I was up too late last night.

I don't usually say that. As the Horde can well tell. But, for the first time in a while I was up until 2 am doing the last of the plying, shocking, and blocking of the last few ounces of the camel down I am spinning for Crown Mountain Farms. I'd promised it by early this week, and even though they haven't held me to my promises at all, I do.

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I had a really full day today, and I'm not getting around to another chapter. I'm MAKING the time tomorrow, come hell or high water or even the Kings of Israel...

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I used to have a series of assassination dreams.  Dreams where I'd go out and kill those that needed killing.  They'd show up the most when I was working really, really hard and doing a lot of work.  Now I wonder, kinda, what they might have meant to me, or what it was I was trying to subconsciously balance back then?  I'm taking a dreams and art class as my adult Sunday education class, and it's just bemusing to think about.   There was no fear or distress in those dreams just an even more sharpened sense of the types of efficiency I have always had in sections of my life.

I had a dream this morning with Jet's younger brother in it.  He was just a two-year-old, curled up in my arm, after the four of us went swimming in a crystal clear, hot spring warmed pool in the depths of a blue-black crystal cave.  He was doing great at swimming, chasing his older brother around, and was as sweet as Jet.  His swim diaper was actually better at protecting his butt from the hardness of the rocks when we were sitting and resting a bit.   A very calm dream.  Only sad after I woke up.

Which was when Jet jumped on me and said, "Mom!  Mom!  Wake up.  Breakfast is ready."   Then he lay on me and rocked and rolled until I grunted, "I'm awake.  I'm awake..." and then he fled down the hallway yelling, "Dad!  Dad!  Mom's up!"

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So we went to Dr. Ladd on Mountain View this morning and I was very impressed.

He asked quite a few questions for data I hadn't thought to volunteer at first, and they were very relevant. It was cool to have him *ask* questions that were intelligent. He also tested a lot of things. He took and x-ray, he did the contact paper test, and he showed me all the data that pertained to what he thought was going on. He was also very interested in Dr. Snyder's toothguard and wanted to know more about it and asked for contact information for him as he was interested in other dentist's techniques!!

It wasn't long before I realized that I really would rather go to Dr. Ladd on a regular basis than my old dentist.

He did answer my questions. The crown is 'good', i.e. it fits in the ways it needs to. It isn't the impact site. And it pretty much works given how much was carved from the top teeth. The amount taken from the top teeth was acceptable as well.

My bite is mostly even on the back teeth on that side. There isn't anything that can just be adjusted to fix it. Rather than accepting my opinion and just "fixing things" he asked me to come back next week with my tooth guard still on from the night and we'd check the whole bite problem right at its worst rather than giving it a couple of hours to adjust as much as it could.

He doesn't just react to my emotions, he takes real data to figure out what's going on, and I think that's the biggest difference for me. Eventhough Dr. Walgast at Perfect Teeth seems to do acceptable work, he really seems to work off my emotions and doesn't do the data check that I really need to feel secure. So I'm likely to just go with Dr. Ladd from now on. Even if the answer isn't an easy one and it isn't just a "fix" to get things 'right'... so...

He also said that most people have some bite problems. That it's not actually that uncommon. That helped a lot in an odd way.

No answer for today. Nothing's fixed but my emotional turmoil about what's going on, but that's such a huge thing....

We celebrated by going to the Daylight Donuts and I'm cheerfully working my way through an apple fritter even as I write. *laughter*

It's 100 on the thermometer in the sun. Ugh.

I was out in the OUR Center's garden for a long time. Ugh. I am drinking gallons of cold anything just to make myself hydrated enough to function.

It was good to get out there again. See everything all grown up and producing like mad. Nearly all of it I planted, too, so I'm very happy about that. The tomatoes are coming along, the peppers are flowering, the raspberries are going mad, the strawberries are still going. The peas are all out of the ground already, which is a good thing. The lettuce has been cut at least once and is nearly back again with all the sunshine and water and food Charles is giving it.

Charles was doing well, but finding it hard to get volunteers to work in this heat. I don't blame them.

I went to the garden after going to the dentist to get my permanent crown in. That... hurt. *sigh* But the tooth feels mildly less sensitive than before, and I think I'm going to be able to brush it. Plus, best yet the dentist said that it should take a long time for the ligaments and the jaw joint and all the tendons and things around it to feel normal again. Especially since I grind my teeth something fierce, it's going to stay a problem for a while and not to worry about it. Just take the painkillers that I need and get on with life.

So I have confirmation that what I was doing was the right thing. Plus, I stuck with the fitting long enough for it to finally feel *right*, which is a first. Usually, I've just bolted from the chair as I hate being there, and paid for it with pain afterward. This time I stuck it out until my bite felt *good* rather than "uhm... that isn't *bad*... uhm..." Hopefully it'll pay off. He said that it's fine to just call and get thing adjusted again, any time. So I'm glad of that.

Jet's off to his super soaker camp again, and he's having a blast with all the other kids and the running around and everything. Better than waiting for his other friends at home. We get some time, he gets some time with kids, and it's all good. MUCH better than the two weeks we were home and he was driving both John and I a little nuts by not just asking us to play with him but asking us how long until the other kids were home so he could play with them? He wanted kid-time. Entirely understandable, and he's getting enough of it, now that, in the evenings he's really happy to just be with us or in his house and playing with his toys. All to the good.

There's a lady at the church who is going to Peru to meet up with her daughter who is doing volunteer work over there. She asked me for extra knitting needles, and it was a real revelation for me to go to my knitting needle collection and realize that I haven't used ANY of my aluminum long needles for over a decade. So I gave her a whole bundle of them, along with some plastic ones, some double-pointed ones in both aluminum and plastic that I don't like at all. It was nice to de-clutter and get rid of those things I just don't use anymore. I said good-bye to the needles, took a picture of them, and wished that they would get good and used by people that needed them now.

Nice to have the ritual cleansing.

I'm reading Jim Butcher's Proven Guilty and it's obvious Butcher has gotten better with time and practice. Juggling dozens of relationships and histories from the previous books, it's even more fun than the previous books. It's still all mind-candy, but it's fun mind-candy. Mmmm... sweet. Plus, it was an excellent distraction from that moment when the dentist put room temperature cement into the real crown and put it on my exquisitely sensitive stub. Ow does not even cover it. He laughed and said, "Well, if you can even see straight after that, you might want to pick up your book."

I think all good dentist have to be mildly sadistic or else the amount of pain they actually cause would get to them, I think. And I have to say I consented to it as the alternative was probably worse. *sigh*

We've had a pretty peaceful morning, Jet and I.

Cinnamon rolls for breakfast. I love Rhode's cinnamon rolls, but it's getting hot enough at night that it's not quite as feasible as it used to be to just put the rolls out overnight to rise. They over-rose a bit this morning, so look kind of craggy. But still tasty. I should just make the dough and let it rise in the refrigerator overnight. Whole wheat would be good. :-) But it's a whole dozen of rolls, when we only eat half of them. Hm. I guess I could just freeze half.

( Peace from figuring out my other stuff and the library. )

After a night on ibuprofen, my mouth is back to at least a semblance of normality, though chewing is still something of a chore.

That, plus the fact that we had nearly a quart of ice cream mix from last Friday prompted me to go to Target. I'd been thinking of the Krups Le Glacier, but it's been discontinued, and John did a little research and found out that there was a Hamilton Beach machine that looked compact and solid enough to be useful for ice cream. It has an electric motor on it, so Jet could just turn it on and watch it work, so I decided to go and get it for myself, since I was feeling badly. Yeah, so I do shopping therapy, too.

I got it. Jet made ice cream the next day and he was so happy to watch it churn and freeze solid and then get Puffy! The thing beat enough air into it to double the volume, easily. And John thinks and I agree, that the barrel hadn't gotten cold enough, as it didn't freeze hard enough to stop the motor. So we had very, very airy ice cream.

The local dairy (no hormones, no antibiotics unless the animal is actually sick, and they say the milk was collected within 24 hours of delivery and it's been so fresh it lasts forever in those reused and reused glass bottles) will now deliver pints of half and half!! I think we're going to have quite a bit more ice cream this summer. *grin*

Oddly enough, even with my aches and pains and stuff, I am actually happy today. The temporary crown seems to be working okay. The *gums* are sore back there, but then that's where the dentist put a BIG HOLE with his novecain needle, so I'm not that surprised. The temp crown is working okay with careful chewing, but I'm trying, mostly, to stay off it until the gum is back up to snuff. But I've done what I can. And there isn't anything left to really worry about. So I'm good, on the most part, and, just maybe, the pain was a good recalibrater of what's now "good".

I finished spinning 8 ounces of wool in something close to fingering weight. But it might be a bit too fine, all in all, sigh, but so it is. I may just have to double it back on itself to get a good sock weight, but I should try it before deciding. I still hate being *too* fine for sock yarn, but maybe I should just to a lace leg and upper with it and just do a double strand across the bottom of the foot each time? I'll have to think about it. Lots of work that last.

I also finished the dark rainbow yarn. I need to take pictures.

I'm also into the third color of yarn on the phoenix, still six more to go, but I'm actually doing the feet of the bird! Soon the wing tips! Woohoo! I bought more red from Shuttles, Spindles, and Skeins, and the needles that didn't work out I returned and bought some really expensive Mountain Colors sock yarn. I really wanted to do socks, somehow, and my sock needles are in Seattle. It's all on the packing table, so that's to the good.

Jet and I found the first two Avatar DVDs that I'd bought a long time ago. We watched them and Jet now wants to see a lot more. "Not as bloody as Rave Master," was the first thing he said about it, but then followed up,"I *love* the Avatar." So I'll follow this more closely for him, and I know that RightStuf has sales on the DVDs once in a while. I'm just afraid that I can only get ALL the Season 1 DVDs and can't just pick up the ones I need... I'll have to look more.

Life right now is an interesting mix of "Hey, I could do that later!" and "Hey! I could do that Right Now if I wanted."

Yesterday was kind of a "Right Now" instant, as on Thursday afternoon I realized that I'd canceled a dental appointment while I was in Oakland, and I might as well do that Right Now, as my work's dental insurance is going to just last me until the end of April. So I called and asked if I could schedule something and they said, "How about 8am tomorrow?" I said, "Sure." Then I remembered that Jet might need a checkup, too, so I asked, "When did Jet last have his teeth checked?" "August, so he's due." "Do you have another slot?" "Uhm... it might not be so good for him, as it's at noon..." "Sure. We'll take that one, too." The great good thing about part-time kindergarten is being able to still schedule appointments for him whenever we choose.

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I had a good evening last night, but a terrible night. *sigh*

The good part was in the evening, after dinner. A nice lady at church, who is a relatively new member, happened across me when I was knitting during Sunday School (which, at our church, is before the service), and noted that it would be cool if there was a charity knitting group at the church. She then went on to create the group, and I have been showing up whenever I can.

She's smart and fun and has the same kind of explorative bent with knitting that I have. It's just knitting, it can't be THAT hard. *grin*

And it's always fun to just sit and talk with her about knitting and all kinds of other things.

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I have a Maryland Bridge in the front of my mouth... top just left of the two front teeth... I lost a front tooth in college through a small accident.

It's just a small bridge that fits against the backs of the two neighboring teeth. It doesn't destroy those teeth, it fills in a hole that's been there for more than two decades, and it covers up a gap in my gums and is over a pretty good hole in the bone of my jaw there from having a tooth missing for that long.

This is actually the second Maryland bridge I've had, and it was installed in 1999 because the implant technology back then wasn't good enough to fill in the bone gap I have in that part of my jaw, yet. I'm going to probably reconsider that now, as I hear that the bone growing abilities have just gotten much better in the last couple of years.

But one of the hazards of the Maryland bridges is that they fall off. There really isn't *that* much surface area for the bridge to use to stay on. So the connections can slip and crack and one wing or the other will just come off the surface it's glued to.

I hate it when it happens. Because it usually happens unexpectedly. And I anticipate it with some dread simply because it's a change and I hate feeling it loosen and my whole mouth kind of goes "Agh! Things are changing too fast..." I think it actually happened Saturday night, when I bit into one of the spareribs, but I kind of ignored it as I didn't want it to "just be in my head" (though my present dentist, who has a good sense of humor often says, "Well... it *is* all in your head..."). Last night, though, it was obvious that the gum on the left anchor tooth was very, very unhappy, and after eating a Clementine it was obvious something was squishing about in there, and the acid from the orange was NOT making it happy. At all...

So this morning, I called my dentist and he had a completely full plate for today (snow coming in Tomorrow and Friday) but told me to come in anyway. He worked me in between the other patients and got it all good again for just $22.50 on top of my insurance. Wow. I am very sore in the mouth, lips, and jaw from holding open so long and from the acid he used to etch the teeth as it went all over my mouth when he rinsed the surfaces off. No Novocaine was necessary for this surface work, another advantage of this thing. The other anchor tooth is kind of unhappy, too, as we had to whack it pretty hard to get the *other* side to come undone so that we could glue the whole thing back on thoroughly.

But now that it's finally come off after nearly eight years (usually, they stick for 3-5 years at the longest), I'm probably going to peer at implants and see what they can now do for me. Because, usually, if the bridge falls out once it's more likely to fall out sooner the second time and with this fast a glue-back, I'm pretty sure he didn't straighten it out or do much detailed adjusting to make sure it would be solid. But it's good enough for now and for me to not worry. Whew...

It's been a great day, so far.

I went to sleep too late last night. Jet had to be woken up every school morning this week. So this morning John left for work well before ether of us awoke, and it wasn't until 8:30 that Jet came into my room and asked me to play with him. He sat on me, turned on the light, and asked me to read him bits of his mining coloring book. Then he hit on the idea of having a bath, and I asked him to get his shampoo. He cheerfully ran out the door.

I went back to sleep.

Twenty minutes later he wandered in again with one of his bath toys. When I sent him back, he loaded up on toys and his mango shampoo. Toys. Hmm. He really wanted a bath in my big tub, not a shower. I sent him back again for clean clothes. Then I filled the tub, put him in, and then took a rather lukewarm shower myself, as the tub. even half full makes significant inroads on the hot water. Then I joined Jet in the still warm tub and gave him a complete scrub, top to toes. Then I dried off and dressed, n

Breakfast was easy with the little boxes of cereal John and I bought yesterday. Dean had taken Jet for the evening, so we'd had a quiet night out. Nice.

We headed out in plenty of time, and even got bagels and were still early for the appointment! That proved useful because they were done early with the previous appointment, so got started.

Jet was great! He did everything that the hygienist asked him to do, and even took the hard parts as a matter of course. The fluoride tray was too big for his mouth, but he took as much as he had to and held it for the time needed. We then had to wait half an hour until he could eat.

So we headed north, filled the tank at the 10¢ off per gallon pumps at King Soopers. Jet watched me through the driver's side window.

By the time we got to the "big" McDonald's and did the pre-meal ritual the alarm had gone off and we got to eat. Jet ate ail his chicken and has been playing quite happily. A little ice cream and the morning is complete. It has been very enjoyable and there's still the afternoon.