Best Laid Plans, Uh huh

So much for the diet. No, not really. I haven't given up, but I'm taking a day off (yes, that's what we'll call it). Because ...

I've had the worst few days. It all started Wednesday night. I took a Mucinex around 7pm, thinking it would help my cough so I could sleep better. But when I went to bed my heart started going crazy - thumping like I'd just run a marathon. I'd start to feel restful, then it would go crazy again. Add to that total nutty anxiety. At 3am I was up in the kitchen eating forbidden bread, thinking fuzzily that maybe the diet was causing this strange anxiety/sleeplessness.

Then, about 4am, I realized that Mucinex (which I've only taken two or three times, usually during the day) tends to make me jumpy and it did seem to give me a restless night once. Even though I'd taken it the night before at 7pm, it's a 12 hour slow-release capsule. Usually when a pill says "12 Hour" I figure I'll get about six or eight hours of relief. But Mucinex is true to its word. I honestly got NO sleep until 7am. And of course the kids are up by then, so...

All the next day I was exhausted, and still anxious. And then started in with a stomachache. By dinner I couldn't eat, was sooo tired, my chest tight and that horrible cough. But then it occurred to me, hey dumbell, your chest feels tight and awful not because you're having a panic attack/rare terminal genetic disease, it's tight because you can't breathe!

So we went to the med center, and Mud Pie and I were diagnosed with bronchitis. UGH. My blood pressure was off the charts (for me anyway), and the doctor confirmed that Mucinex, especially the ones with added ingredients like D or DM (I'd taken DM), has this awful side-effect on many people. She also said I shouldn't take it again. Which will be easy considering I flushed the rest of the bottle (the pills, not the whole bottle) the morning after my horrid night.

Last night I took the prescrip cough syrup from the med center thinking the codeine would knock me out, but it only made me feel floaty. So, I floated above sleep (reminding myself that the previous night was the Mucinex) until midnight, then crashed and slept like a rock until Dr. D, sweet wonderful man, woke me at 8am for an already scheduled dr's visit.

Needless to say, what I could or couldn't eat was not much of an issue the past two days.

I did discover at my visit this morning that I was down three pounds. Yippee!

Diet Never Tasted so Good!

I never had to think about dieting in my younger years. I was a skinny pre-teen, and an average teen, and an average newly married woman, and a slightly round first-time Mom. And after my first child, I lost the baby weight fairly easily. I never got back to pre-first-desk-job weight, but I was healthy and my clothes fit. But then I had second child, and not long after that, third child.

And ugh, now I weigh frighteningly close to what I did when I *birthed* first child. But I just don't do diets well. I tried Slim Fast for two months, and after having four weekends spent in bed with severe vomiting, I discovered something in the diet wasn't doing it for me. Then I tried Weight Watchers (I pilfered my mom's instructions). That worked when I really paid attention, and exercised like a maniac. Only I'm not a maniac. I'm a homeschooling mom and I have other things to do than jog on the treadmill every single day. I'd work at the diet/exercise thing faithfully for a few months, lose maybe three pounds, and feel so disheartened that I'd give up on both.

But now I'm trying again. And although I thought the Atkins diet was strange (we tried it briefly when I was working at that desk job - it was horrible, both the job and the diet), a relative of his diet, the South Beach Diet, might be worth a try.

Dental Update

My dentist had said tooth 15 and one other needed onlays, this after some major dental work last year. I was suspicious then and more so now and debated what to do. I did go for that 2nd opinion after all, to a dentist that is actually far closer to us than the other, but who still seemed like a used car salesman.

That aside, he gave a surprising diagnosis: tooth 14 was fine. A "virgin" tooth, as he called it. Entirely free of defect. But, he said, my dentist probably meant tooth 15, which did indeed have a crack. A small one, not one needing anything more than a filling. He'd recommend a small filling on that tooth, but could see that an onlay (as my dentist was prescribing) might work as well. The other tooth he recommended for a more severe treatment. A full crown instead of an onlay.

So, as long as my dentist mixed up his numbers a little, his treatment plan was A-OK.

I went back to my dentist to get the first (tooth 14/15) taken care of. I assumed he'd say something like, "Oh, oops! Wrong tooth number. Let's change that." But he didn't. So I asked, "Now which one are you working on? The one farthest back? (14)"

"Yup," he said, and explained that it was badly cracked and it was amazing it hadn't sheared in two yet.

"So it's not the one in front of that? (15)"

"Oh..." he looked again. "Why, do you feel a problem with it?"

"No, uh..." I didn't want to tell him I'd gotten a second opinion. He's sort of a wicked guy* sometimes and I really don't want him taking revenge on my mouth, thank you very much.

He said it did need some work, but nothing immediate, but this crack was a major one and needed to be fixed. If the tooth broke, it would be a root canal and crown for sure.

I insisted he take pictures, both x-rays and digital. He claimed a crack wouldn't show on x-ray, but took them anyway. Because he remembered as well as I did how some work done on Dr. D years ago had to be sent to the dental school before the insurance would cover it.

Still, I was torn. The other dentist said there was nothing wrong with this tooth at all! No crack, it had never had a filling, nothing. Yet here my dentist wanted to drill the side off of it and attach an onlay. Yet would he risk his practice for one silly onlay? Would he truly perform an unnecessary procedure?

I couldn't imagine that he would, so I had the work done. Now the insurance company is questioning it. But our insurance company questions a lot of things ...

And the second tooth? The 2nd opinion dentist pointed to the grayed tooth wall and said this really should have a full crown, that my dentist would be surprised by the extent of decay. I had a bad experience with a crown before (last year's root canal was because of a leaky crown), so I thought surely the onlay would be better. So I got that one done too, and the onlay was huge. I could tell my dentist was a little shocked by how deep he had to go to clean it out. He never mentioned crown, likely because a crown has to be made off-site (and he has to pay someone else to make it), while an onlay is made by a machine in his office.

I'm not sure a crown would have had a better outcome, but I haven't been able to bite on that side or tolerate hot or cold since.

We're so frustrated and torn up, again. This has to be the last visit with this dentist, but where to go now? How can you tell an honest doctor from a scam artist? The worst thing is that we all really like this guy as a person (despite his "wicked" side) and the kids actually look forward to going to the dentist. I'm just not looking forward to starting this search process, especially if I'm not 100% sure I need to.

*Recently been burglarized and told me of his "trap" that would involve nails and mutilation. Pretty ingenious idea, but not politically correct in the least!

Silliness of the Writerly Sort ~ Habits of the Writing Soul

So, in the past few days of blog-perusal, I ran across a funny post by the Sneaky Ninja Writer, having to do with traits of a writer. And then, over at Karen Hancock's blog, I saw another list of habits, not necessarily writing habits, but interesting habits of a writer. This made me wonder, again, at how seriously unstable unique writers tend to be.

And this got me wondering about my own quirky habits. I have a book somewhere (in a box in the attic, I think, since most of my library is up there so as to give the impression to any potential buyer that our house is spacious and inviting and not crammed floor-to-ceiling with books. Two shelves crept back from the attic, to our Realtor's dismay, but we really cannot live without our books), which is sprinkled with quirks of famous authors. Some wrote in bed, or standing up, or with a silver bullet between her teeth (ok, I made that last one up ... maybe).

Do I write in only one particular location, or with certain music, or in a certain color ink? Do I have an oral fixation? Do I even believe in oral fixations? (Yes, by the way, because I have children. A few things I have pulled from my children's mouths lately: paper clips, pencil shavings, snow off someone's boots, a dead fly, etc.) What are my strange obsessions? What are yours?

Ok, I'll go first. I can't write with any background noise or music whatsoever. Not soft elevator music, not tunes in the genre of my work (whatever that would be), and certainly not coffee shop jazz. Silence. Having kids around causes problems, for rather obvious reasons.

I also will use only one kind of pen. Ink color doesn't matter, but I always use a Pilot G-2 gel ink pen. Nice that my taste here isn't extravagant.

I snickered at Karen's oral fixation. Of course I don't have that problem. Chewing on my fingers. Repulsive. But, ahem, I do tend to have very dry skin in the winter, and the skin on my lips peels like mad (lipstick/gloss makes this worse). So I have the very bad habit of picking at the peelings while I work. I often go too far, because I'm paying attention to the screen (duh), so I tend to have a napkin dotted with lip blood beside the computer. I'll bet you're wishing I'd kept that last detail to myself.

So? Tell all, and if you don't write (or even if you do) you might share your reading quirks instead. Example: I like books I can slip in the side pocket of the van door. I despise, no, abhor sitting, bored, at the gas station while my husband fills the tank. I don't know why, but he always feels compelled to check the oil, fiddle with the tires, snap the wiper blades, etc. all while I wait in the van with the children and no heat. In February! When I have a book, the time is well used. When I don't, I'll reach for my trusty Pilot G-2 (I keep three in my purse) and huff on my hands until they're warm enough to grip, except I'll realize I left my notebook at home, and my husband has neurotically tidily also insisted on collecting all the stray wrappers, receipts and slips of paper while we wait in the cold because heaven forbid we bypass an opportunity to empty the car of any and every little thing we could possible use to WRITE ON, and after searching for even the corner of an envelope that escaped his trashscapade and finding only one rock-hard wadded tissue in which something truly nasty is growing, I will, after tossing that on his seat, end up glaring out the window, and wishing, again, that the book I'd been reading was slim enough to fit in the side pocket of the van. Incidentally, (see, I knew I'd get back to this tour somehow!) The Shadow and Night does not fit in the side pocket of the van.

Princess Potty

On a positive note - miraculous, actually - Mud Pie, Wednesday morning, decided to strip to nothing and put on a pair of her brother's underpants. On a lark, I brought the potty down from the attic and asked if she wanted to use it. Why, yes she did.

I fully expected her to sit on it, chatter a while about potties and underpants, then get up having left nothing behind. I'd then put her in a diaper and go on with my day.

Only she emptied her bladder into the potty! And opened the potty up, took out the bowl, carried it to the big toilet (like she hasn't seen Fish do this a thousand times), dumped it in, and proceeded to rinse it out herself.

I figured, Ok, she's on empty now, so she won't wet for a while. I'll just let her stay in her brother's underpants.

Only a while later she did the whole routine again! Then she wet her underpants, but changed into dry ones. She stayed dry the rest of the day.

The next day she wet a pair of pants (and was irritated with herself for doing it), but otherwise stayed dry. Virtually no prompting from me.

The next day, while I was typing away on the computer (taking advantage of St. Nick's Curious George obsession), she came up, sat on the potty, then came in to me with the most bizarre look on her face. A cross between fear and pride and horror. "Come look at the potty, Mommy."

She'd left a solid deposit! She was rather alarmed by it and said several times that she would not put her stinky in the potty again. But, still. It was there.

Saturday and Sunday she did great. Dry all day. Today dry again. I forgot to put bedtime pants on her at nap, and wasn't surprised that she woke screaming. But I was surprised when I got up there. "There's poopy in my beddie, Mommy!"

Quick, easy, clean-up. I think she'll see potty as better than beddie for poopie. But I'm still in shock, afraid to say she's Potty Training because I'm not doing any teaching!

Big Fat F

That would be me, for failing. Last week we did Monday's assigned school. Tuesday I had a dentist visit and a bizarre phone call and since then it's been downhill.

Today I got a stack of books together thinking, yes, we'll get back on track today! But it just didn't happen. St. Nick and Fish wanted to play outside. They wanted to draw pictures. They wanted to play with Legos. I wanted a cup of coffee and a quiet moment with NO marker wars, doors left open to let the 9-degree air blow through the house, little Lego motors buzzing. So, the books weren't touched.