Pride Sockets

I got my wisdom teeth out last week. In the beginning, the entire experience was even better than the first, which I only recently stopped raving about.

• I got the nausea, pain medication, and strict liquid diet that made my sister's well-maintained high school eating disorder look like an Asian hot dog eating contest.
• An ex-lover of mine dropped off a TV, a Netflix account, and one more denial to my offer for marriage. But are you sure you're sure? Either way my entertainment was set, and the amount of Jell-O I planned to put away would have turned Bill Cosby's urine lime-flavored.

Internally I started to scoff at every story I had heard thus far about the "nightmare" of adult wisdom teeth recovery. This is the best! Again! I started getting cocky about my graceful recovery. I was too busy praising my doctor (and myself) when he called for what a good team we make, that I didn't listen to any advice he had to give. Plus, at one point Jane told me I was a champion, which carried my kid sister ego all the way through a couple of straws and up to last night when I woke up with a pain shooting down my right jaw.

So I'm trying to clear the air publicly to fight off whatever pounding I feel beneath my gums right now. It could be a blood clot. But I think it's the sting of pride.

I blame no one for this but myself,* and I swear on every pudding cup in my fridge I will have more sympathy for the next wisdom tooth patient who shares their "horror story," just as long as I wake up in the morning the champion Jane thought I was on Thursday.

*Except for the "dental hygienist" soliciting her advice at a party I prematurely attended night of my surgery. No, Popsicles aren't fine, and you're bad at your job. I respect you, but I also blame you a little.

Is this for a grade?

A few weeks ago, I was one of the best communicators I knew. It wasn’t because I had finally realized how to have a fluid conversation that wasn’t in the written form quite yet, and my word it certainly wasn’t because I had mastered the wink by any means, but it was because I finally had some answers to the “what’s new with you?” question.

I’ve had problems with this question for quite some time. It reminds me of Mrs. Ash’s “journal time” in the fourth grade, where our prompt was to write a letter to our teacher telling her about our week, and being as creative as we’d like. My first prompt consisted of a story about me starring me and began with truth but somehow ended in my brutal death. Some kids got a whole page written back to them from Mrs. Ash. I got a giant red question mark. I learned at an early age that to respond to this “tell me about your week/life/what is new with you” confrontation, we must not lie (I’d never), we must not be too self-indulgent (Maggie who?), and we can get close, but we must not die at the end (dead giveaway). (There is also the off-chance that some people are just filling silence with stock questions, and teachers just want a quiet hour in the middle of the day, but the optimist in me refuses both.)

A couple of weeks ago, my current-events storm for this question was the most perfect:

-I had been robbed. (“Well our house was broken into and all my property and sense of security was stolen, but let’s not talk about me, I want to hear about you.”)

-I saw two moose on a hike. (Always a crowd pleaser.)

-I had some of the best homeless attention of my life. (“I didn’t know angels could walk.” Oh bearded man (or woman), you shouldn’t have.)

But lately, the most I have to come up with is that Jane made some great waffles yesterday morning and shared, and I’m getting my bottom wisdom teeth out next Thursday. But everyone always crams advice down my throat with this last one, and I’ve already been through the process once. I know how to cope. A season of Heroes and Vicodine.

So here’s to hoping something goes terribly wrong with my wisdom teeth operation (yes, operation) and I finally have something to say to people again that isn’t old news, me news, or false news because if I’m going to cut anything, it’s going to be the truth. And it’s going to be obvious. You’ve been warned.

Your URL Is Showing

I’ve recently come across this Web site that allows the user to enter text or a URL/blog into its search bar, and it will generate this word cloud of most used words in that site. I figured my blog cloud would be filled with words like, grocery store, homeless people, twins, and probably I. Instead, the biggest, most used words were Christmas, Maggie (when do I use the third person? Gross.), ago (why?), Jane (but not Kristine?), comments, receptionist, and chocolate. Nightmare! I was right on the self-centered thing, but dead wrong on everything else.

I don’t even know myself.

And Kristine, I love you. Kristine. Kristine. Kristine. That should do it.

Speaking of word clouds, some days I worry that I'll never find a man who loves me this much:

http://thedailywh.at/post/501152060/ugliest-tattoo-of-the-day-who-says-romance-is

But now I know exactly how to design that Old Man Winter tattoo I've been dreaming about.

Burgled!

Yesterday, sometime between 9 a.m., and 4 p.m. (or as I see it: Sometime between oatmeal o’clcok and pre-dinner grapefruit o’clock), our house was broken into. Viotlated. Robbed. Smashed. Wrecked. BLED ON. Panty raided.

My roommates’ laptop, laptop, and camera were stolen, and my laptop and tv had been taken. My underwear was strewn all across my floor, and at first I was flattered. But then after some heavy detective reasoning, and after finding an ugly earring on my floor, I deduced that the little pilferer in my room had been a tiny female. And then I just felt judged.

But then I felt flattered again when I heard Kristine describe my untouched and unscathed bike as being worth $2,000. I didn’t correct her. It is a beautiful bike…

My only fear from this experience is that I have become so critical of our thieves for being so sloppy (an earring?? Blood on my bed?? Come on, O.J.!) that I’ve given far too much thought on how to do it right. And no good can come of that.

But just for the record, I’d at least have a trademark. And that trademark would be stealing all the pencils in the house. And all those pencils would be kept in an unlocked safe in my house to confuse future burglars. And none of this would be disclosed on a public blog.

Touched by an Angel

To say I'm a poor driver is an understatement. To suggest my license poses a threat to humanity is a little more like it.

It's been about four months since my last fender-bender, so this quarter's run-in was due and came this morning around 9:00 a.m. I told my brother Gentzy about the wreck as soon as I got in to work. Without missing a beat he said, "Consistency is good. Predictability is comforting."

After slamming into the back of the Honda on State Street (100 percent my fault), three things shot out of my purse:

1. Lip gloss
2. Mascara
3. My cell phone

Great. Now I'm 16. I didn't even know that stuff was in there. (Lie.)

After hiding my teen-bop contraband, I cautiously got out of the car, waiting for the verbal spanking of a lifetime. I saw the driver turn around in his seat and check on a little person in the back.

Great. Now I'm a baby-killer.

The man got out of his car, waring a jean shirt, classic Levi's, hair down to his waist and a giant, "don't worry be happy" smile. This angel, brought to me on a cloud of denim and patchouli, not only assured me several times that no harm had been done, but patiently waited for me to find my policy number while his gorgeous, biracial (great. Now I'm racist) three-year-old bounced in and out of the car, no car seat to be seen.

We exchanged information, and as I drove away, I saw him raise an arm out of the corner of my eye.

Great. The middle finger.

Nope. A giant, nice-to-meet you wave. And then he floated away. Back to God.

As for his policy number? Well Gentzy and I have our suspicions of it actually being the date of the Apocalypse, slipped to me as a warning. But you'll have to wait for 2012: The Squeakual to find out for sure.

Pi

Because I bill my time at work, and each hour is accounted for, I’ve begun to look at my life a little bit differently. At work, my job (and thus worth) is broken into percentages of projects. Which is great for the time sheet. But abusive to my social life.

Like being gunshy to commit 40% of my free time Monday to a luau, or trying to finally figure out which twin I love more by the higher percentage of appearances I make on their blogs.

I didn’t really realize I was doing this until yesterday at work when I dropped one of my almonds into my heater at work. Before my life was ruled by pie charts, I would have said “see ya almond” and maybe thrown another one in there just to keep it company. But because I remembered I had ten almonds, and because that almond was now 10% of my bag, which is a considerable slice on the pie chart, I had to retrieve and devour it and probably lose 50% of my friends if she saw.

In a completely unrelated note, I’m 100% positive re-reading Harry Potter is once again making me a better person. I’ll leave you with this nugget of brilliance from J.K. Rowling:

“There are some things you can't share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them." —pg 179

What a Web

I got into this (Stuff You Missed in History Class podcast). But then quickly got out of it because I could hear the sound the speaker's mouth made every time she opened it to speak. And that sound makes me feel weird. And I think it's avoidable. Plus most of the stuff they talk about, a majority probably had learned in history class. So catch 22*, moving on.

But in the podcast on the Pazzi family (sucker for a mafia tale), they used the word nepotism, which I actually hadn't learned in history class. Or any class. So I looked it up. Nepotism: favoritism shown or patronage granted to relatives. I think I should have known that. Thanks, Illinois educational system**.

When I got home that night, my friend Brandon was over and I asked him why he's never taken a job with his cousin. He said because that would be nepotism. Of course it would be.

Oh word Gods, you are just hysterical sometimes.

Nepotism: Pay it forward.

* I give this term three years before no one actually knows what it means anymore and it becomes a wild card. This is me doing my part.
**49/50. Thanks, Mississippi.