Dark Side of the Moon

When I came back from Richmond, I was developing a sore back molar that got worse over the weekend (naturally).  So on Monday, I called the dentist office and on Tuesday I saw the dentist and he said the tooth had split and it ought to come out.  Do it now, or wait? Now, said I, and he did.  And he asked what painkilers I'd been taking and I said I had some leftover meds from knee pain, and so he didn't give me a prescription for more, or any prescription for anything else, just some gauze and a sheet of "what to do now."   I went to work and read the sheet and it said "do this" and "do that" and "keep taking the antibiotics" and I said, er, huh?  I called the dentist office and said "antibiotics?" and they said "let us check" and then they said "oh that sheet is for general dental surgery, just do the gauze and the rinsing and whatever else he told you."   The sheet says "Instructions Following Your Tooth Extraction."  Hmmm.   But I did the gauze and the rinsing and took more pain meds when I needed to sleep.   And the space kept hurting and it started to get worse, and frankly it didn't look so great either.  So today I called and said "it's nearly the weekend, can someone look at it before then?" and they gave me an appointment with another dentist.   He looked at the space.  He said, "well, yes, there is a little swelling..."  in the tone of voice that really says "uhoh" especially with only about 2 seconds of observation.  He went off to check on something, or talk to someone.  He came back.  He said, "I've called the pharmacy downstairs. Take two of the antibiotics right away and one at dinner and one at bedtime, then three times a day."   He also gave me prescriptions for large-dose ibuprofen for daytime and a different pain med for nighttime.  Also instructions for additional salt-water rinsing and for hot moist compresses.  Also instructions on how to contact the dentist-on-call if things got worse over the weekend, and "please do call if needed!" 

I support doctors who try not to use antibiotics as an automatic response to anything and everything.  Drug-resistance in disease-causing organisms is a big, big problem.   But in this case, 'twas not so good, and now we play catchup.
 

I've had other stuff on my mind than LJ.  But catching up from when I last posted...

( ~ nine days of updates in one easy package ~ )

And that's what's been happening.
  
 

Words given to me by 

peregrinning:

 

Cups
The suit in the Tarot deck springs to mind faster than "being in one's...".  Cups are what turned into Hearts, so they're Love (in all its aspects, familial as well as romantic), and by extension, emotions and feelings rather than the intellectual processes. Which ties back to "being in one's..." where "in vino veritas" has nothing to do with scientific truths.  Generosity is in there, too, to fill one's glass, or another's, to overflowing.

Song
"The singer is not the song." But if you could become one... not easy, not likely.  It's interesting to realize that I'd respond differently to "Music" rather than "Song".  Music is on the outside. Song is what resonates on the inside and while you're singing you're inside it, too. "To lift up the voice in song."  And with the lifted voice the rest is lifted up as well.

Gift
The unasked for, the unexpected. (I'm sorry, but to pick something off of a person's Amazon "wish list" is very nice but it's to give them a present, not a gift.)  And when someone has a special talent for something, "a gift", it's called that because it's unexpected, inexplicable, and not just what comes from dedicated practice, even if that, too, reaches the same level or even higher. A gift is wonderful, but it's not everything.

Vintage
Of wine, of clothing, of jewelry, that which somehow develops added value and garners greater appreciation as it ages. Yes, I know that's not the most exact definition: it really means to be of a particular year.  Or, just old.  But going by -my- definition, I hope to be considered "vintage" someday. :-)

Network
Computer geek, it's connections of signals.  Of wires. Of people. Of rope, of thread. Of... well obviously of anything. The connections that allow a joining from here to there, no matter how indirectly, along paths that all have similar nature. Wired or wireless, the internet is a network, but if you need to send a paper letter to someone to tell them about the latest YouTube sensation, that's outside the network.  Similarly, the relative to whom I only send a Christmas card once a year is outside my network of friends, even if more closely connected by blood.

(Ask me for words if you like.)
 

So it turns out we're not going to be at Buttery Birthday, because the plans for my daughter's massage class went all screwy and we've decided it's best to stay home and catch our breaths.   But I did finally make pound cake with the double-yolk eggs (not so good: I worried about it being just too dense and added baking powder, and it ended up too fluffy) and chocolate cloud cookies (sorry,nineweaving, no preview, but I'll hope that extra cookies at Readercon would stll be acceptable; also, it's been a terrible week to try meringues) and started a new batch of cordial (of blood orange peel and lemon peel in brandy) and I'm currently simmering the apple chutney (thank gods, now those apples are out of the fridge and there's ROOM!).   Maybe some clay play later.  Or tomorrow, before the next life drawing class.
  

So far, it looks like this:

IMs: AIM (often), MSN (rarely)

Blogs: LJ (often), Dreamwidth (single post), Blogger/Blogspot (single post), WordPress (single post)

Other: deviantArt (often), Photobucket (on & off), Twitter (profile only), MySpace (profile only), Facebook (profile only), Etsy (shop still not open), two personally owned websites: chansonarts.com (slowly constructing something someday worthwhile) and dragonbear.com (SCA related and must update sometime)

This doesn't even count places where I'm a member for casual posts, such as Yahoo groups or gaming sites.  If I wanted to have all these active, I'd need 1000 hours a week to do it!   But, they exist and so I seem to think I should be there.  I post, I have a profile, therefore I am. 
  

So the other night I needed to stay late at work and I was bored and I had my camera and I took pictures of myself. I hate pictures of myself. If I'm caught off-guard I looked stressed and tired, and if I'm ready for it then I look strained and fake. So, a caveat: the picture is really me, nothing done to it, no Photoshop, as usual no makeup even, just that I had to go through about two to three dozen shots to get one looking this good.  But I can look this way, sometimes, hey.

me, these days
  

Friday meme time, and I haven't yet done the classic...

( ~ 25 random things about me ~ )

The questions aquarian_azalea picked hit some things that meant a lot to me, that needed long anwers... and I think I've been honest.

( ~ six questions, six answers ~ )
  

It didn't really hurt that much.  It hurt a little more than the epilator I've been using.  It hurt about the same as a too-long-delayed tooth-cleaning but not nearly as much as when they slip with the pick and jab your gum.  The noise was not nearly as bad as a dentist's drill.  The feeling was so different from a doctor's shot that I can't judge which would count as worse: the vibration made it feel like a dozen small needles going in very shallowly instead of one long needle poking deep.  It was over in about 15 minutes and it didn't/doesn't hurt afterward.

( ~ tattoo (yes, really) ~ )
   
  

Because someone noted that their subjects were more indicative of the year than their first lines for the first post from each month, I've included both. 

( ~ 2008 ~ )

And that was 2008.  More about writing and less about cooking than I would have thought, and not nearly enough about art.   Since I'm intending to keep the monthly card readings going, the same sort of listing for 2009 should be even less useful in summarizing what my journal is all about.
  

I'll looking forward to goose for Christmas, for a festive holiday meal, and 'twill also give leftover pieces and scraps and fat to freeze for cassoulet later in the winter.

No rubber duckies, but I've added a skull to my wish list. We've sketched them twice in art class, and both times I've been too far away to see all the details. I want my own. Well, not -my- own, but... you know.

The community college has a student art show each term. It's not a big deal, just cases on the walls along a classroom corridor and mostly just as examples of what each class covers, but our "Drawing I" teacher asked for submissions from us. Probably not many people submitted works, but both of the ones I offered her got accepted into the show, the tagine and the trees, and there was only one other from our course. So I can claim my work has been exhibited, I guess, in a pad-the-resume sense. Like, implants -and- a push-up bra sort of padding.
  

Art class homework was to make a small work in pastels.  I wanted to work on color shading, so picked some simple shapes with good colors: a yellow rubber duckie and blue towel on the rim of the cream-colored tub.  As I worked on it, I found myself thinking "This is really cute, my mom would like this, I might give it to her for Christmas."

And then I found myself thinking "Dear gods, please, please PLEASE make my kids never view me as the sort of mother you give things to just because they're 'cute'!"   No pictures of rubber duckies, no happy singing flowers, no pink-nosed flopeared bunnies, no big-eyed puppy dogs (well, unless Keeshonden, and that's only a maybe).   You can't get past this when they're little, because there's too much push from schools and other conventional sources to give Mom something "nice".  But they should know me better now. :-)
  

Another meme.

Take a picture of yourself right now.

• don't change your clothes, don't fix your hair...just take a picture.
• post that picture with NO editing.
• post these instructions with your picture.

(1) Yes, I'm late on this meme. My computers have no cameras. My digital camera isn't working well. My film camera needed new batteries. Therefore, this waited till the film camera got its batteries -and- I saw someone post the tag again. And I had to wait to get them developed.
(2) I can't show just one pic. I hate pictures of me. This way at least you get a range of how bad they can be.  I did include all five, though.
(3) Besides, it was very late at night, after the NHSO concert, at my motel room and right next to the fan (yes, my hair really is going straight up in that first pic) and the button on my camera doesn't work well when holding it at that angle and the red-eye reduction flashes a zillion times so you're never sure when it's -really- taking the pic. So, feh, sue me. 
(4) Also, I usually wear glasses. But not while reading and not at the computer. So, hah! You'll still never recognize me! :-)
  

I have a problem with repetitious negative thought patterns.  "Maybe I should, shouldn't, should  have, shouldn't have" being the mildest sort of cycle. 

So I've decided to try using a mantra.  If I'm going to get caught up in repetition, let it be something positive, or aim towards a positive goal,  instead of letting me wallow in the same old crap (ewwww!).

I try to be respectful of other traditions so, yes, I did some research on mantras and japa mala and the Hindu and Buddhist traditions involving them.  I am not treating it as a magic spell or a deistic transaction: do this and get this result.   I am not pretending that one set of chants or one cycle of days is going to solve my problems or make me enlightened.  I am choosing one of the simpler ones, the ones recommended for beginners, and I have tried to learn the correct pronunciation and meaning of the words and syllables.   (For pronunciation, some sites have phonetic spellings, a couple have audio clips, there are some chants on YouTube, and there are collections available on Amazon in full album or individual mp3 downloads.)

If it helps in any spiritual fashion, I will be grateful (but probably skeptical).  If it works to retrain my brain so that my mind falls into the mantra instead of "why didn't I, why can't I" then that's quite good enough.
  

Yanked from rufinia:

Can you describe me in one word? Try and then post this in your own LJ for some descriptors of your own.

I'm now registered for Drawing I at Middlesex Community College, which will be the first art (not crafts) class since high school.

I've also picked up Epoisses cheese, goat's milk, catfish, and the ingredients for bagna cauda and currywurst.  :-)
  

I have a new favorite candy: Starbucks Chai Truffles.  Incredibly creamy milk chocolate (and usually I favor dark chocolate) around a center flavored with Tazo Chai black tea.   It is sooooo yum!   And the way the chai spices linger, I can be satisfied with just one.  Uh... for a while. :-)