In case you are the only person who reads this, and you read about how I was going to get surgery on my jaw, and you've been checking on a daily basis to see how that went, the answer is that it went great. I had my surgery on February 18th and everything went "by the book" or so my surgeons told me. I had a completely painless (though tedious) recovery, during which i could only eat foods I didn't need to chew. Culinary creativity saved me from a total food meltdown, and this was good.

Why am I bored today, having not been bored enough to write for half a year, you ask? It all started a few months (was it a full year?) ago when my brother-in-law and his long-time girlfriend decided to get married. Because it's what brother's do, he asked my husband to be his best man.

My husband decided that the bachelor party would be on the Saturday before the wedding, July 2nd. We had these plans to drive down to Madison, WI (where the wedding will be) on that Saturday morning, bringing our dog with us and spend a full week with the family prior to the wedding, and then return the following Sunday. This plan was flawless. Everything was under control and the only things we had to worry about were how to clothe ourselves, who would feed the cats, and what to get as a gift.

Three weeks ago, disaster struck. Okay, it wasn't really a disaster, it was just a huge inconvenience. Husband was informed that if Ludo (the dog) came with us, he would have to stay in a kennel all week. Also, instead of sleeping in the usual basement room, we would either be sleeping in a camper that no one had seen, or at his grandpa's house.

I should back up a second here, and mention that I'm more than a little neurotic, and I value sleep slightly higher than life itself. I would rather not eat than sleep somewhere unpleasant. The normal sleeping arrangements at the in-laws are far from ideal, as they have this unusually sized bed, called a twin-and-a-half, which just was not meant to sleep two people, especially two adult people. Since we're usually only in town for three or four days, I just sort of cope with it and end the trip incredibly sleep deprived and crabby. Maybe no one has noticed that. I hope not. Now, the idea of sleeping in a camper that has the potential to be anything from super awesome to mouse-infested and moldy was enough to make me panic. I would rather try really hard to sleep in my car than sleep in a place with mold and mice. Also, spiders. I would rather stay awake than sleep with spiders. With that in mind, I decided we needed a contingency plan, like a hotel, where I would not lay awake all night panicking about spiders, mice, mold, using a stranger's bathroom in the middle of the night, how to roll over without waking up my husband, or anything else that weaseled its way into my exhausted brain.

I was planning to look for a hotel, but I was simultaneously crippled with the sudden task of finding some way to keep the dog cared for without driving him 250 miles and then abandoning him in a kennel for a week. As it happens, I'm loathe to do that anyway, but having to drive back home with him completely hyper after being penned up for a week would probably be enough to make me leave him in Madison. Avoiding 5 hours of a frantic 80 lb dog lunging at passing vehicles and trying to climb into the front seat while dripping spit everywhere is pretty motivating.

My thought process was that a hotel is at least $60/night and a local pet boarder is at least $35/day. We'd be looking at almost $1000 in lodging alone. That's more than a mortgage payment for us. It had to be the last possible option. With that in mind, I called some friends, and found out that one of them could watch him... after the 4th. Since we had to leave by 9 am on the 2nd, that wasn't really going to work. I was trying to come up with some elaborate plan where my parents could watch Ludo for two days, and then pass him off to my friend, and then she could watch the dog and the cats. Simultaneously, I was trying to find someone with no life who could come feed the cats over the holiday. It turns out most people I know are not willing to give up a holiday weekend to feed someone's pets. Strange.

I continued to agonize about this while other things started to pile up. I started prodding Husband with things like "Have you ordered shoes yet? Are you going to get a wedding present? Do you even own brown pants? What tie are you supposed to wear? Why are you more worried about these things?!" and he would just say "I'll take care of it. Say, when we're down there, do you want to go to Noah's Ark?" I tend to focus on problems until they are resolved, with no expectation whatsoever that things will magically resolve themselves, and I certainly don't think about recreation when I'm considering how to best prepare to sleep in the wilderness after being driven out of a camper by small animals in the night. Husband's lack of concern merely instilled more concern in me. I felt more or less abandoned to handle all of these things on my own. "Worrying won't help," he said, but what I felt was "if you don't worry, we will end up at homeless drug addicts."

About a week ago we were told that we could sleep in this vacant rental property for the week, so the lodging problem, at least, was resolved. I did ask if the house might smell like mold and be full of mice, but I think Husband was getting pretty tired of my nonsense by this point.

We borrowed an airbed from some friends on Friday, and Husband finally bought a wedding present on Thursday. If the house smelled bad, we'd just keep all of our clothes somewhere else.

Since no magic solution for dog care did present itself, I decided to stay home until tomorrow, and drive down separately. That way, if the camper was, in fact, unlivable, I could just buy a tent and we could live in the yard, or maybe rent a hotel and only spend $300 on lodging. I also felt that since Husband is totally unconcerned with sleeping in a mold-infested rat's nest, he could sleep in that or on a couch or in his car until then.

It seemed like everything was sorted out, until I realized that I'll probably still be sleep deprived by next Sunday, and I will not want to make the five hour drive back by myself. Since my overall level of anxiety regarding this trip is still unnecessarily high, I focused on that until I began seeking alternate methods to get down there, so I can ride back with Husband. I looked at plane tickets and found them too expensive ($400+ for a direct flight, $200 for a layover flight that takes as long as the drive). I briefly toyed with the idea of taking the bus, but it takes greyhound almost an hour longer than a regular drive, and they have weird luggage restrictions. Then, I remembered the Megabus! It turns out that they only charge $37 to get from here to there, and as long as there is room for more luggage, they'll take whatever you've got.

I got myself a red-eye ticket and my friend who will be caring for the pets from Tuesday night on will drop me off. Now I just have to figure out how to get all my clothes and other items into one bag, in case the trip fills up somehow. I think I'll be safe.

So that's the story of why I'm home alone and therefore bored out of my mind, and felt the need to write this all down for no one to read.

Cheers! ]]> http://www.rancid-tea.com/viewpost/579.html http://www.rancid-tea.com/viewpost/579.html#response Sun, 21 Jun 2009 13:06:42 CST admin animals http://www.rancid-tea.com/viewpost/579.html#response

I mentioned to my mother how it seemed like those were the only birds we got in the cities. I never saw cardinals, bluejays, chickadees, or nuthatches. She suggested I get a sunflower seed feeder, and said it would attract more birds. Since my parents have several feeders out year round, and plenty of birds to go with, I asked if they had any that they didn't use on account of squirrels and they gave me one that had been sitting out in the garage. We hung it up in our back yard and filled it with sunflower seeds and waited.

It has been two weeks, and now we have a variety of birds I didn't see before. Purple finches, way more gold finches, cardinals, and a mourning dove have all become frequent visitors.

With this success, I'm tempted to get a suet feeder, and make some vegan suet, as well as a humming bird feeder, and possibly a mixed seed feeder. I would also like to get a bird bath and see if that attracts even more birds. ]]> http://www.rancid-tea.com/viewpost/578.html http://www.rancid-tea.com/viewpost/578.html#response Sat, 23 May 2009 11:20:17 CST admin Jaw Realignment Surgery http://www.rancid-tea.com/viewpost/578.html#response

In more severe cases, if your jaws are very different lengths, the surgeon may have to adjust both the upper and lower jaws, requiring the jaws to be wired shut, post op. If your jaws are canted, front to back, or side to side, a wedge of bone is permanently removed during the surgery, and again the jaws must be wired shut. Both of these operations are somewhat riskier than the basic operation I require, and can have a longer healing time.

Upon receiving my request for pre-approval, my insurance company refused the claim because my "malocclusion could be treated non-surgically." Which prompted me to call them, and ask "what if I already had orthodontics for this and it didn't fix it?" After a lot of back and forth between my new doctors and orhtodontist, my old orthodontist, and my health insurance company, they decided that it is, in fact, covered.

I have scheduled preliminary appointments with the new orthodontist but at the moment I don't have an appointment to get braces on yet. The earliest that could happen is in a few weeks.

I had my consultation with an oral surgeon yesterday afternoon (during snowmageddon) and had some x-rays taken. I'm hoping to get digital copies that I can post. The surgeon said I had a pretty simple case, and he thought I would have good results, so I scheduled a consult with an orthodontist to get the first physical step underway: braces. Ugh.

I'm definitely excited at the prospect of being able to chew things like rice and pasta for the first time since I was a child. I will try to keep this process updated. ]]> http://www.rancid-tea.com/viewpost/576.html http://www.rancid-tea.com/viewpost/576.html#response Tue, 27 Jan 2009 08:16:14 CST admin personal http://www.rancid-tea.com/viewpost/576.html#response http://www.rancid-tea.com/viewpost/575.html http://www.rancid-tea.com/viewpost/575.html#response Fri, 16 Jan 2009 08:28:42 CST admin music work http://www.rancid-tea.com/viewpost/575.html#response

That said, I haven't had a ton of sleep in the last two weeks. I was *almost* caught up on Monday, after getting in some 30 hours of shut-eye over the weekend, but then immediately dove headlong into the week. My body finally gave out on me on Wednesday, and I started getting a cold. The project ramped down around the same time, so I'm back to working shorter shifts (especially since I had over 30 hours in for the week by the end of Wednesday).

Last night, in spite of the fact that I could have used the sleep, I went to the 331 Club to watch my co-worker's roommate play a set. I really enjoyed the music and had a really good time. It was a sort of spur of the moment decision, and my lack of sleep probably played into why I agreed to go, but it was nice to get past the moment of social awkwardness ("is she just inviting me to be nice??') and go. If you're into folk music at all, or just need something really relaxing to listen to, check out Brianna Lane. ]]> http://www.rancid-tea.com/viewpost/574.html http://www.rancid-tea.com/viewpost/574.html#response Sat, 13 Dec 2008 17:59:33 CST admin cats http://www.rancid-tea.com/viewpost/574.html#response

Abe

Ethan and I decided that we could squeeze one more animal into our home, so we adopted Abe, formerly Annie. So far he has mostly lived in the basement, with brief excursions upstairs to see our other cats, who have done remarkably well with this. There has been some hissing, but mostly just frightened regard from across the room. I'm hopeful that with several more 'visits' upstairs, Abe can be a permanent upstairs family member soon, and we can stop calling him 'basement cat.' ]]> http://www.rancid-tea.com/viewpost/573.html http://www.rancid-tea.com/viewpost/573.html#response Mon, 17 Nov 2008 21:04:42 CST admin personal http://www.rancid-tea.com/viewpost/573.html#response

Tonight it finally gave up the ghost, when I ripped the circuit boards right off of the charger, leaving two sad little wire stumps... Moral of this story: don't rip your stuff apart by making the same mistake over and over again.

Seeing as I can't handle sitting through a single commercial break while also dealing with traffic, and my car has what we will call 'reduced radio capacity' I've already ordered a new broadcaster / charger which has a cradle for my MP3 player and hopefully will not get yanked on over and over again. Hopefully. ]]> http://www.rancid-tea.com/viewpost/572.html http://www.rancid-tea.com/viewpost/572.html#response Sun, 16 Nov 2008 11:39:25 CST admin food recipes http://www.rancid-tea.com/viewpost/572.html#response Moroccan Stew with Quinoa at epicurious [...]]]> Moroccan Stew with Quinoa at epicurious ]]> http://www.rancid-tea.com/viewpost/571.html http://www.rancid-tea.com/viewpost/571.html#response Sun, 26 Oct 2008 13:53:28 CST admin health personal http://www.rancid-tea.com/viewpost/571.html#response

Yesterday Ethan and I were out shopping for some suits (cause hey, suit + guy = very nice) and we spotted a Best Buy. We stopped in just to see (this has become a habit for us lately) and lo and behold they had both a small pile of Wii consoles and just a few Wii Fits. Woo hoo!

My arms were already sore from Wii Boxing with Westy on Friday, and now my legs are super sore from... lunges, running, attempting to ski, and several other activities. It is uber fun. If you have a Wii (if not, you should get one) and you can find a copy of Wii Fit, it's totally worth it. If I get good at the strength exercises, I might even invest in some ankle and wrist weights. ]]>