Regina Noctis

Some friend of Mom’s sent her an invite to Gmail. Then she got invites and sent one to me. Now I have six invites to send out. Does anyone want a gmail account?

The motto of the Knights of the Garter was Honi soit qui mal y pense. “Evil to him who evil thinks.”

One day a number of years ago, my mother made a horrible pun at me (an affliction that I learned from her, by the way, so anyone who’s tired of my puns can blame her.) In response, I told her, “Honi soit qui mal y puns.” Evil to him who evil puns, of course.

She’s never forgotten this. And then she became a member of MonkeyFilter and used it in one of the comments. She always thought it was immensely clever (no accounting for taste, I suppose) and was happy to have a chance to use it. At first, she was disappointed when no one seemed to even notice, much less comment on it.

It seems to have developed a life of its own there, however. A little while after she used it, variations started appearing. She told me about this, since it was before I joined MonkeyFilter. That had died down by the time I joined, so I never saw it or its variations in use. But that changed tonight. I was greatly amused to see a variation involving cows on the site. And it was thrown out there by the guy whose picture I used to create the James Bond graphic I was rambling about a little while ago. Seems fair, somehow.

Unfortunately, I don’t speak enough French to understand the entire variation. I’ve only got a few words, after all. Understanding “cow” in it was easy. Written, it’s close enough to the spelling of the Spanish word for cow for me to understand that much. Besides, it’s in a thread about a Flash animation featuring a cow. Doesn’t take brilliance to work out that much of the variation.

For the rest, though, I think I’ll have to check Babelfish or something. Tomorrow, after I get home from school. It’s very late for someone who’s got to get ready for a morning class. I should attempt sleep. I just wish I were actually tired.

I could really go for a batch of ’s tookies right now. The ones with both chocolate and peanut butter chips.

Someone wanna pack her in a box and ship her down here?

Went to sleep Thursday with everything working fine.

Woke up Friday morning with no connection on any of the three computers.

Fooled around for the day on Friday trying to figure out what the issue was this time.

Gave up and called tech support at 8:30 this morning. Got bounced to a different tech support. Lost connection since the only way I can be at the computer and the cable modem is while using my cell phone, and the cell decided it was cranky today. Called back and sat through the waiting period again. Did troubleshooting with the tech, discovered it was nothing that she could fix. Got given yet another number to call in order to get connectivity back.

Called for next bout of tech support. Sat through long wait again, finally worked my way up to a level 3 tech, and got the problem fixed. Or so I thought.

Plugged the cable modem back into the router, once verifying that the cable modem was now operational. Plugged router into the computer. No connection on either of my two computers.

While cursing my way through resetting and reconfiguring the wifi router for the third time since we got the damn thing, Mom knocks on the door and announces that connectivity is back. I tell her she’s about to lose it again since I don’t have connection on either of my computers and I’m in the middle of reconfiguring.

Get the thing reconfigured. Both my computers have connection. Mom’s doesn’t.

Reconfigure Mom’s computer Gorgar and reboot it. No connection.

Growl at Gorgar. Reboot again. Connection.

I wonder how long it’ll last this time.

And, since I had no connection yesterday, happy belated birthday to . Hope you had a wonderful day yesterday, sis. Love ya lots.

Metal Goddess Belly Dancers. I watched a couple of their clips. They do some traditional stuff, but they also dance to Metallica, Dio,  and Megadeth, among others. Rather different, seeing belly dance done to metal.

I can’t believe I just spent over $700 in about twenty minutes. Most of it on supplies for one class.

At least the biggest expense… the camera and lens… is something I can continue using for some time to come.

Two birthdays today. and , happiest of birthdays today!

Only three people can see this post, since only three people might care one way or the other.

I clicked over to my user info to do some editing today, and discovered a new person that has listed me as a friend in the “friend of” column. is here. Yeah, that Sibylla. I assume that folks would rather not that she know Tantalus and Rhesa are also on LJ, so expect me to be very careful about mentioning any of the three of you were involved in AS or PH.

I suppose I shouldn’t have used my LJ pseudonym for a character name on PH, but too late now. I’ve been tracked down. Teach me to be dumb in the future, won’t it?

Or not.

Live and don’t learn, that’s me. :D

I had a dream last night. It involved traveling somewhere (don’t recall where, but it was going to be a long flight, I do remember that) with a friend that has always been just a friend. I’ve never felt any attraction there (though several of my friends think this friend of mine is quite hot, from what they’ve said to me.) However, this dream, while not quite into X or NC-17 ratings, was skating right along the boundary between those and R ratings.

Since this friend is practically like a younger sibling, I felt a might bit weirded out when I woke up.

I got all my classes. Even the ones I was waitlisted for.

In my previous college experience, if anyone was anything other than first or second on the waitlist, it was pretty unlikely to get into the class from the list on the first day. With persistence, it was possible to get in later sometimes, as people decided to drop. But very rare to get into classes if not in the first couple slots on the list.

I wasn’t first one either of the waitlists I was on. Yet comparitively (compared, that is, to my previous experience) large numbers of people didn’t bother to show on the first day. Or couldn’t be bothered to show up on time, so lost out to someone who was on the waitlist. I found myself wondering if this was because of a different location (though I’ve been to two different colleges, at opposite ends of the country, and the experience of being waitlisted was the same) or if there’s been some kind of change in the diligence of the generation entering college for the first time. Or some of both. Not a moment of wondering that’s likely to be answered. At least, not by me.

Ah well. At least it worked in my favor.

And now, I sleep. I’ve been up since 8 this morning on three hours of sleep. The massive amount of iced mocha I drank to counteract the exhaustion is finally wearing off. And I have to get up early tomorrow, even though I have no classes until Wednesday. Have to run back to Bakersfield to pick up the supplies I need for photography and get my books. I have six chaptes and a software tour to read by Wednesday morning.

I’ve got to be up early to get ready and then head to Bakersfield for the first day of the semester. I have two classes I’m waitlisted for and need to try to add. The first starts at 11 in the morning. And if I get into all the classes I’m waitlisted for, it’s going to be a long day. The last class ends at 9 at night.

My sleep disorders have been acting up for a few days now. After the last bout of oral surgery, all my energy seemed to be going toward healing, and I was falling asleep by eight or nine at night, and waking up around five or six in the morning. Once I was past that healing stage, however, the sleep disorders reasserted themselves and I am now falling asleep around four or five in the morning and waking up around one in the afternoon. In other words, back to the usual.

This afternoon, realizing that I might have problems getting to sleep tonight, and not wanting to oversleep and miss the first day of the first class, I went in to talk to my mom. There’s the possibility I will sleep through the alarm, or turn it off without entirely waking up and then fall completely back to sleep. I wanted to tell her that I was worried about this, and to ask her to make sure I was up in plenty of time to get ready and drive to Bakersfield.

I only got as far as telling her that I was worried about this. She turned to me with her pissed off look – the one that makes her eyes change color from green to yellow (and that is incredibly spooky, let me tell you.) She started going off on me about how I’m just making excuses to avoid going and that I’d “better fucking get your ass to Bakersfield.” I never got the chance to ask for the help, not then. She just kept yelling at me, insulting me, and telling me that my worrying about such a trivial problem minimizes her and everything she went through when she was trying to raise me, attend school full time, and work full time. If I tried to say anything, it just got worse. I finally couldn’t take it anymore and went out to my room in order to cool off. I had reached the point where I knew I was going to be screaming mad, and my reaction to being irrationally angry is always to go away until I cool off, and then come back to talk about it rationally once I’m over it.

She wouldn’t allow me that. She followed me to my room and kept on going. Eventually I gave up trying to get her to hear me and just sat unmoving while she ranted and yelled. I’ve always needed a safe retreat when I’m deeply upset, and she had invaded it and made it unsafe. She’s not the only one who’s done that. It seems like many of my friends are also incapable of letting me go away and cool off in something that feels like a safe haven. They follow me and keep right on going. This feels like a violation every time, and it did today too. It’s something that always seems to put me into a near panic. I’m unable to even come close to thinking rationally once this happens, and anything hurtful that is said or done is magnified greatly. I either wind up crying, or sitting there completely immobile while trying to control the reaction.

Unfortunately, my face when relaxed settles into a look that most people interpret as insultingly sullen and angry. I usually make a conscious effort to have what feels to me like a very slight smile in order to look what other people consider normal. But when I’m trying to control my reactions, all my focus is turned toward what’s going on inside, and my face relaxes into that sullen look. That’s what happened this afternoon, and it set Mom off even worse. She finally stormed out of here with some parting shots that were intended to hurt as much as possible as punishment for looking at her as if I “don’t think she has a right to say anything to me.” That’s how she has always interpreted it when my face is relaxed. Been that way all my life.

While she was in here, she’d had me backed into a corner… literally. Even if I’d had someplace else to go that felt like a safe haven to try and get away from it and calm down, I was trapped. And felt trapped, like an animal in a cage. Once she was gone, I couldn’t control the reaction anymore and started just sobbing. All the other stress that has been going on and building up inside me aided my breakdown, and I wound up sitting on the floor crying for about two hours. I couldn’t stop. I tried, and I might succeed for a few minutes, and then it would start up all over again.

After that, I was emotionally drained and just wanted to sleep. However, John decided to take the only remaining thing that my grandmother has from her father, a chest that he built for her, and attempt to destroy it. The ensuing yelling match between him and my mother took place just outside my door, and woke me up when I was almost asleep. This was followed by an announcement from him that he was getting out of here. He was going to go move to Salinas because of all the “evil” here. Like this was somehow punishing us by taking his shining company from us. He got in my grandmother’s van and took off. And he took with him the only key to the Pontiac that he normally drives. The Pontiac was parked behind my car, blocking it in. Grandma wouldn’t let Mom call the cops to report that he’d stolen the van, and done it in such a way as to leave us without a vehicle that we could use. Mom came out here to tell me this as I was starting to wind down enough to sleep again. Once again, I was too angry and upset about something to be able to sleep. Not that sleep mattered at that point anyway. If the Pontiac was blocking in my car, John had the only key to it, and he’d taken off in the van, there was no way I was going to be able to get to Bakersfield anyway.

John did eventually come back, and Grandma got out of bed and forced him to move the Pontiac out from behind my car. He put the van there instead, but we can work around that. Mom has keys to the van.

However, even though I’m still feeling absolutely drained and exhausted, this has been an immensely upsetting day. I try to sleep, and can’t. I did finally start to drift off about an hour ago, and my cat pushed the door open (it makes a godawful screeching noise when it’s opened) and that woke me up. This is the third time tonight that the cat has pushed the door open. Every time, I’ve picked him up and put him in the house so he can’t keep me up. And then John promptly goes and lets him out so he will wake me up.

It’s now something around five hours until my alarm goes off. I’ve been attempting to sleep since around 8 in the evening. I’m miserable exhausted, so much so that I’m dizzy. And if I don’t drive to Bakersfield tomorrow in spite of the exhaustion, it will be at least a week of days like today has been. Which is not going to help me sleep any more than today did. Stress-related insomnia. You’d think that my mother would understand that things like today only make it less likely that I’ll be able to sleep. She’s been living with my inability to sleep most of my life. But that doesn’t seem to stop it.

I’m so tired. I wish my brain would just shut up so I could sleep.

Life with my psychotic cousin has been hell lately. He lost his wallet, the keys, and the computer chip to the Pontiac, first of all. He drove out into the country, got out of the car, took out the chip, and while he was out of the car, lost all three. He won’t say what he was doing out in the middle of nowhere, though I have my suspicions. Where better to buy his drug of choice than a country road with no one anywhere around? For days on end, he wouldn’t tell us where the car was. Finally, we got it out of him, and had the car towed. Grandma wound up having to pay someone to rewire the car so it would start without the chip.

Since his license was in his wallet, my grandmother told him that she didn’t want him driving around in the van until he got it replaced. He drank most of a liter bottle of gin, told her to go fuck herself, and drove off in the van anyway. It came back with some interesting minor dings and paint scrapings to go along with the bullet holes. It when on like that for a time, before he went and got his license replaced.

Then he had a $200 cell phone bill, which he was unable to pay. He insists on using his phone anywhere and anytime he feels like it, and then he’s shocked when he gets these huge bills. on top of that, he got his eldest daughter a cell phone and told her to feel free to use it anywhere and anytime she feels like it. Between the two of them, the bills are insane. And rather than make him face the consequences of his own actions, my grandmother has paid off these cell bills.

A few days after that last cell bill came in, he wandered off to see if he could get a different contract. While he was there, he bought a new phone. Not an inexpensive one. Slightly more than the cell bill he claimed he couldn’t pay. He came back and waved the phone in everyone’s faces, announcing that it was the size of his nutsack, and then doing a series of deep knee bends to show how macho it made him feel. And then, when all was said and done, he decided he didn’t want and/or couldn’t afford the price of the services that would activate all the bells and whistles that went along with his new phone. So it does exactly what the old one did, and that’s all.

Next, he quit his job. It wasn’t an impressive job. He was just a delivery driver for Domino’s pizza. But it got him out of here every day and gave us all a respite from his insanity. And it meant that he had some money coming in. It at least paid some of his bills. Now he has no income, by choice, and Grandma is footing his outrageous bills completely. He’s using his cell more than ever, and telling her that paying it will be her responsibility. And I know that she’ll do it.

Then he decided it was time to get even with me for helping to lock him out of the house when he was putting Whiskers out in the midst of asthma attacks. He waited until he was going to be out of the house overnight, and locked the one door that is normally left open at night so he and I can get into the house. Since my grandmother still refuses to get the bathroom attached to my bedroom fixed, I was stuck without. I was in considerable pain by the morning.

He ripped out my grandmother’s roses and painted parts of her yellow house white. Like, the right front half, and about a fifth of the left wall, toward the back. All exterior walls, by the way. He had painted silver one section of the black fence around the pool, and now has painted the top half of that back to black. He also painted parts of his room black. He threw away some of grandma’s books, and some of mine. We managed to rescue one of my books, but that was it. The rest of the ones he tossed were destroyed.

The bowls we feed the cats in have been disappearing. Yesterday, we finally found out where they’ve been going. John was opening up the crawl space under the house and throwing dirty cat bowls there. We’ve now got a huge ant infestation because of this. We only discovered where the cat bowls were going because he decided to clean detritus out from the crawl space entrance, and left it all piled on the concrete. I saw a good ten or twelve bowls mixed in with the leaves and dust. We rescued the ones that he hadn’t destroyed before putting under the house. When we told my grandmother that we’d found the cat bowls, and where they were, she tried to claim that she had no idea how the could possibly have gotten under there, but she doubted that John put them there. We pointed out that she hadn’t done it, I hadn’t done it, Mom hadn’t done it. That left only one other person who lives here. Grandma tried to claim that one of the cats must be picking the bowls up with his mouth, taking it outside, and putting it under the house. She completely ignored the fact that one of us would have seen a cat carrying a bowl when we let the cat out. She also ignored that the grating in front of the crawl space is too heavy for the cats to move.

He’s taking the glasses in the house and throwing them into the flowerbeds. We have about five spoons remaining in the house out of I don’t know how many, because he throws them away. He took the raw meat that my mother was going to cook for dinner tonight, 6 chicken breasts, and made it vanish. We don’t know if he threw it out somewhere or gave it away. And then he went and gloated at my mother that there was nothing for dinner.

Before he moved in here, he lived in the house of which he’s part owner, the other owners being his ex-wife and kids. During one of his particularly crazy phases, he destroyed the place. He ripped out all the kitchen appliances and cabinets and threw them in the yard, and then started breaking holes in all the walls. By the time my mother and grandmother saw the damage, you could see straight through from one end of the house to the other. He ripped out wiring and plumbing. He wrecked random patches of the floor. The house was completely unliveable, which is why my grandmother moved him in here.

Over the last couple of days, he has begun to work in earnest on destroying this house. He has been down in the basement, mostly messing with that end of the crawl space. He started by pulling out nails on the posts that support the floor above the basement and the crawl space. Today, he was trying to pull the posts out. He was also ripping out the screens that cover most of the crawl space access there.

Tonight, I heard strange noises outside my room. I went out to discover that he has ripped out one of the spigots for hoses that scatter the yard. He has planted it upright in the flowerbed in front of his room, run wires through it, and attached a light bulb. It’s immediately below the light that hangs on the wall next to his bedroom door, essentially redundant as well as stupid.

He is hearing voices in his head again. He claims that it’s Jesus telling him to “fix the house,” telling him to threaten my mother because she is evil and possessed of satan, and on and on.

He also has, in the last couple of days, decided that he’s seeing “code words” everywhere. An example of a code word would be on the battery pack he was waving around. They were size C2 batteries. He decided that C2 is a code word. That all of this is some kind of message from people who are out to get him. His paranoia is increasing every day. It’s a part of what started his so-called home improvement on the basement. He decided that he wanted to make it his bedroom, so he was going to fix it up and make it someplace he could live in. Why? Because he feels safer there. When the people who are out to get him come here, he’ll be harder to find.

Grandma has been saying nearly every day that John is driving her absolutely crazy. She has begun talking about running away from home. She flatly refuses to take the logical step to end the insanity and kick him out. I made the mistake of suggesting that as the only real way to live a calm life around here, and she ripped me apart for saying something like that about her precious grandson.

My mother had enough of all of this, and locked John out of the house tonight. She didn’t warn me that she was going to do so, which means I’m locked out of the house also. I discovered this a short time ago, just before I started writing this. I’m geting dehydrated and hungry, so I was going in to get a glass of water and a snack. No dice. I’m also very arthritic and in a fair degree of pain because of it, and the medication I take for the bad arthritis days is also in the house. I do have a variety of painkiller out here, but it’s one that gives me horrendous cramps if I don’t take it with food. And, of course, that’s in the house. I wouldn’t mind going to the bathroom either. None of this will be possible, however, for a minimum of five hours, and that’s if Mom gets up at six. She usually does, but sometimes she sleeps in.

I used to get around the lack of water out here by keeping a pitcher of it in my room. But my darling grandmother took it away from me. She didn’t need the pitcher for anything. I just wasn’t allowed to use it anymore.

I suppose that if I get desperate enough for water, I can put on some shoes and go trecking out into the back yard and try to find a hose spigot without any light. Not a fun proprosition, since Delano doesn’t have the kind of city-glow that someplace like the Bay Area does. It’s dark out in that yard, and I don’t look forward to stumbling through the flower beds, tripping over things, until I find a spigot. But I may have to. I’m dehydrated enough as it is that my throat has gone sore. Waking someone up isn’t really an option. My grandmother’s not completely deaf, but she’s close enough for jazz. And my mother can sleep through pretty much anything. The only thing I’ve seen wake her up before she’s ready to wake up was a vacuum cleaner being turned on about two feet from her bed.

Meantime, John’s paranoia is making me paranoid. The crazier he gets, the more difficulty I have relaxing my guard enough to get some sleep. He has already declared that this house is too full of evil… and he meant me at the time he said it. The evil he was referring to is that I have no qualms about calling the cops when he does something that merits it. He has made noises about how “evil” is trying to get him and stop him from living his life. So I keep expecting an attack on either Mom or me, since we are the evil he is talking about. I figure that with his insanity and mounting paranoia, it’s only a matter of time.

Damn, I’m thirsty.

*sigh* Pitch-black back yard, here I come…

I just found out. The first season of “The Goodies” is out on DVD.

Want!

OMG they are so hilarious. I know most folks in the US haven’t heard of the Goodies before, but they are worth searching out, believe me!

There is a now-infamous (at least among MoFites) thread on MonkeyFilter started by a troll calling herself Daisy_May. Inspired by some comments I saw there, I doctored a graphic (something I haven’t done since I lost my job at FirstAm) and posted it there. I found it amusing, but wasn’t sure how everyone else would take it.

This is the graphic, if anyone wants to see. It will be less funny for anyone who bothers reading this journal of mine, since I don’t think that anyone here reads MonkeyFilter. Or if they do, I don’t know that they go digging through the deleted posts to read the (last I checked) 737 comment-long thread.

The comment that inspired the graphic was one in which the three people who called Daisy_May on her trollish behaviour were jokingly elected the MoFi bouncers. There had been some other comments about Photoshopping images in that same thread. The two rather melded, and the idea was born to create a Charlie’s Angels doctored graphic using the heads of the three bouncers involved (all male, btw.)

However, I could only find one headshot that was large enough to be of use in the thread where folks were posting pics of themselves. One of our bouncers had posted both a normal picture of himself, and the one I used, which he referred to as his professional picture. So I found an alternative that would only need one person.

Today, one of the other “bouncers” saw the graphic I made and posted, and sent me a picture of himself, in case I can manage to get a pick of the third gentleman and actually create the Charlie’s Angels graphic I originally pictured. Along with praise of my effort. And he posted on the thread that I am a goddess. Picture and the email and thread praise were completely unexpected. But it really made my day.

In case I don’t hear from bouncer number three. I should try and come up with something to do with this pic. He was kind enough to send it to me. I should immortalize (or destroy, depending on your point of view about my doctored graphics) it somehow.

I moved to New Jersey on my 22nd birthday. I was, unsurprisingly, less than pleased about moving on that day of all days.

We landed in Philadelphia, rented a car, and began the drive up to Clinton, where we’d be living. Since we had nowhere we had to be at a set time, we opted to take the scenic route there. We saw Princeton, and miles of countryside. I had once pictured that the east coast had to be almost wall-to-wall concrete. After all, what you see in movies and television shows is cities. Newark and Trenton were the only parts of New Jersey I’d ever seen before I went there. It left an impression of cement, brick, and run-down abandoned steel mills. This was, after all, also a part of what’s become known as the Rust Belt. I couldn’t begin to imagine why the place might deserve the state nickname of the Garden State.

But then I was there, and ridiing down routes with trees so thick, it was like driving through an endless green tunnel. Wildflowers were everywhere, blooming exuberantly since they’d gotten a boost of minerals left behind after the winter snows had melted. I learned, over my years there, that the wildflowers bloomed in sequence. For a couple weeks, everything would be shades of pink. Then there would be purple, then blue. Yellow would take over, and then white flowers. Some early or late from the next or previous wave would be scattered through, but for the most part, the wildflowers were very well-behaved, and waited their turn.

As the sun was setting that first day in New Jersey, the two of us were getting increasingly hungry. It had been a long day spent in airports and on planes. The only food had been the airline meal we’d gotten in transit, and it was neither filling nor terribly edible. Since we were on the east coast, we made the decision to stop at the first diner we came across. Diners like you find in the east are not to be found on the left coast. Denny’s and such like have nothing in common with true east coast diners, but those are the closest that we have in California. And that’s a crying shame, as I found out that night.

We wound up stopping at the Highland Diner, the first one we spotted once we decided it was time to eat. The look of the place itself, inside and out both, was nothing particularly amazing. It wasn’t good or bad. It was pretty much just there. But diners aren’t about the ambience anyway.

The menu in that diner, and as I came to find out, every diner, was huge. I didn’t see how it could possibly be economical to have all of that available 24 hours a day. But the diners, one and all, did it.

It has long been acknowledged in my family that I have a talent for picking the best-tasting thing on the menu when I wander into a new place. No matter what anyone else gets, they almost invariably want whatever I ordered. That night was no exception. I decided to try something I’d never even heard of before, something called Chicken Francaise.

Then it came, and it was heaven. Wine, lemon, garlic, chicken, and linguine in just the right proportions. And enough of it to feed two of me.

I ordered Chicken Francaise almost every chance I got after that. If it was on a diner’s menu, I was having it. While all of it was good, it was never as good as that first time.

Since moving back to California, I’ve tried periodically to find a recipe for Chicken Francaise. I’ve tried various ones, and none were up to par of that first time. I finally got fed up with that. I had formed some opinions on how they had achieved the flavor and texture I remembered so well, and decided to wing it. What I came up with did get the texture, but the flavor was different from the Highland Diner’s Francaise.

It was even better.

I’m very happy.

, Man of At Least a Dozen Voices, has a birthday today.

Also one of the finest writers it’s been my privilege to know.

Happiest of birthdays today, Commander.

*hugs*

On the community blog I belong to, MonkeyFilter, everyone is pissed as hell at the ruling of the California Supreme Court. There’s a thread that, last I checked, had hit 106 comments and was still climbing. Among the various comments, I found one in particular that called an image to mind that rather amused me. Would that it could be done, and have legal standing…

Someone should sue the state of California and demand that they reimburse everyone who spent money on wedding gifts that are no longer valid.

Yeah.

I react pretty strongly to antihistimines or prescription pain medications. At best, I very nearly reach the point of being a drooling idiot under the influence of them, if I force myself to stay awake. More often than not, I’m asleep within 45 minutes of taking them.

Thirty minutes ago, I took one Tylenol three. The codeine is making its presence known now. Drooling idiocy is not far off. Or else sleep.

DAMN it’s hard to type coherently. I’ve had an easier time typing when drunk.

But at least I’m enjoying my drooling idiocy. :D

Tired tired tired.

Bed. Yeah.

Over $300 and a mouthfull of gauze and novocaine later, the other three teeth have been removed and I’m home. I can’t talk much right now, since I have to bite down on the gauze to keep the bleeding under control. I can kind of talk around it, but two of the extractions were far enough back in my mouth that when I do talk, I choke on the gauze after about three words and start gagging.

The extractions didn’t go quite as smoothly this time as when I had the last three extracted. One of the three that went this time was the one I’d had the root canal done on a few years ago, that never was crowned. It and I parted companies some time ago, and it was at the gumline that the thing broke. Dr. Cho had to partially retract the gum on one side in order to get a grip on it with the pliers (they may not actually be called that. I have no idea what dental instrument names are. But they sure as hell look like pliers.) I did my best to ignore it all and just concentrated on watching the TV. Law and Order was on, after all. And I haven’t had much opportunity to watch the show at night. Since Grandma injured her back falling down the stairs, she’s discovered that she’s more comfortable sleeping while sitting upright in a chair in the living room than sleeping in her bed. Unfortunately, the extractions were relatively quick work, so I didn’t get to watch the whole thing. I tuned in after the beginning, and left before the end. So, less than an hour all told to get numb, have two X-rays done, and have three teeth removed.

Just two fillings and a cleaning to go now. The next appointment is the day after the semester starts at Bakersfield College. Fortunately, I have no classes that day. I managed to arrange my schedule so everything is on Monday and Wednesday, and my next appointment is on a Tuesday.

I really like having four consecutive days off. One of the joys of a college schedule, of course. If you work at it, you can usually manage more than a two-day weekend every week. Yay for four-day weekends!

I think she’d be a good companion for the Little Goth Girl.

Making Fiends, making fiends,
Vendetta’s always making fiends
Making fiends
While Charlotte makes friends…