As yet unpublished

More teeth

I have failed at wisdom teeth extraction healing.  I got the dreaded dry socket and now I have to have this incredibly gross goo put in my sockets every day so that I don't go out of my head with pain.  I think that a doctor invented this goo from the Ancient Egyption times.  Gauze soaked in clove oil and other strange (but natural!) stuff ... totally random and ancient and weird and amazing.

I'm amazed at how the tooth industry is so quaint and ancient.

Maybe I'll have energy for something other than my current socket obsession later.

Wisdom teeth

I need to do the research on the evolutionary story on wisdom teeth.  Why do we have them if we have to get them taken out?

I had two impacted wisdom teeth taken out in college and in my dentists infinite, money grubbing, wisdom he left the other two in.  Two teeth with no opposing teeth that don't get well cared for and get filled every so often ...

I need 2 crowns and had a bad wisdom tooth so ... today I am without wisdom teeth. 

I've never had laughing gas before -- that was fun.  The most fun I had today.  I think the surgeon almost put her knee on my chest when she tugged and pulled and repositioned my jaw to remove those two, deep rooted suckers.

How barbaric!  I was just envisioning that the surgery I had today looked and felt about the same as it did 100 years ago!  Although we now have reliable ice and painkillers ... well, I guess some laudunum would have worked.

Anyway, no tally of the day because I spent the day with throbbing holes in my mouth.

Teeth tomorrow

I just came from a meeting where the topic was fear ... and projecting is always a bad thing to do but I hate the dentist and all things teeth and I have to have two wisdom teeth pulled tomorrow and then 3 crowns in the near future and man oh man will my mouth ever be the same again?  Aaaaaa.

Okay.  It's just teeth.  It takes like 20 minutes.  This too you will survive.

Breath in and out.

I had rowing today -- I'm learning how to row.  We row with two oars and it's not so easy and you spend a lot of time hoping like hell you don't fall into the smelly water.  I am not a huge fan of water, either.  Water is so amazingly powerful and I have a very healthy respect for it and don't really like being in it when I can't see my feet and I know that in this river, you can never see your feet.

Today was the end of our third week of rowing and ... today I did it.  I did it the way you are supposed to.  I let the body hang and the feet do the work and the rowing follow and I didn't pull and I didn't fight the oars and I somehow went into that zen state and just did it and it was cool.  Really cool.  For a few minutes, I got it.  And then I nearly fell in again and did that face where you try to control and the more you do the less it works until you let go again and then you are in the zone and rowing as you should.

Learning how to row is a great metaphor for good things go do in life.  Stop the fight against things you can't control.  Let go and the rest will follow.  Stay in the moment.  It's all there. 

Tally of the day:

*One of those extreme soccer mom days.  Had to get Thomas up for an appointment at 9:30 am so he spent the morning being mad that I woke him up and then took him to town and me to crew and then from crew had lunch and went to work and then went home and took Thomas for an allergy shot and gained a bunch of kids along the way and had to take them out for food because there were so many and then went to see jazz, the author and to a meeting.  Yes, I had to refill the tank.
*Nick used his cell phone reliably for incoming and outgoing calls and let me know where he was and what he was doing all day long.  Day two and there's always tomorrow.

I'm ready for school to start!

So, I think a day long summer vacation is fine.  I really do understand the value of downtime ... just not sure that parents and teens need to be side-by-side to take it because the teens get downtime and the parents get hair-standing-on-end time.

Nothing really wrong with the day.  Started work early and left as my 12-year old was proclaiming, as he awoke at 7:30 am from a dead sleep, that he was going to save his money to buy an oxygen machine.  Huh?  7:30 am is too early to start wondering what your 12-year old wants with an oxygen machine.  So, I gave him a bowl of cereal and went to work.

I used the cellphone leash with Nick today and he was there almost every time I called -- Johnny on the spot with location and communication.  Maybe there's something to moving upwards and onwards after all.  Thomas didn't even get up until 11:30 when I woke him up to go to the gym and we didn't even get there until 2 pm.  Still, it's nice to work out with your kid, if a little intimidating (they can just chuck those weights around while I have to really try hard to lift them).

I was doing fine until the freezer at work decided to defrost and the people working tonight decided they couldn't and they moved graduation to tonight so that noone was around ... and kids came to my house and goofed off and gave me a frustrationg boost and then bought pizza and soda and ... IT WAS ALMOST DINNERTIME.

Tally of the day:

*Had to knock some 15-year old brains around a little bit and restate the summer rules of the road
*Was thrilled that Nick figured out how to use his cell phone for both incoming and outgoing calls
*No dinner guests or sleepovers came to fruition
*Nick continuing reaction to the tetanus but seeming to soldier through it except for the fever he's running and the puking that he did
*I got to do some work at home and it's not melty hot so I didn't feel like I was working in hades

Graduation Gifts

I thought of my good friend Brad Feld as I merrily rang in and wrapped up all of our gift copies of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged to dole out to all the high school graduates I know.  I just think it's best to start them all out on the right path.

Day one of vacation was survived.

Tally of the day:

*Nick sick because of reaction to tetanus booster.  Wasted sick day!
*Thomas in the city with his girlfriend Mackenzie for the day and then they made dinner (!) and had ice cream and watched a movie.

Suspiciously quiet and easy.

Schools OUT!?!?!

Holy cow, school is just about to be over with.  I mean, in my mind, it's over.  If Nick didn't have to finish his math final tomorrow ... he would have been done on Friday and if Thomas didn't have a Spanish final, well.  Anyway.  They are done.

It kind of makes my blood run cold when I think too much about the fact that I'm going to have two teenagers to ride herd on for the next 8 weeks fulltime ... not just the time when they aren't in school.  Holy smokes.  These teenage creatures are slippery, wiley beings.  They smile and say the right things and you just hope that what you heard is what they meant ... because sometimes what you see isn't what you get.

I'm learning to smell the little rats -- like, when the kids are all talking a different story that's almost the same and they start doing this who's on first thing and if you aren't too careful you'll miss the magic trick being pulled right in front of your eyes.  If it's not simple and dead easy to read the tea leaves it just shouldn't happen.  And these are good kids -- fun kids -- smart kids -- bored kids -- exploring kids -- growing-up-way-too-fucking-fast kids.

I'm glad that I'm young enough as a parent to have more than a dim memory of my own teenage years ... and with a brother 8-years my junior, well, I have a chillingly good memory of his teenage years.  And if I use either experience as a measuring stick I guess I have most bases covered.  But we didn't have cell phones and bank cards and access like these kids do.  And I didn't live right next door to NYC where I think my 15-year old plans to spend his summer exploring.

There's a few stories from the year to tell ... there's enough distance between them and now to maybe start the blog of moral teen stories told from real life incidents. 

See you in the sweaty, upcoming days.  I remember when I was 16 throwing a frisbee around in the 100 degree heat to the point that you couldn't move fast enough to do anything good, bad or indifferent.   Maybe I could just pray for paralyzing heat and the extreme need for kids to seek out the air conditioned library.