IT’S ALWAYS TOOTH HURTY HERE…GET IT? TOOTH HURTY. HEH.

 Thursday morning I (finally) got to go have the procedure on my tooth done. 

I only say finally, because it seemed like a long time to put off having an abscess taken care of, but the endodontist went to many years of school to make these calls, so who am I to question it? It had actually stopped hurting, so I had a very slight hope that maybe it had gone away, but no such luck.

I had Steve drive me to the appointment because I requested having nitrous during the visit, and although I know I could probably drive home afterwards, I didn’t want to take a chance of being woozy and trying to drive. I was being conscientious, ok? Geez. 

The procedure itself was uneventful, I suppose. I have only vague impressions of someone drilling into my jawbone, thank goodness. I guess it was pretty routine, except that he was only able to do half of it. I don’t know if it was worse than he thought, or if it’s normal to do this kind of thing in two visits (I get the rest of it done in July) but it took less than an hour to drill it, fill the abscess with medication, and slap some dental concrete on my crown and send me on my way. It didn’t even hurt that much, but then, half of my entire face was pumped full of the stuff that takes all the feeling away. Seriously, it was hours before I could feel my lips again! I was even able to go to a Trash Panda baseball game with Steve’s company before I started to feel any pain.

Oh, but the pain was waiting on me. Y’all…when my nerves recovered, I felt like I’d been punched repeatedly in the face. The doc prescribed pain meds, and even though they were the kind you have to show ID to get, they did nothing! I was hurting so badly. Friday and Saturday were spent just trying to manage it, and floating somewhere in a codeine haze. I feel like I must be a huge weenie dog because I can’t seem to get over the hump on this, but even today, Sunday, I woke up in enough pain to keep me home from church with my face on ice. I’m trying very hard not to take more of my pain meds than necessary. Opiates scare me, even the relatively weak ones I was prescribed, but I know I’ll need them at least once a day until they’re gone so I can function until this gets better, because I still feel like I was slammed face first into a wall.

Thankfully, I think it maybe getting a bit better. OTC stuff is helping more today, I think, but my face is also numb from the ice pack, so we’ll see! I hope it is, at least, because another month and a half of this without relief, and I will go insane AND I WILL TAKE YOU ALL WITH ME!

There is no clever way to end this entry. Just send my face some good vibes, if you don’t mind. ;)

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

 1) Y'all, we went to the fanciest wedding reception I've ever been to in my whole life the other day!

Now that most people around here are getting vaccinated, and going to outside events is becoming normal again, a friend of ours finally got to have her wedding reception! She was supposed to get married last June, but couldn't have the wedding where they could invite all their friends, so they postponed it until October. October came, and again, they couldn't do the big to-do because we weren't out of quarantine yet, so they went ahead and had a tiny, family-only wedding and postponed the big party until vaccinations were more common. 

Now, these people are rich. I know that sounds gauche for me to say, but they are. Like...really rich. That is important to know so that you can understand the scale of this party.  When the original wedding was being planned, the bride's mom began redoing her property to have the wedding there. We had never been to her mom's house before, so we didn't know what to expect. She lives in a rather rural part of North Alabama, and driving through there was like driving through any other country neighborhood so I thought maybe I'd misunderstood and it was going to be like a backyard party, with just lots of well dressed people.

I was very wrong. When we got to where the GPS told us to go, there was a long driveway that was blocked off and a field to park in. There were golf carts with drivers to take us to the actual party, and showing up to the house was like unexpectedly arriving at Hogwarts Castle. It was this big, beautiful stone house overlooking the valley. When she mentioned redoing the backyard, she didn't mean she planted some shrubs, I mean she resculpted the lawn, dug a lake, laid down paths...that kind of redoing the property.  On the other end of the property there was a massive white tent, a dance floor, a freaking bandstand, and little satellite places with flowers, bars, booze, food, a photo booth, waiters/waitresses bringing around drinks and food and cotton candy and party favors. It was like nothing I'd ever been to before.

I don't mean to sound in awe of the thing, because receptions don't have to be big or fancy to be fun, but it was hard not to be impressed. But all that fancy stuff aside, it was a really fun party! I don't know if it was that people finally felt comfortable getting together again, or what, but we had a blast. Steve even danced! He NEVER dances! We didn't stay very late, but we enjoyed ourselves very much.

2) Steve, Anthony and I went to Nashville to see an art exhibit by Pablo Picasso. It was at the Frist, and it was a lot of fun! 

We got to Nashville around 11:00 Friday morning and had some time to walk around and get lunch before our tour. I will never understand why that city has become a mecca for bachelorette parties. Honestly, from the time we parked our car to the four blocks we walked to get to Broadway, we saw no less than four bachelorette groups walking the same way, and when we finally got to the main street, there were countless more. Granted, Nashville is a city I've been to dozens of times, so I'm sure I take it for granted, but why would people travel from out of state to go to Nashville for something like that? Vegas (tacky, tacky Vegas) I understand...Nashville, not so much.

We had lunch at a place called "Ol Red," which I think is owned by Steve's man crush, Blake Shelton. It was loud. Like, really loud. There was a live band in a relatively small space, so if you wanted to actually have a conversation with the people you are eating with, you're kind of out of luck. We had to shout to be heard, so that sucked, but the food was good at least. Hehe, we did have a small SNAFU at dessert time, though. We each got a different dessert so we could share with each other. You know when you see "To Share" on a dessert menu, usually that means it's slightly bigger than a normal dessert and they bring more than one spoon or fork. Apparently at Ol Red, when they say "To Share" they mean you have enough to share with a softball team. It was a truly alarming amount of dessert. When the waitress brought the platters to us, she looked concerned and so did we. We tried to share with the tables around us (we didn't touch the food with our hands or anything, but people are understandably hesitant to share food with strangers) but ultimately we had to take it home with us. Even after splitting it into two to-go boxes, it still took Steve and I three days to finish our share. So, you know, if you ever eat at Ol Red, just get one dessert for the table. That is more than enough. Geez.

The exhibit was a lot of fun as well, although I was reminded about how irritated I get at Picasso. I don't know why, really, because I don't mind cubist works (although it can be confusing to look at) but I think he is kind of a cheat. See, he was a very talented painter. His early work was more traditional, and beautifully done, and if you look at his progression to cubist work, his stuff is still lovely. Even his more straightforward cubist art is nice. Then he just got weird and stuck with that. I know that's just my opinion and there are people smarter than me that could explain why I'm wrong, but I think he did some avant-garde stuff, the right hoity-toity people said it was awesome, and we ended up with an "Emperor's New Clothes" situation. A lot of his later work is weird, if not down right disturbing. I'm not saying he wasn't talented, but I think he was like "I'm going to make this picture as ugly as possible and people are still going to love me for it." I dunno, it irritated me. It still irritates me. I still enjoyed seeing his work, though, because any time you get a chance to see famous artwork you should, even if it's just to see what the fuss is about. Some of it was nice, other stuff made me angry. But I suppose that's what art is all about, right? Eliciting feelings, even if those feelings are that you want to punch a hole in some of them. Ha!

3)  I need a haircut. I don't want to get one. I love having long hair, but I do not know HOW to have long hair. I'm constantly getting it caught on things and it gets all tangled and crazy looking, and I have split ends, but I still don't want to bother with it! I kind of love the fact that, for a year, we all went slightly feral with our appearance. I mean, I could have done without the weight gain, but I like pandemic hair! I think people look better slightly shaggy! I'll be sad when everyone looks put together again. Well, except for me, I don't think I'll ever look put together, but I never really have so it's ok!

4) I ordered a box of perfume samples from a company that I generally can't afford to buy perfume from. I thought it would be fun to try all the fancy smells and see which one I liked and maybe save up for a bottle, but I think I'm in big trouble. Almost all of the scents are vanilla based, which I usually don't gravitate towards, but they all smell so delicious. I've decided to wear one a day and see which one I like best. My favorite so far is Vanille-Banane, which smells like fancy banana pudding and I'm in love with it. Today I'm wearing something that has the word cacao in it, and it also smells divine. I keep sniffing myself, which is weird, but I don't care. I smell like dessert and I am loving it!!!!