Myu won’t take no for an answer when begging to be in my lap, even when I don’t have a lap available. I was squatted down in the kitchen a few minutes ago cleaning up a spill, and she hops right up on my non-existent lap and settled in for a nap, which didn’t work out so well for her, seeing as I wasn’t planning on squatting in the kitchen for longer than two minutes.

Truly, she is being a huge pest today.

On top of the weird weather, I’m personally feeling weird. Sort of have a strange upset stomach thing going on. Since I haven’t eaten anything strange lately, I guess I’ll chalk it up to having eaten too much yogurt and soft foods since Wednesday and my stomach now having to adapt to eating pizza and other solid stuff. Just sort of odd, though. Not queasy enough to declare myself queasy, but just queasy enough to feel yucky.

The cats are completely out of their minds today. Ronin just wants to roam around the house seeking out and chewing on plastic. Myu just wants to sit in my lap, even if I am not sitting down. Tora is running around like a tiny wailing banshee. They just want attention, I’m sure, but I have been trying to get caught up on a few things –in addition to my usual Monday phone call marathon– and I don’t have time to sit and dote on spoiled cats right now.

In other news, there is no other news. I have to get back to the housework and phone calls. Break time is now officially over.

There was a time not all that long ago when most children in America were taught exclusively by their parents. I have relatives who went to school in one-room schoolhouses, and their parents were thankful their town was large enough to have a teacher. Sure, the internet and luxuries of the modern world make homeschooling easier and possibly better than it was in the past, but I’d wager that most people are woefully inadequate to the task of raising a child from birth to adulthood and giving them all the information they will need to survive in the modern world.

Lin and I once discussed whether we would homeschool or not –if we decided to have a child– and even with my liberal arts and sciences education and his mathematical, science, and engineering education, we didn’t feel up to the task. Things have changed so much during our lives that much of what we know is now virtually irrelevant or horribly incorrect. We both keep updating our knowledge-base and continually reeducate ourselves on our respective topics, but I guarantee you, there are things both of us learned in school that have changed and we likely don’t know about it. Then there’s the whole social education kids need to get that I have no idea how we’d have supplied. So even though I think Lin and I would have been great parents and taught our children a great many things, neither of us truly believed we could give our children everything they would get from a public education.

But I digress.

The point of this post is just to say go ahead and hate on the professors and educated folk. Toss them out on their ears. Booo to having a higher education! Hiss!!!

I would suggest before throwing yourself too whole hog into eschewing the educated and education that you do spend just a bit of time contemplating the path a country steps onto and perhaps reading up on what has happened when professors and the educated were held up as villains and shunned … if not run out of their country, imprisoned, or outright killed. You could start with Iran or Iraq.

It was a good game. By the end of it, we were actually being noisy in an out-loud sort of way with our cheering and booing –and the tossing of general insults and jeers. Neither of us is what I would call a true football fan, but we do enjoy a good personal rivalry. It was a good game. We enjoyed ourselves.

But I knew the Saints were going to win all along, because for everything to be right in my universe, the Saints had to win. New Orleans had to win, because New Orleans has been through so much crap. And, they did … because everything is right in my universe.^†

Anyway, maybe I missed all the really great commercials, but The Who really weren’t so great. I think it’s time to go get into the pajamas and prepare for sleep. Tomorrow is Monday, and we all know Monday’s suck, even worse than the Super Bowl commercials and The Who.

1. † Well, quasi-right. I still haven’t managed to bring the universe into complete alignment with my wishes. I’m working on it. Give me time.

Judson Phillips: We’ve heard of the Obama plan. What’s the Palin plan?

Sarah Palin: The Palin plan? It’s quite simple. And I kind of get a kick out of it, I think it probably drives some of the elitist crazy that I don’t get angry about it I get a kick out of it that when they say I am too simple minded and too plain spoken but my plan is quite simple and that is to support those who understand the foundation of our country. When it comes to the economy it is free market principles that reward hard work and personal responsibility and when it comes to national security as I ratchet down the message on national security, it’s easy to kinda sum it up by repeating Ronald Reagan when he talked about the cold war and we can apply this now to our war on terrorism you know bottom line we win they lose we do all that we can to win.

Yup, my paraphrasing wasn’t too far off the mark or much shorter than her own words. It’s just not much of a plan.

As far as the speech and the rest of the Q&A goes, I have read them, and I can’t even be bothered to rant about such fluffy talking-point nonsense. If you want to know what she said, Time has the highlights, and to be honest, these highlights are about as much meat as can be found on this bone.

Thanks goes to Ribbie’s Weblog for being the first place I found the bit I wanted.

The spot that used to be home to a cranky wisdom tooth is healing quite well. The gum is already starting to pull together, and it really doesn’t hurt at all anymore. My poor abused held-too-far-open-for-too-long jaw hinge? Not so wonderful. The muscles are really, really angry. Makes chewing and eating annoying, but it’s getting better too. In a couple more days I will be able to gnaw on whatever I want to gnaw on without experiencing any post-gnawing repercussions.

I’m just glad I got to eat something substantial today. My tummy is very happy. It finally feels full.

You know, people think because I am so skinny, I don’t eat much. Even people who have been around me when I am eating often fall prey to the illusion that I am a light eater. Nothing could be further from the truth. I eat as much as anyone. Sometime, I probably eat a lot more than other people. I just don’t eat much all at once. To go from eating one large meal a day (dinner) and many small meals throughout the day to not being able to chew anything and having to eat soft foods only, without having mentally prepared for it in advance, is a freaking nightmare for me. I have to have my crackers and cheese (or peanut butter), butter bread with smoked sausage slices, poached egg on toast, and fresh veggie sticks, or I am just not a happy camper. Yogurt, flan, smoothies, and ice cream are not adequate substitutes, no matter how closely the calorie count matches. And not nibbling while making dinner (for Lin only the last few days) sucks more than I can even express.

So yes, I am an eater. I enjoy eating. I am excessively bothered by limited food choices and lack of variety in flavor and texture. I like food. A lot. If I could gain weight, I’d weigh a thousand pounds.

But I got to eat today, and it was wonderful. I imagine tomorrow I will eat again, whether or not it ends in some jaw pain. Mmm … food.

(paraphrased slightly)
We’ve heard about the Obama Plan. What is the Sarah Palin Plan?

I insisted he switch back, because I really wanted to hear Sarah Palin explaining her plan for America.

This will be paraphrased until I get a transcript, but her response was almost as brief. I was expecting a five paragraph explanatory essay, and I got a paragraph.

Free market principles that reward hard work … rah rah rah sis boom bah!

[lengthy cheering]

On national security, we must do whatever it takes to win. We win! They lose! Ronald Reagan … rah rah rah sis boom bah!

[lengthy cheering]

And then they asked the next question.

Seriously. No plan, except free market principles are awesome, and we have to do whatever we must do to win, no matter what, ’cause that’s what Ronald Reagan said during the Cold War. It couldn’t have taken more than five minutes for her to state it, and some of that time was length cheering from the audience.

I’d rant, but I don’t want to harsh the smooth mellow mood I am enjoying at the moment, and I’d suppose I will have to read the entire transcript of her speech and Q&A. I don’t want to, but I feel compelled. At the least, it will be entertaining.

Therefore, to save my husband and all my friends having to hear me whine about how I am sick to death of eating mushy stuff and feeling pain, I will now begin drugging myself with the pain pills and drift through the weekend in a pleasant and pain-free fog. I hate to do that, because the pain doesn’t seem all that bad, but I’m tired of being cranky and grouchy and whiny. At least when I’m on the pills I’m smiling and happy, which means my household will be peaceful. I’m sure Lin is tired of the whining, and it is a little out of character for me, but argh … it’s just enough pain to be bothersome and impossible to just ignore.

So if I post anything this weekend, you have been warned, I may be loopy and nonsensical. Not that I am not like that anyway, but you know, the drugs do make me worse.

Also double plus uncool is the fact that now my neck and back are both feeling OK, and my body has realized it’s missing a tooth. Ow. Ow ow. Looks like I’m stuck eating mushy stuff again today. It feels stupid to take a pain pill, because it doesn’t hurt all THAT bad, but it hurts just enough to be a serious distraction and annoyance. All the same, I will probably be drugging myself soon. I don’t want to, but I’m not getting anything done anyway. Might as well sit around in a pain-free fog. But that itching feeling has started too, so it is beginning to heal. I’m sure it won’t be long before I’m all back to normal.

Mom went back to the dentist this morning to have her much more problematic tooth extraction site looked at, and she too is still on soft food, but it’s looking a lot better. She also made our next appointments for March 18. One of us at 2 pm and one of us at 3 pm. I think this might be the last one where I have anything done to my teeth, so then all I’ll need to do is go in for a nice cleaning at some later date. Yippee! Well, eventually we’ll need to talk about getting a bridge put in, but I’m going to take a bit of a break first. I’d like to pay down the bills a little, and I’d like to not be going to the dentist just for a little while. I’ve been going every month for about six months, and that is getting just a bit tedious. It’d be nice to go visit my mom and not have it include sitting in a dentist’s chair for an hour. I may like my dentist, but it’s never all that much fun.

In other news … um … there is no other news. I think I’ll go fix myself a pot of mashed potatoes and get some housework done, in case I end up taking a pain pill, after which nothing at all will get done but sleeping.

And the promised sunshine could start now, it would really improve my somewhat foul mood.

Or you could just not get re-elected, which would please me just fine.

Sincerely,
Someone Who Thinks You Need To Retire

Related Links:

McCain says Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is ’successful.’
McCain: ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Has ‘Been Working And I Think It’s Been Working Well’
Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Hearing — Mullen Strong on Repeal
‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ hearings

1. † And don’t even get me started on how well treating women like chattel worked for the majority and was also effective and successful. Really, don’t.

I’m going to make a stew tonight. If nothing else, I’ll be able to eat the soft veggies and broth … and maybe pull some of the meat into pieces that don’t require much in the way of chewing. I just can’t do the yogurt and smoothies anymore. It’s getting me down. I want to gnaw on something! The biggest problem though is that while yogurt and such will keep the body going, it doesn’t exactly provide all that much energy. I’ve been trying to do some housework, but even with all the sleep and yogurt, I feel totally wiped out. No energy at all. My goal at this point is to get the dishes done and the living room vacuumed and the stew made. Then I am calling it a day.

Tomorrow will be better! Tomorrow I will chew food!

When my alarm went off this morning, I laid in bed for a while and assessed how I was feeling. Top complaint was the throbbing pain in my neck and back. This was followed by noticing my jaw joints ache. Next on the list was the gnawing feeling of being excessively hungry. At the bottom of the list was the gaping hole where a tooth used to be, which really doesn’t bother me much more than the broken molar he fixed did before it was fixed. In other words, if it weren’t for my neck and back, I’d be feeling quite fit today.

I’m glad I took that Vicodin when I got home last night, because I was such a bundle of pain I couldn’t tell what hurt and what didn’t. I fell asleep about 60 seconds after I hit the post button on last night’s blog update. I don’t know if I’d have been able to fall asleep without the Vicodin. I was just aching all over. I might skip the pain pills today, but if I end up taking one it will be for the pain in my muscles and jaw and not for the removed tooth. The tooth extraction is barely bothering me at all, aside from the fact I’m not supposed to eat any solid and chewable food until tonight or maybe tomorrow.

I can eat a ton of yogurt –I’ve almost finished off a huge tub this morning already– and never feel less hungry. It’s killing me that there is still leftover pizza in the fridge, and I can’t have any! I think feeling hungry will end up being my biggest complaint today.

My neck and back will probably take a week to get sorted out. First there was a really long drive in hard rain, then an hour and a half with my neck cocked at an unnatural angle while the dentist did his thing, and then another long drive home in the dark and rain. My neck muscles were all kinds of stressed all day yesterday, and they are definitely letting me know it this morning. I couldn’t even do my morning yoga it hurt so badly. Yeah, that sucks.

And you notice me mentioning an hour and a half in the dentist’s chair? Yeah. It was a loooooong appointment. The first 30 minutes was getting the shots, waiting for them to make my mouth numb, and then rebuilding that broken molar. The other hour was the poor dentist trying to get my wisdom tooth out. He had a few problems, most notably that my tooth did not want to come out. He ended up having to cut it into three pieces –one piece for each root– and even then, he had a real time of it getting the pieces to come out. We were both pretty frustrated and grumpy by the time it was over. Almost a shame that tooth had to come out, seeing as it was so solid, but that was one of the ones causing my jaw alignment problems, so it had to go.

I was commended again for being an awesomely wonderful patient. Some of you know I suffer from a horrible phobia of dentists and dental work, mostly because I have had a lot of dental problems in my life and been to some really awful dentists. I think now I can say I have conquered that phobia. All it took was finding the right dentist, one who cares about me as a person and gives a damn if I am uncomfortable or feeling pain. Finally found that dentist, and now I just put my faith in him, sit in the chair, open my mouth and close my eyes, and ignore whatever it is he is doing. In fact, I am so good at zoning out while he’s working, he pokes me every once in a while to make sure I’m OK.

And they all talk about how much I smile while I am there. Well, I’m a pretty happy person anyway, and I smile a lot, often for no reason at all, but mostly, I have a lot to smile about when I go see this dentist. First off, he and his staff are wonderful, warm, and charming people. I enjoy seeing them and hearing what they have been up to lately. Then there’s the fact that I know they only have my best interests at heart and not their clinic’s bank balance. The most important reason for me being happy to be there though is that every appointment brings me one step closer to an end to all my dental problems. It gets better all the time, and I am probably only one appointment away from being able to just go in for cleanings and regular checkups once or twice a year … like a normal person. What’s not to smile about?

I am so eager for my next appointment. Mom needs to have another wisdom tooth pulled, and she insists I be there with her this time, so my next appointment will have to wait until she gets over this last tooth extraction (she’s had some problems with this one), so it may be next month before I get to go back. I’d go back next week if not for that. All the worst is in the past now, and I’ve gotten through it all. What’s left is nothing major, and I want it done now! I’ve never been known for my patience, especially not when a goal has almost been reached.

About my mom: well, she didn’t follow the dentist’s instructions at all, and she’s sort of brought herself a world of hurt because of that. She has another appointment on Friday so the dentist can check on it, and she’s not allowed to eat anything at all solid until then. I feel badly for her, but she did bring it on herself. You have to follow the instructions for aftercare or things can go south quickly. She’s not all that bad off though, and I’m sure by next week she’ll be right as rain again.

Now I am going to go shovel some more yogurt down my throat, because I am still super hungry. Then I think I’ll take a nap. My neck and back are burning painful, and I think being horizontal and relaxed would do it some good. It’s going to be another gray and nasty day anyway, so I might as well just kick back and chill. The only thing I really need to do today is the dishes, and it won’t be the end of the world if they don’t get done, so I’m going to spend some time recuperating from the stressful driving and having my neck twisted for an hour and a half while in the dentist chair yesterday. I have to say, it feels pretty good that these are my major complaints this morning, because I expected my mouth to be causing me the problems, and it’s barely being a problem at all.

And as soon as I am able to stuff real food in my mouth again, I will be one totally happy camper. I do love the yogurt, but as a dessert not a meal … and most certainly not as the only thing I get to eat all day! I want to chew something!

I hate my dentist. OK, I don’t hate my dentist, I still love him, but … I think he was sneaky today. He asked what I wanted to have done today, and I told him whatever he wanted to do, since he’s the professional. We decided we’d only rebuild the one molar and leave the wisdom tooth extraction until next time. Once he’d gotten the molar drilled out and ready for filling, he suddenly decided the wisdom tooth needed to go today too. I think it was his plan all along! Sneaky!

Anyway, I’ll tell you about it tomorrow. Unlike my mother, I was more than willing to pop a Vicodin as soon as I was in my own house … not even so much for the now-missing tooth but for my neck and jaw, which actually hurts worse. The pain pill is kicking in pretty strongly now, so I think I’ll have a fruit smoothie and go lay on the couch like a lump.

The coolest thing of all? Three years of terrible dental work in now almost over. In fact, the worst of it all is now done. What’s left to do is a few piddly little things like replacing amalgam fillings with white resin ones, and two tiny cavities. So YIPPEE! I made it through it all! Finally almost done! I was starting to think there would never be an end to it.

No idea if I’ll be spending the night or not, because I have no idea if the dentist is going to want to remove that wisdom tooth that needs to go. Other people probably hate it if they don’t know exactly what a doctor or dentist is going to put them through at their next appointment, but I find myself liking it myself. If I don’t know, I can’t have panic attacks about it. It’s helped my dentist phobia quite a lot, though I think having a dentist I like and trust is what has really helped with that problem. Still just wish he didn’t live 80 miles away.

Lin was a total saint yesterday and on his way back home from Del Rio, he stopped by to check on mom and take her some soft foods to eat. I didn’t even ask him to do that. He came up with the idea on his own. What a wonderful husband! She was thrilled to be checked on and happy to have some tasty things she could eat, and I knew someone I trusted had seen her with his own eyes and could verify she was doing OK. And she is doing OK, in fact, this morning she was sounding quite chipper. It looks like her tooth extraction crisis has passed. Yeah!

The rain seems to be letting up finally, so I better finish getting my stuff together and get ready to go. My appointment is a little after 1 pm, and I don’t want to pull into town and immediately have to go there. I’d like to eat something first, because it’s entirely possible my wisdom tooth will be on the chopping block today. I sort of hope not, but whatever he wants to do in my mouth, he’s free to do it. I want all of this dental stuff to be over with ASAP.

See you when it’s over!

But my reasons for being fatigued –other than helping my mother cope with the aftermath of a tooth extraction– are good ones. I did some writing today, worked on some music, and did a couple of sketches for the first planned paintings of 2010. My muse is apparently back in full force, and I have missed her for YEARS. Feels great to be fully creative again after such a long dry spell, even though the end result of such a day is the aforementioned fatigue. It’s a good fatigue. Mostly.

And as usually happens when I am enjoying a creative spike, there has been much self-reflection and a few personal epiphanies. My midlife crisis seems to be entering full-swing, and while it still very much feels like being a teenager all over again, I can see myself standing in the light at the end of the tunnel, and I like what I see.

With that said, I do believe I owe vast swaths of humanity — as well as a few personal friends– an apology for thinking of them as weenies about something I am not a weenie about. I have come to realize that I am one tough bird. My ability to deal with things such as pain, injury, illness, crisis or whatnot is not the norm, and I have probably been far too hard and judgmental of people who don’t handle those kinds of things as well as I do. They are the norm, and I am the outlier on the far end of the bell curve. I am a small yappy terrier with an intense desire to get past problems as quickly as possible and get back to doing the things I want to do, because I do not have enough hours in the day to sit around dealing with problems endlessly or whining about how woeful I am. I’m sorry. I will do my best to cut some people some slack in the future.

Which doesn’t mean I won’t still roll my eyes and think someone is being a weenie if they go on and on whining and crying about a problem instead of just getting past it and pressing onward. There are some weenies out there, you know, and yes, they do need to just get over it already. Sorry, but it’s true.

And now I am going to order a delivery pizza, since Lin is still making his way across this huge state of ours and won’t be home until late, and then I think I will practice some more piano. Or maybe I’ll just go to bed. I really am beat, and tomorrow afternoon a dentist will be doing something in my mouth, and none of it is likely to be at all pleasant. I should probably be well-rested for the event so I can continue to be a tough bird and get back to usual daily life as quickly as possible.