The stories will get better eventually.. I promise.

It's been kinda a long time since I blogged.. I'm sorry for all you fans *snort* out there. I've been suffering with the reality of 4 bones being removed from my body. Friday, as you can tell from my last blog, was great.. I felt super. Saturday, I was mostly tired... Sunday I felt like something the cat dragged in. It was Monday morning when I figured out that Vicadin makes me physically ill, so I quit using that. I'm such a wimp. There really weren't any benefits in taking them either.. I mean.. where are the pink elephants? Blue, at least, come on!
So, I've been slowly starting to feel human again. Yesterday, I was feeling really eager to do something fun.. take Audrey to the park or whatever.. and then I got a migraine.. grrrrreeeaaat. Ben happened to get back from school right after I took some excedrin and he ushered me off to bed. So, he got to take Audrey to the park while I laid in bed trying hopelessly to go to sleep.
If you don't have migraines.. here is the brief description of what happens to me. First I get blind spots.. they aren't black spots.. just blank.. nothing.. It took me a few mintues to realize that I was trying to read out of the corners of my eyes because of that. Then, when that went away, I got little rainbow squigglies swimming around in my vision. And, no.. the fact that they are pretty is no consolation. While I was lying down, the right side of my face and my right hand went numb.. oooooo.. tingly. And I felt like I was rocking in a perfectly still bed.. bleah. Once that went away.. the dull throb started. Of course, that was with the medication already in effect, so I shudder to think what the headache would have been like if I hadn't caught it in time. At that point, Ben came home and put Audrey to bed. I just had to get up, so we watched the season finale of Lost. I had my head in his lap because I was still dizzy.
Nice day huh? It's not over yet. I had my follow up dentist appointment to make sure the holes in my head were closing up okay. The nice nurse took a funny little syringe thing (no needle, hooray) and flushed out my sockets with some sort of non-sweet flouride/rubbing alcohol concoction.. she said it was an antibiotic.. riiiiiight. Here's the gross part. The last of my stitches came out with the flushing.. ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. Then she told me to use the little syringe thing for cleaning after meals. Woo..... hoo....
I will say one thing.. I had a fantastic dinner last night. I made my first roast, ever. Eating meat is so great after a week... :)

Blood... Yum.

I had my butcher-shop.. er.. dental appointment yesterday. We dropped Audrey off at the Morrisson's house. Audrey apparently waved and then didn't look back twice. Didn't have to wait long to go back and sit in the chair. I don't know why everyone at these sorts of appointments ask "Are you ready?" I want to scream, "Of course I'm not ready you maniacs, I want to run out of this place screaming and hide under a rock somewhere!" They put a nice blanket over my body and then one over my head (it was a little chilly) and then the oral surgeon came in and asked, "So, are you ready?".... sigh...
I should have warned him that my veins have a tendancy to roll in my right arm. He was poking my arm all over the place to get the IV in before he decided to put it in my hand instead. In the mean time, my eyes are leaking and the nurse wants to know if I'm okay. Woohoo. I was already exhausted because I hadn't slept that well, but Ben swears I was still awake when they put some sort of foam thing in my mouth to keep it open. I don't remember that part at all. All I remember was feeling that cold IV liquid (saliene?) going up my arm and the doctor prattling on about some dental experience of his.
I woke up shaking which freaked me out and I started crying again.. now, I don't make noise when I cry. My eyes just leak everywhere and my face turns red. Ben was already in there, but he said that I was awake when they let him back in.
At any rate, we left with 3 prescriptions and instructions not to eat anything but very soft food or liquids (hooray for the mountains of jello I made.) They wheelchaired me out to the van and then Ben wheelchaired me around Costco while we waited for my drugs to get filled. Amoxicillin, Ibuprophen and Vicadin (eat your heart out Gregory House). Hey, let me know if I start acting sarcastic and surley.. uhh.. wait.. too late. Ben took me home and then left briefly to get Audrey.
Audrey went down for a nap and Ben and I watched Lost for the next 3 hours. I changed my gauze a couple of times.. yum. I took some drugs.. oooo.. pink elephants...
Then, we went out with some friends and I had a nice strawberry milkshake and mashed potatoes.. Audrey and Ben pigged out on Chicken strips and Hamburgers. I'll never have that excuse again. I am feeling amazingly well for having just gone through crap and an emotional meltdown.
Today has been better, though the pain is still a bit obnoxious. No bruising and only a little swelling. I took the first nap I've had since just after Audrey was born. Ben's mom is taking us to Bucca de Bepo tonight for dinner.. looks like mashed potatoes for me again.
We didn't make it to the Lavender Festival... we were sleeping.. so I'll have to find a way to get that lavender wreath done for the front door.
I've eaten about 4 boxes worth of Jello, maybe more and I've had more drugs in the past 24 hours than I've had in about 6 months. I think I may have swallowed enough blood to impress most vampires and laughed at things that weren't funny... at all. I still feel a bit wobbly now and then, but thank heaven for knock-out drugs. I didn't want to be awake for the yanking.. drilling.. shudder.. the nightmare.

Someone is making money and it's not me.

I keep promising myself that I will post something on my blog at least twice a week... How awful that I can't even keep promises to myself...
So, I went to the oral surgeon last week expecting to get one or possibly two of my wisdom teeth yanked out. I must say, at least their office didn't smell like disinfectant and fear. The first thing they did, once I did the obligatory wait time in a nearly empty office, was put me into a room to x-ray me. The first thing they asked was "Are you pregnant?"... "Uhhh.. noooo.." "Okay, stand right here and bite down on this. The machine is going to move around your head so DON'T MOVE." (weeee.) Really, the machine was cool but I thought it gave off a peculiar air of smugness.
Then we went into another room and waited to look at the scan of my skull.. really, it wasn't just one of those little slides with a black and white shot of your teeth.. it was a black and white scan of (at least) the bottom half of my skull... I think I might get brain cancer... As it turns out, I have the broken tooth (duh) and two other wisdom teeth have caveties.. stupid weak tooth enamel. So, they said that it would be a good idea to get out all 4 wisdom teeth and just get it over with. I agree.. but I also have major trust issues with dentists.. And they also told me that if I wanted to get Nitrous Oxide, I'd have to come back later... So, on July 11, I go to the gas chamber and come out with 4 less bones in my body... I hope it will make me happy.

But, I know it won't.

The Good, The Fun and the Horrible, Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day....

Today is Ben and my ninth anniversary... it really is a wonder that it seems to go by so fast and yet filled with so much. It's also a wonder that I'm not a million years old with all the road (virtual & real) that I've walked. I gave Ben his anniversary gifts this morning: a hand-held Tetris game (which he positively beamed over as it's really the only video game that he likes and promptly forgot that I had another gift) and a peridot tie tack. Peridot is his birthstone and, strangely enough, no one has ever given him one. The other interesting thing about the tie tack is that it has one of those chains attached to it so you can fix it to your shirt (presumably so your tie doesn't go flying around). He said that he'd never had a tie tack with one of those either... so, it's a first for a lot of things today... He then put on a small frown and said, "Think about what you want so we can get it today.." He has been agonizing about my gift for weeks and I have been (as usual) completely blank on gifts for myself. I'm also promising myself that I WON'T get another video game... THERE IS A NEW WILL WRIGHT GAME COMING OUT TODAY CALLED SPORE!! AGGGHHH! Ugh.. I'm so disgusting.. I can't help my addiction to Simulation/Creation games.... Oh crap, I just looked up the Spore website and now I REALLY WANT that game.. there goes another year of my life... sigh..

I'm the Senior Activity Days Leader for my ward. Senior only because my partner has been doing it for 5 months instead of 1 1/2 years. Activity Days is a program for girls 8 to 11 years old. They come to the church twice a month and we have some sort of activity that encourages talents, living the gospel and serving others. I was really, honestly afraid the first time I got up in front of those girls and tried out one of my little ideas on them. Now, my fear has slowly become a calm panic that builds the 2 days before each activity and crests just as I'm getting into the Primary Room. After that, I'm typically okay.
The reason I bring this up is that we had an Activity Days yesterday and I am just sooooo proud of myself... well, as proud as someone as unpretentious as I can be. Two weeks ago I assigned the girls to research a famous artist and bring a short report on them. They were not pleased. School just got out and here I was assigning them homework! I laughed a little on the inside..
Starting on Monday (I think.. it's been a positive blur) I realized that there would be girls that showed up that didn't have anything to report. These girls can be a bit forgetful and their mothers end up finding out about assignments the day after they were due...
So, I started looking up pictures and biographies on all the artists I'd assigned so that I would have something for everyone to report. It took forever and I soon discovered that biographies are varied and prone to the biographers personal impressions and not just fact. The pictures were a challenge as well as most of them were about the size of postage stamps online and tended to pixelate when enlarged. By Wednesday morning, I was in a positive meltdown and frantically trying to get everything together before my early afternoon dental appointment where I was sure they were going to rip out two of my teeth. I had everything done before Audrey went down for her first nap... siiiiiiigggggghhhhhh....

Speaking of which, I've had a broken tooth for 4 1/2 years... bottom right wisdom tooth. I broke it while eating mashed potatoes on my lunch break at Walgreens.. I was on the phone with Ben and promptly burst into tears when I realized that part of my tooth was missing and that I had EATEN it... I was very good and went to a dentist as soon as I could. Unfortunately, the dentist balked when I informed him that I was on some herbal remedies: Kelp and St. John's Wort. He said that one of them was a blood thinnner and he was concerned that I wouldn't clot if he pulled out the tooth... so, he wanted me back in a few weeks.. we ended up moving in the interim.
So, 4 1/2 years later, pain brought me to a new dentist who asked me a battery of questions, looked at the tooth, was amazed at my capacity for pain and promptly gave me a referal to an oral surgeon... He also gave me an Rx for antibiotics because he said the hole in my face was infected.. surprise, surprise...
I now get to wait a week for the horror.. the smell.. the sounds.. the panic attack of another dentists office..