Recap on My Life, such as it is:
Wednesday was Wednesday, and Wednesdays generally rock. This Wednesday had some twists and turns, but it was still a decent one all told.
Thursday was the supervisor-involved off-site company party. I'd been planning on carpooling with Snarky Lady, given that there was to be a bit of a booze-up, but I'd not planned on the carpool being in my vehicle. It was decided that I would begin my process early, and if I'd not recovered by the end of things, Snarky Lady would return us all to home base. (Leaving Vash at work overnight is not terribly recommended, but it would have worked, and I could have walked home. Things didn't go that way, though.) I had a Tequila Sunrise. That was definitely sufficient to get me distinctly non-sober. Another, and I was sloshed. I wound up letting on that I might have a bit of a crush on Turbo, though not to him. (Fortunately.) I got to watch company politics in action. Whooo boy are there company politics in action. Who does what where is sort of indicated by the hang-out zones. I hung with both the Management/Dayshift knot and the Evening Field knot. Turbo was sitting on a couch between the Princess and Trendy Chick, much to everyone's hilarity. He looked to be enjoying himself. When Trendy Chick and the Princess wandered off somewhere for some reason, Homie G suggested that I go sit over there (so that Turbo would not lack for companionship). I declined, with the imprudently-phrased, "Are you on *crack*?!" to Homie G. (This was because while it had been intended innocently, it might not have remained innocent, and I did not want that.) There was random chatter; I mostly hung about smiling full of boozy good cheer. The booze wore off, but the good cheer remained. By the time the time came to start wandering off, I had about everything back but a whole lot of "write to long-term memory". I got our party back to Survey Central. Snarky Lady and the Lead Monitor bitched about *everything*; I'd actually enjoyed myself. We watched Bleach and Death Note when I got home; I didn't have an apple this time.
Friday involved paperwork in the morning. I did my usual paperwork out of order, as the office wasn't done with some of it yet. I finished things up, and then found myself a little at a loss for productive things to do. It was clearly time for ... THE DISK COPY PROJECT! I'd previously requisitioned a floppy drive for my shiny machine from Turbo. I employed it. The project is finished. I went home.
Friday night was painful. I've been having some issues with my teeth. I've been gathering random ads from dental places and taking looks at them, and the original plan was that I would start calling around on Monday to see when I could get an appointment. Friday night I was taking a long bath with relaxation, and the random tooth pain I got was enough for me to say to myself, "Okay, I have dealt with this long enough, and it HURTS." When I had that wrenched shoulder, the urgent care thought it warranted narcotic pain meds. After the first one, I thought differently. I was pretty sure that this tooth thing warranted narcotic pain meds. When the narcotic pain meds wore off when I was in channel later that night, I came to realize that this warranted an emergency dentist trip. I took another one of the blessed things and went to sleep.
I'd intended to wake up to the alarm on Saturday morning and check out the place that opened at 9 and took emergencies. I slept until 10 instead, figuring that an hour of extra sleep in a situation like this is to be blessed, and then called both the place that opened at 9 and the place that opened at 10. The place that opened at 10 had better vibes; I grabbed myself and a couple books and my purse and my cellphone and my headset and set out, calling Mama as I booted up Vash. Happy Birthday, Mama. I'm taking an emergency trip to the dentist! How is your weekend? I'm really trying hard to be a real responsible grown-up. She recognizes this. I'm glad I have family. (Mama asks, "Are you on your cell phone?" in a very particular tone of voice. OMG my mother is from the previous generation.)
Dad took over the phone. We have common ground in geeking about things still, at least.
I finally found the dentist's office; they specified the strip mall, but not the position in the strip mall. It was one of those things where an entire corner is taken up, and there are several strips placed at seeming random over the tarmac. I waited for ages upon ages in the waiting room, like two hours or in that neighborhood. Then I got my face looked at. I liked the attitude: first we'll look, then we'll see what needs doing.
I was unable to locate the pain to one specific tooth, and so pointed out the top three probable problem areas. They poked in and announced that it was probably the wisdom tooth with the BLOODY GREAT HOLE IN IT, as that was the immediate and glaring visible problem. Dr. J's logic involved working on the obvious problem first; I rather agreed with the sentiment. He questioned and prodded a bit, and asked if I would like it to come out now. I agreed with some show of enthusiasm. Papers were signed, blessed numb-goop was first applied and then injected and then INJECTED; I was working on a text-message post about how I was utterly bloody petrified when they came in and proceeded to remove the tooth from my poor face.
It's rather scary how enthusiastic I was about the whole procedure. I know that Dagger was the one at the forefront of the Collective, because while the whole multiplicity thing has been not so prominent lately, this is a sort of pressure situation, and she's the only one who can simultaneously be protective of the whole Collective and also let our defenses down enough to let some random strange guy I have never met before put his hands in our mouth and Do Things To Us. Oddly enough, she trusted Dr. J *completely*. Not in any circumstance out of the appropriate, but in his field, the trust was complete and there was no tension.
I hadn't realized that modern dental science still uses good old-fashioned applied physics like that for tooth extraction. There were some great big scary metal things, like very large ice picks and letter openers, and it did give a moment of pause when I realized that these things were for sticking in my mouth and whacking around the tooth. But this was why I was there, so all flight or fight reaction was summarily removed. Not suppressed, but removed. Dr. J put the pick-like-thing on the tooth and began scrunching it, like wiggling it forcibly. Then there was pounding with the chisel. I should have been freaking out at this point, but I was in this beautifully compliant frame of mind, staying perfectly still and even relaxed. (I had a pulse of 68 when they took my blood pressure; that's about 20 bpm lower than my usual at the plasma place; granted, this was resting pulse vs. sprint-into-booth pulse, but still, lower is lower.) Dr. J warned me that I would hear some cracking. And I did. And far, far sooner than I expected, I felt the tooth *gone*, and I giggled with glee!
Dr. J and his assistant did some giggling of their own. Seems my sarcastic mouth works even when I'm not talking. Dr. J suddenly went *zoom* into the bathroom, and I wondered what his issue was. When he re-emerged, I learned that my tooth had gone flying out of my mouth and onto his pants, where it had stuck. Hooray for sarcastic teeth.
I wound up taking a photo of the bloody thing.
It didn't focus terribly well, but, tooth. The assistant said that I could keep it if I wanted it. I did not want. I just wanted a photo.
I was happy enough with the experience that I made an appointment for January 6th to see about the front tooth/the rest of my teeths. I told Mama tonight that I may have actually Found a Dentist, rather than found someone who is going to be working on the teeth.
I presented my prescriptions to fill, went home, changed and collected my fudge, picked up my prescriptions, and went to the potluck with interviewers. I told Snarky Lady that since the meds had kicked in, she should treat me as a not-too-bright robot. So she did. I was happy.
Snarky Lady was having drama with someone. Specifically, one of her minions is an alpha too, and said minion has been bulling around, doing minimum effort for maximum slack, and all sorts of stuff that boil down to bad blood between the two of them, and drama, and gods know what-all. I'm trying to figure a position that involves me staying the fuck out of it and also involves Snarky Lady not bitching to me about it. I'm already trying to get into that position regarding Snarky Lady vs. the Bullpen.
There was cleaning up and going home. When Site Services got there, they were boggling at the amount of cleaning up that had been done. We did a lot. It was good. My fudge was half-eaten. There was lots of food. We got sent home with some. I brought home a lot of random. Since I was part of the set-up and take-down crew, I will be getting paid for that part of things. Yay. Overtime!
I'm feeling very all right. I'm sore, I'm groggy, and I can't wait for this to heal, but omg it feels so much better than it did with that tooth in.
Female TMI, yay. It is Bitchy Witchy Week! I believe November's was the first one in quite a while, and it was non-standard. I'd been having some rather not bleeding for a while, and I was not dreadfully worried because my body will do random things like that from time to time, I'm under stress, and I'm not around un-chaperoned sperm. November was a lot of driiiiping of not very much. Three weeks of it. Then December, a week without anything, and then now WHAM! A nice thick tampon is not supposed to be soaked through in two hours, thank you very much. A cup is not supposed to be over-run in six. I just met some blood clots that I might have been able to pass off for chopped liver. Tuesday was the start; Wednesday was OK; Thursday was wtf, Friday was WTF?!?, and today, Saturday, I was rather numb to the whole experience and I am just "going with the flow", as it were. I'm figuring that my uterine lining was doing some strange thing for quite a while and now more of it than usual is there and available to be ejected. I'm fine with that as long as it all comes out properly and in good order.