Category: Daily Life

This afternoon I got a henna tattoo on my hand. Thinking ahead to tonight's gig with my band, I asked her to draw a skull with something swirly around it:

A little girl saw it and said it was scary, but to be fair, I don't know for sure whether she meant the design or my wrinkled and wizened hand. Perhaps both.

Of course, once the skull design was a fait accompli, I remembered that I work a corporate job in an office when I'm not cavorting around on stage. No one would blink an eye at a skull pattern on my mic hand. A skull on my mouse hand? Well, at least I've been there long enough that they know me by now.

This week certainly seemed to fly by! That's a good thing because I am tired. So tired.

Tomorrow night I have a gig with my band, so the weekend will feel equally short, particularly when you factor in the fact that I'll be spending most of the day playing Warrior Knights on Sunday.

My fundraiser for the foster cat is going well and it's over the halfway mark. He's putting on weight and being very friendly. I have a terrible suspicion that he might have ringworm, but we'll deal with that separately.

For now, I just need to get some sleep and think about getting a few errands done before a brunch I have tomorrow. Good night!

One of the life skills I have been actively working on for decades is patience. I used to be incredibly impatient, but it didn't take long for me to recognize that no one benefits from that kind of attitude.

However, cultivating patience can be a challenge. Take yesterday, for example. I had a ticket to see Stephen King talk about his new book. I left work a little early with the thought that I might be able to grab something to eat on my way there, but the traffic was terrible and it took me almost twice as long as I might have expected to reach my destination. By the halfway point, I had already given up on the idea of stopping anywhere and I had to just concentrate on making it to the venue by the time the doors opened.

As I drove through the parking garage to find a spot, I saw the line for the event. It stretched down the block, into the garage and up the ramp. For a moment, I seriously considered pulling back out of the spot and just going home, but since I'd already paid and it's a pretty big deal to see Stephen King, I put on my gloves and went out to stand in line in the cold.

Fortunately, the line moved quickly and I managed to get my ticket from the will-call desk and find a seat a reasonable distance from the stage. The presentation wouldn't start for almost 90 minutes, but I surfed the net on my phone while I saved a seat for one of my friends who was on her way.

Stephen King was highly entertaining and quickly reminded me why I like his books so much. I really wish I had brought a notebook to write down some of what he said. Fortunately, a book blogging friend of mine also attended and here is her recap of Stephen King's presentation.

The big lesson in patience came after we all left our seats and grabbed our copies of the book that came included in the ticket price. I made my way back to my car and spent almost 15 minutes waiting for the cars behind me to let me back out. No dice. There was complete gridlock in the garage and I could tell that nothing was going to get better any time soon.

Even though it was fairly late and I was tired and hungry and more than ready to go home, I decided to turn the situation to my advantage. I could have just sat there and been frustrated, but instead I shut off the engine, got out, and headed for the stairs at the corner of the garage.

I wasn't sure exactly where I was going, but when I made my way out of the garage I saw a coffee shop across the street. Hooray! I bought myself a small cup of coffee and a ginger molasses cookie to have as a pre-dinner snack, then settled myself comfortably on a stool by the window to wait out the traffic.

There was a time when I would have been seething with impatience over being delayed like that, but I have long since let that kind of attitude go. There's no point in getting worked up about things over which you have no control, especially since the consequences of being late are essentially nil. After all, no one was waiting for me to perform surgery; I was just heading home to feed the dog and warm up some pizza.

Patience is a work in progress, but I think I'm getting there.

I've already had one of Saturday's planned activities get cancelled because it's supposed to snow. Of course, we're used to snow right smack in the middle of the Midwest, but generally not quite this early. I think I remember a snowy Thanksgiving or two when I was growing up, but that was pretty rare.

Thus, it looks like we're going to be in for a long, cold winter. Fortunately, we wised up a few years ago and purchased a snow blower, which turned out to be a fantastic idea.

I should probably have a look at my tires to see how the tread is holding up because it seems as though it's been a while since I bought them.

I have plenty of warm, hideous robes I can wear around the house. The dog owns far more cold weather garb than he is willing to wear. 

The only thing that I'm truly concerned about is the general suckitude of loading band gear in and out of clubs in the snow and ice all winter long. It's bad enough during a short winter but excruciating when winter drags on and on.

How are you feeling about the early winter weather this year? Is it going to affect your plans?

Toby is not germane to this story, but look how cute he is!

Last night I performed with my band, so you might think I would have taken today for rest and relaxation. However, I felt fairly motivated when I woke up and it was a beautiful day, so I took advantage of it to get some things done.

Not at first, though. First I met up with my sister, brother-in-law and nephew for breakfast after putting out a call on Facebook for a restaurant breakfast buddy because I didn't have enough ingredients to produce food for myself.

After that, a Costco run. It took me five minutes to load my cart with 184 pounds of solar salt and cat litter, which seemed like more than enough for my poor car to hold.

Once I got home, I needed to transport everything into the basement, but the needy foster cat wanted to follow me everywhere. I had to use the studio bathroom foyer as an airlock to load everything in so the cat wouldn't get out or get smashed.

Yard work was next on the agenda. I used my favorite power tool, the hedge trimmer, to shape the boxwoods in front of the porch and the yew bushes on either side of it. I try not to get too carried away with yew trimming because lots of little birds live there. I also cut down the dead stalks of the allium so they'd be out of the way when next year's growth comes in.

Then it was the ugly job I've been putting off: volunteer honeysuckle surrounding a black walnut tree with a stubborn poison ivy vine growing up the side. I got all the honeysuckle cut down to the ground and bagged or dragged into the woods. I picked up some of the walnuts, but we had a bumper crop this year and there's no gathering them all. I also snipped the poison ivy vine with my loppers and poisoned the root ends for the bazillionth time because I am an eternal optimist. It remains to be seen whether I managed to get a poison ivy rash in the process.

After that, I was literally out of energy. I could barely operate my limbs to put all my tools away in the shed. I went inside to find something to eat and ended up with a frozen meal that I'm pretty sure A Librarian gave me before she moved away. At this point it looks like it's not going to kill me.

My husband and I made a quick dinner run once he got up and when we got home I dumped all seven litter boxes and filled them with fresh litter. I learned my lesson from the last time I did that and divided the soiled litter into four separate bags so I could actually lift them into the trash. 

Now I'm going to watch TV for the rest of the night. I think I've earned it.

To begin this story, I think my Facebook updates really say it all.

10:23 a.m. - I would like to thank Yesterday Celeste for deciding to take today off because it was a fantastic and glorious idea.

11:52 a.m. - I'm still in my robe and pajamas. This is the best day ever.

12:08 p.m. - Eventually I need to get dressed, go to Costco, do some housework, etc. But I'm in no hurry. [Note: Other than the getting dressed part, none of this ever happened.]

1:38 p.m. - So far today can be summed up by my favorite quote from Office Space, "I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing, and it was everything that I thought it could be."

* * *

Around two I put on comfy yoga pants and a loose t-shirt and took the dog for a long walk that lasted more than an hour.

When my husband got up in the afternoon, we went out and had a meal and returned just in time for me to head out to a party at Cagey's house. There were bourbon slushies there. Delicious bourbon slushies.

After that, I let my sister talk me into going out to see Dolewite, but lazy pajama mode ran too deep for me to truly appreciate a bass-heavy hip-hop cover band, so I bailed out before midnight and went home.

Still, it was exactly the kind of day I needed to finally snap out of my time change doldrums and get ready for the weekend. Really, it was probably more rejuvenating than if I'd taken an actual vacation. I need to do this kind of thing more often.

After reading Fluid Pudding this week and hearing about her crazy range of experience with various dentists, I felt that it was a subject I could address because I also have teeth that have been subject to professional care at least twice a year over my lifetime.

My first dentist was a wizened, troll-like man who didn't waste any time on nonsense like reassuring nervous patients. That was fine until I finally got my first cavity while I was in college and surviving largely on donuts and Mountain Dew.

The intersection of the fact that I'd never gotten a filling before, the rollercoaster emotions of my youth (I think that was the same week my beloved childhood cat died), and the frightening reputation of dentists in pop culture meant that I was completely freaked out. The dentist was predictably impatient with me when I cried in his office after hearing I needed a filling and wouldn't commit to it on the spot.

As I rode down the elevator in the medical building to leave, a stranger noticed my distress and was so kind and concerned that I realized she thought something was actually seriously wrong. I was embarrassed to have been such a baby about the whole thing, got the filling, and moved on to an adulthood where fillings weren't such an overblown tragedy.

When that dentist died, a much younger dentist bought the practice. He was a big man with a Scandinavian name and it wasn't difficult to imagine him with Viking forbears. I recall his dental care to be quite satisfactory, although I remember my dad complaining about his giant fingers. He was the first dentist to replace that original filling that caused me such distress, along with the one or two other amalgam fillings I'd gotten from my first dentist. I certainly appreciate the trend of tooth-colored fillings.

When that dentist left the practice, a much younger dentist took over. Seriously, I think he was twelve. By then I was in my thirties and it was the first time I'd encountered a medical professional who was younger than I was and thought, "No." I'm sure he was a perfectly good dentist, but I was just plain uncomfortable with his relative inexperience and suspicious of his diagnoses. I readily acknowledge that it was probably all in my imagination, but that was what finally made me stop driving to the other side of town and find a dentist near my house. (Turns out I wrote about him at the time.)

My current dentist is great. His office and methods are up to date, he and his staff are very friendly and professional and they have demonstrated great tolerance and flexibility every time I've completely spaced an appointment.

My only complaint is the dentist's minimalist approach to pain management during procedures. Of course no one enjoys being numbed to the gills and dribbling liquids from their slack lips all day, but this guy goes in the complete opposite direction. He uses the bare minimum amount of novocaine necessary to keep you from leaping out of the chair while he's drilling, and it's pretty much worn off by the time you walk out the door. I've learned to pre-game with some Tylenol before I leave home. Also, I have a pretty good tolerance for pain, which helps.

As long as I decide I'm good with the occasional post-filling jaw ache, I'm likely to stay where I am for a while. So let's hear it: do you have any good/bad dentist stories to share?

Photo credit: Tambako the Jaguar