Update on parts of my head

So, my teeth feel weird. The fillings are so flat, and my teeth should be jagged and sharp for tearing apart meat and stuff! I can't stop feeling them with my tongue and thinking how weird that they are smooth. Yesterday the tooth that needed the big filling felt sensitive to cold water, but today it's feeling more normal. I was hoping I would not have sensitive teeth forever, and it's looking good so far.

***An hour later: now my teeth are feeling very sensitive again. I hope it goes away! I'm just drinking tap water, with no ice, and it feels jarringly cold.***

My eyelids are feeling so much better after one and a half days of disposable lenses! By the end of the day yesterday, my eyes were getting tired of them, but I think that after my eyes and brain get used to my new prescription, it will be fine.

So, Mom does not remember having a fever while she was pregnant with me. She said she may have had a flu or something, but no big, memorable illness. Who knows if that is really the only reason I would have those cataracts? I am no eye doctor.

I'm trying to finish up the last little details of Christmas presents. Part of some presents are alive, so I'm hoping they will look the way I want by the time they are delivered! What could they be? Am I raising puppies or chicks?? I'll tell you after they've been delivered. :)

The Tooth Doctor

So, I was greeted by hygienists saying, "Your appointment is going to be so fast! Your cavities are so little! I wish my fillings were so little!" And I got 3 fillings really quickly. Then the dentist checked their work and noticed that my top back tooth was chipped, and it hadn't been when I was there two weeks ago. She triple-checked my x-rays, and is sure it wasn't chipped two weeks ago.

So, they had to fill that spot, too. That one was a bit bigger. Even though I got really tired of being there, I'm glad she caught it so I could just get it taken care of. Now I have 6 months with no weird objects in my mouth, no stinky latex gloves, no foul-tasting numbing agent (needed only for the 4th, surprise filling), and no foul-tasting bonding agent. Yay!

Also YAY is that my fillings are white (A-1 is the color). I'm so glad they do that now! Two of my new ones are on the bottom, so if I laugh, you could see them. But since they're not silver, you'll never know they're there. The joke's on you, mouth-looker!

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The longer the day goes on, the more I feel those blisters inside my eyelids. Knowing what is wrong really makes me aware of it! My poor eyelids! I can't wait for them to heal up and feel normal again, after years of being mildly to very uncomfortable.

I'm also pretty excited about my cute new glasses. Maybe they'll be ready early and I can pick them up when I go back to follow up on the contacts I'm trying out. :)

The Eye Doctor

 
So, I went to the eye doctor today, and it was a very educational experience.

1. I have tons of tiny blisters on the insides of my eyelids. I am allergic to something in the contact lens solution that I've been using for a few years now. I have thought my eyes were so uncomfortable because of it being so dry here. Really, my eyelids have been BLISTERING (tiny blisters -- she could only see them with a machine) for maybe three to six years.

I had hated my last lenses SO MUCH because they would come loose and get up under my eyelids and become stuck to them, and I would try to massage my eyelid to get them to come down, and I would put in all kinds of drops to try to loosen them to come down, and finally I would have to turn my eyelid inside out and grab hold of the lens and PEEL it off of my eyelid. I found that very creepy.

Well, those blisters act like little suction cups, pulling the lens off my cornea and then holding on to the lens so that I have to peel it off.

Sometimes, I have felt like there was a piece of dust or something in my eye, and now I know that it was probably a blister that I could feel!

Obviously, I'm never using that brand of solution again! She said that it should get better after a few days without the solution.

Now, to be fair to my previous doctors, I have sometimes used other brands of contact solutions. So it's possible that I didn't have the blisters when I visited other doctors. Also, I had never complained about contacts getting stuck, because it had never happened before, so they never had that clue and looked at the insides of my eyelids. STILL, I wish that somehow they had noticed and told me to switch solutions years ago. Maybe I would like Colorado more if I didn't think it made my eyes so dried out all time!

I'm trying dailies this time, so there would be no need to use any solution -- you just take them out of their little packs and then throw them away at night. No cleaning, no rinsing, no storage. But, what she would have recommended was Clear Care, which uses hydrogen peroxide to clean them. You have to be really careful with that stuff, because it will burn your eyes if it's not neutralized. So, each bottle comes with a special case you use, which has a metal in it that changes peroxide into saline. There are no preservatives, which are what I am allergic to in the kind I've been using.

2. I have cataracts in the middle of my cornea that I got in utero. The doctor said they're caused when the mom gets a fever during pregnancy (I haven't confirmed this event with my mom, but if that's the case, poor Mom! Isn't it hard enough to be pregnant, without being feverish?). The doctor had a fever during one of her pregnancies, so one of her daughters has this kind of cataract. She said it looks really cool through the machine, like 5 snowflakes on each eye.

These cataracts are the reason why my eyes are so much more sensitive to glare than the average person. I have wondered about that before, because Jason will seem just fine driving at night, but the high contrast between the darkness and the bright, bright headlights of other cars will KILL my eyes.

It's better for me to be the driver at night, because somehow the lights from the dashboard make it less of a transition for me between the darkness and the headlights. Around here, they have laws about keeping streetlights dim to save energy and to not disturb people in their houses. So even in town, it is pretty dark.

Jason used to have an ipod charger or adapter or something in his truck that had a really bright light on it, and I always had to cover it up at night because it gave me terrible, long-lasting headaches. His current device doesn't have the same effect on me.

3. This VSP insurance is freaking awesome for glasses!!! I ordered a new pair, and I only had to pay $44.20. Without insurance, it would have cost $736.00. !!!!! Of course, I wouldn't have gotten all the features that I did if I had to pay out of pocket. I will take a picture with my new glasses on as soon as I get them. They are supposed to be ready in about 2 weeks.

This afternoon, I will go to the dentist to get a cleaning and 3 fillings. I am doing all my doctor stuff this month! It's nice to get it all taken care of and not worry about it for a while.

After dinner

 The sky was beautiful.
 We stopped here, either for ice cream or anniversary tans -- you decide.

9 Year Anniversary

This month, we celebrated the 9th anniversary of our first date. We ate dinner at Southern Sun, where many of the employees and patrons are covered in tattoos, dreadlocks, and political statement t-shirts.
 And they wrap up your leftover sandwich as a swan.
 

My Juicer

Here is my juicer, a Waring Juice Extractor. I got a refurbished one directly through Amazon for $29.99. Now it looks like you can get refurbished ones through "authorized dealers." I can't vouch for the authorized dealers, but I like my juicer.

It would be better for me to eat whole fruits, I know. Drinking juice, you miss out on fiber. Plus you can drink a lot of calories without feeling full. But, I simply WILL NOT eat as much whole fruit. So, I get more nutrients by drinking juice regularly and eating fruit when I will/can/desire to do it.

I got a big hunk of ginger at the store, and some more apples. So tomorrow I'm all set to make Apple + Ginger juice all day long.

Juice Recipe

As you may know, I bought a juicer a few years ago, and I love it. I mostly make apple + orange juice, since that's my favorite. Once I juiced a pineapple, and that was awesome, but kind of expensive.

I tried a new recipe today, which I was a little suspicious of, but it was Yummy Yummy Yummy!
3 apples and a 1/2 inch piece of ginger. Oh, man. It's so sweet and delicious! I'm going to have to buy more ginger. This might be my new favorite.

It might be especially good for health, too, since ginger is supposed to help fight off colds. Apples are just good for you in general. How could it be wrong?

I have sneezed about 400 times today, so maybe this drink will nip in the bud whatever bug is trying to make me sick.

Another recipe that I like is spinach + carrots. It looks horrible! It tastes really good. Somehow carrot juice is really sweet, even though I don't think of carrots as being sweet.

Jack of all trades

Guess what I did the other day! I fixed my sewing machine. All by myself, with screw drivers and sewing machine oil and blowing air into mechanisms. It seemed to be dead, and was making a very HOT smell. It would only stitch v e r y s l o w l y a n d w i t h a g r o a n i n g. And then, once I was done with my tune-up, it was zipping along like a silent race car.

Here was the tricky part: I checked the manual, and it didn't help me at all! I just kept taking parts off and cleaning them and blowing on them to get any lint off, and then I finally oiled a part that isn't even shown in the manual as being an oil-needing area, and it was like a sewing machine miracle!

If I can't be successful at work, at least I can have these other kinds of accomplishments. :)

Tall People and Stuff

I've heard and read several times that tall people are at an advantage in getting a job, and that tall people tend to make more money. Here is an abstract for an article that says that tall people tend to have higher IQs. I never heard that one before, or believe me, I would have been spreading the news long ago!

So, if I could just get an interview for a job I want, and go in there and be confident, and have good posture, my height should do the rest!

I also recently read about how tall people use up more of the world's resources, like in countries where people are tall (I believe Sweden was the example given), airplanes have to have fewer seats to leave enough leg room. So, it costs more resources per person than, say, a Chinese airplane might.

Oh, Tall People! Taking jobs and then taking up space. When will we be stopped -- or completely take over the world?

More on the pillows

 
Geez, this picture would only show up sideways two posts down, so here it is upright. The back pillow has scooters on it! I still have to do something with all the threads, but they're 90% done. So far, they're keeping Francis out of my chair.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

Something made for me today

Since my laptop is quite old (over 4 years! With an average lifespan of 3 years, that's not bad.), it has been having some problems with turning on after being shut down. So Jason is building me a desktop computer for Christmas! I have to have a working computer to do my job, so it's awesome that he can get that set up before my laptop dies forever.

 
 
 

Now I just have to transfer over everything that I need from my laptop. Luckily, he has some ideas about how to make that process a little easier and less time-consuming. I have maybe 30 bookmarks that I need for work, and I want all my Word files, and all my music files for itunes, if possible. It would be a lot to transfer one by one!

Things I made today

 
I made roasted chicken and potatoes for dinner. Here's how to make chicken really tender:
1. Marinate the chicken in some form of liquid. I used water, but often we use beer. You can use fancy things, if you are fancy. If you are fancy, you should probably pronounce it Frenchily: "Mahr-ih-nodh."

2. When it's time to cook the chicken for dinner on Monday night, say, "Hey, do you feel like going to Chili's for dinner?"

3. 24 hours later, finally remove the chicken from the marinade or (water) and cook it.

I put some chopped ginger and garlic on half the potatoes. Since it was a new experiment, I didn't want to ruin all of the potatoes if it was gross. But, it wasn't! They were good, and not too strong. I think a good idea might be to puree the garlic and ginger and then brush it on. Maybe next time.


I made two pillows today.

 
Their job is to sit in my chair, not only looking cute but also keeping Francis the Cat from sitting in and shedding all over it. He loves that chair so much, and fits so well in it when he curls up to nap, but it is a magnet for his fur.

I also took a lovely walk around the lake and enjoyed the nearly-70 degree weather! I was astounded by the periodic winds that roared and stung my eyes. Tomorrow we are supposed to wake up to snow. The weather people are admonishing those who drive to work to leave 20-30 minutes early. I don't have to be anywhere until 2:00, when I will get my teeth cleaned after 4 years of not seeing a dentist. Hopefully there are no bad surprises. I have always loved that post-cleaning feeling of sharp edges between my teeth.