I'm Thankful for Much, Not the Least This

We are thiiiiis close to Thanksgiving, and all around me are things for which I am thankful.

The gorgeous colors on the trees, which made us wait this year until we thought it was going to be a drab autumn then surprised us with splendor.

My morning gig as a middle school accompanist which has turned out to be so. much. fun.

That my dental work is in the past rather than in the future.

And Acorn television, which is a cheap way to feed my addiction to British procedurals.

Thanksgiving also means I'm in frantic hurry-up mode on all the cozy projects I hoped to finish by Christmas so I often have Acorn playing in the background while I'm knit-one-purl-two-ing, and because I am not always exactly sure what the Brits and Scots and Irish are saying, I keep the closed captioning on.

That's fortunate, because as binged on The Clinic I mistakenly thought this mother was taking her son to the cinema to reward him for good behavior when he got a shot and it wasn't until I glanced up at the screen that I realized the Irish apparently reward good behavior differently than we Kansans do.

Whshew. I'm really thankful I'm a Kansan.

Do Not Google This

I'm doing very well after my oral surgery, thank you. The self-pampering continues, and I intend to make that last for a very, very long time.

Part of the reason the pampering can continue is because I'm looking a little fairly horrifyingly ragged around the edges. You see that ankle in today's illustration? Transpose the bruise to my right jaw, add six square inches of yellow shading around the edges, throw in a heaping helping of swelling and you have an idea of what I look like six days post-operation.

I am pretty, pretty, pretty.

I am so pretty that I could not bring myself to use any of the eight selfies I took in an attempt to show just how marked I am. Did you know that when make-up artists try to make someone look older, they shade in natural smile lines and wrinkles? And that when subcutaneous bleeding settles from the upper jaw to the lower jaw, it settles into the smile lines and wrinkles? Yes. I am vain enough that I don't want that shared on cyberspace.

So I turned to the internet for an image I could use to show just how bad I look, and that brings me to the point of today's post:

Do not ever, under any circumstances, Google "image face bruise following oral surgery."

Oh. My. Gosh.

People, those images are truly terrible. You not only get the run-of-the-mill discoloration I'm sporting these days, you also get images of THE SURGERY ITSELF, complete with broken teeth, gaping wounds, and Sharp Instruments Inside Mouths.

It is...off-putting.

That's why, instead of a picture of what my face really looks like, you see a bruised ankle and a yellow flower. And because I value the sensibilities of anyone who might see me in person, I'll make a concerted effort to turn the other cheek to the public.

You're welcome.

This Food Picture Has a Story

Pure delight

It's a shame I posted the picture of my lunch on my Facebook page yesterday--it was so much more colorful than my supper that you see here. Baked sweet potato, banana, Costa Rican mug of cafe con leche next to a bottle of pain pills. 

Supper, on the other hand, was monochromatic. Baked potato. Cottage cheese. Ice water. Salt and pepper. 

It was one of the most delicious things I've ever tasted

Three hours before my colorful lunch, I had been blissfully unconscious and unaware that an oral surgeon was in the process of removing my final (unerupted) wisdom tooth, which had decided it was ready to leave this world one way or another and was dissolving and taking part of my jaw with it, and hey! Let's see if this back molar is ready to go, too!

Several decades ago, I had oral surgery to remove my bottom two wisdom teeth. My experience was not nearly as cushy as Husband's wisdom teeth removal which, in his college days during the halcyon days of insurance largesse, included a three-night stay in the hospital. My (impacted) teeth, on  the other hand, were removed in an office procedure that left me fighting pain and a lingering abscess for the next six months. 

So I was not at all delighted when my dentist discovered that the tooth I had lovingly cradled under the skin waaaaaay in the back of my mouth all those years was going rogue. 

Not. At. All. 

However, I discovered yesterday that oral surgery has changed in the years since that first extraction. The most obvious difference was that back then the dentist offered a few of whiffs of nitrous gas to ease the process. While that was a decent step up from biting down on a stick, yesterday's surgeon gave me an IV that obliterated the time between "I'm just going  to tape this needle down now" and "Okay, please step from the wheelchair over into the recovery chair. Your husband is bringing the car around." 

Seriously, it was mind-boggling. 

I know that something happened in my mouth because I have a tiny mark where some sort of retractor kept my lips pulled back, and oh, yeah, I look like an over-industrious squirrel preparing for winter by storing  All The Acorns in her right cheek, but after a single pain pill yesterday, no pain. Thankfully, the back molar was discovered to be intact and it's staying put. 

And Husband has been pampering me endlessly. That colorful lunch (which was pre-pain pill and I was still a little too dopey to fully appreciate) was served on an inlaid wood tray. After a no-breakfast, no-lunch day, though, the baked potato with cottage cheese supper was soft and salty and hit the spot like not even a Kansas ribeye could have done.  

Especially if you look closely at that monochromatic picture. The only dab of color is smack in  the middle, and it's the frosty blue label on a York Peppermint Pumpkin. 

Thank you, trick-or-treaters, for not eating this piece of candy. It was perfect for what ailed me.