I have had the same dentist for as long as I can remember. He is a friend of my uncle's from highschool. They played football together and when I was younger he would always tell me that I was braver and tougher than any football player he knew. I had to go through a lot of dental work in order to make my adult teeth fit in my very small mouth. You may not know this about me, but I am actually short 4 teeth.
When I saw him last spring he told me I should see a dentist in Calgary post haste because he thought I might be starting to grind my teeth. And then I chipped one of my front teeth in Mexico and I thought about seeing someone about that ... but somehow a whole year had passed since my last checkup and I hadn't managed to make time to find anybody here. So when I got the reminder call that I was due for an appointment I spurred myself into high gear.
My new dentist seems nice enough but he is no Dr S. Plus I kind of hold it against him that he managed to find 5 cavities on my first visit. Even though I know they have probably been there awhile, and should probably hold it against Dr S for not finding them one at a time. Loyalty is funny like that. Apparently he only found them due to new laser technology - I guess the old technique, wherein the dentist poked the top of your molars with a pointy instrument and if the point went through a soft spot it meant you had a cavity (I am so scientific), was no longer effective as everyone has much stronger tooth enamel these days. So my new dentist has this laser that they hover over your teeth and it emits a reading (0-99) and a high pitched squeal when it senses decay. It went pretty crazy in my mouth.
I have never had a cavity in my life so to go from 0-5 in a matter of moments was pretty shocking. And filled me with dread. Because the thought of having to hold my very small mouth open wide for over an hour while it was filled with a ton of instruments was enough to make me want to gag. The reality was not a lot better than the horror scene in my imagination. They have some spit sucking machine that helps to prop your mouth open while holding back your cheek and tongue ... I am sure that is the only way my mouth stayed open as long as needed. But it didn't stop my jaw from spasming. And they only did one side, so I get to go through this joyous experience all over again in about 2 weeks time.
And seriously, the freezing. I was trying to concentrate on breathing slowly through my nose and on not panicking and part way through the procedure I noticed that the right side of my nose (the side that was frozen) didn't feel like it was breathing properly, which did not help to ease me away from my proximity to hyperventilation. It was only as the freezing started to wear off that I realized that was because my nostril was also frozen. It was also the oddest experience to be able to see all of these instruments being passed around and knowing that they are in my mouth and being able to hear them but not actually being able to feel them. Talk about sensory overload.
Suffice to say that I am determined to never ever ever have another cavity for as long as I live, amen. Which means it is a good thing that I have also accomplished #87 on my list - 30 consecutive days of nightly teeth brushing. (I've heard that if you can do something 30 times in a row it starts to become a habit. AND I even managed to continue my new good habit outside of my normal environment and in an environment - my parents - at which I habitually relax my standards.) I was so lax in my night time routine, often so tired by the time I was getting into bed that it was so much easier to just crawl into bed and think I would just make up those 2 minutes in the morning. I have also added flossing and a mouth rinse. Lazy about my oral health no more.
Showing posts with label 101. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 101. Show all posts
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Monday, February 18, 2008
#22. Make Seafood Crepes
And I actually made them this time, instead of just eating them.
For future reference here is the recipe:
Crepes
1 cup all purpose flour
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup water
1/4 tsp salt
2 tablespoons butter/margarine (soft/melted)
Place ingredients in blender in order given. Blend 30 seconds. Stop and stir down sides. Blend 30-60 seconds until smooth. Refrigerate ~ 1 hour. Makes about 16 crepes.
Note to self: Mom usually does 1.5 recipe. 1 cup milk and 1/2 cup water will make thinner crepes.
Filling:
In a frying pan saute butter, mushrooms, onion and celery.
In a large pot melt 1/4 cup butter, whisk in 1/2 cup flour & salt to make a roux. As thickens add: soup stock/milk/wine (~2-1/2 cups total liquid). Add generous amount of worchestershire sauce. Salt to taste. Add in saute mixture.
Cook shrimp, scallops, crab/other seafood in butter and lemon juice.
Add to pot until thick and bubbling.
Allow to cool and fill crepes.
So it is not an exact science but it sure is yummy.
For future reference here is the recipe:
Crepes
1 cup all purpose flour
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup water
1/4 tsp salt
2 tablespoons butter/margarine (soft/melted)
Place ingredients in blender in order given. Blend 30 seconds. Stop and stir down sides. Blend 30-60 seconds until smooth. Refrigerate ~ 1 hour. Makes about 16 crepes.
Note to self: Mom usually does 1.5 recipe. 1 cup milk and 1/2 cup water will make thinner crepes.
Filling:
In a frying pan saute butter, mushrooms, onion and celery.
In a large pot melt 1/4 cup butter, whisk in 1/2 cup flour & salt to make a roux. As thickens add: soup stock/milk/wine (~2-1/2 cups total liquid). Add generous amount of worchestershire sauce. Salt to taste. Add in saute mixture.
Cook shrimp, scallops, crab/other seafood in butter and lemon juice.
Add to pot until thick and bubbling.
Allow to cool and fill crepes.
So it is not an exact science but it sure is yummy.
Monday, January 28, 2008
4 years and growing ...
1. Finish Europe Scrapbook
It took me the better part of 4 years but I put the finishing touches on my Europe scrapbook over the weekend. I started scrapbooking the spring of 2004 after Kristy & Chantal came back from Mexico, almost a year after I took my trip with Beth & Mel. We still lived in the Party House and a group of us (Kristy, Chantal, Karen & Sabrina) would get together every couple of weeks to work on our individual projects together. Sabrina is our "dealer", she works for a scrapbooking company so she is our direct line to papers, stickers and all the cool tools that make scrapbooking an absolute addiction. As our lives got busier we found less and less time to make scrapbooking a group activity, but still get together periodically to share ideas, trade tools and tips and provide positive feedback about eachothers work.
We spent this last weekend at a bed & breakfast near Ferintosh - scrapbooking, socializing and getting pampered by our hosts. They provide 3 square meals a day, a huge room to spread out our projects, a hot tub, lots of beds and as many cinnamon buns as your heart desires (not to mention tarts, pudding, pancakes and an amazing dessert that tasted exactly like a drumstick). I enjoy scrapbooking - it combines my love of taking pictures with my penchant for hanging on to assorted oddments that I pick up along my travels AND I get to hang out with 4 girls I don't spend nearly enough time with now that I am in Calgary (and who am I kidding, in the last year before I left for Calgary). I also find scrapbooking challenging which is why I prefer to do it in a group setting so that I can get opinions and positive reinforcement that my efforts don't look like crap.
I'm not quite sure how to explain why I find scrapbooking so challenging. It's not exactly that I don't think I am a creative person - but it's not a part of my brain I use very often so my creative skills are a little rusty. And I have always been told that I am no artist - which is true in the sense that I couldn't draw a stick person to save my life - but I am starting to realize that you can be artistic in ways that don't involve drawing or painting and I like that scrapbooking is an outlet that allows me to find my inner artist and to express myself in ways I might not otherwise be able to. I have ideas for other projects now that the Europe book is complete, a little smaller than scale but by no means less important to telling a story about who I am and where I have come from. I'm looking for other ways to tell that story - blogging here more often is going to be another outlet, buying a new camera and taking more photos is a top priority. It's all about opening myself up to new ways of expressing myself, new ways of thinking about communication, new ways of figuring out exactly who I was and who I am becoming.
It took me the better part of 4 years but I put the finishing touches on my Europe scrapbook over the weekend. I started scrapbooking the spring of 2004 after Kristy & Chantal came back from Mexico, almost a year after I took my trip with Beth & Mel. We still lived in the Party House and a group of us (Kristy, Chantal, Karen & Sabrina) would get together every couple of weeks to work on our individual projects together. Sabrina is our "dealer", she works for a scrapbooking company so she is our direct line to papers, stickers and all the cool tools that make scrapbooking an absolute addiction. As our lives got busier we found less and less time to make scrapbooking a group activity, but still get together periodically to share ideas, trade tools and tips and provide positive feedback about eachothers work.
We spent this last weekend at a bed & breakfast near Ferintosh - scrapbooking, socializing and getting pampered by our hosts. They provide 3 square meals a day, a huge room to spread out our projects, a hot tub, lots of beds and as many cinnamon buns as your heart desires (not to mention tarts, pudding, pancakes and an amazing dessert that tasted exactly like a drumstick). I enjoy scrapbooking - it combines my love of taking pictures with my penchant for hanging on to assorted oddments that I pick up along my travels AND I get to hang out with 4 girls I don't spend nearly enough time with now that I am in Calgary (and who am I kidding, in the last year before I left for Calgary). I also find scrapbooking challenging which is why I prefer to do it in a group setting so that I can get opinions and positive reinforcement that my efforts don't look like crap.
I'm not quite sure how to explain why I find scrapbooking so challenging. It's not exactly that I don't think I am a creative person - but it's not a part of my brain I use very often so my creative skills are a little rusty. And I have always been told that I am no artist - which is true in the sense that I couldn't draw a stick person to save my life - but I am starting to realize that you can be artistic in ways that don't involve drawing or painting and I like that scrapbooking is an outlet that allows me to find my inner artist and to express myself in ways I might not otherwise be able to. I have ideas for other projects now that the Europe book is complete, a little smaller than scale but by no means less important to telling a story about who I am and where I have come from. I'm looking for other ways to tell that story - blogging here more often is going to be another outlet, buying a new camera and taking more photos is a top priority. It's all about opening myself up to new ways of expressing myself, new ways of thinking about communication, new ways of figuring out exactly who I was and who I am becoming.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
More than a list
I've been thinking a lot about goals lately, as I review my old 101 list and try to create my new 101 list (I'm at 98). About how setting goals is a good way to really think about where you are and where you want to be and what you want to do along the way. About how accomplishing your goals is fulfilling and provides a sense of moving forward. About how some goals are easily quantifiable and have an obvious end and how other goals are just kind of ethereal and hard to pin down as totally done because they never are, not really.
I've been thinking about how great it is that I accomplished 73 things that I set out to do almost 3 years ago now. And how while that is fantastic and amazing ... well what about those 28 that I didn't finish? Why didn't I finish them? Did I fail by not finishing them? And there is no real definitive answer. To any of the questions. I guess who I am now is different and the same as who I was 3 years ago. I guess I have different goals and different dreams and at the same time I have some of the same goals and dreams and it is very confusing at times. To figure out who I was and who I am and who I want to be. Who I want to be to myself and who I want to be to others. I have tendrils of thoughts that almost come close to being answers but they are difficult to grasp and almost always when I am half asleep.
I've been thinking about all of the really cool stuff I did in 3 years, all the not so cool stuff, all the happy and sad and extraordinarily painful moments, all the things I would never have thought to put on my 101 list but that happened anyways and have helped to shape the way my life is heading today. Not only did I go to Greece, but I flew overseas and saw most of Athens by myself and then spent the rest of my 10 days having a very fabulous time with my parents and meeting a lot of people from Holland. I went up two Acropolises (Acropoli?) and one of them involved a donkey. I went to game 6 of the Stanley Cup playoffs. I got a new job (on the list) and it involved moving (not on the list) all by myself to a city where I really knew no one and without my BFF to hold my hand. I saw one of my best friends get married - was her maid of honor, hand made invitations, learned enough about powerpoint to make a slideshow, wrote and said a speech, got seranaded, and had actual conversations with boys from highschool who used to terrify me. I hit Las Vegas twice, kissed a real live baseball player, took a road trip to Palm Springs, went to LA and saw Wicked (!!) at the Pantages Theatre. I met Simone, her fabulous family, and got to be part of her entire pregnancy. I have a better relationship with my mom than ever before. I did readings at my grandmothers funeral. I bought a new car.
I guess what I am trying to tell myself is that while it is well and good to have a list of things I would like to do, it is also more than acceptable to not do all of those things, to have my priorities shift or change all together and to have experiences that I never would have had the foresight to plan out on paper.
I've been thinking about how great it is that I accomplished 73 things that I set out to do almost 3 years ago now. And how while that is fantastic and amazing ... well what about those 28 that I didn't finish? Why didn't I finish them? Did I fail by not finishing them? And there is no real definitive answer. To any of the questions. I guess who I am now is different and the same as who I was 3 years ago. I guess I have different goals and different dreams and at the same time I have some of the same goals and dreams and it is very confusing at times. To figure out who I was and who I am and who I want to be. Who I want to be to myself and who I want to be to others. I have tendrils of thoughts that almost come close to being answers but they are difficult to grasp and almost always when I am half asleep.
I've been thinking about all of the really cool stuff I did in 3 years, all the not so cool stuff, all the happy and sad and extraordinarily painful moments, all the things I would never have thought to put on my 101 list but that happened anyways and have helped to shape the way my life is heading today. Not only did I go to Greece, but I flew overseas and saw most of Athens by myself and then spent the rest of my 10 days having a very fabulous time with my parents and meeting a lot of people from Holland. I went up two Acropolises (Acropoli?) and one of them involved a donkey. I went to game 6 of the Stanley Cup playoffs. I got a new job (on the list) and it involved moving (not on the list) all by myself to a city where I really knew no one and without my BFF to hold my hand. I saw one of my best friends get married - was her maid of honor, hand made invitations, learned enough about powerpoint to make a slideshow, wrote and said a speech, got seranaded, and had actual conversations with boys from highschool who used to terrify me. I hit Las Vegas twice, kissed a real live baseball player, took a road trip to Palm Springs, went to LA and saw Wicked (!!) at the Pantages Theatre. I met Simone, her fabulous family, and got to be part of her entire pregnancy. I have a better relationship with my mom than ever before. I did readings at my grandmothers funeral. I bought a new car.
I guess what I am trying to tell myself is that while it is well and good to have a list of things I would like to do, it is also more than acceptable to not do all of those things, to have my priorities shift or change all together and to have experiences that I never would have had the foresight to plan out on paper.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Wrap up
I realized a while back that the deadline for my 101 things in 1001 days has long since come and gone. So the other day I did my final tally and was pleasantly surprised to find that I had completed 73 items on my list and had started work on several of the last 28. (Yay!) This was much better than anticipated, especially considering some of the stuff I thought was a long shot (Greece) actually managed to get knocked off. It even inspired me to make up a new list, which at this point I am not going to post publicly but may use as fodder for future entries if the results are interesting enough. I will mention one goal that does affect this site though, which is to write a minimum of 36 new entries ... I figure that means writing at least once a month and although I am hoping to write more than that, once a month will be a good start if nothing else.
The last few days have been mostly good, even though I feel terribly burnt out at work what with the short staffing and all. I still love my job but half staff with no end in sight is not very fun even when you are doing something you love. The one bleak spot was finding out that Simone is 99% for sure moving back to Edmonton, which means a)if our head office can't accomodate her living in Edmonton when she is done her mat leave we are down another person and b)one of my best girls will no longer live in the same city as me. Who will I have TV nights and dinners with? When will I get to see 2 of my favorite boys? But this is not about me, and I know how much Simone has wanted to go back to Edmonton and how unhappy she has been alone in Chestermere while her husband works out of town so much of the time. So I am honestly happy for her and think this will be a good step for her.
I think part of our bond, aside from automatically being kindred spirits, is that we are both displaced Edmontonians. We understand what it is like to love our job but not really feel at home in Calgary, to worry about being so far away if something were to happen to someone that we love. In some ways it is different because as much as there are hard days and moments when I wish I could just go home I also feel like Calgary is where I am supposed to be. I feel like given enough time I can make Calgary work for me. It is hard to find the balance though - between going home often enough that I don't get homesick and super lonely for my family & friends, and staying in Calgary for long enough periods to feel like I am starting to have a life and make friends here. Trial and error and baby steps I guess.
The last few days have been mostly good, even though I feel terribly burnt out at work what with the short staffing and all. I still love my job but half staff with no end in sight is not very fun even when you are doing something you love. The one bleak spot was finding out that Simone is 99% for sure moving back to Edmonton, which means a)if our head office can't accomodate her living in Edmonton when she is done her mat leave we are down another person and b)one of my best girls will no longer live in the same city as me. Who will I have TV nights and dinners with? When will I get to see 2 of my favorite boys? But this is not about me, and I know how much Simone has wanted to go back to Edmonton and how unhappy she has been alone in Chestermere while her husband works out of town so much of the time. So I am honestly happy for her and think this will be a good step for her.
I think part of our bond, aside from automatically being kindred spirits, is that we are both displaced Edmontonians. We understand what it is like to love our job but not really feel at home in Calgary, to worry about being so far away if something were to happen to someone that we love. In some ways it is different because as much as there are hard days and moments when I wish I could just go home I also feel like Calgary is where I am supposed to be. I feel like given enough time I can make Calgary work for me. It is hard to find the balance though - between going home often enough that I don't get homesick and super lonely for my family & friends, and staying in Calgary for long enough periods to feel like I am starting to have a life and make friends here. Trial and error and baby steps I guess.
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