly sadistic or else the amount of pain they actually cause would get to them, I think. And I have to say I consented to it as the alternative was probably worse. *sigh*