Gingivitis strikes again!

Last night I had one of those dreams again where my teeth fall out. My left incisor kept popping out of its socket. It had somehow broken - or rather rotted off from the root, leaving jagged half roots that wouldn’t stay in the socket. Whenever I tried to push the tooth back into the socket the sharp bits would poke and hurt my already inflamed gums. I decided to look in the mirror to see how bad it really was and to my horror, as I pulled back my lip to see my gums better, I discovered that the festering infection was actually rotting holes through my gums. I took out the loose tooth and smiled prettily into the mirror only to see my reflection grin back with a set of not-so-pearly whites encased in decaying, discolored and swollen gums. I wondered how upset Mr X would be at the insanely huge dental bill I was surely going to amass. But more importantly, would Mr X still find me attractive? Unless he has a rotten mouth fetish I don’t know about, chances are good I would repulse him. My last dentist visit was in July and I was praised for my clean and healthy teeth. How could things have gone so horribly bad in such a short period of time?

At that point I jerked awake and immediately verified that my teeth were still intact. Then I breathed a sigh of relief as I rolled over and vowed to be a brushing/flossing/mouth washing superstar.

Our new pets!

Yes, you heard it right, we have pets - plural. We have 3 (at least) raccoons. The great thing about these pets is that I never have to remember to feed them. (Which is good since I'm terrible at remembering to do so on a regular basis...don't even ask about the chickens and pigs I tried to raise.) That means I don't have to buy food for them either and that's nice since I can't afford it. I also don't have to worry about making sure they have water, or taking them to the vet or anything like that. So far there are only 3 reasons I've found that these pets are obnoxious:

1) Sometimes they leave gifts of fecal matter just outside our front door. It's gross and I don't want to touch it so we just hop over it until it's dried enough that we can simply swipe it into the adjacent flower beds with a stick or something.

2) Occasionally these raccoons have territory disputes amongst themselves and the resultant screeching and hissing is loud enough to wake me from a dead sleep. Plus it's kind of disturbing to hear.

3) I'm a little bit afraid of my new pets clawing my eyes out or something should I stumble upon them in the dark. Like last night when I was leaving the detached garage (aka piano room, aka exercise room, aka guest room) to come back into the house after a bit of piano practicing...I opened the door to 6 sets of beady eyes boring into me intently. It was as if they were trying to decide if leaping onto me and clawing me to shreds would be worth ceasing their berry-eating fest for. (They climb into the tree behind our house and devour these little red inedible berry thingies every night.)

The Spank heard 'round the World

The other day at work I was talking with one of my fellow IT professionals when a another woman came to ask us for help. She wanted to know if her USB drives were still disabled on her computer. Right off the top of our heads, we couldn't really say whether hers was active or not.(We disable them on most computers for security reasons at work.) So I came up with the brilliant idea that if she wanted to determine whether her USB ports were indeed active or not, then put a thumb drive in the port and see if it's accessible. I assumed that somebody would have a thumb drive around....who doesn't? Turns out out that I was the only one in possession of one. So I whipped out my drive and headed to this lady's computer, with my IT coworker accompanying us both. My thumb drive loaded just fine, and just to prove it I randomly pulled up one of the many untitled pictures that happened to be on my drive. I didn't think I had anything on there that could possibly embarrass me... but my face turned a lovely shade of purple when this picture popped up, full-screen, amid roars of laughter and shocked squeals of delight.

Mr T is now famous at my place of work. So sorry Mr T!

I, like, totally "rocked the vote"

I voted today. Yay me. I’ve always wanted to live in a swing state during a major election like this, that way it feels more like your vote matters. (Ya, ya, Everyone’s vote always matters, I know…but you know what I mean, right?) We did live in a swing state but we ditched that state mere months before the major election. Now I’m back in CA where my vote for president seemingly just gets lost in the crowd. Ah well, I’d rather be here anyway…just this past Saturday I spent the afternoon at the beach. But you can bet that I’ll be keeping my eye on the NM results just to see what my vote could have done there.

Culinary Casualty

It seems Mr X was a victim of accidental food poisoning last night. I swear it wasn't on purpose. I prepared a whole lemon roasted chicken on a bed of peppered croutons (homemade)/sautéed onions along with garlic mashed potatoes. I thought it turned out very well. Not only did it look beautifully mouth-watering, but it was moist and flavorful. But much to my dismay, at 3 o'clock in the morning I awoke to the disconcerting sound of Mr X vomiting in the bathroom over and over again, poor thing. If it was food poisoning I don’t know why I didn't get it ... maybe a stronger stomach...? Regardless, I feel awful about the whole thing and I've decided to take a hiatus from cooking/baking for a while. Those of you that are expecting me to bring something to the Thanksgiving Feast....I suppose I'll bring it if you still want me to, but eat it at your own risk. You've been warned. Poor, poor Mr X.