I love street fairs, so when it was pointed out that most of the West End of Dallas would be closed to all non-foot traffic this weekend, I wasn’t upset about the lack of discount parking as much as I was excited to experience a Texas tradition. Translation: We spend a few hours exploring the Taste of Dallas festival before making it to the CSz arena last night.

Things I learned:
– Going to a food festival when you are three days past dental work, and forbidden to chew borders on masochism. Most things smelled really good, at least, but all I could actually eat were Cassoulet (mine is better) and ice cream (Ben and Jerry’s. Fuzzy brought me this during the late show last night, and had to ask strangers to confirm that he’d really been served Cherries Garcia because he thought it would be pink. He’s so sweet. And no, I didn’t have to chew the chocolate shards. What Fuzzy didn’t steal melted very nicely.)

– People at food festivals are not always firing on all thrusters. Witness the Japanese restaurant offering sushi in 97-degree weather. Can we all say “food poisoning”?

– You can have four radio stations and three music stages in a four block area and still have a conversation. Really. No, really. Okay there was gesticulation and much screaming, but still.

– Adorable kids handing out fans should never be turned down.

– Never say no to free iced tea.

– Jeans and layered t-shirts are not the best choice of attire for such an event. Five minutes outside, and I was dripping.

Still we had fun. The early show was great, house was packed, and one of my fellow newbies totally rocked in his stage debut. The late show started at a nice blue level and quickly descended into shades of midnight and indigo, but was still funny, although honestly, half the humour was from watching everyone react to the suggestions they were given.

Today, I was invited to a coworker’s birthday party, and I want to go, but I feel like I should stay home and rest, because my mouth still hurts (and worse – ITCHES – and I’m kinda crabby.) Also, I have to finish a story for someone. I shall text her and let her know – she’ll totally understand.

I’ve been doing a lot of mental preparation for the upcoming blogathon, including formulating a survey, and planning a stack of books to talk about. I’ve kept most of my favorites from childhood, but every so often someone will mention a book that I loved, also, and I’ll realize I’d forgotten about it, or at least, stuck the memory in an old, dark, disused corner of my brain.

On the First Book blog, for example, someone recently mentioned Marguerite Henry’s Misty of Chincoteague, which was a favorite of mine for the longest time. I was more drawn to Phantom than to Misty, of course, and could never decide if I wanted to RIDE her or BE her (I was seven at the time). Years later, when I was in temporary ownership of a small black pony, I realized how very zen horses can be. I miss that. There’s a very deep part of me that is still a ten-year-old girl with braids and jeans with rainbows on the back pockets who is crazy for horses.

Well, for horses and books.

I’m sitting here in bed with my laptop at 1:43 in the afternoon, waiting for vicodin to kick in (it’s just starting to). Why am I drugged? I spent the morning having a tooth extracted, and my head feels like it’s going to explode.

This is the tooth from which a filling was lost last week, and which subsequently broke and tore my cheek to bits. I had recommendations of dentists from three people, and we chose the one closest to home, who managed to see me at 8:30 this morning. I went in expecting a root canal, but we did a full panoramic x-ray, and the dentist, Dr. F, said, “First, this is a secondary molar. You don’t use it to chew all that much. Second, it’s a top molar and there’s almost contact with your sinuses. Third, your mouth is small and you barely have room for the tooth ANYWAY. Fourth, even if we do a root canal, there’s almost nothing there to attach a crown to. I don’t like to recommend this, but your bite is okay, and I don’t think your other teeth will drift, so I think we should extract it.”

I looked at the x-ray with him, and the computer simulation as well, and just the fact that he explained everything made me feel really comfortable. “Can we do it today?” I asked.

“Absolutely.”

So I called work, and told them I’d be late, and why. They’d all spent two days listening to me whimper and watching me drink a lot of fluids, and not chew anything, so they really had no problem with it.

Now, I have an overactive gag-reflex, so having instruments and latex-covered fingers down my throat is never a good thing, but Dr. F used tons of novocaine (I am all about the novocaine), and let me breathe, swallow, rest, etc, as he worked.

Molar extractions generally take an hour.
Mine took two and a half.

The tooth was broken in such a way that there was nothing to grip, and then, it wouldn’t loosen, and then they had to give me more novocaine, and then there was drilling to separate the roots, and then much twisting turning, and I nearly bit off the Dr. F’s finger (he apologized for making me gag that much), and finally they managed to get it out, in pieces, but it was difficult because the roots of my teeth aren’t straight, the way they’re supposed to be. In fact, they’re not even merely ‘curved’ – but had an almost 90-degree angle.

I kept apologizing to the dentist for being difficult, and he kept telling me I wasn’t, that I was being just fine, and he was sorry for any discomfort, and finally, when I was nearly in tears, we were done.

I met Fuzzy in the parking lot, and mimed that a) I needed drugs and b) I’d been told not to go back to work til tomorrow, and c) that I was in much pain. He offered to take me home and go fetch the prescription, because he’s sweet that way, but they had to have positive ID for the vicodin, so I said no. I had to wait twenty minutes to get it, but it wasn’t that bad because the novocaine hadn’t worn off.

And then it did, and I was still waiting for the vicodin to kick in.
Which it now has, so I’m going to sleep.

Oh, and, I’m still going to need a root canal…in a different tooth.

Inspired by Ms. Ophelia of Dreaming in Denmark I am sharing something I’ve seen one of the senior members of ComedySportz do on more than one occasion, that I thought was cool. The first time there was a young girl in the audience celebrating her birthday, and V., who is quite tall, got down to her eye level during the “Birthday Song” that was being sung for all the birthday folk that night. I thought this was incredibly cool and thoughtful of him.

Later, I saw him interacting with other children, and realized that he’s an old hand at such behavior, but I thought it spoke highly of him, and said so to my husband. “Well, you’re supposed to do that,” he said, “when you’re talking to kids.”

“I know,” I answered. “But most people don’t.”

We had a lively discussion about that, but I maintain that most people do not think to do that – if they did, witnessing someone doing it would not have been noteworthy, after all. But Ms. Ophelia’s post got me thinking that crouching when you’re interacting with a small child does more than give them your eyes, it also gives YOU a new perspective. I don’t have children, of course, so I tried it with my dogs, which, let me tell you, is almost impossible with a chihuahua.

Still, at – or rather, near – doggie eye level, I realized that dogs look for visual clues, too. They don’t necessarily understand a smile vs. a frown, but they know that slitty eyes mean anger, and blinking can mean distress. Zorro, the chi, is always trying to avoid eye contact – he’s a lovable shy little guy – but Cleo, our galumphing girl-dog, is always straining to reach our faces, and somehow, I don’t think puppy kisses are her sole motivation, any more. I think she really needs to see our eyes to know if we’re happy to see her, or bothered and want her to go away. She’s always been very visual though, responding to hand signals even before vocal ones, though her hearing seems fine. (For a while she even slept with her eyes open, which practice I’m glad she grew out of, because it was sort of disturbing.)

Of course, the whole experiment with crouching brought back reminders from workshop about eye contact (or lack thereof) being key, and now I’m hyper-conscious of meeting anyone’s eyes.

In order to participate in the Blogathon without being chained to a desk, I’ve made a new purchase. I am now the proud owner of one of these.

(I’m already a Cingular subscriber, so it was a good choice for me.)

Tonight another of the newbies from my group at ComedySportz made his debut. I particularly liked some of his mime work – there were really nice bits of detail, and I could ‘see’ the object he was shaping and using. I liked that he gave it mass when he moved it.

I was sort of distracted during the show though, because I lost a filling and cracked a tooth the other day, and while there’s no pain in the actual tooth, the inside of my cheek is swollen and sliced to ribbons. I got teary during Freeze Tag watching as tonight’s playerz helped an audience member set up a marriage proposal to his (very) pregnant girlfriend, and it wasn’t just that I was moved, it was pain cutting in.

After the show, many of us went to Spaghetti Warehouse for dinner, which was tasty, although I couldn’t eat the bread because it requires too much chewing, and they were out of tiramisu. My chocolate sundae was nice, but there were nuts in the magic shell. Oh, well. At least pasta and mushrooms were mushy enough for me to eat.

It will be Wednesday before I can get to the dentist, because of work and the 4th, but the swelling’s already improving, and Blistex makes this great KankaPen thing that has a soft brush which dispenses novocaine gel into the furthest reaches of my mouth, and my cheek is already starting to feel a bit better.

So, all in all, it was a nice night.

A friend once commented that even though I tend to be really guarded in real life, I’ll talk about almost anything in my blog. That’s not entirely true – I tend to avoid spouting my politics, for example – but I do have a tendency to be far more revealing in text than I ever am in person, unless I know someone really, really well.

Wikipedia refers to this by a term coined early in the existance of weblogs: escribitionism. I’ve liked the way the word tastes for a very long time, and as I’m prepping for a new project (Blogathon 2006), and have just changed my blogging engine and skin AGAIN (longtime readers will recognize the return of a favorite template), I thought I’d adopt it for a while. As one does.

Speaking of Blogathon, I’m blogging for First Book this year, and I hope you’ll all support me.

Reading Charles de Lint has faeries on my brain, pixellated pixies popping out of ‘puters in my imagination, to pirouette en pointe across my palm before disappearing in a poof of glittery pink.

Talking with Sky has my head in 1875 Belgium, 1920 Paris, Spain somewhat later, and Havana in the early 50’s, and my brain bursts with fantasy images of intimate soirees with neurotic artists and denizens of penny universities, sipping coffee black as ink, armagnac deep as blood, and twice as sweet, or absinthe, in shades of emerald and pearl.

My brain floats free following the eddies and currents in the stream of consciousness, preparing me for sleep in much the same way that reading James Joyce always did when I was still in school, disconnecting thoughts and letting reason lie dormant for a few hours.

Darkness shrouds me from the harsh light of reality, and soft cool sheets cradle my descent into dreams, where faeries decked in vert et argent (Janet will know the significance of THOSE colors) whisper magic words in my ears.

We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
— Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act IV, Scene 1

I went to bed with my hair pulled up and woke with a knot in my hair, and when I was in the bathroom this morning, I got toothpaste all over my favorite bra, and dropped my blusher brush in the sink and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

At Starbucks this morning they had a raw newbie running the till (during morning rush) and on loop 12 there were stupid drivers who waited too long to merge into a single lane, and when I got to work there was a cluster of smokers directly in front of the entrance door, and they glared at me when I asked them politely to move. I shouldn’t have to walk through a cloud of cigarette smoke to get into my office!

It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

The loan processing software I use at work kicked me out with three times (sql and divide-by-zero errors) forcing me to reboot and every file I touched was completely craptastic and they were out of apples and peanut butter in the cafeteria and there was no soap in the good bathroom.

(It was the kind of day that makes me want to blow off my real life and go be an itinerant street poet. )

On the way home, I made the mistake of returning a call to my mother (who’d called my cell from Mexico) and she spent fifteen minutes screaming at me because the company we now refer to as “Affordable FuckHosts” and it’s sister company “Affordable FuckDots” refuse to release her domain, or answer the email ticket she sent (we don’t respond to email – it’s spam) and WHY this is my fault is beyond me, and then we went to buy dog food, and I wanted to look at the fish, and one of the angel fish was cannibalizing it’s tankmates, and when we stopped at a certain quasi-fast-food place for dinner, there was an old guy ahead of us in an even older Mercedes flirting with the flustered cashier, completely oblivious of the line of cars behind him, and then I crunched my ankle coming into the house because Cleo pounced me and Zorro was between my feet.

It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
Fuzzy reminded me that some days are like that.
Even when you rhyme.

With apologies to Judith Viorst.

Taken from Tarotchan at LiveJournal: