Last week Pumpkin had her surgery. She did great. We brought her home Saturday morning and she spent most of the day just lying around. You could tell she was on drugs. She would get up occasionally and we would just pick her up and put her back on the couch. It was pretty funny to watch. One of the first things she did when she got home was “scratch” on her scratching post. After a couple of seconds of “scratching” she would stop and shake her paws and lick them a lot. I wonder if she realizes what’s happened to her.

She has slowly started acting like her normal self. She is curious about things and will even run and play at times. I love that she doesn’t have front claws to scratch things with anymore!

Here are a couple of pictures:

• Pumpkin before surgery – her favorite spot on top of the fridge.

• Pumpkin after surgery – the orange bandage is there to keep her from getting at the pain patch they put on her. We had that removed yesterday.

We take her to the Vet next Saturday to have the stitches removed. She has been pretty good about not biting at the stitches too much.

We are glad to have her home and almost acting like her normal self.

• I have another sinus infection. I saw a couple of kids last week who were sick. As soon as I started feeling sick I took Airborne (yuck), vitamins (I should take them daily – I know…I know) and Zicam. The “cold” went away fast but it turned into a sinus infection. Why does it always turn into a sinus infection for me? Grrr. My nose is bright red, I can’t breathe and I feel like I’ve been punched in the face. Hopefully I will start feeling better soon.

• Next week is the big file audit we’ve all been waiting for at work. Everyone is stressed out. I do not look forward to going into the office because I am afraid of what’s waiting on my desk. So far it hasn’t been too bad for me. I’ve even learned a few things – always a good thing when you’re new. I will be glad when this file audit is over. Hopefully all my files will check out just fine. I am also looking forward to the office returning to “normal”.

• The weather here is terrible! Yesterday we had a blizzard in the middle of the day and we are expecting more snow starting tonight and ending tomorrow afternoon. I think there is even more coming later this week. It is not fun driving around in it all day. Most of the main roads are okay, it’s the neighborhoods that are the worst. So far I have only gotten stuck once and it wasn’t really that bad. I’m thinking my next car should have four-wheel drive.

• A lot of kids are entering our program all at once. We had our weekly team meeting today (where we hand out kids) and the team leader kept saying “come on guys. We all have huge caseloads. Somebody’s got to take this kid”. It was a sad meeting. We all left overwhelmed and not liking our jobs very much. Too many kids to see and not enough time and don’t forget all the paperwork!

I love my job.

I made this recipe last night and it was delicious. It also tastes great alone as a salad without the tortilla.

Ingredients:

• 4 cups torn romaine lettuce
• 1 (6 oz) package southwestern seasoned or grilled chicken breasts strips
• 1 large tomato chopped
• 1 can (11 oz) corn, drained
• 1/2 cup Mexican style grated cheese
• 1/4 cup ranch dressing
• 1/4 cup salsa
• 8 flour tortillas

Directions:

1. Toss lettuce, chicken, tomato and corn in large bowl; sprinkle with cheese.
2. Mix dressing and salsa. Pour over lettuce mixture; toss to coat. Spoon evenly into tortillas and roll up.

Hat Tip: Kraft Foods

One of my favorite things to do is cook. I especially enjoy trying new recipes. I get bored eating the same things over and over so trying new things makes it fun and new. If I have Mexican food for lunch, I don’t want Mexican food for dinner or for the rest of the week for that matter. Weird I know. Especially when I am married to someone who can eat the same thing over and over and over.

I subscribe to a couple of food magazines and recipe RSS feeds so I have plenty of recipe ideas. I really enjoy watching cooking shows too. I wouldn’t mind taking some cooking classes either. I can’t wait until I have a bigger kitchen so I can try new things and entertain more. I think when we start looking for a house, the kitchen (and master bedroom closet) will be my top deciding factors. Just kidding.

Joey has been very good at trying my new recipes. He usually asks “what’s in this?” or “what do you call this?” I try and make things we both will like. However, one time I made a chicken recipe with peaches and peas (I knew it was a stretch) and Joey asked me to never make it again. I am just glad he tried it. Sometimes he’ll try something he likes and will say “this is a keeper.”

A couple of months after we were married Joey asked me if we could have tacos or hamburgers for dinner. He just wanted something “normal”. So now I make something “normal” every so often so we are both happy. Sometimes it’s easier to make the “normal” recipes anyway.

I think I might start posting recipes I like on my website. Let me know if you have any good recipe ideas/resources.

I’ve added links on my sidebar to a few of my favorite resources.

Yesterday I posted about why I do not enjoy going to the dentist and mentioned that I had to change dentists when I got married. Well, I recently had an appointment with the “new” dentist that truly confirmed my desire to find another dentist or go back to my old one and pay the out of network price.

Before I go on, I should mention that this dentist is a very nice guy and I do not mean to attack him as a person.

I have been going to the “new” dentist for 3 years and his office does things slightly different than my “old” dentist’s office. First of all, his office is small and old. For some reason I have a problem that the building is old. It makes me nervous – especially the equipment in the office.

Second, he does not have any dental hygienists in his office. I don’t think I have ever had the dentist do EVERYTHING for a typical checkup before. Usually the dental hygienist sees you and then the dentist comes in and checks your teeth. Not really big deal and this dentist actually does a good job cleaning my teeth. He’s a little rough but I’m tough – I can take it.

Finally, he makes me do a fluoride treatment at the end of the checkup. He squeezes flavored fluoride into trays that I have to wear for one minute. It is disgusting and I haven’t done fluoride since I was a kid. My “old” dentist never made me do fluoride treatments. Again, not really a big deal. I guess I am just being picky.

So, my most recent appointment was awful. It was an appointment later in the day so I could go after work. When I got there nobody was at the front desk but I could hear them working in one of the rooms. I sat down in the waiting area and started reading a magazine. It was a good 30 minutes before the secretary came out to the desk and it was to answer her cell phone. I heard her tell the person on the phone that she was training somebody new and would need to call them back. She then looked at me and asked me how I was and if my insurance had changed. She did not mention the fact that they were late or how much longer they would be. That made me upset. I ended up sitting in the lobby another 30 minutes. It was well past my appointment time and I didn’t want to sit there very much longer. At this point I briefly thought about leaving or asking them to reschedule me.

Finally the secretary took me back in a room and quickly did my x-rays. (I should note that I have a hard time with x-rays because my mouth is so small. They hurt and I gag every time.) She kept jamming the x-ray film in my mouth and she seemed bugged that I was having a hard time. At this point I really wanted to leave.

I waited another 10-15 minutes for the dentist. He finally came into the room and did not mention anything about being over an hour behind. I could not believe it. He just smiled and said “anything new with your teeth?” Are you kidding me?! When he was cleaning my teeth I could hear his stomach growling. It also felt like he was going to rip my lips off my face. Ouch! The new assistant didn’t know how to suction either and the dentist didn’t seem to notice that I was drowning (or so it seemed). I really did not want to swallow all that crap that was collecting in the back of my throat.

At the end of the cleaning, I asked the dentist if we could skip the fluoride treatment and he must have thought I was joking. He explained why he has his patients do it and I told him that I haven’t done fluoride treatments for many years. While the new assistant and I were waiting for the secretary to come in and prepare the trays, the dentist left the room for a minute and the the new assistant whispered “my dentist doesn’t make me do fluoride treatments either”. Not a very good thing to say when you work for a dentist that does fluoride treatments but at least I am not crazy.

After 2 hours I was able to leave the dentist’s office. I don’t think I want to go back to that office. I do not appreciate how I was treated. They need to work on their customer service skills or something. Maybe I’m being unreasonable here and I’m willing to admit that. I just think it will be better for my wellbeing to find a different dentist. Don’t you agree?

Sorry to be so lengthy. I promise I won’t bring it up again (or at least for a while).

When I updated the theme of my website something happened to the commenting feature. For some reason all comments are being marked as spam. So, I asked Joey to help me create a contact page.

If you comment on my blog and it doesn’t appear immediately, please contact me so I can get it fixed.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

I really do not enjoy going to the dentist. When I was little (~10 years old) I was rollerskating down a hill, holding on to a jump rope, when I fell and knocked out one of my permanent front teeth. My mom stuck the tooth back in my mouth (backwards) and drove me to the dentist. The dentist turned the tooth around and I remember going home with a popsicle stick to bite down on to keep the tooth in my mouth. My mom stayed up with me all night and she would wake me up when I stopped biting the stick so my tooth wouldn’t fall out again. Doesn’t that just seem strange to you?

Anyway. Long story short (or at least I’ll try) – I had countless root canals to try and save my tooth and braces for 5 years to fix my overbite. Since I was not wearing my headgear like I was supposed to, the orthodontist suggested I have one of my upper teeth pulled to help move my teeth back faster. The orthodontist took the brace off the tooth he wanted pulled and I went to a dentist I had never seen before (not sure why I went to a new dentist). When I went to have the tooth pulled the dentist looked at my teeth, read the orthodontist’s note and started taking a brace off a different tooth. I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t quite sure what he was doing…plus, he’s the dentist. He should know what tooth to pull. Well he didn’t…he pulled the wrong tooth! That’s not even the worst part. After he realized he had pulled the wrong tooth, he put it back in my mouth and rewired my braces! He said that sometimes teeth will re-attach. Yeah right. The next day I went to another dentist to have it pulled out again. I think I had to be sedated the second time. I also had to have a second tooth pulled another time.

When I had my braces taken off, I had to have my front tooth pulled out because it was dead. By that time my parents found a wonderful dentist – in case you were worried. He recommended an oral surgeon to pull my tooth and give me an implant. The dentist and oral surgeon worked closely together. It took several years and surgeries but I now have “normal” looking front teeth.

So as you can see, I do not enjoy dentists. I get nervous when they are holding x-rays. I think to myself “are they sure they know what they are looking at?” Since the tooth-pulling-mishap, I have had one cavity filled and the dentist must have thought I was crazy when I asked him 100 times which tooth he was going to work on.

When I got married my insurance changed and my family dentist no longer accepted my insurance. I was very sad and scared to try another dentist. My husband suggested we go to his dentist. His family has gone to him for years and have really liked him.

Stay tuned for a post about my experiences with another new dentist.

When my sister, Christene, was in town for Christmas she taught Pumpkin to play fetch and it didn’t take long for Pumpkin to catch on. Joey thought we were crazy when we told him that Pumpkin could play fetch.

Pumpkin likes to fetch her mouse toys. She will bring us one of her mouse toys in the morning when we are sleeping. She will drop the mouse by one of our hands (or head) and if we don’t notice, she will start scratching. It was cute at first but now we’d much rather sleep a couple more hours than play fetch. We usually play fetch before we go to bed to help wear pumpkin out so we can sleep.

Here is a picture of her with a mouse in her mouth:

(Sorry it’s not the greatest picture. It was hard to get a good one. She’d turn away from the camera or drop the mouse before we could take the picture.)

Next week we take her to the Vet to have her spayed and declawed. We will drop her off Wednesday night and pick her up Saturday. It will be hard to leave her that long but it will be nice when she doesn’t have any front claws to scratch everything with! I am also hoping she will calm down a little bit. She can get pretty CRAZY at times.

I recently got an email from Grandpa titled “The Laws of Life” and I wanted to share some of them with you.

Here are the “laws” I liked the best:

• Law of the Probability: the probability of being watched is directly proportional to the stupidity of your act.
• Law of the Telephone: If you dial a wrong number, you never get a busy signal.
• Variation Law: if you change lines, the one you were in will start to move faster than the one you are in now.
• Law of the Result: When you try to prove to someone that a machine (i.e., computer) doesn’t work, it will.
• Brown’s Law: If the shoe fits it’s ugly.
• Wilson’s Law: As soon as you find a product that you really like, they will stop making it.

And finally, the “law” I can identify with the most since working with little kids:

• Doctors’ Law: If you don’t feel well, make an appointment to go to the doctor, by the time you get there you’ll feel better. Don’t make an appointment and you’ll stay sick.

How very true.

Tonight Joey and I stopped at the gas station to put gas in the car. It was windy and cold outside so I was very happy that Joey offered to fill the car up. I forgot to push the button that opens the fuel door (a feature on this car that I am not use to) so he tapped on my window. I smiled and pushed the button but nothing happened. I pushed it again and again but the fuel door would not pop open so I got out of the car to try and help him. There was ice all over the ground. It was windy. “This really sucks” I thought to myself.

We tried pushing the fuel door really hard, pushing the button a hundred more times, pushing a key in the side of the door, pushing a key in the side of the door while pushing the button…we tried everything we could think of. We have the scratch marks to prove it too. Joey then suggested we go home and he’d try to get it open. I didn’t really want to go home because what could we do there? I then started thinking about work tomorrow and what I was going to do with hardly any gas and 4 kids to see and before my thoughts took over I said a quick little prayer.

We both got back in the car and started brainstorming how to open the stupid door. I suggested we get hot water and pour it over the door just in case it was frozen shut. We both knew it wasn’t frozen but it was worth a shot, right? So I went into the gas station to ask for hot water. I explained to them my problem and they said “isn’t there a button in the car door that you push?” Do I look like an idiot?

They gave me a cup full of hot/warm water and I dumped it on the fuel door and we started the whole process of trying to open it again. Then someone pulled up next to us and saw what we were doing and asked “is it frozen?” We told him “no” and explained our problem. He then came over and tried to help. After a couple of tries he said “sometimes there is an emergency handle in the trunk to open the fuel door”. We looked in the trunk and sure enough there was a handle that said:

Fuel Filler Door Release – EMERGENCY HANDLE

We pulled it and the fuel door opened. Wow! Who knew? We thanked the kind stranger and I thanked God for sending him to us. I also thought about paying for his gas but before I could say anything he was gone.

I wanted to post this for a couple of reasons:

1. So you’ll know what to do if this ever happens to you
2. So you can share this handy tip with a stranger who seems to be having trouble
3. To show God is good even in the small stuff