My Life

[Lunkhead]

Sorry to hear that!

I learned yesterday at the dentist that for various reasons I probably need to have my right front tooth removed. It'll be a 4-6 month period to go from having my actual front tooth to having a fake replacement.

[owl]

Oh shit! That sounds really awful, I'm sorry.

[Lunkhead]

Thanks. It's going to be unpleasant but hopefully it will be fine.

In _good_ news today I learned I finally am getting a promotion I should have gotten a year+ ago. Being 43 is a real rollercoaster ride so far! I'm scared what will happen tomorrow.

[owl]

That's cool, congrats! It's like the tooth fairy but way more so because you're a grown-up now. And inflation. Lose a tooth, get a few K.

That waiting period sounds so shitty, though. My friend had broken front teeth for like a year waiting to get new veneers or whatever they are put on. Why do you have to wait so long? The bone has to heal before they can screw in the implant, or what?

[Lunkhead]

LOLOLOLOL That is a really awesome way of looking at it.

And you've sussed out the reason for the timing. The first procedure is the tooth extraction, and cleaning out the infection in the jaw bone, and putting in a bone graft. That then will have to heal up for a while for step two, putting in an implant to hold a future fake tooth. Then that has to heal up as well, before step three, putting the fake tooth onto the implant.

[Pigfarmer Jr]

I went through a lot of scaling etc this past year after years of brushing regularly but avoiding the dentist (like decades.) I don't recommend it. It's not fun. But my teeth are my own and I didn't even have a cavity. Anything that is more involved than what I went through sounds terrible to me. So I wish you the best on all that.

[ujnhunter]

Just tell everyone you are a professional Hockey player.

[crumpart]

And just like that we have a house to rent. Five minutes drive from our current house. With no furniture in it. Hooray!

[vowlvom]

Excellent! Good work!

[owl]

That must be a huge relief! Well done.

[crumpart]

Yep. Huge relief. Not having housing lined up when you’re an immigrant with no family or close friends to fall back on in emergencies is not wonderful.

[owl]

Complaint time: God, I am SO TIRED. I've been working super late every day for what feels like forever and it feels like I'm constantly swimming upstream. I finish some things off the top of the pile and never make it to the bottom, so the other stuff just keeps sitting there... at least I made a good dent today with starting an enormous project moving. But it's well after midnight here and I just finished, and it's been this way for at least two weeks and I'm still not caught up!

And there is some Family Stuff going on behind the scenes in my family that is kind of simmering away in a Cold War scenario on at least two fronts, and part of me is like "hmm, this is stressful, I should probably go find a therapist to talk to about this," but ugh it seems like SO MUCH WORK to figure out insurance and how to find someone who's covered and taking new patients AND who is the right kind of therapist to talk to you about XYZ, and it all just reminds me of how I need to make a doctor's appointment for something soon too, but I have no PCP, so meanwhile my mental and physical health are both semi-languishing because our healthcare system sucks and I just don't have the energy to figure it out right now. I would complain about how the US is the worst, but I can't bring myself to say that right now because we're not mid-Brexit or completely shut down over the coronavirus or burning to the ground (except figuratively)... etc. etc.

Also I accidentally missed my volunteer shift over the weekend because they rescheduled it like a month ago and I wrote the wrong date on my calendar, so I showed up at 4 pm as usual and they were like "we're closing early today, remember?--we were expecting you here at noon and you didn't show up" so I felt like an asshole and also did not get to see my cranky beautiful wild animal friends. Everyone got taken care of, but I made a bunch of extra work for people.

On the other hand, I have a place to live, and all my teeth, and family nearby, and this thread has made me feel super grateful for all those things!

[gizo]

Everything is fucked and it’s 40°c so I’m dancing to Ezra Furman outside while cooking Kumara on the BBQ

the sun will come up tomorrow
You are loved
You get to choose what you bring.

Hugs.

[crumpart]

Moving boxes booked! Back in Australia we hired plastic moving crates a couple of times and they were brilliant. For the last move from Dublin to Cork we had to buy cardboard boxes and they were the absolute worst. Thin, shitty, expensive and we got a moth infestation in our clothes. So happy to find a plastic box hire company have now set up shop here.

After an international move and a cross country move (that one was from two locations to one location, being studio and house —> house), this five minute move is going to be a breeze.

[Caravan Ray]

We admitted a possum tonight at the wildlife center where I volunteer, and it weighed 19 POUNDS (8.72 kg) and was the biggest possum I have ever seen!!!! I later looked up "how much does a possum weigh" on Wikipedia and the upper weight limit listed there was 14 lbs. It is so big it may have to be moved to the eagle cage, and it physically doesn't fit inside the little plastic igloo we normally give them to hide in.

Other fun facts I incidentally just learned from Wikipedia about possums:

• they have 13 nipples, arranged in a circle of 12 with 1 in the middle. Almost like the Betsy Ross flag, but not quite!
• here is one of the representative graphics on the Wikipedia page, "Virginia opossum inhabiting a piano in Houston, Texas, shortly before its release"

Possums are annoying. And I am talking about the cute Australian ones - not the ugly as fuck American ones.

[vowlvom]

The ugliness of the American ones is 99% of their charm. I wish I had a possum.

[Caravan Ray]

The ugliness of the American ones is 99% of their charm. I wish I had a possum.

Fair enough. I get that.

I just had a possum experience tonight though. Ours are so cute

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_brushtail_possum

We had an adolescent female tonight - looking like she is setting up a household. But they eat all of our tomatoes and peas and basil... sure - it is the worst drought in recorded history - we are happy to share - but they also torment our dogs. Ok - our dogs are stupid - the possums actually come in to our kitchen through the dog door and eat dog food - leaving the dogs to cower under our bed in fear.

Apparently I am not allowed to whack them over the head with a shovel (neither the possums or the dogs - I have checked with the Council).

Anyway - I am an angry middle aged man and I will shout at the fucking possums if I want to.

[crumpart]

Also Australian possums make one of the most blood-curdling hiss-growl-screams known to human kind.

[owl]

Everything is fucked and it’s 40°c so I’m dancing to Ezra Furman outside while cooking Kumara on the BBQ

the sun will come up tomorrow
You are loved
You get to choose what you bring.

Hugs.

Thank you <3

kumara is the same as sweet potatoes I think? Sounds delish grilled.

[owl]

The ugliness of the American ones is 99% of their charm. I wish I had a possum.

Fair enough. I get that.

I just had a possum experience tonight though. Ours are so cute

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_brushtail_possum

We had an adolescent female tonight - looking like she is setting up a household. But they eat all of our tomatoes and peas and basil... sure - it is the worst drought in recorded history - we are happy to share - but they also torment our dogs. Ok - our dogs are stupid - the possums actually come in to our kitchen through the dog door and eat dog food - leaving the dogs to cower under our bed in fear.

Apparently I am not allowed to whack them over the head with a shovel (neither the possums or the dogs - I have checked with the Council).

Anyway - I am an angry middle aged man and I will shout at the fucking possums if I want to.

• I love our big hideous American possums, they look so gross and shabby and I think they are adorable
• I would love to see an 8.2 kg brushtail possum
• I have 2 (New Zealand) possum fur sweaters--one I knit myself, one I bought in a store--and a pair of socks, and even though it's super cold here, they are almost too warm to wear most of the time. very fuzzy
• shout at the possums, live your best life

[Lunkhead]

Fortunately I haven't gotten close up with any kinds of possums. But on a marginally related topic, yesterday morning we noticed that a mama squirrel was building a nest in the tree right outside our kitchen windows and we watched her for 10-15 minutes as she went back and forth from the proto nest and the edges of the tree branches where she was chewing off little branches to carry back to her next. It was SOOOO cute. I'll post photos later.

[Lunkhead]

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