cuckoo in the rain... it's never boring, is it?

I cracked a tooth yesterday whilst enjoying a pile of Jordan almonds, and last night during the Christmas Cantada part of two of my teeth decided to fall out of my head. I thought it was no big deal - they're in the back, and my teeth didn't hurt. except pretty soon my tongue, rubbing against the jagged edges of the teeth, started to feel not so good. we stopped at CVS and I patched it up with some do-it-yourself filler, hoping to get through the night and morning until I could call and make a dentist appointment.

I made it to the studio bright and early (even though I woke up twice during the night - the second time, I just got up and surfed the 'net. this would be more of a drag, I think, if I had a 9-5 job, but since I can usually count on finding time to nap I try to just roll with it). a quick call to our dentist revealled that she doesn't accept our insurance anymore. nice! so I call husband to scout around and save me while I tried to get through my session. yikes, enunciating all the words for a 19 chapter statistics course was rough. I managed three chapters, and then we called it so I could go get my teeth taken care of and come back fresh tomorrow or Saturday. in fact, I stacked tomorrow pretty full of work, but felt totally confident I could knock this out today. I headed to our new dentist and, upon arriving there, was told I needed my baby doctor's medical consent before they could work on me. makes sense. so I called my doctor's office, and got the nurses voicemail. message number one, left at noon.

message number two, left around 12:20. a little plaintive.

at 12:30, the dentist said we needed to push back the appointment to 2p. boo! but okay, maybe that would give the people at my doctor's office time to listen to their voice mail and fax back the papers the dentist had already sent over. I went to La Madelaine and drowned my achy tongue sorrows in potato soup and too much bread. then went and sat in my car in front of the dentist, staring at my phone. I might have made a couple of calls to my doctor... and I'm pretty sure the last message on the nurses' voicemail was slightly panicked and teary. I was most assuredly losing my marbles. I could just see this all taking too long... I'd lose my appointment and have to come back tomorrow, blowing my careful scheduling out of the water and prolonging my pain. I decided to call one last time for good measure, around 1:45, and a nurse picked up!! they sounded a bit like they were 'handling' me - they kept referring to me as 'the patient', like, 'Wanda, please talk to the patient first", like I was crazy phone lady, but what can I say - in my mind, this was an emergency and I really needed them to get me some medical consent pronto. once notified, Dr. Haufrect, of course, immediately sent over a wonderfully thorough consent, and off we went into the land of drills and other not incredibly pleasant instruments. the dentist praised my temporary filling, which made me oddly proud. it occurred to me that I'm soooo blessed to not have a sensitive gag reflex right now... it would have been a wretched afternoon. so it all worked out in the end... my lips and tongue still feel gigantic and my tongue is still tender, but I avoided a full-on root canal and have a temporary crown that will turn real in a few weeks (not magically. I have to go back in. but wouldn't it be cool if it could magically turn real?).

anyhoo, this is life, right? I'm thankful it all worked out, thankful we had the funds to handle it gracefully, thankful to work with people who'll bend as they're asked to. we have a full weekend ahead of us and then, early Monday morning, I head to Dallas to work for a couple of days. Michael will join me Tuesday night and we'll head to Hico for Christmas 1.0. followed by Houston Christmas 2.0 on Friday, driving back up for YaYa's Christmas 3.0 on Saturday, and then more Dallas work the following Monday/Tuesday. happy holidays! actually, they really are, since of course I have Michael as my co-pilot and sweet baby to give me something nice to think about and hope for.

speaking of, I'll share this piece of advice: a chick at my agency, whose baby is 8 months old, got a bladder infection when she was 4 months pregnant and it was so awful she told me I must, MUST drink cranberry juice every day. I can't stress how serious she was about this tip. not the Ocean Spray variety... the real deal. so I got this stuff:



and it is STOUT. like, screw up your face and make a funny noise stout. but sure, I can totally imagine that it's killing off anything that might be trying to infect me. life was made easier when I mixed it with my Simply Orange orange juice... now it's more like a super-sexy mocktail! that cleans you out!

enough of this post. I feel myself beginning to lose focus. byebye, train of thought!

oh, I do think Jakob and Katherine were somewhat robbed on SYTYCD last night... I like Russell and all, but he's not as good a dancer, IMO.

and first baby gifts from the Rice's today!!! precious books!! so sweet and thoughtful...

**shutting down**