Annabelle Speaks

A Cure For My Cranky: Meet Oliver

I don't know about you, but I find kids to be a great cure for a cranky day.  Meet Oliver, our friends' 5-month-old.  Have you ever seen a baby with better eyebrows?  HONESTLY.

Who wants their teeth done by the Marquis de Sade?

Despite the fact that I have the world's nicest and most gentle dentist, the first thing on my mind as my biannual cleaning approached was that dentist song from Little Shop of Horrors.  If the sound of dental instruments makes your skin crawl (as it does mine), might I suggest you don't Google that song and watch it on YouTube to refresh your memory of it?  That is a memory that need not be refreshed.  Trust me.  See?

GAH!  Sorry about that.  I couldn't help myself.

My dentist is nothing like that.  When I first went to see her last October (after a seven year break of no dentist appointments at all, such is my fear of dentists), she wasn't at all judgy or lecturey (those are totally words, shut up).  Hell, she all but followed me home she was so in love with me and my teeth and how awesome they were.

This time started out just as smooth.  I remembered to take a good dose of Xanax before the cleaning so as not to scar the poor dental hygienist with the non-stop full-body clenching that was the highlight of my last cleaning.  (THE SCRAPING NOISE.  I cannot deal with the scraping noise.)

But towards the end, it went a bit downhill.  I mentioned that I had been having a bit more sensitivity in one tooth than normal - mostly to cold, but also to pressure/chewing.  The pain-level I was describing wasn't concerning them, but they did a few cursory tests like blowing cool air on one tooth at a time, and when they hit the sensitive one I all but FLEW out of the chair.  The dentist and hygienist both disagreed with my assessment of "sensitivity" and put that right in the "pain" camp.  And that was "a lot more than a four on the pain scale of 1 to 10".  Who knew?  Anyway, after some x-rays and a few other tests it seems I have a fractured tooth.  Delightful.

Oddly, the level-one fix for this is not to do anything to the fractured tooth at all, but to grind down the opposing tooth so that it doesn't put pressure on the fractured one when I chew.  My question: don't I need the pointy bits on that opposing tooth?  Aren't those important?  It would seem not, as she sanded off what felt like half the tooth.  I go back in a week for a reevaluation to see if we need to do the level-two fix, which would be a crown on the tooth.  Just what I need - more dentist appointments.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go look at lolcats or something to get the images from the Little Shop of Horrors dentist out of my head.  Gah.

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P.S. Anyone who lives in Chicago and is looking for a dentist, Dr. Lani Basco is made of all awesome things.  Seriously.

Banana Accessories (Not A Euphemism, I Swear)

I love Unclutterer for many reasons, but their Unitasker Wednesday feature is very near the top of the list.  There are some damn strange unitasker products out there.  A recent favorite was the Microwave French-Fry Maker because SERIOUSLY?  Who has that kind of space?  Craziness.

While neither of the unitasker items I found at my grocery store take up much space, they do raise the question, "Who thinks bananas are a complicated enough food to require multiple unitasker gadgets?"

Once upon a time, our hero, Mr. Unitasker Lover, was slaving over a hot stove room-temperature counter-top.  Whole SECONDS passed him by as he sliced up a banana for his morning cereal.  How much nicer my life would be if I didn't have to painstakingly slice off individual bites of banana!  It would save so much time if I could do this all at once!

SOLUTION:

Our hero's banana-slicing problems a thing of the past, he found himself with a new problem: what if he only needed half of the banana?  Would the other half go to waste?  OH THE HORROR!!  Clearly multi-use food storage options were inferior.  Foil?  Tupperware?  Plastic wrap?  NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

SOLUTION:

And Mr. Unitasker Lover and his banana appliances lived happily ever after.

Skype This: My Parents Weigh In On SYTYCD

Since my parents discovered the wonders of Skype, my computer has been ringing off the hook.  Er, off the desk?  Whatever.  They call a lot.  And they entertain me.

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Mom:    Who's your favorite on So You Think You Can Dance?  I really liked that salsa dancer they got rid of a couple weeks ago, too.  I think that was a mistake.

Dad:    Did the salsa dancer dance with the Tostito dancer?

Me:    *eye-roll*

Dad:    I heard it was a match made in heaven.  Or Mexico.  Or Mexican heaven.

Me:    I like Alex the best, hands down.  I loved the hip-hop dance he did last week.

Mom:    Me, too!  I've always loved Snitch.

Me:    You mean Twitch?

Dad:    At least she didn't call him Switch.  Or Schnits.  Or Snatch.

Me:    Dad!

Dad:    What?

Bush Fantasy: FULFILLED

*tap tap tap* Is this thing on?

The thing about skipping a day or a week or two weeks of posting is that it starts to feel like I'll never in a million years catch up to everything I want to write about here, so why bother, you know?

Since I last posted I've been to Vegas, spent a night in the emergency room with a delightful case of kidney stones, gone to my family reunion in Wisconsin, visited my in-laws for a weekend, taken the final exam in my spring night class and the midterm exam in my summer night class. Who has time to post with all that going on?  So I'm going with a sort of highlight reel.

VEGAS

Previously the furthest west I had been was Mt Rushmore in South Dakota.  Flying over the desert I and the majority of the other passengers were all but glued to the windows watching the mountains passing below with a level of concentration normally reserved for brain surgery or celebrity gossip magazines.  T, ever the observant one:  "Only midwesterners.  OMG SAND!  LOOK GUYS!  SAND AND ROCK!  Woah.  Cool."

GRAND CANYON

We also took a day-trip to the Grand Canyon while we were out west.  It was beautiful and breathtaking and blah-blah-blah you-know-this-and-can-see-it-anywhere.  We did the skywalk(loud music on that site), which was a neat experience, mostly because it came with the built-in entertainment of some really awesome people watching.  While I thought it was all beautiful and super-cool, I had exactly zero of the stomach-turning nerves that so many other people experienced, even when T and I leaned back over the railing just because we could.

(Note: Yes, there is totally glass behind us.  Whatever - we were still totally brave.)

In other mother-heart-attack-inducing-news, there were no railings keeping people like me away from the edge of the canyon.  So I was able to do stupid things like this.

WAX MUSEUMS ARE SUPER COOL

We spent part of an afternoon at Madame Tussuad's, which is noteworthy only because I got to fulfill a very specific fantasy.

FINALLY, INDEPENDENCE DAY

After the craziness of the last few weeks, I've spent the majority of the holiday weekend relaxing by myself.  T is in North Carolina helping her friend Marie pack for her upcoming move to Wisconsin, I don't have any tests or assignments due in my night class, and I finally have time for picture sorting and laundry washing and food cooking and book reading and highly important napping.  Now I'm all caught up again, and HOPEFULLY I can stay that way for at least a week or two.

So, what's new with you?