I never finished telling you about the whole wisdom teeth ordeal…

Days 15 and 16, I stayed off the pain meds, determined to just get better already. Plus, I felt woozy on the drugs — headachy and tired and bleh — and I figured it was time for me to buck up. As though I had control, ha!

Day 16, my ear started hurting. I knew I’d be taking pain meds on Day 17 when I was going to play Ultimate come hell or high water, and began counting down the hours until I could take medicine again. And then my husband was like, This is stupid; take the meds. So I did.

Day 17, I played Ultimate. Also, the ear pain was getting worse.

Day 18, the ear pain was spreading to my chin, eyebrow, cheekbone. All my teeth on that side of my mouth felt tender, like they were riddled with cavities. I called the oral surgeon and left a message with the friendly receptionist. My main question: Was this increased pain normal? Had there been complications I didn’t know about? And no, I had no red gums, bleeding, swelling, fever, etc, etc. Everything else looked and felt good.

at work: a soft lunch

Day 19, the friendly receptionist called back. To summarize: The doctor said your surgery was quite difficult so your recovery will be longer than normal. The pain will migrate around your face as you heal. You can always come in if you’d like us to check it. Have you tried hot compresses? Their “I’m sorry but there’s nothing we can do” attitude was beginning to give me the distinct impression that they didn’t believe that I was in pain, or that they thought I was trying to get more drugs (which I was). 

That day I called my husband at work and told him I could no longer advocate for myself. A few minutes later my son (the ER nurse) called me. When I asked him if there were any other options beyond Oxycodone, he rattled off a huge list of medicines, as well as over-the-counter options and home remedies, which made me really feel like the oral surgeon was ignoring me. I decided I wasn’t going to drive an hour round trip and pay big bucks to have them look in my mouth and repeat that there was nothing they could do for me, so . . .

Day 20, I called my regular dentist. Might I come in and have someone look at the incisions just to confirm that everything is actually okay? I asked.

At the dentist’s office, they flatout said, “You should not be having pain. Something is wrong.” They took photos and asked me questions and consulted with each other. The dentist noted that one side of my face was ever-so-slightly warmer and more swollen, immediately called in a prescription for antibiotic, and when I teared up thanking her, she wrapped me in an enormous bear hug. There’s no charge for this one, she said.

med notes

The pain lessened dramatically over the next several days but it took another five days or so for me to go off pain meds completely. Exactly four weeks to the day of my surgery, I went running for the first time (the pain and stiffness was always worse in the morning), and now, nearly six weeks out, I’m almost one-hundred percent back to normal. 

All things considered, getting my wisdom teeth out wasn’t terrible. I never once gagged on blood or threw up. I ate just fine (mostly). My face hardly swelled at all, and I didn’t get dry socket. I continued to live and do things and function. (I made cheese on Day Two, for crying out loud.) But ongoing pain is distracting and exhausting, and the medicines, while necessary and absolutely wonderful, change how one feels, which only adds to the cycle, a cycle which seems to get increasingly vicious at every turn. To finally be on the other side, and to feel like myself once again, unmedicated and pain-free, is rather incredible.

The End
(for real this time)

This same time, years previous: whey ricotta, how we homeschool: Rebecca, Clymer and Kurtz, my sweet beast, the quotidian (12.4.17), the quotidian (12.5.16), oatmeal sandwich bread, in my kitchen: 6:44 p.m., cinnamon raisin bread, baked ziti.

My children regularly send me instagrams and then every few days I tell my husband I have some fun stuff to show him and he’ll plop down on the sofa beside me and pop in an earbud. (Are we the only one who share earbuds on the regular?) It’s a great way to end the day, or the week.

Here are a few of my favorites, collected by my children and curated by me.

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“Nobody knew where you were and your phone was off!”
(Version Number Two is the more accurate me.)

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I stand by this one hundred percent.

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We have firsthand experience with porky pigs like these.

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My older daughter says this is what working with my husband is like. (My husband is the one with the hammer.)

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Her eyes!

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Don’t you DARE eat before supper.

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Also from my older daughter. (I get a lot of carpentry clips.)

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In my dreams…

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Snow is awesome.

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Truth!

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Not my moves.

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They could’ve at least faced the other direction!

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Have a good weekend, friends. xo

This same time, years previous: a food-filled weekend in Brooklyn, ippy, millionaire’s pie, books and movies, in the sweet kitchen, the quotidian (12.1.14), Thanksgiving of 2013, peppermint lip balm.

So about that permanently pregnant cow of ours…

Because Charlotte was so much bigger than Emma had ever been, and Emma had delivered months ago and without us even knowing, we’d been watching Charlotte very closely for the last two months. I was determined not to miss this birth. Plus, I was concerned she might have twins. At first the idea of twins was exciting, but when I realized that twins would mean we wouldn’t get to milk her, I switched to fervently hoping it was a singleton. Not that I could do anything about it, of course. 

We checked her twice daily, and many days I made mid-day treks down to the field, just to make sure I wasn’t missing something. 

Things we were looking for:

Discharge
Swollen backside
Softening pins
Bagging up
Less wrinkle-age in the teats
Ability to manually express milk
Lack of appetite
Restlessness

But day after day she was the same, same, freaking boring old same: enormous, and with a gradually filling bag and the hilarious, wide-stepping waddle to go with it.

And then, finally, on Saturday morning, there was a change. Instead of standing by the fence gazing forlornly up at the house waiting for The Man Who Brings Hay, Charlotte was hanging out way up in the field, so right away we knew something was up. Her pins didn’t look any different (they had been softening, but the dip wasn’t as dramatically visible as I thought it’d be), her teats were still wrinkly and bone dry, there was no discharge, and her bag and backside looked pretty much the same, but not eating was definitely different.

By mid-morning, she’d stationed herself down in the field and my younger daughter and I had joined her. She was up and then down, up and then down. The birth was obviously going to happen, so we alerted family members. 

My brother’s kids were at my parents’ place.  “Does [Grandson] have time to get a haircut?” my mom texted. 

“Maybe?” I replied, and then I texted my other brother’s family who was enroute to Virginia for Thanksgiving week, and then my mom and dad showed up with the kids (Grandson’s hair half-cut), and my older daughter arrived and then my daughter-in-law and before long, we had a small crowd, aka, A Birth (semi)Circle. 

The birth itself was uneventful.

The calf hung out in the sack until it hit the ground and burst open.

Charlotte gobbled up the goopy stuff.

My other brother’s family arrived, and we watched for awhile as the calf, a gorgeous little heifer, struggled to stand and we debated whether or not Charlotte was going to pop out another calf.

For a few minutes we thought she might — she laid back down and appeared to push; just fluids came out — but then she got back up and went about the business of worrisomely trailing her calf who was busy making friends with the humans. 

calf’s first group selfies

From then on, things settled down. I considered naming the calf Grace since it was the start of Thanksgiving week (and then the name stuck). We didn’t see her nurse for the first 24 hours or so, but she was zipping around the field like she was jacked up on caffeine so we figured things were fine. 

For the last couple days, we’ve been milk training Charlotte and feeding the colostrum to the pigs.

She’s an easy-going cow but getting her into the shed is tricky. She hates the dark, enclosed space, and the door sill made her totally freak: she steps her front feet over and then she’ll freeze and, gingerly lifting one hind foot as high as possible, she’d hold it there, peddling the air, before lunching forward in a rush, and then she’d do the same with the other foot, a surprise move that makes us roar with laughter. 

She’s such a gentle cow, though. One evening when we couldn’t get her into the stall, my husband just free-stand milked her — in the shed but entirely unrestrained — with the machine and she just stood there. 

This morning my husband finally got the halter on Charlotte (the lack of a halter was more an operator error than a cow problem) and then we were able to muscle her into the stall. Once in, she just stood there, as placid as could be, and I actually cuddled her, cradling her whole head in my arms like she was a giant snuggly dog.

mustering her resolve

Happy Thanksgiving, friends! xoxo

This same time, years previous: 2022 garden stats and notes, pie!, curried Jamaican butternut soup, how to use up Thanksgiving leftovers in 10 easy steps, the new bestest ever, no two ways about it.