Wisdom Teeth

This sucks. No, I take that back, this doesn’t suck, because if I suck or sip anything then I might disturb my clots and that could lead to a very painful phenomenon known as empty socket syndrome. Not that I’d notice the difference; really, as I am already in way more pain then I am comfortable being conscious for.

I had my Wisdom Teeth taken out less than a day ago. So far, I see no benefit to this.

It was a funny little day, yesterday. It started with my mother picking Gareth and me up, dropping my little sister off at school, going back to my little sisters school because she forgot something, and finally arriving at the oral surgeon’s. We live in a small town, so thank whatever powers that control the universe of dentistry that our only oral surgeon is good at what he does. This is balanced out by giving him a pair of rude, condescending, harpies for secretaries.

“You didn’t get the paperwork in the mail? My, aren’t you slow, stupid and ugly.”

Has anyone ever noticed that waiting rooms have the worst music ever? I have long believed this to be a sinister plot, and I feel that yesterday proves this. There we were, sitting in the magazine strewn waiting room for a half hour, being forced to listen to the worst offerings that modern music has to offer, when finally a good song comes on. I recognized it as one of Pink’s earlier songs. It had a good rhythm, though I can’t for the life of me remember the title. Just when Gareth and I start to tap our fingers, the song halted mid-introduction, and an ugly sounding pop song from the eighties starts playing instead.

As Gareth said at that moment: Madness

Anyways, I was trundled away to the back room and finally got to exchange a handful of words with the surgeon. He at least was nice and answered a few question. I was nervous as hell, this being my first surgery of any kind. Funny thing was, the main comfort I had was that the nurse looked exactly like Nurse Kelly from MASH.

Whatever works, I guess

The last thing I remember is telling the surgeon to make sure I was unconscious before cutting on me. He assured me that they wouldn’t and then I passed out.

I woke up fully conscious with a numb face and a mouth full of cotton. According to Garth, I looked like a happy chipmunk because of the swelling and the gauze pushing my face into something resembling a smile.

Photograph of me after coming out of the operating room

And then we went home. Well, we sung by my sister’s school again to drop off some forms. And we got my medication from the pharmacy. Then we went home, after sitting in the car for thirty minutes while waiting for the tow truck to get out of our way.

Remember how I said we lived on a mountain? Well, some idiot went off the cliff. My mom made the mistake of asking the cop if we could just scuttle by, since I was recovering from surgery. The tow truck guys had barely begun to crane the car up, and we could have easily made it past them. She should have asked them, not the cop who showed up five minutes after us, and as far as I could tell did nothing but stand around and look like a douche-bag.

He responded to her question with a dismissive little, “Yes, well, we all have reason why we want to get home,”

This is the reason why he wanted to get home

I mean, I can sort of understand not making an exception for a surgery patient, I guess, but he could at least have been polite about it. He then proceeded to tell my mother that “there is a hospital down the street.” Which wasn’t even true, the hospital was on the other side of town. I have a theory that most cops aren’t born, they are grown in cloning vats from the DNA of a gorilla and some jerk-off named Bruce.

The origin of our police force

But I digress. Eventually, we did get home. I was so fucking thirsty. I hadn’t had anything to drink all morning because to the anesthesia, plus my mouth had been open for forty-five minutes while it was being sliced open.

Anyone who has ever tried to drink with a numb face before knows what is about to happen. I got soaked.

Finally, finally, I got settled down. My mom, worried but satisfied that I was okay, left, and Gareth and I played some video games.

Then the anesthesia wore off.

Want to know the worst part about how the body processes anesthesia? The de-numbing goes outward to the end of the nerves, so now I found myself in excruciating, sob racking pain, and my face was still numb.

Gareth ended up on the phone trying to explain to the bimbo secretaries that I hadn’t eaten anything yet because they had said to wait until the bleeding stopped, and that I needed to take the pain pill anyways. They just kept repeating that they had said to eat at least an hour after the surgery so that I could take the pill before the anesthesia wore off, and no, of course I couldn’t take it on an empty stomach.

At last, Gareth’s godfather, alias: Ocho, got me to eat some yogurt. I took my pill and managed to whimper myself to sleep.

Later, when my face had finally stop being numb, we watched Read Or Die, followed by Tank Girl, which made me feel much better.

The universal cure-all

Later: It’s a couple of day’s after, and I’m getting ready to post this. Status-wise, I’m finally starting to feel more like a human being and less like a blowfish that somebody kicked in the face. Why they would do that to a poor little blowfish is beyond me.

Why?

This is a good thing, because I kind of have to go to school tomorrow and I really didn’t want to do that with an inflated face. I’m finally eating things that resemble food and not liquefied colors, but MY GOD, I would murder someone for the ability to eat a steak sandwich.

This Guy. I’ll murder him

Apparently I’m actually doing a lot better than someone who just had four wisdom teeth taken out, two of which were impacted. That’s cold comfort when you’re as pitiful as I am in the face of long term pain and discomfort. WORST SPRING BREAK EVER.

Graduation

I didn’t want to go to my High School Graduation. As far as I could tell, there wasn’t much of a point. I had been taking a lot of college classes that semester, and as far as I was concerned, I had already left high school far behind me. The ceremony seemed like it would be a lot of pointless standing around, and I didn’t need it for closure or anything.

And, I mean, it was a charter school. A small one. We’re talking a graduating class of twelve people here. Twelve people that I didn’t even know.

Who are you people?!?

So, ditch it, right? I knew other charter school students who had ditched their high school graduation. It was no big deal.

Apparently I was wrong.

My mom hit the roof when I told her of my intentions. I didn’t want to go, it wasn’t a big deal, there were only twelve graduates anyway, it’s gonna be at the grange for crying out loud, I don’t want to. But my mom wanted me to want to, it is so a big deal! It just is! You have to go, rite of passage, it is a big deal shut up and eat your broccoli.

EAT IT

 And so the months of arguing commenced. And then hey, look at that, they made me valedictorian. I am to this day convinced that my teachers only made me valedictorian so that I’d stop trying to ditch. No, that’s not entirely true, there was one other person in the running for it. Want to know how she got out of it? She got pregnant.

Why didn’t I think of that!

So now I definitely had to go, and everyone was oh so proud of me, and the world was filled with rainbow sugar and ice-cream!

Yippee!

I hate it when people praise me for something that was very, very easy. Oh my, I got marginally better grades than twelve other people!  How did I ever manage that when half of them were delinquents, a quarter of them were distracted by getting pregnant, and the three other smart kids weren’t taking as many college classes as me?

How?

Okay…that was a lot of sarcasm there. Ahem. Yes, as I was saying. Make a big deal about it when I put actual effort into something. I lucked out in the gene pool and am able to do well in school. Praise me after I spend five hours drawing or writing something that shows drastic improvement of my technique. Don’t praise me for something that I barely noticed doing. If I didn’t work for it, I don’t want it.

                                   Oh my gosh! YOU’RE BREATHING!!!! You’re amazing!        

Digressions aside, I finally caved and said I’d go to the stupid graduation. And I would wear purple goggles. Because purple goggles, that’s why. Besides, they matched the graduation gown.

And so that prompted even more weeks of argument. Even though I had cleared it with the principal, for some reason my parents got very hung up on the purple goggles. I finally abandoned the plan when my mom pulled out the whole “Fine, do whatever you want, I don’t care.” Now, that may sound like a victory. Do not be fooled. That is the set-up for a lifetime of awkward, estranged Christmas visits. So the goggles were abandoned. Funny thing is, even though I had promised my mom that I wouldn’t wear them, she kept bringing them up. Every time we talked about graduation, she always asked “You’re not going to wear those goggles, are you?” She either didn’t believe or forgot. I may never know.

So graduation day approached, and there was so much I wanted to do. It could have been awesome. The plots were as minimal as having my friends stand behind me during the speech holding cue cards that said things like “applause” and “panic” to having them burst in dressed like voodoo witchdoctors, point to me, declare that I was now an adult, swarm, and remove me from the hall, all the while laughing maniacally. So many plans….. but I didn’t do them. Want to know why?

Because I love my mom, that’s why.

I love you enough to not ruin an elaborately planned social event!

This whole thing was obviously important to her, even if I didn’t care. So really, shutting up and taking it was the only thing I could’ve done.

…Okay, I did do one thing, but I made sure it was okay with my mother and the school principal first. Here is the beginning of my valedictorian speech.

Attention mortals! We have infiltrated the governments of this planet and taken hold of all your military bases. You are at our mercy, and I am here to prepare you for your future as the slave race of the glorious Xarcov Empire, I…. (look up, notice audience)

Um, (cough). Wrong speech, different date. Hold on a sec….. (paper shuffle) ….mass disintegrations will commence….brain transplantation…..clones already in place…all your base are belong to us…. (clear throat)

Okay.

Attention mortals! Today is our high school graduation. Today we have passed a milestone in our lives……

Blah, blah, achievements, blah, blah. It’s pretty normal after that. Yes, I am pretty weird. Not everyone threatens to enslave humanity in their valedictorian speech. But that’s okay; things are more fun when you’re weird.

That, and the un-weird are the first to go once the armada gets here.

France and America

Sooner or later, everyone will make fun of the French. Why? Because no one is going to get mad at them for it. To Americans, mocking the French is like breathing. Everyone does it and it would be ridiculous to get mad at someone for it.

Yeah that’s right, the air’s all for you, isn’t it bitch?

But it’s okay that we mock the French, know why? Because the French mock the Americans just as much. For every joke about chain smoking and baguettes you hear over here, there is a joke about overeating and cowboy boots going on across the Atlantic. We hate them for being rude, stuck up and having a language with far too many letters in each word. They hate us for being rude, crass, and never bothering to learn any language other than English.

Of course, we don’t really hate France. I mean, France helped us out during our Revolution, we helped saved them from Nazis (we took our sweet time getting to it, but we did) and they gave us French bread and French fries. What’s there to hate?

Oh right….that.

The way I see it, France and America have a sort of love/hate relationship going on. Not unlike that of Legolas and Gimli.

Wait a second……

My God!

This explains everything.

France is Legolas. Legolas is France. And Gimli is more American than a bald eagle eating apple pie.

The ultimate symbol of America

Now this just leaves one question……

What does that make Aragorn?

HON HON HON!

SNOOOW!

Snow day! It’s a snow day!

Usually, as far as I am concerned, there is absolutely no point to the winter weather. It’s cold, it’s rainy and it’s miserable. The weather where Gareth and I live is pretty bi-polar. It’s pouring slush one day, and the next day it’s bikini time. The only difference between winter and summer is that winter is colder. This can be nice and cozy; for about a week. Then it’s wet. It’s wet, it’s freezing, and the wood stove only heats one room in the house.

But last weekend brought with it that rare occurrence that makes all of the ass-freezing, bulky coat-wearing, and wetness worthwhile.

Behold, sunny California where we call home:

 Pass the tequila

Sometimes it helps to live at the foot of a mountain, I suppose. Though we are in constant danger of accidentally running over BigFoot.

Our friend, BT, lives farther up the mountain then we do, so we piled into her parent’s little four wheel drive truck and headed on up. This sounds a lot more impressive when you realize that this was three full grown early twenty something’s shoveled into a space smaller than my writing desk with these two monsters climbing all over us the entire way up the road.

Luckily, it was a short trip. Made even shorter by the fact that we eventually had to tumble out of the car and walk the rest of the way while Bt’s dad put chains on the truck.

Onward!

So what’s the first thing we do when we get to the house? Settle in?Start a fire? Recover from our long, ten minute trek? No…

We get into a sword fight with icicles.

Behold, an epic battle to the death between life-long friends! Have the medic standby! Designate your seconds! Cue the Star Trek fight music!

Actually, they were pretty crappy swords considering that they broke in half every time you hit them. Which is a good thing, because I was second to both of them and in the event of both of their deaths, I would have to battle and then defeat myself, which would have been confusing and messy.

At least they looked pretty

We romped around for a bit after, throwing a few snowballs, making a few quick snow sculptures, etc. Then I thought it would be a good idea to make a snow angel. The snow was so powdery; it seemed like a perfect idea. I was wrong. I flumped down in the snow, ready to create the imprint of my fallen angel, when my coat road up, causing my bare back to become acquainted with the snow in a way it never should have.
After flaying on my back for a few seconds, I managed to scramble to my feet. Ironically enough, the imprint I left actually looked like an angel. I wonder if that’s how the first snow angel was created, by flaying in distress from the cold snow.

Eventually, we uncovered Bt’s old sled. And that’s when the real fun started. That’s when we created the sled run that most children dream about creating, and which I have decided to name The Icy Mountain Hellhound Chute of Death and Molestation. 

Named such for two reasons; one: because every time we went down it, this happened:

“Son of a biiiiiitch!”

And two: well, the molestation part only applies to me. I don’t know if it’s because at high velocities I tend to yip like a coyote, or because I am just that attractive, but every single time I got to the bottom of that sled run, Zed would jump me.

RAPE! RAPE!

I had a few awkward moments trying to get up and cockblock him at the same time. Gareth was very unsympathetic to my plight. I quote: “At least you got the honor of a dog trying to have sex with you. I just got chewed on by Duke.”

Pooor Gare-bear.

And that’s not the only shenanigans those two pups got up to. See this wonderful snowman I made?

It was a wonderful little snowman-fox-thing. It was the best little snowman-fox-thing ever! It was going to grow up and become President of The Land of Little Snowman-Fox-Things. We even colored it green, to represent that country’s national colors.

Duke ate it.

And then Bt threw it’s corpse at him. And missed.

So we got soaking wet, went inside, and repeated until only carrot cake and hot cider could revive our poor exhausted bones. Around four we piled into the truck again. BT and Gareth thought it would be a good idea to ride back to the bottom of the mountain in the truck bed. This is just shows how magic Gareth is, because by the time we stopped, BT was covered in the snow fallen from the trees, and Gareth had not a scrape on him.

Now my ass and neck are sore and I am so tired that I’m going to bed three hours early.

But it was so very worth it.

Also, there were yaks.