speaking of havarti-sesame bites

ok, so.....i fully admit that these little treasures taste just as good frozen out of the box i was to send to paris, as they do warm and toasty....and that they taste even better with a bit of havarti melted on top of each little bite.....and while i know that this is no way to keep off the 5 pounds i have lost....this discovery has made me very, very happy......

gasp.......

ok, so.....i enjoyed a marvelous afternoon off.....starting with the h-burg goodwill, where i found 4 tops (size small), a fleecy pullover (also a size small), 3 pairs of jeans (size 6), and some really heavy brass bookends-horses- that my daughter will just love.....that is one-stop xmas shopping.....on to the big lots where i found really nice metal tins for sending savory havarti and sesame bits overseas....and on to the d-ville goodwill, where there was nothing to be had.....the kroger, and then to the aldi's.....and it was in transit from kroger to aldi that it almost happened...not to me...but to the crazy woman in a black honda similar to mine who pulled out of the kroger lot after me...who was so close to my bumper i could see her face....and when i stopped at the bypass light (yellow), she actually came around me and went through the light (red)...just as the folks in the oncoming lane were starting to move ahead...and a red car almost clipped her back bumper....and i gasped aloud...because had the red car taken a jump on the light there would have been quite a crash.....the second gasp came after aldi, as i was making my way to the bike shop up 3rd street, by the hospital and then the church and then the bank, when a big-ass pickup truck stopped dead, and then proceeded to parallel park to the left....into a spot the looked to be too small.....this guy made it look simple after he failed to hit either the car in front or the car behind.....i am surprised i could gasp, because of the shock and awe..........and now i am home safe and sound...and with a list of small task to do before tomorrow, when i am informed i will drive my mother to lexington to buy a digital h/d television....which will be a gift from my brother....we are to drive over to hamburg place....gentle readers...i would rather take a beating than to drive to hamburg place at xmas time.....but after all is said and done we will eat lunch at....red lobster......with the eldest child so we can deliver the package.....good thing i did goodwills today....because i might not be on the mood for more than 2 or so after driving to hamburg.....double gasp.....

another friday.....

ok, so.....here we are at another weekend.....i have the mundane to take care of....grocery shopping and laundry...plus a trip to lex tomorrow to take the eldest to lunch and to deliver a package that came to the house in his name.....must make the rounds of goodwills on the way because not to do so would be a sacrilege....there is a dinner after church that i do not plan to attend....and then all the sudden it will be sunday night and back to work on monday.....friday's promise so quickly fades into sunday evening.....

old trees, old trees....

ok, so i especially enjoyed this piece from today's nytimes about an exhibit of the photographs of especially old trees...such as a tree that was just a sapling at the battle of Antietam Creek in 1862....wow what a long-lived tree......kinda like the tree i photographed outside st julien-le-pauvre in paris......which looked as old as the church.......

ok, so

ok, so.....only about half of my students showed up for lecture this evening....most likely because the project was due.....and so i decided to give bonus points tho those who turned it in on time.....and bonus points to those who showed up for class......yeah....not the way they would do things at princeton......but eku-d is a far cry from the ivy league......given that one of my students ate carryout macaroni and cheese from the cracker barrel while i talked......who gets carryout mac and cheese?......one more lecture left before the test...the one on aging and dying...and the one that traditionally gets the most discussion.....and then the exam and then we are done...until i get started up again in mid-january.......not thinking about much of a spring break trip because i am hoping that we can all go to austria to see child #1 next year during the holidays.....and so i am saving my pennies just in case.....nice that i will have another 2 semesters to earn that kind of cash.....this evening i was not the picture of health.....i am still plagued by jaw pain.....and i appear to look as bad as i feel...pain tends to age one, don't ya think?.......and so i am going to take a nice long bath and go to bed early and try to regain my youth......

under-acheivement as a strength

ok, so... i have a friend who is an under-achiever....actually....now that i think of it......i can think of at last 3 folks i know well who have not risen to the level that their talent predicted....and one wonders how one can stir on someone who has settled in.....the person i think most about is a close friend at work...who is smarter than anybody on-site....makes it all run...and gets paid pennies compared to nurses who do little and complain their day away........how fair is that?...not fair at all...but that is the way things are...and until my friend gets off her bottom and goes back to college she will continue to be the unsung hero and get paid little for her trouble.....but she has 2 children under age 8...and she is too blessed tired to go back to school...and in my mind it is a tragedy......on the other hand.....one of the nurses i work with in lincoln is going back to school to be a nurse practitioner...she will get her b.s....most nurses have only a 2 year degree.....and then to the classes required by this specialty...and she will make the big bucks if she can stick it out...she has 3 children under 10...but her spouse us vested in her choice and picks up the slack.......it can be done......

book club....

ok, so we had a record crowd at book club..to discuss the namesake......quite a feat for a group that included no one less than 2 generations from immigration.......we talked briefly about the naming part.....and then about the gogol part...nobody had read the original short story...i know that we own it...but could not locate it in our vast shelving arrangement.....(gentle readers....we own enough books to cause gravity to drag our home down the hill into the lake....)...and mostly we talked of the immigrant experience and how hard it is to shake one's past even when one desires to do so.....the closest experience is my grandfather broughton telling me as he was dying that his mothe tolkd him he could either speak german, or speak english and be an american....what choice did he have?.......easy for us who don't look foreign to say......

so old, so cold.....

ok, so...the temperature was 34 degrees as i slid outside to get the newspaper while the coffee brewed.....the high may hit the fifties, but this 34 degree stuff has already gotten old.....we have gone european, with a twin-size down duvet sitting on top of our green duvet, which covers a blanket rather than the old down comforter.....which is so heavy as to be unwieldy.....this twin down thing was in a closet, and is very light and easy to kick off if one gets too hot.....ah, the joys of menopause.....must be ready for the entire range of temps.....though when we put on the flannel sheets the bed will transform into near-womb conditions....i might not be able to drag myself out of bed for the duration......

screaming children.....

ok, so...today was remarkable for the number and shear seismic splendor of screaming children......the highlight was a child of 3 who stood and screamed in the lobby...just stood and screamed...blood-curdling screams....while his mother registered.....people stared at the sight, given that his mother was no further than 10 feet away....and he appeared to be in no visible distress.....and the screaming kept up as i ushered them into my clinic room....and at some point the screaming became comical...given that his mother appeared to ignore this continued outburst.......and i actually laughed at this child......at which point he stood stunned....and appeared to wonder how i could find his 'pain' so funny......as he was leaving one of my coworkers remarked...'that child ain't right'......true, and a parent who has done nothing to fix this problem ain't right either.....

saddened

ok,s o the part i failed to mention yesterday when i got home from the dentist was how, in my time in the chair, with my mouth open and numbed.....my dentist droned on in a litany about his son's recent screw-ups.....gentle readers.....i have known this fellow's son since he was 3.....and i find him to be a likable guy...and i have no need to hear about what he has done wrong this week....especially given that he is in graduate school and making his own way in the world.......what else could a parent ask for?.....

pain...

ok, so ....now that they tooth on my bottom right has been fixed......my right jaw is still in incredible pain.....hopefully with a day or two of chewing correctly will bring these poor jaws back into alignment and we shall be able to put an end to all references to physical discomfort.......

magazines.....

ok, so...the best part of the afternoon....the absolute best part....was the waiting in the waiting room with piles of magazines that i could leaf through......i make no illusion of reading any of the entertainment weekly, time, metropolitan home or gourmet of fairly recent vintage.....it is quite enough to skim the headlines, look at a few charts, smell the perfume ads.......and mostly move on.....i did enjoy a review of the deathly hallows.....written well after the book was released, so that every detail not available to those who reviewed it sight-unseen (just to say if was reviewed) could be thoroughly rehashed.....written by a true harry-fanatic.....probably my age....he declared that it was after the 4th book that rowling figured out that her audience was as much adult as anything...and began to gear her prose toward an ever aging readership......to the point that the use of the word bitch in the final installment was appropriate rather than shocking.....i's have said the same thing under the circumstances.....this article was a full 3 pages long...not a bad total for the 10 or so magazines i actually touched during my wait.......at this point the only magazine i receive weekly is the new yorker....and while i savor every word, and do not miss having to schlep out the stacks of old magazines from time to time...i do enjoy those times when i have nothing better to do than to turn pages.

the good news and the good news....

ok, so.....i have been at the dentist for the past 2.5 hours....and although i cannot feel my tongue, close my lips completely around the edge of a glass.....i feel that the tragedy has come off better than expected....the gold crown could not be replaced because the tooth actually broke beneath it.....BUT the dentist was able to fill the place with amalgam unavailable when this crown was made...read this as on onlay...as the dentist told me that these are onlays not crowns...who knew.... and so....i got to keep the hunk of gold that came out of my mouth, and i now have a passable white filling.....and my insurance covered most of it.....which meant that my bill at the end was so surprisingly low that i almost started to argue the point.....but back to the gold....i now have quite a stash of old gold....from my original engagement ring that had to be replaced when i wore through the back with years of gardening.....at some point i might be able to use this used gold to have the citrine stone i bought awhile back set...hadn't even considered doing it while gold was at an all-time high...but if i have enough gold of my own i might be able to pull it off.....maybe if i lose another onlay.....just joking.....i'm babying what is left of these onlays......

rude awakening.....

ok, so it is thanksgiving monday.....and despite having swollen gums, and an achy jaw....i must get myself together to go back to work...... where i have just 5 work days to get ready for an audit, and just 8 days to wait for my boss to resign (as rumored)...and so there is doom in my mouth, and doom at my workplace....and rain and the possibility of thunder storms outside....and i could use some help finding a silver lining......maybe the world will seem improved after the dentist today at 2......

beginning to bake.....

ok, so...i made 2 kinds of savory crackers this afternoon, with the intention of packing them carefully enough to make it safely to paris-based festivities......i remade the havarti-sesame crackers......a bit more pink this time with extra hot sauce.....yummy....and a walnut-blue cheese crackers....which could have used a bit of salt.......no idea how one transports such food items abroad, other than i do not intend to use metal tins, which may get everybody in security all in a ruckus......maybe just cardboard lidded boxes with lots of tissue.......anyway, these little nibbles will go well with wine and cheese......and at this moment the batches are tucked carefully into the freezer so i will not nibble them all ahead of time.....

suffering in silence....

ok,so by the time i got to sunday school, the notion of dwelling on my teeth was swept away by tales of actual woe...people who had lost loved ones or had a family illness or other pressing emetgemcies seemed more important topics of discussion than people who lost dental work.......just as it should be......

sunday school....

ok, so i teach sunday school this morning, and eventually i better move on from blogging to studying the text and making a few notes......the passage is the classic one where j.c. replied to his critics something about giving to caeser what is caesar's, and giving to god what is god's........j.c.'s comment was a crafty way to answer a factional question, in an age when there were many factions .....little has changed in the middle east it would seem.....but i suppose what i find most chilling in this text is how much it reminds me of what is happening at work...where factions have been at work for months and months pushing an agenda that is ridiculous on many levels....and now the rumor is that the director will quit, as many have hoped and that we will get a new director who will be present at all times......who in their right mind wants a boss who is always there?.....these folks have obviously never had a looking-over-your shoulder boss....it is something to be avoided, actually......and since we have shared a director with a sister health department.....there are those who do not quite understand that we cannot just take a part-time position and hire the replacement fulltime without adjusting down expenses somewhere....most of the time expenses are downwardly adjusted by laying off staff...gentle readers, my soon-to-quit boss is not someone that i am comparing to j.c......though i must add that he has never done me a bad turn and that is why i have gone out of my way to stay out of the factional business.........yet i do feel that these factions have the potential to make my professional life miserable for months to come.....and with this aching jaw and swollen gums and crumbling dental work i have no use for discord at work......

all afoul......

ok, so....i woke up this morning with my sinuses clogged, by jaw in pain, and my gums swollen......clearly i clenched what is left of my teeth during my time asleep......and must continue on as is for nearly 48 hours til the dental appointment......this focus on my health has become annoying at best......distracting at worst.......because i seem to be unable able to concentrate on anything but my head......even as i lay in the bed listening to a piece about alice seibold on the bbc, i had difficulty getting beyond my personal discomfort.....beyond the possibility that pain and aches are the new reality......seibold's new book is about pain and aches and growing older and more feeble/fragile, at some level.....and at some level it was hard to listen to the gist of her newest book's plot.....i don't want to read about stark reality at this point....i want to lose myself in the fantasy of the prose....or at least immerse myself in a story where nobody feels mean and old.....

the address.....

ok, so....my mother arrived this evening with the address in lassee, austria of her cousin gertrude...or more likely, the address of gertrude's son gunther, who is also a doctor(dentist?) and was talking of switching houses with her and her husband (dentist) when mother and dad visited there years ago.....gentle readers....i have made it quite open and clear that my children would be visiting the vienna area for quite sometime...and this address has just now materialized......hopefully my children can make contact...with these folks who are closer kin than the folks we visited in lambsheim....my mother remembers sending her old clothing to gertrude and her sister elizabeth....we visited elizabeth and her family in hanau in 1972...and mother and dad visited gertrude and her family in lassee sometime after i left home in 1974.....no idea when it was that they were in vienna...but i digress.....she has had this address and is just now passing it on.......

amen

ok, so the dentist office called...they can work me in monday at 2:00 pm.....they were in today, but didn't seem in a mood to negotiate about an appointment today.....