Oh Yeah!

After almost three weeks…

I PASSED MY NOTARY EXAM!!!

Aside

The only person who decides if I am having a bad day is me.
For too long now you have felt the need to dictate when people can be happy, based solely on your moods.
No longer.
The only person who will fuck up my day is me and you can try all you want, but don’t dish it out if you can’t take it.

Wendesday Night Crock Pot Results

This week’s recipe and variations:

Salsa Chicken

(this is wicked easy and if you can mess this up, I can recommend a take-out place.)

You need:
Salsa (I use two “tall” containers, depending on the size of your pot)
Chicken

You will:
1) Pour salsa into crock pot.
2) Add chicken
3) frozen=5 hours on high, Raw=less then 5 hours on high

You can use the same thing in a 13×9 pan, covering with aluminum foil and putting in a 350degree oven until cooked.

if you’re not a fan of salsa, you can also use this concoction:
Manderian Oranges, Salsa Verde/Tamales  and/or tomato of your choice (crushed, diced, etc.) or even, for the truly adventurous, Fruit Salsa.

What it’s Like

Should you be so lucky as to not have the sheer JOY of seasonal allergies, let me help you.

First, tip your head and fill your ear with water.  Then stuff a cotton ball inside. Repeat on the other side.
Now wrap your head in a fluffy pillow, duct taping it to your forehead.
Have someone punch you directly under each eye.
Fill your nose with jell-o.  Make sure that when you lie down all the jell-o goes to one side of your face.
Drink a lot of liquor so when you sit up, you can feel everything sloshing around in your head and you feel discombobulated (as opposed to combobulated).
Drip honey through your nose so it runs down the back of your throat making you have a non-productive cough.  And when you cough, make sure that the honey/jell-o mixture gets pushed back up into your nasal cavities.
Have another person punch you above your eyes.
Make sure that the rest of your body wants to get going and run around, but you feel like a bobble-head and like you’re going to faceplant if you stand up, let alone attempt jogging.
Amplify all the close sounds (like hair brushing against your shirt) and dampen all the far away noises (like your boss talking).
Get some cardboard/packing peanuts/newspaper.  Draw a super delicious food on it.  Then eat it.  Oh, it looks like pizza, but tastes like NOTHING.
Convince yourself to have dreams of your father receiving dental work while your entire family watches.

Rinse, lather, repeat.

I Only Play Stupid

We’re driving to a friends house for some Memorial Day antics.
him: so I found the [golf] driver I want.
me: I know.
him: Nooooooo, I told you about last years model and this years is out and it’s only $50 dollars more.
me: so you’re telling me that instead of spending $X, you want to spend ($x+$50).
him: Uh.  Yeah.  But I didn’t want to come right out and say it was ($x+50)
me: I choose when I’m bad at math but I don’t tell you when I’m good at math.
him: Oh.

So now we’re at the golf store.
me: why don’t you just drop me off at the mall (directly across the parking lot) and you call me when you’re ready because I don’t want to stand around while you test drive.
him, pouting: You don’t want to spend time with me?
me: Me standing around while you talk golf hardly constitutes spending time together.  If you’re going to go in, pick up the club and then leave, fine, I’ll hang out.

Forty-five minutes later, I’m still in the sporting goods store.
him: I’m in trouble aren’t I.
me: I am trying on SO MANY shoes at Kohl’s and I’m not going to buy any of them.  Oh, and by the way, how do I look today?
him, conceding: You look good.
me: *hair flip*

Okay, Who has $4,000 They Want to Give Me?

I’ve decided that I will try “dating” my new dentist before breaking up with my old dentist.
Wait, isn’t thing what I always said I wouldn’t do… the cheating part?  That I’d be honest and be like, “This isn’t working.” and be mature about it?
Well, I guess it’s not really like cheating because I haven’t made the full on commitment to the new dentist.  It’s like we’ve met for coffee and we’re trying to decide if we like each other.
Things went really well though.  The office was much more high-tech then my previous office. Ends up that I’m still cavity free, which is great.  Everyone, even the dentist who owns the practice was surprised at how super my teeth are.  And it was like they couldn’t believe it’s been six months since my last cleaning.
They took pictures, actual pictures, of my teeth.  I’ve never seen the backside of my top row of teeth until Wednesday.
After the cleaning (in which they sprayed my teeth with water as opposed to the sit-up-swish-spit-lay-down) I got to rinse with Listerine (um, that was a first) and then I get handed another cup.
“What’s this?”  I ask.
“Uh, fluoride.”
“What now?”
“Fluoride.”
“Ah-ha?”
“You swish it.”
And there was my first fluoride treatment since grade school, when it cost a quarter and you got the little packets (white, with brown print) and you swished and spit back into the packet.  Yum.

Flashback to 1985.  I’m five or six and my adult teeth are starting to make appearances.  One of my teeth on my bottom row has the adult tooth coming in behind the baby tooth and the baby tooth isn’t budging.  After waiting as long as we could, the only option was to remove my baby tooth so my adult tooth could come in mostly normal.  And that’s how I lost my first tooth.  With a pair of dentist pliers.

So now, Fully Adult and Well Over the Age of 19 Stephanie has a slightly crooked tooth on her bottom row.  It’s not like I have a complete snaggle tooth, but I know it’s there.  So the new dentist is looking at my teeth and says in a wow-you-have-great-teeth-BUT way, “Did you ever have braces?”  And I’m like, “No.”
“Well, you’d be a perfect candidate for Invisalign.”
“Really?  The dentist I was seeing never mentioned anything about it being a problem.”
(flashback noise.  My old dentist says, “Well, sure, we COULD do that, but we’d have to file your teeth down and you’d need braces and I don’t do that here.”)
“Oh, see, your bite doesn’t line up like it should due to the shifting from this tooth here.”  tap-tap on Crooktooth.
“Hmm, I was told I’d need to be filed down etc.”
“Maybe, but not necessarily.”
“Iiiiintersting.  But you know, honestly, it’s not bothering me.”
“However, you have started chipping your front teeth and the mis-alignment could be encouraging your TMJ.”
“OOOOOOHHHHH.”

A- Why did old dentist NEVER realize my teeth are chipping?  I noticed and I see me every day.  B- Why did old dentist never suggest misalignment?

So we go though the hoops of how much it will cost and how long it would take.  I was given a sheet that said the cost was $3,700 and insurance would cover about $1,200 of it.  And for someone who’s never had any kind of dental work done, I nearly passed out.  Ends up that traditioanl braces cost just as much.  Didn’t know.  Also didn’t know that because I’m over the age of 19 and not dependant, I get zero help from my insurance.  What?  Don’t adults get crook teeth?
I called back to the dentist and asked WTF, you’re saying I’m covered and the insurances says I’m not… what gives.
Ends up the office messed up and in fact, it would cost me $3,700.

Pro:
* Possible reduction of TMJ incidents
* Non-Crookteeth
* Perhaps my jaw would loosen up and I could eat a meatball without cutting it into quarters

Con:
* $3,700.
* Possiblility that my teeth will shift again (but this is the same for metal braces)
* $3,700.

So, anyone have an extra four grand lying around that they would LOOOOOVVVEEEE to donate to  Stephanie Can’t Open Her Jaw All The Way Due To Denistry Gone Awry Over Twenty Years Ago?  We’re located right next to The Derek Zoolander Center for Kids Who Can’t Read Good and Want to Learn to Do Other Things Good Too.

I’m a Cheater.

Dear XXX,

I have been faithful to you for the past 20-something-ish years now.
Lately though, I am starting to wonder what else there is out there.  Curiosity is getting the best of me and the only thing you’ve changed in the past 20-something-ish years is your address.
I feel as though your chambers are a library.  Drenched in yellows and browns, your once shining resin clock is now yellowing and that cross-stitch in the corner seriously needs a dusting.  While I do not doubt your cleanliness, I wonder about who has been here before me.
And after all these years, you ask me the same questions, to which you already know the answers.   You ask me at the most awkward times, reducing me to a muttering of “uh-huh”.
Do we have bad blood over the pre-Steve?  It’s not that I wanted to send him to you, it’s that I needed to get him out of the house before I tied his testicles to the deck railing and left him out in the snow.
I know that I still have some hard feelings about when you sent me over to see your friend.  Now he was a jerk.   I figured that all of our time together would have lead you to have me see someone else; knowing what I physco I become.  Come to think of it… maybe he wasn’t your friend after all.
You know, speaking of my conditions, I figured that maybe you should have been one of the first ones to notice that something was rotten in Denmark rather then blowing me off.  I often wonder if you wouldn’t have been so rushed if we may have curtailed a lot of this pain and practically permanent damage.
Finally, I know that you run a business and the business of business is to make money.  However, our visits lately have seemed more like a cash grab then a genuine concern for my well-being.  I am a bit apprehensive to see if there’s anything that you may have missed in your hastiness.  I am also excited to see if you weren’t on the mark about some of my other concerns.
It is with this sentiment that I tell you that I am going to cheat on you.
I am going to see a new dentist.
There, I said it.

Sincerely Yours,
Stephanie

Vote for Stephanie in 2008!

You know my doodle of Scary Cake rocks.

Show the world just how much Scary Cake rocks by voting on it for Doodle Day over at curlywurlygurly’s.
Now, keep in mind that mine is not very good compared to some of the other, betterly done doodles, but show me some love.

PPPLLLEEEEASSEEEE!!!  Because we all know I need ANOTHER reusable grocery bag.

What’s Worse Then Crumbs in the Bed?

We’re laying in bed watching Family Guy.

me: Ouch!
him: Muh?
me: There’s some-ow-thing poking me in the toe!
him: What is it?
me: I don’t know.  It’s poking my toe.  At the end of the bed.

I crawl down and carefully pat down the sheets in case it’s a steak knife, porcupine, broken vodka bottle, dog whisker…

him: well, whatsit?
me: I dunno yet… um, it’s… sticky…
him: Sticky?
me: yeah, it’s like gum.
him, defensive: I don’t chew gum!
me: I didn’t say it WAS gum.  It’s… it’s (sniff sniff) a starburst.
him: Oh.  That may be mine.

Dear Brain,

Dear Brain,

For around 29 years now, there have been fingers at the end of the hands.
Please be more mindful of them because you’ve unwittingly misplaced the third one in six months and now my pinky is all purple and swollen.
I know that you know that there are nerves in said fingers and that I am a ten-finger-typer.
Your mindlessness towards my digits has become quite annoying, not to mention painful.
If you keep this up, the liver will be talking with you next as it’s once again processing a pain reliever.

Thank You,

Stephanie