Surviving...

No April Fooling from the nice dentist, so I let him live. A little over an hour to remove a messed-up tooth root, clean & pack & stitch it up...and now we "see what happens." Was hoping for more of a "and now you'll never hear from that tooth again as long as you live" but guess I'll take what I can get, huh?

In other news, I really do need to change my name to "Some Patients." They gave me knock-out pills that did almost nothing. "You'll just go home and sleep all day!" they assured me.

Yeaaaaaah, no. Wide awake. Not even fazed. Not even particulaly mellow. Pretty prickly, actually...the Denizens are walking BIG circles around me right now...although probably more because my jaw looks a bit grotesque and I have to grit my teeth to talk lest I start tearing out stitches. Awesome!!

Can't WAIT for the Great Tooth Drama of 2010 to be over.

Would like the Great Ohmygah We Won The $200M Lottery Jackpot drama next, please...

(sent from my Treo)

Nearing a new project

Got through the heel flap, turned the heel and halfway through the gusset pick-up on the ride in this morning. With luck, I'll finish this second sock after my surgery tomorrow and be on to the next project.

Funny how that "second sock" syndrome works, huh? BORED NOW! Want new project...socks, and sleeves, do it to me almost every time...

(sent from my Treo)

Memo to me...

Dear Me:

Spending half an hour fiddling with a playlist in iTunes to get the "perfect" mix for the commute doesn't do you a whole lot of good if you forget to sync your iPod.

Please keep this in mind in future.

Thanks,
Me

p.s.: Idiot.

(sent from my Treo)

Gee, why are they staring at me?!

So I went to the dollar store a couple weeks ago to pick up some of the endless streams of stuff you find yourself picking up when your kids are in school. “Could each student bring in fifty pencils? And four boxes of Kleenex? And fifteen pads of paper? And…?”

The mission this week being stuff like plastic tablecloths and clothespins, I hit up the dollar store. Your source of probably fatally-flawed but extremely cheap clothespins that, while they couldn’t possibly hold up a single cotton t-shirt on a clothesline, will do just fine for whatever craft project your first grade teacher has in mind. Plus you get 200 of them for a dollar. Rock on!

As I was standing in line, the cashier wondered aloud when Easter was this year.

Nobody in line knew. So I took out my Treo and looked at the calendar…which does not actually have the traditional holidays downloaded into it because, well, I haven’t gotten around to that yet.

But I’ve got all the solstices, moon phases and random holy days from religions nobody ever heard of in there. If it doesn’t get you a day off work, it’s probably in my calendar…but tell me that Good Friday is this Friday, and I’ll be stunned by the revelation. (Seriously. I was. Even though I already knew Easter was April 4, the fact that April 2 was Good Friday was like, “dude…wait…whaaaaaaaaaaat?”) (Also, I’m having surgery on April Fool’s Day. O.M.G. That dude had better not be a joker, I swear to Dog I will cut him…)

I can’t explain that. Really. I can’t. Except that weird random holy days interest me, and mainstream ones, the ones I grew up with and looked forward to every year because they involved candy-candy-candy (sweet tooth: I haz it) (hmm…also, I have rotten teeth. Coincidence? I THINK NOT), kind of don’t.

“Well,” I said, squinting at that blasted screen that was obviously designed for people with hawk-like vision. “Let’s see. Spring equinox is on the 20th, ohmygosh that’s this weekend. OK, and the next full moon is on the 29th. So, that would put Easter on…April 4.”

And then I looked up to see everybody in line staring at me like they weren’t sure just how crazy I was.

“Whaaaaaat?” the cashier asked.

“Because, uh, Easter is one of those movable feast day thingees? Yeah, heh heh…it’s, uh, see, it’s always on the first Sunday (ahem) after the first full moon (called the ‘worm moon’, by the way, isn’t that kinda funny, hahahaha…ha…heh…ahem) after Ostara? I mean the Vernal Equinox? You know, first day of spring?”

“That’s…kind of…crazy…” she muttered, still looking at me like maybe I was dangerous.

{beep…beep…beep} went a few pads of paper and bags of clothespins.

“How on earth do you even know that?” she blurted out.

“It is my life’s work to collect as many valuable bits of worthless information as I possibly can,” I told her solemnly.

“Oh. OK. Well. You have a nice day, then.”

Yeah.

And then I wonder why people are always looking at me like that…

Money Monday: March 29, 2010

I was thinking a lot about life insurance this last week. Nothing will bring this kind of thing to mind like wondering if you’re actually about to face the Grim Reaper, right there in your own bedroom. (Hey, a tooth abscess may have been what killed Ramses II, you know.) (Alternatively, he may have been ninety years old and it was just kind of his time and oh by the way, he had a tooth abscess. Whatever. Point being, it might or might not have killed the Great Pharaoh.)

I read not long ago that fewer than half of the American population carries life insurance of any kind. And yet it is my unscientific observation that just about everybody I know has, at one time or another, sat through an awkward session with someone who was selling the stuff – universally speaking, it seems to be a very uncomfortable situation with high-pressure tactics and unsatisfactory outcome for at least one of the parties.

Either the turkey bought and the salesman is happy, or the turkey walked and the salesman has gone hungry.

I admit I hate those presentations as much as the next person. They set my teeth aching, they truly do…especially since it seems in my personal experience, the salesperson knows about as much about overall financial planning as they do scalar field theory. (I’m told it has something to do with physics. Or everything to do with physics. Something…physics-y.)

It irritates me because life insurance is an important part of financial planning, especially for those of us with families. It protects what you already have and provides for the goals you will now not be able to fulfill; the loss of either one of us around here would be an absolute nuclear bomb for the surviving spouse financially – like the emotional burden wouldn’t be bad enough, huh?

So, who needs it and who doesn’t? How much do you actually need? Can you just do it once and bang, that’s it for the rest of my life (or until the term of the policy is up, anyway)?

The answer is…it depends. It’s way too big a topic for a blog post – this is like the Cliff’s Notes version. The best thing to do is to research-research-research on your own; Life Happens is a good place to start.

The need for life insurance increases dramatically as the children start entering the picture; the keyword to me is dependent. As people become dependent on you, well, that’s when life insurance starts getting pretty darned important.

How much do you need? There are a couple ways that is generally calculated. The first way is the “multiple earnings” approach, which is crazy-lazy a very simplified way to come to a figure: Take your gross income, and multiply it by {3, 5, 10}.

There. That’s what you need. Ta da! Done.

Except that you’ve done nothing to actually assess your needs and you could be wildly off in any number of directions.

The other method is the “needs” approach. This one is harder, but not so hard that it should cause anybody to break out in a cold sweat.

You start with your immediate debt liquidation, for home mortgage, credit cards, auto loans, and so forth. (This, by the way, is protecting what you already have, right?)

You’ll also throw your (ahem) final expenses in here. Funeral costs can be scary-high, sometimes as much as a decent wedding, for carp’s sake. Think about what you want and plan accordingly. (Personally, I’d want a dirt cheap body disposal but darned good beer for the wake. I probably won’t care much about the body anymore or where it ends up, but I have a feeling I’ll care deeply about good beer well into the next life.)

The next thing to look at is your ongoing income needs. First, figure what you’ll need for monthly expenses going forward – if you’ve paid off the mortgage up there under ‘immediate needs’ you may need less, but if you’re having to add full time child care you may find you’re adding yet more.

From that, subtract your anticipated survivor’s benefits (Social Security, pensions, IRA disbursements etc.) and your ongoing or anticipated income. This is your net monthly need; multiply that first by twelve to get your annual, and then by the number of years you expect to need this additional income. This may be “until the youngest child is grown and flown,” or “until I retire myself.”

After this, take a look ahead. What goals remain undone? College funds for the children, or the surviving spouse? Beefing up the retirement fund? “Other”? Add those here.

Take a deep breath and total those things up. That’s the total income needs.

Now, take a second to list out your current available assets – what you have in savings and investments, or assets you can quickly and reliably liquidate on demand.

Subtract the current assets from the total income needs…and that’s your additional life insurance needed.

It may seem incredibly high. It may seem pleasingly low. It may be that when you start shopping around, you can’t afford what you want; the younger you are when you get started, the better your price will probably be.

When you have a good idea of what you need and what you want, shop around. Competition can be fierce, so getting multiple quotes is always a good idea. Also look at different pricing tiers; oddly (at least, it seems odd to me), you will occasionally find that more insurance actually costs less.

This is something an awful lot of us don’t think we need. It’s something for “rich” people, or for people who are up to no good, or for heaven’s sake, we don’t need that! We’re young and healthy and eat nothing but organic oatmeal, for heaven’s sake!

Practically bullet-proof…

Granted, statistically speaking, it’s a long shot. I don’t really think either one of us is going to drop in harness any time soon; I’m far too optimistic a person for that. And we are in good health, and young, and…well, not so much with the organic oatmeal. But we’re growing organic peas! And eating them! Usually right off the vine, which we find to be rather an amusing form of obsessive snacking…Normal People are going face-first into a bag of Salty Snack’Ems, and we’re out in the backyard snatching peapods off the vine and snarfing down those sweet little jewels as fast as we can.

But could it happen? Well, sure. Some idiot decides to pound back a six pack of beer and take his truck for a spin. I’m distracted crossing a street while someone else is distracted by their cell phone. My husband’s excessive love of bacon clogs up his arteries to the point of no passage.

At our ages, death tends to be very sudden. Not a whole lot of expecting it; just one glorious spasm of Something Stupid and that’s it.

…and the surviving spouse is left with a fistful of bills, a house full of kids, and a huge black hole where the emotional, financial and physical support of the other used to be…

That life insurance premium is the only bill I pay every month hoping that it will be an absolute, utter waste of money; but knowing in my heart that if the unthinkable happens, whichever one of us is left will be intensely grateful for all those “wasted” payments.

If you’re one of the just-over-half out there without it – look into it.

And I hope and pray you’re never glad you did.

Even the cat isn't impressed

"Seriously? A big bowl of spinach? Yeaaaaaah, not impressed..."

(sent from my Treo)

Ultimate slow food

I truly believe you burn more calories shelling peas than you get from eating them.

These are the last of the "winter" peas. The vines were still producing, but getting spindly and producing very few, and somewhat bitter, peas. The new vines are going like gangbusters, soooooo...out with the old, in with the new! Putting in some fast-grow spinach while we wait for the hotter weather the beans will want...

(sent from my Treo)

The Carrot Expert is on the job...

We're harvesting the rest of the winter carrots today.

Do not try this at home, people - as you can see, WE have a resident Expert to help out...

(sent from my Treo)

Frugal Wooly Board

I need a wooly board. Seriously. Actually, arguably, I need several of them - it isn't that unusual for me to have four or five or six sweaters lying around drying. They could all use being blocked as they dry.

But I don't own a wooly board because every time I see that $100+ price tag on it, I choke up a little and back away. (Same thing goes for sock blockers. I'm actually trying to get my husband to help me on that - I see no reason why we can't take a wander through the hardware store, find Something Suitable, and make a few sets in various sizes ourselves...I mean, sure, paying $14 for A blocker isn't that big a deal, but people...in this week's laundry, there were SIXTEEN PAIRS of hand knit socks in sizes ranging from Wee Little Boy to Mr. Size 11 dangling all over the house! It would be nice to be able to slip them onto blockers to dry, don't you think? But I'm not paying $$$$$$$$ for sock blockers, nor am I going to wash one or two pairs a day in the sink or something when they are made of MACHINE WASH yarn. But I digress.)

Check out this pattern for a "frugal" wooly board! Out of PVC!

My husband...he is King of PVC.

He could totally make this. Probably with stuff he's already got out in the shed because...heh heh...yeah. He breaks so much PVC out in the yard? He practically buys the stuff by the truckload and stores it...because he WILL need it, oh yes, he WILL need it...

The many faces of progress

This morning, I woke up with no swelling and almost no pain in the tooth. I was so happy, I stayed in bed an extra half hour to celebrate! (I know. Who needs Vegas, baby, when there’s parties like these happening right here?! In bed until 5:55, wooooooooooo, lookout, wild woman!!)

Ahem.

In other Wildly Exciting News, I finally got the second sleeve steeked and sewn on the husband’s Lillehammer sweater.

Last night, I pointed imperiously in the general direction of the kitchen and barked, “Random Child! Unload that dishwasher! Husband! Make spaghetti! Other Random Child! Load the dishwasher! If you need me, I’ll be over here steeking…”

Then I did the sewing along the steeks by hand, which took about sixteen thousand times longer than using a sewing machine (especially since I was being super-paranoid about catching the floats and adjacent stitches and all…but you know what? I think may hand-sewing is actually sturdier than what I got using the machine the last time I did these) (you know what else? I have Officially Decided that I prefer the Fair Isle method where you cast on extra stitches for the steeks and do that checkerboard thing, rather than this Norwegian-style thing where you just knit the pattern and then have to sew it down…sure, it’s, what, twelve extra stitches in every round, but I’m going to be nervous about those steeks for the life of the sweater, whereas when I use good “grabby” wool and have six stitches worth of feltable buffer between the sweater and the cut part, well, I sleep better at night).

Then I set in the sleeves. And sewed the shoulder seams. And then it was late, so I went to bed.

But! The major stumbling block is officially over! The sweater has now come out of hibernation and is on its way to actually being finished-finished! I know! It’s like, the excitement is palpable…

Now all I have to do is pick up 16,000 stitches (give or take 15,880 or so) around the collar and do the Collar Pattern (hmm…seem to be short a ball of green…hope it’s in the Merino Leftovers box where it belongs…) (well, you know, I kind of figure the chances of Tim wearing this in public somewhere and somebody going, “Nice sweater, buddy! Wow! Is that a Lillehammer? Waaaaaaaaaait-a-second, why do you have extra yellow on that collar? Weren’t those two rows supposed to be green, Mistake Sweater Boy?!” are kind of remote, so if I have to play a little fast and loose with the collar pattern, so be it…but hopefully I’ll pull down that box and find the ball of green sitting in there, staring at me accusingly as if to say, Why did you put me in here before I was done with the job?).

And run in approximately 27,000 ends.

Give or take 3.

Which of course is the downside of all that lovely color work. You’re done…but not done. Done, but still have whackity majillion hours of work left…and personally, this is the part that is work. The knitting part is fun. The running in of ends? Not so much fun.

Seaming isn’t my favorite either, although I do find it rather satisfying when an “invisible” seam actually is, you know, invisible…I feel very clever when the two pieces just sort of fit together all smooth and stuff. Bonus points if the pattern lines up on either side.

This is going to be a wonderful dead-of-winter sweater. It is wicked warm (unpleasantly so last night, actually, as it smothered my lap in our 70-degree house), in beautifully soft yarn (KnitPicks Merino Style) and just…way not something you’re going to pick up at WalMart, you know? But with the yarn coming from KnitPicks, and discounting the fifteen zillion hours it took to make it, the actual cost out the door is about forty bucks.

Oh, OK, eighty bucks, if you count all the quarters that had to go into the Cuss Jar when I was trying to do the steeks and the sewing machine needles kept snapping. Geesh. You people are so unforgiving when it comes to math…

What am I, FIVE?!

BY THE WAY…thank you all so much for all the comments and support. I’ve been taking the probiotics and I think they are helping a lot; and the doubling up Vicodin + Motrin hint probably saved my life this weekend. (I did call the hospital drug hotline first to make sure I wasn’t poisoning myself, though; there are so many stupid ways to die and I probably will pick one of them eventually, but I like to avoid it whenever I can because, well, you only get one shot at a stupid death, and I want to make sure it’s the right fit for me, you know?)

Now, boy, did I have a weird morning. Surreal. I mean, it started off kind of lazy and nice. Got up slowly, and took the old time getting the Denizens going because we had plenty of time, right?

Well. We hit some kind of time warp thing and one second it was 6:15 and I had “plenty of time,” the next it was 7:15 and the kids are still half-dressed and I’m all, CRAP! because they have now missed “breakfast” at the sitter’s house (which would be cold cereal…every.single.day…) and are less than ten minutes from missing the van to school, too.

Sooooooooooo…I made them toast and eggs and bacon for breakfast. (They were pleased.)

Then I dropped them off at school instead of the sitter’s house. (Double pleased.)

And took Captain Adventure to the sitter’s house to wait for his bus. (Sorta pleased, sorta not.)

Then I got all wild! and also crazy! and stopped by Barista’s on the way home for a orange dark chocolate mocha (oh, I was verrrrrry pleased!).

Then I came home and rolled up my sleeves (well, actually, I put on a sweater because it was a little chilly in here) and got to work.

Sat through a meeting, during which my stomach decided to start rolling and flopping around because it thought maybe I was distracted. Ha. Allow me to introduce you to my little friend, Multi-Tasking. That’s right. I can listen to a guy describe why something on a spreadsheet Ain’t Quite Right and boss my stomach around.

This is how talented I am.

And then it turned out the tables I had been using weren’t quite right (fortunately, not because of something I did…not really because of something anybody “did,” more just because when you’ve got something as complex as this something is, with whackity majillion fingers in eighteen pies, well, it’s easy for something to get overlooked in the process).

We had another meeting about this. And at the end of it, we were going to chat over IM. And I waited for a while, but no chat was forthcoming.

So I said, “You know what? This is probably going to result in me having to re-run everything I did today which is going to take a while sooooooooooo I’m going to go ahead and get myself a bowl of soup while the getting is good.”

I went downstairs. Put a bowl of soup in the microwave. (Homemade semi-cream of tomato soup – it has some small chunks of homegrown tomatoes in it, not big enough to be a problem for the chew-less but enough to make me feel like I’m “eating” something.)

Took a couple more Motrin and a Vicodin and my next dose of antibiotics.

Was sitting at the table with the newspaper getting my daily dose of outrage while I drank my soup…

…and then, it happened again!!!!!!!! Time folded itself around my house and I blinked and it was almost 3:30!!!!!!

And I had a big red blotch on my forehead and cheek from the table.

Whoa. Maybe I was, like, abducted by aliens who performed brain experiments on me!

…or, possibly, I put my head down on my kitchen table like an exhausted toddler and fell asleep.

For almost two hours!!!!!!!

I mean seriously, what is this, kindergarten?!

I wasn’t that tired, either. (Or, I wouldn’t have said I was, anyway.) (Hmmm…I’m sounding more and more like a toddler every second here, aren’t I…)

Even more strangely, Vicodin doesn’t usually do that to me. Usually, it actually makes me kind of hyper and keeps me up at night, which has been part of the problem this week. “Oh, the Vicodin will help you sleep!” The Experts™ say, nodding wisely. “No, no it won’t. It will make my hyper and keep me up all night,” I will say. And then they go, “Ha ha ha, no, it’s a sedative, dear…”

Because obviously, having lived inside my skin for forty{mumble} years is as nothing to their knowledge of what they’re prescribing. Which says right on the label, “May cause excitability in some patients.”

Hmm. Maybe I should change my name to Some Patients.

ANYWAY. It was so embarrassing I naturally had to rush right out and tell the entire Internet about it. (Well, after I frantically answered a bunch of emails, ‘fessed up to my project manager that I’d just taken a two-and-a-half hour “lunch” in the middle of all our Crazy and kicked off three simultaneous data pulls to pop into spreadsheets so I can pretend I wasn’t asleep for two and a half hours at my kitchen table, drooling on the story about adult education centers in peril of losing funding.)

Sigh.

On the one hand, obviously, I must be sicker and more in need of sleep than I feel like I am.

On the other, you know what I did not need today – or this week, for that matter? More lost hours. My task list (both at work and at home, thank you very much) isn’t getting any shorter, and my paycheck isn’t getting any bigger, and I’m going to have two more days fully off next week…argh.

But I guess it’s kind of to be expected. I keep thinking I can just suck it up and walk it off, no matter what “it” is. I get angry when I can’t. I’ll be the first in line to tell somebody else that holy crap, woman, go to bed!…but when we’re talking about me I’m all, “Nah. I can take it. I’m prairie-tough.”

And boy, do I ever howl when it doesn’t work out the way I wanted it to work out. (Ohmygah…I really am only five years old…well…sure explains a lot, don’t it?)

I’m really looking forward to this being over. Funny how something so small can just…take over your whole life, you know? The outward signs are so tiny; even the Yucky Thing that had me so thoroughly freaked out was no bigger than my pinkie toenail. (And about as attractive, come to think of it.) (Memo to me: Pedicure. Look into it.)

But man oh man…everything from my diet to my sleeping to even when I can work is being dictated by this thing.

Kind of humbling, really. There you are, going about your life like the Queen of Everything, thinkin’ you’re totally in charge and some junk and then wham. Something you need a microscope to actually see grabs you by the knees and sends you flat on your face.

Glad I worked from home today. I mean, I probably wouldn’t have fallen asleep on my desk in front of God and everybody at work…but you never know.

Especially as I’m not actually in charge of these things, it would seem.

Almost ready for solid food!

Heh…the things you don’t think about when life is just going along the way it usually does. Things like chewing, for example. Or being able to reach down to tie your own shoe without having to lie down for a second to let the throbbing subside.

This new antibiotic may have some (ahem) unpleasant side effects and all, but apparently it works. I was a little worried when I first woke up, but a “mere” three Motrin and some coffee later I felt more than able to sit down and get back to work!

…which is another thing you don’t think you’d feel happy about, you know, “Oh goody, I can totally spend the next eight to ten hours working, yay!” is not generally high on most lists…but it feels pretty awesome right now!

My big worry right now is my short term memory loss and documented history when it comes to remembering to continue to take medications when I’m not being poked in the backside by symptoms. Now that things are settling down and I’m getting back to my passes-for-normal routine, I’ll have to be very careful that I don’t forget to keep dosing up every six hours.

…granted, the side effects of the medication may help me to remember because heh-heh, yeeeeeeeah…this stuff is, like, the chemotherapy of antibiotics. The production line motto on this stuff must be something like, “Kill them all and let the body sort it out.”

But it surely is nice to be able to think about the possibility of maybe eating solid food again, at some point.

Even if what my digestive system chooses to do with it afterward may be a little on the scary side…

Swiftly move the seasons

California is one fast-paced kind of state when it comes to our weather, you know? A couple weeks ago, I was shivering around here at night wearing two layers to bed and big thick socks and resisting the urge to creep down the hall and nudge up the heater.

Storms from Alaska had us back down into the 30s and even (on one notable evening – notable because an awful lot of us gardening-types had already started direct-sowing and transplanting) high 20s.

Ouch.

Fast forward to tonight, when I was throwing open our bedroom and bathroom windows and setting small fans under them to encourage the cooler outside air to flow in. Because gah, it was hot and stuffy and sweaty and some junk in here! Seriously!

Soon, I’ll be whining about how unrelentingly hot it is, how hard it is to sleep with all this blasted heat.

I actually do prefer the winter on that front. I find it much easier to get to sleep when I’m “too cold” than when I’m “too hot.” You can always throw on another layer of clothes or another blanket…but there comes a point where there’s just nothing else you can take off and if you’re still sweatin’ and sufferin’, wellllllllll…there you are.

Kind of out of luck.

But it’s very good news for the tomatoes, which need to get transplanted soon. They’re outgrowing their little peat cups and starting to swoon a bit – they need more room to grow, more nutrients from the soil, and some lovin’ from the good old sun.

…before it becomes a burning tyrant of unrelenting scorching heat and nighttime temperatures that feel like high noon, and not a drop of water to be found anywhere other than the end of a city-supplied hose…

The things you find...

Wow...from, like, last February?! I just found this in a very cool cotton bag, UNDER the husband's (also unfinished) Lillihammer sweater in my knitting caddy. This cute little bag just needs its straps grafted together, a thorough blocking, and a lining put into it (whoops...sounds like sewing...hmmmm...).

Also, there is a Significant amount of Palette left over from this project. Maybe a Fair Isle style tam?

(Girl...one project at a time, please...)

(Still feeling pretty crappy today. Having trouble maintaining sense of humor. As long as I take too much Vicodin/Motrin and then stay PERFECTLY STILL, I'm almost OK. Try to sit at the computer and think, or rotate the laundry, it's throb-a-pahlooza. Feh. Want instant fix. Want it yesterday. Don't care about your "blah blah drive infection into blood stream", just PULL this bleepin' thing! Hand me those pliers, I'll show ya how we handle this sorta thing out hee-ya in Crazy Town...)

(can you tell I just sat down again after moving around? Ooooh yeah, the pliers are looking a lot less scary than they usually would...)

(focus on the pretty little bag, Tama...such a sweet pattern, just needs a little grafting to be off the needles...you can handle grafting six stitches together, even while on Drunken Monkey Pills, right...?)

(because seriously - coherent thought and I are apparently not on speaking terms today...I hate Vicodin sooooo much, even when I'm ever-so-grateful for it...)

(sent from my Treo)

Lentil Soup

Lentils are a frugal cook’s friend, packing a lot of nutritional bang (dietary fiber, folate, B1 and protein) for not a whole lot of bucks – and unlike their cousins the dried bean, they provide all of that bang without requiring long soak and cook times.

You can actually make it from bag of dried lentils to spooning up your soup in well under an hour, and sometimes as fast as thirty minutes.

This was a thrown-together recipe, made up of things I happened to have on hand – it turned out really well, is a healthy sort of meal, makes plenty and freezes well, and for bonus points is extremely inexpensive to make. Especially if the vegetables are coming out of your backyard, which is of course a little on the “advanced” side but was pretty awesome for me this weekend when a trip to the supermarket might as well have been a journey to the moon.

ANYWAY. You’ll need:

1-2 tablespoons olive oil
3 medium carrots, finely diced
3 stalks celery, finely diced
1 onion, finely diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon sweet paprika
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper (more or less to taste)
1/4 teaspoon black pepper (more or less to taste)
2 cups lentils, picked over to remove rocks and misshapen lentils and rinsed until the water runs clear
1 small can tomato paste, about a quarter cup (or, a regular 14-1/2 ounce can of cut up tomatoes) (or, about six whole fresh tomatoes, seeded and chopped)
6-8 cups water (you could also use vegetable or chicken stock)
Generous Dash of thick hot sauce if desired (I used Pepper Plant)
Salt to taste (ended up being about a teaspoon of sea salt, which is a bit “saltier” than plain table salt)

Warm up the oil and sauté the vegetables for a few minutes; the onions should be getting translucent and the house should be filling with a savory scent. Add the spices and sauté them around for a few minutes; this should bring everybody in the house into the kitchen to find out what you’re up to, and is a good time to remind anybody of chores they may have forgotten but could probably get done in time to have a snack when the soup is ready, hint-hint.

Add the tomato paste, lentils and water – the water should fully cover the lentils by a good two inches, so if you need more don’t hesitate to add it. Bring this to a boil, reduce the heat to a simmer, and let it go uncovered for about half an hour, stirring occasionally.

Give it a taste and adjust the seasonings; the lentils may need a little longer (another ten to fifteen minutes is usually about it), but probably not. You can run it through a blender if you want it super-thick and rich, give it an extra-vigorous stirring to make it “kinda” thick and rich, or leave it as it is. I kind of like leaving the lentils whole, but it’s also good in “puree” form.

It’s also really good with some gently toasted homemade bread to dip in it. If, you know, you’re able to chew such a thing. (Seriously, the husband’s pliers are starting to look a lot less scary at this point…I am exceedingly weary of having a toothache at this point…)

I like to add a big old dollop of Pepper Plant hot sauce to it at this point, which gives a lot of extra flavor and kind of puts a floor under the flavorings. (I use that stuff in just about everything. It has a great flavor to it, not too spicy but not bland either, and it has a way of melding with everything from meatloaf to soup.) (Heavy ‘bell pepper’ overtones, too. Not a bell pepper anywhere on the label, but I’d swear they must be in there somewhere…maybe under “spices”? Or can jalapenos imitate bells when in sauce form? Inquiring minds want to know, people…)

(Possibly because inquiring minds are hoping to make their own homemade hot sauce with their own homegrown ingredients this year, because inquiring minds really don’t know when to give up and say, “Ya know, you’re never going to beat this store-bought sauce so why bother blistering your eyeballs cutting up jalapenos trying?”)

(‘Course, inquiring minds would also like to make a version that is perhaps just a little less spicy but still very flavorful, so that the delicate Denizen tongues don’t spit it clear across the room if the hand attached to the inquiring mind in question maybe got a little enthusiastic while shaking the sauce into the stew.)

(Inquiring minds are actually really looking forward to “canning season” this year – inquiring minds have got a lot of ideas, and one of them rhymes with “ridiculous amounts of spicy zucchini relish” because ohmyGAWD, is that stuff good on everything including sandwiches and anywhere else you might consider using mustard.)

(It’s so good it’s one of the very few things I would consider hiring out a professional-grade kitchen to make a huge-big whack of it so I could sell it at the farmer’s market…it’s that good…)

(And zucchini bushes are that prolific…)

(Oh my Lord, are they ever prolific, those zucchini bushes…)

Fun and Excitement, now with Better Antibiotics

Needless to say, I called the dentist (actually, I called an endodontist, which is the dude who specializes in root canals and other “pulp” related problems, but if it waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck…) (also, ‘dentist’ is easier to spell than ‘endodontist’, just sayin’) this morning. We discussed how things had gone over the weekend and there was some frantic activity and eventually we came to come conclusions about what-all is happening now and what will happen soon.

We moved my surgery date up to next week instead of week-after-next. We could not, however, move it up any further because he can’t do the surgery while things are so puffy and oozy in there. That’s right. I have to get better before I can have surgery. Oh, irony…

To which end, they upgraded my antibiotic to something I’ve never taken before. It is rather expensive, but according to theory it should actually kill 99% of all germs and bacteria in my body within the first twelve hours of taking it. Including the “good” ones, so I can expect some (ahem) fun and excitement in the intestinal department over the next few days. Good times!

Then they told me I need to stay close to home until I have my surgery, or at the very least until we get the infection under control. If the infection migrates out of my jaw into my body we could have things go really bad really fast; and, the side effects of the medication can apparently hit really hard without warning.

I suspect being on BART between Dublin and Castro Valley at the time would be…bad.

I have to admit, they’ve made me really nervous about taking this stuff. The list of “expected” side effects is crazy-long, and then there’s also a long list of “stop taking this immediately and call your doctor if” stuff, and then there’s also a shorter but scarier list of “if this happens, call your funeral home immediately to make arrangements because wow, are you ever screwed” stuff.

But then again, the list of scary around not taking it is even, well, scarier. Not surprisingly I’m pretty focused on just the pain part of the whole ordeal, but the infection all by itself is a pretty gnarly one. It has probably been bubbling away in there for quite a while, too – thanks to the stuff I take for my back and hip, things whose warning signs include “inflammation pain” are going to get a pretty good head start before I’m going to catch them.

Sigh.

It just seems so…unreal, though. Last week Monday, I felt great. No more cold, no more sinus headache, all the Denizens finally back to school after a week of one or more of them home with some variety of scrounge…awesome.

I only made the appointment for myself on my day off as an afterthought – I was making appointments for them, and then I thought, oh yeah, I should probably see someone about this and that and the other thing too…

Can’t put the off forever, these things. I need to have a whack of fillings replaced, and the implant needs a skin graft done around it, and I have a cracked crown that should be replaced.

I expected to spend part of Friday all numbed up with some new fillings glistening from my poor old teeth…but able to head out into the garden afterwards, and to spend the rest of my four day weekend working on all the things I had planned.

Spending the whole time, plus an extra day tomorrow, lying around unable to even knit…was really not part of the plan.

Neither was yet another two unpaid days “off” in the same pay period for surgery and recovery next week. Fie.

Still. Even though I’m not particularly happy about the whole thing, I still feel like one of the lucky ones. My husband is around to take care of me and the kids while I’ve been indisposed. He is able to work from home today and tomorrow, the window where the chances I’ll need someone to run me back to the endodontist or the hospital are highest.

And my income isn’t needed for our most basic expenses – losing these days sucks, but it doesn’t mean we’ll be falling behind on any bills or having to eat grass clippings or anything like that.

Oh well. If I get a good tailwind on this thing, maybe I’ll feel so much better tomorrow afternoon that I can get out there and get those tomatoes into the ground where they belong. They’ve been hardening off all weekend (I got that done, anyway), so all I need to do is get out there, clear out the rest of the three beds…dig 160 holes…cut apart the trays and drop each tomato plant into its hole…pack the dirt back in…and…ugh…you know what? I think I need to go lie down again…

(The “new” pea bed is exploding with pods! EXPLODING! There must a thousand of them out there, swelling up…they’re delicious, too, little juicy-sweet bursts of pure goodness…also, Captain Adventure loves to pick carrots, and has become quite the expert at picking out the ones that are ready to be picked… “Get him DAT wun, mom-MEH! Him is a gud car-wot!”) (Still won’t eat the carrots, mind you, HAHAHA, ‘tis to laugh, but he thoroughly enjoys the picking process…)

Not going particularly well over here…

I think this is rapidly becoming the most painful experience of my life. And the most frustrating, too – I can’t spend a whole lot of time, you know, upright.

Yeah. Things are not progressing as I’d hoped they would. And then a couple hours ago, I made the mistake of taking a peek at the Offending Area in my mouth and…yeah.

Let’s just say there are developments that are…best left unsaid, or perhaps merely summed up like this: “EW!!!!!!!”

My right lower jaw is now noticeably swollen, the pain has shifted up and down the whole length of my jaw, my upper jaw and face from nose to under my right eyeball is inexplicably numb and yet itchy (on the inside of my skin, which doesn’t stop me from trying to scratch it), I have a disturbing tendency to throw up whenever I try to get up and move around and the pain itself is…impressive.

If I take the absolute maximum ibuprofen permitted by the most lenient doctor in the world, and then spend the next hour lying perfectly still with an ice pack on my jaw, it is almost bearable.

But the moment I, you know, say, “Gee, maybe I could just do a couple rounds on that sock…or read something…or make some soup because I’m kind of hungry…”

The throbbing returns. And lo, it is epic. And furthermore, if I don’t chicken out and snuggle back down into the sofa, well, I throw up anything I’ve managed to get down. (This may be due to the ibuprofen – it doesn’t generally agree with my stomach in any case, and boy howdy am I ever suckin’ it down right now.)

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the initial antibiotic I was prescribed is not taking care of the old business.

This also brings up another topic that I’m deciding is something of a sore point with me, and it is this: They always want to schedule things like root canals, extractions, oral surgery and so forth, on Fridays. They made a big point of that when they scheduled my surgery for two weeks out – it was the first available Friday and most people like Friday because, see, they have the whole weekend to recover…

You know what? Pardon me for being blunt here, but @*^&@ work – that’s OK, I’ll go ahead and miss a few extra days of work because you know what I want? I want my surgery to be done on a Monday.

Because you know what sucks? Realizing on Saturday morning that things are not going well and having that knowledge followed up by the knowledge that there is diddly-poop to be done about it until Monday because GUESS WHO ELSE HAS THE WEEKEND OFF?

Oh yeah. That’s right. Dentists. They all take the weekends off.

A couple years ago, I had an extraction done on a Friday – woke up Saturday morning with a lovely case of dry socket and had to just suck it up and deal until Monday when the dentist wandered back in from the golf course.

This thing happened to explode into an indescribable nightmare of pain and misery on a Thursday, and they gave me stuff on Friday that was supposed to help it and went on home for the weekend…and it’s getting worse and worse and all I can do is hope I don’t die or something before Monday.

Which is a lot closer now than it was this morning when it first occurred to me that maybe I didn’t want to have this damned surgery on a Friday after all – because by golly, having to go forty-eight hours with no access to a Trained Specialist when something is getting uglier by the hour is…kind of nerve-wracking, actually.

Just sitting here…watching my face swell up…weird symptoms, increasing pain, the icky thing that has started happening inside my mouth…and there’s nothing I can do, nobody I can call, nowhere I can go and point at it and say, “What the @*^&@, man?!”

All I can do is wait for the weekend to be over and the dentist to get back to the office. And take more Motrin. Refill the ice pack yet again. Drink some soup. Throw it up. Drink some more quick during the brief lull in stomach upset a bout of vomiting will sometimes grant you…and hope that whatever That Yucky Thing is in there is “perfectly normal” and “expected” and that all we need to do is upgrade to a beefier antibiotic and then we can all have a good laugh about the chipmunk cheek and under-the-skin itch and That Yucky Thing that has me so crazy right now.

Yeah. I’m definitely thinking maybe I’d rather have the surgery on a Monday…so that if things go south on me Tuesday morning, well, I can flippin’ call the dude and reasonably expect him to be around to tell me what to do, whether or not to worry and maybe, I dunno, do something about it…

I don’t ask much, do I? All I want is instant and complete fixing of my issues, that’s all, that’s not too much to ask, is it…?

(I’d also like my email to work right again. I’m not sure what happened, but Outlook appears to have “eaten” my personal folders…so everything I downloaded off the mail server before Friday morning is toasted.)

(Eh, I know it is all still there somewhere, I just lack the brain power to go find it right now...it will be something stupid, annoying but relatively easy to fix once I feel more like myself, I'm sure...)

(I’d also-also like to be able to eat more of the lentil soup I made this morning because it is awfully good…but my stomach is just not too happy with me right now…it’s basically just lentils with some finely diced carrots, celery and onion from the backyard, plus about a quarter cup of tomato paste, and some ground cumin and garlic powder and cayenne and some bell pepper-based hot sauce, all boiled together. It’s tasty and very filling, which is nice when you can’t, you know, actually eat…but I don’t think I’m going to be able to get anything into me until we get closure on this deal…feh…)

(I’d also-also-also like for it to be 9:00 Monday morning now, please. Any chance we could just fast forward through the next fourteen or so hours? Take them ‘as read’ and move on?)

…feh…

Failed root canal. Infection. Oral surgery. Blah blah blah.

I am not a very happy camper right now. (No, really? Why-ever not, I wonder quietly to myself…)

The thing that annoys me the most is that pain relief is probably about 48 hours out. When I whined vigorously mentioned casually in passing that my Vicodin prescription was doing precisely diddly-SQUAT! for the pain on this deal, the otherwise charming dentist shrugged uncomfortably and said, “Wellllll, unfortunately, there’s not a lot to be about that, then…what will help you is the antibiotic but, well, that’s not like, you know, take a pill and pop! Pain relief…yeaaaaaaaaaaah…it’ll probably take, you know, a day…or two…”

Here he glances at the x-ray showing the blackened areas where the demons of HELL are playing hurley with the heads of champions the infection is, and muses, “…probably two, yeah, proooooobably two…”

I kid you not, I was >>this<< close to asking him if he wouldn’t just, you know, numb me up. Yeah yeah, surgery isn’t for two weeks, but could you just get me good and numb for a couple hours, so I could maybe eat something…? Or maybe take a nap?

Actually, maybe you could numb me up for, say, 48 hours? You know, just until the antibiotic starts taking effect and that thing where my whole entire face is throbbing settles down a bit…?

Yeah. That’d be swell, thanks…

Sigh.

Oh well. On the bright side, the antibiotics should be getting in the ring with the infection and kicking some bacterial butt soon; 48 hours sounds like a long time right now, but if you really stop and think about it…that’s miraculously fast.

And it’s possible it could work even sooner! So, you know…I could wake up tomorrow already feeling Significantly Better! (I reject YOUR reality and substitute my own…)

And furthermore, what a wonderful time I live in, huh? There was a time when something like this was practically an automatic death sentence. (And what a horrific death that had to be, too. Ugh.) Shoot, infections like this still kill people from time to time, even here in the “civilized” world.

But me, well, at the first sign of real trouble I trot on in to the dentist’s office and he catapults me over to a specialist, and there are instant digital x-rays and we can point at the various lines and dots and say, “Here is the infection, and there is the bone loss, and this right here is how the one leads to the other, so we will go in this way and pack that with this and then, well, problem solved!”

Shoot, as of a couple months ago, I even have dental insurance…which won’t pay for all of this or even potentially the majority of it, but it will cover some which is a lot better than none, right?

All things considered, I’m still leading a charmed life…even when my entire face is throbbing and I’m pretty sure one of those demons is actually gnawing on my inferior alveolar nerve…

Typical…

Typical…

I have a four day weekend. That’s right! (un)PTO today and Monday…and a long list of wanna dos to fill it up. Gardening! Cleaning! Organizing! Cooking! Finishing knitting projects!

…jam-packed weekend right here…

The item that was not on the list until a few days ago was “go to the dentist to find out why one of my molars is suddenly so sensitive that even the silky light touch of room temperature water passing over it is an exquisitely painful experience.”

What makes this a particularly joy-filled event is that the molar in question has already had a root canal done on it.

When a tooth that no longer has nerve endings in it starts throbbing like this, it is seldom something easy and readily fixable with a thirty minute appointment.

Sigh.

It was bugging me a bit Wednesday when I made the appointment. All day Thursday, it was, like, the focus of my entire life. I was keenly aware of it throbbing away while I was working.

And of course, I was up most of the night trying not to think about it. Except that I couldn’t help groping at my jaw because seriously, should it not be swollen out to HERE if it feels like this? Why can’t I feel any swelling? Ow, hey, does it actually hurt to touch the outside of my mouth near that molar? OW! Yeah, yeah it does…how about if I poke under my jaw, under the molar…OUCH! AW, CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, THAT HURT!!!!! Hmmm. What if I press down from just below my ear in the general direction of the sore tooth…

(Seriously, what is it about toothaches that make us do things like that? I know I’m not alone on this, I’ve watched other people do it too…the tooth hurts, so we poke at it and prod at it and experiment on it…gee, if I take this knife and jam it down between the sore tooth and the one next to it, does that hurt? Why YES! YES, IT DOES…OK, let’s try…)

I took two Vicodin last night, people…they did nada for this pain. (My back felt better, though, so, you know…I had that going for me, anyway.)

Undaunted, I came home from dropping off the Denizens and started doing laundry. Folded one load and then sat whimpering on the sofa waiting for the throbbing to subside. Took another Vicodin. Then two Excedrin. (Which, by the way, I think worked better than the Vicodin.) (Either that, or it took the Vicodin over an hour and a half to kick in, and the fact that I took Excedrin half an hour before was mere coincidence. But somehow, I doubt it.)

Then I thought to myself, Look. You get a day off that isn’t a Whole Family day off what, every two-three months? Get something done! It’s just a little toothache for carp’s sake, quit being such a baby!!

So I got up and grabbed the vacuum cleaner and sucked the cat hair off the play room furniture and then started whimpering to myself.

So I said more stern words about sucking things up and not being such a big baby and moved the furniture out so I could get at the mountains of crumbs and cat hair and dust and dander and we do not want to know what-all else that was under it all. Wiped down the tables. Vacuumed. Ran my new steam cleaner over the floor.

Collapsed in a miserable pile of whole-head throbbing and decided that I am definitely dying and that seriously, in a hundred years, nobody will care whether I died in a clean house or a dirty one and Christ-Awl-Mighty, is it time for my appointment yet…and can a dentist prescribe morphine because WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!

I have a very bad feeling about this. It’s like I can sense my entire four day weekend’s plans just…flittering away.

Even the finishing of knitted objects thing is fading out of the picture; I mean, most of them, sure, they’d actually make an awesome thing to do while getting over whatever nasty thing is about to happen…but the one thing that I really wanted to finish?

It involves the sewing machine. Because it involves steeks. Because it is one of the most seriously awesome sweaters I have ever made, and it has been sitting unfinished for months because the last time I tried to finish it, I broke two sewing machine needles and didn’t have a third and then it took months for me to get around to buying a new one because I kept forgetting about it and now I have the needle and was rarin’ to go BUT the very idea of trying to find the sewing machine out there in the garage (which looks like a Goodwill store after a hurricane) and then setting it up and beating the Denizens off me while I try to use it and thinking because steeks are not something you go into all “la la la inch, centimeter, whatever, let’s just eyeball it and hope for the best!”…

…meh…

It was bad enough that I’m finishing my husband’s sweater just in time for our daytime temperatures to be back in the 70s. Now it looks like he might not get it until Winter 2012.

Well. Fortunately for all of us, it’s time for me to go to the dentist now.

I shall endeavor not to bawl all over the poor man, who really has done nothing to deserve what is about to walk through his door…

Whew...

Eldest just opened her birthday presents. I got her two video games, one for the Wii and one for the DS.

She squealed over both of them. And now there is rapt silence as the music of the Wii game begins to float through the house…

Once upon a time, buying presents for her was easy. Anything brightly colored that made a noise, she’d love it.

These days, her tastes are more refined and subject to change from day to day. Just because she told you two weeks ago that this was “The Game,” the one she wanted more than aaaaanything, or that this book was THE book (or series), the one she couldn’t wait to read…well, that was so five minutes ago.

I was actually a little nervous about how she’d feel about the games. That’s the thing about having kids who don’t ask for a whole lot on a day to day basis: You really don’t want to let them down when they’re actually expecting something.

But, for one more birthday…I got it right. Go me!

Next year, I’ll be buying for a {gulp!} teenager.

{…pause to contemplate that…}

…hold me…