I’m finishing up a work-related crunch, exacerbated by a personal crunch for a few things too. It has meant some long days combining the two, and with some dental fun, even some messed up sleep schedules. Last night, I was working late and then watched some TV episodes to unwind, too hyper to sleep. Crashed late, woke up late, had meetings that started right at 9:00 a.m. So I was off and running for the morning, without time for a proper breakfast.
I was looking forward to lunch, and then a mini-crisis hit at noon, so I was swamped during my expected break. I figured I would end up grabbing something at my next break which I hoped would be around 1:30. It actually was closer to 2:30, but I got a surprise in between.
My son, J, brought me lunch. It was all his idea. He is pretty sensitive and can read me really well, so he knows when I’m stressed out and having trouble with boundaries or schedules. So he grabbed some left over pizza, a plate, a cupcake he made last week that I had been saving, and a yogourt drink. Instant lunch. It was like manna from heaven, as they say. It was so nice and so perfect, I almost cried.
I love the man he is becoming, and his extreme sensitivity both terrifies me for his future heartaches and fills my bucket beyond measure.
Today I chose to be grateful for his act of kindness, and even more for his approach to life and family.
I’m not sure if “choice” is the right term here. About ten days ago, my #12 tooth, upper right, next to my front two, started to twinge. I’ve had twinges before, usually a result of being too quick with my brushing in previous days or too many sugary drinks. It lasts a day or two, I adjust my oral hygiene and intake, and it goes back to normal. And I make a note to have the dentist check it the next time I’m in.
A little dental history
But when it comes to going to the dentist, my history is not good. Growing up, dental visits were not covered by my parent’s health plan, so I remember going once when I was about 9 or 10. I had one cavity, and the tooth was already loose. No muss, no fuss, off we went.
My next visit? I was about 24 or so. I had a bit of money and some benefits from work, so I went for a clean and inspect, all good. Then I didn’t have benefits for awhile, so probably age 28 was about the next visit. After that, I’ve gone a little more regularly, but it’s far less than the recommended frequency.
I brush, I do okay, no major problems, but I have a really bad gag reflex. Then about 15 years ago now, I went for a dental visit to a young dentist downtown. I liked the guy, he seemed good. It was a disaster. I ended up with some latex stuck in my mouth, felt like I was swallowing a balloon, and after I started heaving, he couldn’t remove some pick thing from my mouth with the latex until I calmed down. I feel, no word of a lie, that if I had eaten breakfast that morning, I would have had lots to throw up, and I could have choked to death. It was that bad. It freaked me the f*** out.
I used to go for cleanings to a dentist downtown, but she kept hiring new hygienists, underpaying them, they move on when they have experience, and she hires another new recruit. Great for her business model, and lots of people do it I know, but it was hell on my gums. I felt like they were jabbing me every couple of seconds. I could last about 30-45 minutes, but any longer than that, and I would start to climb the walls. I couldn’t move away, but the rest of my body would start twitching like I was a junkie jonesing for a fix.
There had been one hygienist there, and she left to go work somewhere in Barrhaven area. I wish I knew her last name, but I didn’t. I tried finding her, without seeming too stalkerish. She was about 35, her name was Vicky, she had red hair and used to work downtown. I called a couple of clinics one time not too long after she left trying to find her, I would have followed her to any practice. She was awesome. I relaxed and she never JABBED ME WITH A PITCHFORK IN THE MOUTH! But after about 2 calls, I realized no matter how I worded it, I sounded like a stalker. Not a good feeling.
Anyway, I eventually tried a dentist out in Kanata that I had heard good things about, she advertised quite heavily on the radio and someone I knew had used her so I gave it a go. I managed a couple of cleanings with her, but eventually it became clear that over time, I’m getting worse, not better. I just can’t stand the experience. When the dentist decided I needed some fillings, she referred me to a dentist near me that does sedation dentistry.
Back to the tooth at hand
Before I digressed with my oral history, I was basically saying that I’ve had small twinges before and I make a note of them until the next time. But since I need sedation, I can’t just pop over anytime for a dentist appointment. It takes more work, I need someone to bring me home, pretty much wipes out the day, etc. So I intentionally forget and don’t bother scheduling something until I think it’s “time” again. My goal was to go sometime this year, but I hadn’t made it there yet, and with Covid, I figured late 2021 was a better bet.
Then I got a twinge that didn’t go away. In fact, it got a lot more acute for pain. And even my bottom tooth started hurting for some reason. As it escalated, I called the dental office for perhaps some emergency care, but sedation is hard to arrange for “emergencies”. Emergency is easy; with sedation is hard. But in the meantime, they gave me an antibiotic and the pain went away in about 36 hours. Almost completely gone. On the pain scale of 1-10, I had been hitting 6s and 7s and then 7s and 8s at the peak; then it went down to about 4s; and on the weekend, that went down to 1.
They had a cancellation and were able to take me in today, so I jumped at the appointment. It was just a check-up to see what was going on. Two x-rays, a bit of tapping on the teeth.
And the result.
The best news is that about 18 months ago I was having some problem with my back molars that made me wonder if my other 2 wisdom teeth were making an appearance…whatever it was, it wasn’t those. No sign of them, so I’ll probably never see them.
The lesser but equally good news is that after being referred to him last time where he did 4 cavities at once, I have no cavities now. Yay.
The less good but fully expected news is that whatever is going on with my tooth was not “cavity” related but instead was something root-ish. Or as he put it, my tooth is too close to my root. I’ve tried talking to it about social distancing but it’s not listening. Anyway, the long and short of it is that I do indeed need a root canal.
The bad news is that in order to do the root canal, and to do a cleaning at the same time (hey, I’m already there!), they need me to be in the room for 90 minutes (30m root, 60m cleaning). And it has to be the same room. Which means their first opening is…dun dun dun…December 17. Blech. If my pain returns before then, I’m supposed to call. But my antibiotics will run out Wednesday so I’ll have to cross my fingers it doesn’t get infected again. Sigh.
Andrea has already arranged for someone to drive her over to pick me up afterwards so she doesn’t have to take a cab. I’ll take one there, not much choice, as I can’t drive that day.
Today I chose to go to the dentist, and to make plans for a visit with sedation in December. Not exactly the way I wanted to tick the box this year for the dentist, but I’ll tick the box anyway. At least it seemed relatively safe as nobody was around.
I have already mentioned the garage reorg and my commitment to 30-minute increments to get it all done. I planned to only do the 30 minutes today, but my wife was helping, and the first 30 minutes or so blew past pretty fast. With her help, I got the rest of the stuff off the existing wooden shelves AND managed to move all the astronomy stuff out of the wardrobe cabinets to be temporarily stored in the living room. I need to sort it all before it goes back anyway.
But with all that done, the shelves were bare. I could move the wardrobe out of the way. Why not take a whack — literally — at tearing down the wooden shelves?
I gave it a go with a decent hammer and a small pry bar. I fully expected that to be a bear to do, and it was, a little bit. But with less than an extra 20 minutes or so invested, and the help from my wife earlier, I’ve jumped ahead two full days on my expected timeline. I’m pretty happy about it. Now I still have to take some nails out of boards, try to remove two more boards that are vertical, and assemble a metal bookshelf to do the next step, but we’ll see how far the next 30 minutes gets me.
I also did a ton of work on my trivia setup today, including pre-programming a slide deck that will pull my questions from an Excel spreadsheet, and show it all in Powerpoint, including the results page. I have trivia Wednesday for friends and trivia on Thursday for work, and I’ve done the work questions first as I need to get them translated, but overall, it’s all working relatively well. I’m pretty happy with it. Heck, we even had time to run errands today, buy groceries, and do three loads of laundry. Happy productive day!
Mind you, we also tried to play Terraforming Mars for the first time today, and it is SUPER complicated. Way over our heads and I don’t find the instructions particularly well done. Apparently there are videos online to give a better overview as we have been doing certain elements wrong.
Today I chose to do more on the garage, even going beyond my simple 30-minute embrace incrementalism. Good progress overall and ahead of schedule for the new timelines.
I have some big projects that I’m working on around the house, or maybe just one big one, which is to get my sh** squared away, as I’ve blogged about before. My garage is a disaster, and I had hoped to spend a fair amount of time on it today. But it’s slog time. None of what has to be done is anywhere close to “fun”, so I don’t have a burning desire to do it of course.
But I was up late, slept in (I’ve been enjoying a bit longer sleeps the last few nights, I think it is the antibiotics working overtime perhaps), and then this afternoon, Andrea and I ran a bunch of errands all over the city, from Bell’s Corners all the way to Trim Road. Fun times. I may even have picked up a speeding ticket from a radar cam in there. Nice.
Anyway, it took all afternoon, and when we got home, I was a bit fried. I really didn’t have the energy to work on the garage. We put some stuff in the shed, summer tires for example, and some golf clubs, but I even got the club selection wrong. I meant to keep a specific set out, and I jumbled them all together. Hopefully I’ll have time to rectify that before the snow comes.
But after supper tonight, I forced myself to do the slog for at least 20 minutes. I would have went 30, but Andrea and Jacob were waiting on me to play cards. Nevertheless, I did it. Because I *need* to do it, and I need to make the effort. So I moved a bunch of stuff around, got stuff off the wooden shelves I need to clear, and even moved some of my astronomy stuff into the house. Did I make amazing progress? Nope. But I didn’t really expect to do so. I just needed to make SOME progress.
I also did some work on my computer setup for trivia and threw in a load of laundry. Incrementalism to keep moving forward. Better than I accomplished yesterday.
Today I chose to embrace incrementalism. I didn’t make huge progress, but it’s something.
Okay, I admit it, we eat out a lot as a family. Most of that is my fault. We do well when we actually plan in advance, and organize accordingly. But often I let the majority of the weight fall on Andrea, and if we don’t have a plan for the week, it is easy to say, “Okay, it’s 6:30, nothing is planned, what are we ordering?”. It’s basically a plan to use our backup plan. Andrea doesn’t enjoy it as much as Jacob and I do, but she doesn’t tear my head off either.
But to avoid total chaos, we have a three-part rule that we follow. The first two are simple politeness, the third one was ingenious in hindsight.
Part one of the rule is that we take turns deciding. We don’t always remember whose turn it is, necessarily, as we all like similar restaurants, and have our favorite dishes from each. Ones that one of us doesn’t like much tends not to be in the rotation much. On pizza nights, it’s a separate rotation from the normal rotation, and is more rigidly enforced. I like Colonnade Pizza, Hawaaian with chicken; Andrea is open to moving around to different places like Milano’s or Toppers; and Jacob will choose Pizza Hut every time. For regular restaurants, we have fast-food staples of Wendy’s or Harvey’s, or if Andrea isn’t participating, McDonald’s. Subway is popular with all three. Other restaurants are Vietnamese, Thai, Japanese (low-end), Royal Oak, Swiss Chalet, Montana’s, Red Lobster. A few others in lesser rotation.
Part two of the rule is we can’t always choose the same thing in our rotation nor can we choose something we just went to, those are kind of “pre-veto” guidelines. Andrea reacts to that more than I do, and Jacob would eat the same place every time if it was Pizza Hut.
But as I said, Part Three is designed to save marriages and prevent family breakdown. Have you ever been in a situation where someone asks where you want to eat, you don’t really know, where do they want to eat, they don’t know, blah blah blah? Or someone says, “anywhere is fine with them” but you suggest Place 1, they say nah; Place 2, no; Place 3, it wasn’t very good last time. But yeah, anywhere is fine.
Both of those situations drive me round the f***ing bend. Seriously, it used to piss me off to no end. And so I finally got fed up one night and said, “Okay, NEW RULE”.
Here’s the eye-opening truth bomb.
If someone suggests somewhere to go, and you don’t like it, you can say no, BUT…wait for it…you have to propose an alternative.
You can’t just say no to other people’s suggestions and crap on their idea. You have to suggest something that you yourself are comfortable with as a choice. And if you don’t have a better choice to suggest? You shut the f*** up.
I wish I had thought of this years ago. Years of organizing things with friends, family, dates, and seriously, this rule has changed our discussions. No stress at all. We all know we can’t say no without an alternative to suggest. And surprisingly, it makes us all more collaborative.
For tonight, I probably would have opted for Montana’s. We haven’t done them in a long time, could be good. We all like their food, not regularly, but occasionally. Early on we had tried to go to the one local and it wasn’t open. We’ve gone a couple of times since they figured out how to be open, which coincided more with their patio being open too. We’re not THAT brave.
For Andrea, she has a craving for Red Lobster, and I bet it’s her next choice.
But it was more or less Jacob’s turn, hard to tell when some previous nights were collaborative decisions, but we called it as Jacob’s choice. Frequently he wants some suggestions from us to help him create a menu. We suggested Montana’s (he normally gets burgers), Vietnamese (won ton soup and pad thai…I know, not exactly Vietnamese, right), or Red Lobster (probably would get some sort of nugget). His choice? Swiss Chalet.
I like Swiss Chalet, and they have their festive special on right now. But here’s the small irritating part. Jacob doesn’t order their chicken. When he chooses the Royal Oak? He orders mac and cheese. Vietnamese? Some Thai food. Swiss Chalet? Cheesy pizza. With stuffing from the festive special as a side.
I did point out to him, as I have before, and will in future, that it is his choice. And that he might want to consider something else in the future. But it is his favourite food, even if it is not the best place to get it. I find it a bit ironic, and my parents would chortle at the experience. When I was a kid, well, Jacob’s pre-teen age, my parents used to take my brother and I out to the Miss Diana restaurant, sit in the “nice” section rather than the diner, and order. My dad frequently had veal; my mother too, but she varied occasionally. My brother had varying things. Me? I would look over every item on the menu, and in the end, I would choose fish and chips. Every time. Used to drive my dad nuts.
I didn’t really know how to articulate it back then, but later in life, I realized that it was perfectly rational as a decision. Not only did I know they did a good job with it, and that it was consistent, I also never had fish and chips at home. Most of the rest of the meals on the menu might have been okay, but the ones I was likely to choose were all dishes that would likely have been “different” from the way my mom made it, and different wasn’t necessarily better. She wasn’t some gourmet cook, but I liked her cooking better for most things. Sure, not veggies. But meats certainly, potatoes definitely. We could have burgers on the BBQ, her tenderloin was awesome, and I still salivate at the thought of her broiled pork chops. We tend to burn ours, I have no idea how she had hers perfect all the time. Maybe just volume.
As an aside, back in my single days, if I was eating out by myself, I appeared to be a definite creature of habit. If I went to a specific restaurant, I might have soup if they had a good choice (anything but tomato or vegetable usually, or pea, blech), maybe chicken nuggets, fries, diet coke, and perhaps some ice cream afterwards. One of the waitresses thought I was crazy cuz I always ordered the same thing. I was like Sheldon from Big Bang Theory. But not really. What the waitress didn’t know, was that I could have gone ANYWHERE for dinner. I decided I was in the mood for nuggets and fries, and so, I went to that restaurant as they had decent nuggets at an okay price. With possible soup and ice cream added to the front and back. If I had wanted steak, I would have gone somewhere else. Pasta? Somewhere else. Thai? Burgers? Italian? Pizza? All somewhere else. I would occasionally ask about specials just to see if anything enticed me away from my plan for the night, but not often. I had decided 2 hours before what I wanted, that’s why I was there. Not for the restaurant, not for their menu. Just that dish. In a COVID world, you can just order it. Heck, we could order three different take outs if we wanted to do so.
So if Jacob wants to choose Swiss Chalet and order pizza? Sure. If we want to veto it, we have to suggest somewhere else AND feel strong enough to override someone else’s choice. Neither Andrea nor I felt strongly enough, so Swiss Chalet it was.
Today I chose to follow my own rules. I only wish I had those rules long ago.
