guess what

I have a new old haircut.  Or an old new haircut.  Whatever.

This was a hard decision.  I didn't really have the money for a good haircut and what's the point of a bad haircut.  I mean, my hair already looked crappy.  Did I need it to look crappy and short? So out came the clippers.  I'm hoping that by the time my hair grows back I'll be able to afford a professional.  We'll see.  I was a little hesitant since I'll be seeing my mom soon for Thanksgiving and she always likes it when I actually have hair.  She thinks I look fine with a shaved head but of course likes hair more.  I wouldn't usually think that's such a big deal except for that since my mom now lives in France I haven't seen her for nearly a year and it'd be nice to be able to do little things to make her happy.  Oh well, I'd better knit her a hat or something to make up for it.  Get it? No hair=new hat.

Just this morning my last remaining client at the Pilates studio in Brooklyn told me today was going to be our last session, at least until his wife gets a new job or he gets a better one.  I was bummed because I've been working with him for about a year and half and he's great. I'm not totally freaking out about money right now but I might be soon.  But then I'll just be in the same boat as half the nation so nothing special there.

So here's the explanation of my last post.  I got the new antibiotics from the pharmacy and haven't had any negative reactions, at least none that I'm aware of.  But last Friday I decided to go to the dentist just to make sure that nothing was wrong with my teeth.  Lauren A. recommended the Ryan Center, which I must say was pretty great (thanks Lauren).  When I first walked in the front desk was a little snooty but I think they were just super busy.  The Ryan Center has a sliding scale fee which was great for me since I don't have a steady income.  The dentist took some x-rays of my jaw and told me that yep, I'll need to have a root canal done on my upper back molar and maybe even on the one next to it.  But his more immediate concern was the infected abscess in my mouth. I was aware of some swelling but I just figured my jaw was swollen from the sinus infection. He referred me to the emergency room at St. Luke's hospital which was about 20 blocks away.  I walked on up and was quickly sent to the dental department since they were closing soon. The surgeon numbed me up first then punctured and drained of the abscess of "quite a bit of puss." Awesome.  Let me tell you, the draining didn't hurt so much but getting that needle stuck in that swelling to numb it hurt like hell.  It was stuck in there for a good 10 seconds (I counted), twice! It really really hurt.

Anyway, the oral surgeon agreed that I would need a root canal or a tooth extraction.  He set up another appointment for me that's a week away in case I wanted to get it done there.  I think he could only extract my tooth and not do the root canal, it was a little unclear and I was a bit woozy. But he said I was welcome to cancel the appointment if I decided to go to Columbia, which is where the dentist at the Ryan Center referred me.

That was my day Friday.  And the best part: everyone was so nice!  Seriously.  The cashier desk at the Ryan Center was nice, the receptionist for the dentist was nice, the dental assistant and dentist were nice, the guy doing my intake at the emergency room guessed my last name was Danish and talked to me about how beautiful Denmark is, the woman filling out my info and income at the hospital chatted with me about the economy and our new president, the woman who took my x-rays at the hospital joked with me about my earrings because I couldn't take them out and they showed up on the x-ray and the oral surgeon was understanding about my wincing when plunging in that needle.  I was really amazed.  I could have had a supremely horrible experience but I didn't.  And I really believe it's because how great everyone was.  I think there might be a lesson here.

And does anyone know why the formatting of my posts is all wonky? See how the paragraphs of this post are all like single spaced but the ones in the post two down are like 1.5 or even double spaced?  What's up with that? Is it because I'm creating this one on my Mac with Safari Inconsistent formatting drives me nuts.