You're turning violet, Violet!

I'm at the point in my recovery where instead of having an ice pack pressed up against my face all day I now have to use a hot pack and chew gum. It supposedly helps ward off jaw stiffness. I don't normally chew gum, so I've found it hard to pick up the habit so late in life. I simply don't know what to do with a mouthful of gum. I'm not used to it being there, so my speech comes out all garbled. Also, I'm terrified that if I let my mind wander I'll revert to chewing it with a set of teeth that no longer exist, and that would be remarkably painful, so, constant vigilance! I know people who constantly need to be chewing on gum, but for me it's just another chore, like rinsing with salt water 4 times a day. Similarly irksome is the fact that brushing my teeth now literally requires both hands and a small flashlight.

Vacuum love

I haven't vacuumed our apartment in ages, simply because we have a crappy upright vacuum that seems to make everything dustier than when I started, and after having worked for facility services on campus I'm accustomed to using industrial equipment. Solution: we purchased my dream vacuum - a Numatic NVQ 380-22, or what the WILK custodial staff calls a happy vac. It has a small head that gets into corners, it moves around and under furniture easily, and it's super quiet. It should arrive on Thursday, and you best better believe I'm going to vacuum the crap out this place, quite literally. Watch this video to see why I love Numatics so much.

Applesauce and medicine. Oh boy! Oh boy!

My brother wins the admiration with the correct guess of "I'm not Grandpa!" Watch this Dexter episode and all will be revealed.

Livin' the dream

Well, they're out. I went in yesterday and had to wait and wait and wait because my doctor was doing some other surgery at another building so I was a little ticked when he finally showed up. Mainly because it sucks to wait around for something that terrifies you, but also because I couldn't have anything to eat or drink beforehand.

That said, I don't even remember falling asleep and before I knew it I was awake and they were done. Optimistic. was there, and I talked to him, but I couldn't see him because of the oxygen thingus on my face, so I took it off and then told Optimistic. to go and ask if it was okay that I had. He left but was promptly told to lay down because he was colorless and woozy (medical stuff doesn't sit well with him). I told the nurse that he can't watch House, but it was through a lot of gauze, so maybe she only pretended to understand me. Anyway, I think it's a little funny that they had to clear Optimistic. to drive me home.

We got my prescriptions filled and headed home to where I had the sofa waiting for me with books, water, an ipod, tissues, and plastic spoons. The rundown of my day went something like this:

-ate applesauce and pills for lunch
-napped between changing my gauze and ice pack every hour
-listened to music all the while
-made the mistake of getting up to change my gauze in the bathroom mirror and ended up almost blacking out
-stayed on the couch after that
-ate pudding and pears for dinner. This took me 1 hour.
-had more pills
-watched A League of Their Own
-watched Much Ado About Nothing
-napped
-went to sleep on the couch

This morning I woke up and all the numbness was gone. It's nice to be able to feel my tongue, which should make mealtimes go a little faster. Also, I wasn't expecting to be able to walk around this much this soon. That said, I probably won't stray too far from the couch, simply because I'm lazy. What does today have in store? Some more movies, maybe a book, and a whole lot of napping.

The plus side of all of this is that Optimistic. may have finally gotten a decent night's sleep without me snoring next to him, and I get to watch all the movies he hates. Everybody wins, and all it took was me having costly surgery!

P.S. If any of you can come up with the correct 3-word phrase in response to what I had for lunch you will win my admiration. I'm looking at you, younger siblings.

A farewell to teeth

I'm having my wisdom teeth out tomorrow, which means a week of pudding, painkillers, and Pollyanna. Wish me luck.

There's no business

I spent all last semester doing research for a feature film being produced jointly by BYU and First Light Entertainment. Shooting began once school let out and I was on set for the first two weeks of May for the stuff being filmed at the LDS Motion Picture Studio which has a fake western town on its back lot. The weather was a bit temperamental, but I wore my pith helmet, which kept off both sun and rain quite nicely. Here are my two props crew-mates Tara and Jessica who are really hard core. I worked in the mornings and came to set in the afternoon, but they put in twelve hour days every day and are still going now that we're shooting on location.


That said, I'm hard core in my own way. Written into the script are several dead animals, which count as props, and guess who was in charge of them. Me. That's how I came to pluck three dead chickens and bake two rabbits in the last couple of weeks. Is this a bathtub full of dead chickens? Scientists agree that it is.


Scientists also agree that if you don't want your house to smell like a wet hen you shouldn't pluck a chicken indoors, so the last two I did on set. Also, plucking chickens that you got for free from a farm because they died mysteriously is not the most fun. But everyone was very impressed that I was able to go through with it three times, including cutting their heads off. Hopefully I will never have to handle a dead chicken ever again.


The upshot to being on set was that several name actors agreed to be in the film, including Edward Herrmann, who you may remember from such films as Annie, Overboard, and Saint Maybe as well as the show Gilmore Girls. It was really unprofessional of me, but I couldn't help snapping a few (dozen) pictures of him when he wasn't looking. Margot Kidder of Superman fame also agreed to play a significant role in the film and was a lot of fun to have on set. And now a few extra pictures.

This is our smoky saloon complete with 1st AD and town extras.

The head of the Art department mixing drinks.

Our director Tom Russell with Edward Herrmann

All in all it was a lot of fun, but I'm glad to be done. It's nice to get to spend time at home to rest and cook and read and in general, relax without having to worry that chicken #2's bottom is turning a weird shade of green.

P.S. I forgot to mention that John Gries of Napoleon Dynamite and Real Genius was also in the film and he gave me a shoulder punch!

Minty fresh motherly extortion

In honor of yesterday being Mother's Day I wanted to share one of my favorite stories about my mom, who will probably be horrified by what I'm about to say, but here it is.

Once when we were shopping at Target my mom found a case of Andes mints on clearance for 12 cents a box. So she bought the whole case, because that's a great deal on mints. She then charged us kids a dollar a box if we wanted any. Her reasoning for charging us was that she didn't want us to eat too much chocolate, but we could afford it, so we ended up eating a lot of chocolate anyway and she ended up making a tidy profit. I think she made at least $50 off of us. I also think I have the best mom in the whole world.