bits

 We took hours insulating the washing machine wall the other day - but it got done.  Esme had to test a lot of her measuring and cutting skills - and we had to keep pressing through until every step was done the way Mark wanted it done.  I smashed one hand a little on something (still can't remember what) and cut myself with the utility knife, but only a little bit.  Mark always says if you don't bleed on a project (jokingly/sarcasm) it wasn't done right.  I was a bit hangry and really wanted to just be done with it - but he kept finding more details for us to do in each layer before proceeding.   I had come home from the postal route and was making soup in the other room in tandem.  It was good soup - turnip, with zucchini, onions and kielbasa.  I made some lentil with pork fat and red bell pepper today, but the turnip soup still won out as much better.  Mark was making a pork roast for him and Esme - I ate about a tablespoon of that with an avocado for dinner.  It is going to get below freezing tonight, and we've gotten the elderly mama cat in - she slept on my lap while we watched StarGate.  

 I haven't run the little car all week, but will have to see what happens tomorrow after work.  We have run the suv and it was doing well.  We did a major animal feed run in it and got the propane bottles refilled.   I am not going to try to take the little car to work tomorrow as I don't need the anxiety of not getting there in time.  That is a big reason we needed another car that was more reliable, but I can't just let the other one sit all the time either, as it needs to be run for it's battery etc.

 I've been trying to deal with the teeth all week and done a fairly good job.  I'm still grinding most things or making them into blended soup - and bread and cookies that have been soaked thoroughly in coffee.  I've mashed up bananas and peaches.  I've still worn the teeth every single day, and I'm down to just a few painkillers a day (ibuprofen), mostly before I put them in the morning and just before I take them out at night.  I'm fearing there might be a tooth shard in that one place that still hurts so much. Once in a while when the plate slips a little trying to bite something, I can feel a hard bit slide on the plate there - and it would be pretty severe if that was my jaw bone doing that in just that one place - but a bit of tooth shard makes a lot of sense.  That would explain things, including a slight swelling just above it that has not went down.  

Why am I not running into the dentist and asking them to x-ray now that I've thought of that?  Because me and my stupid pain tolerance - it isn't quite so bad that I know something is wrong, but it's annoying.  And to me, what is annoying, is probably their 'what can you give me to get it to go away'... like Spock raising an eyebrow in mild annoyance at somebody rushing him with a sword.  I spent an entire summer with a fracture from falling out of a treehouse, because my mom didn't think it could possibly actually be an injury, because I only cried a little right afterward.  At the ER after another injury, the nurse wasn't sure I could possibly be injured because I was laughing uncontrollably - then she saw the x-ray - that one required a splint.  I held a gushing wound closed on a finger cut down to the bone from my house all the way to the clinic and the doctor there could not believe what he saw when I finally took my hand off it - 'have you been holding that shut the entire time since it happened?' Of course I have.  Why wouldn't you?  Then he gave me ten stitches with lots of superglue over them and a splint on that so I wouldn't move it while it healed.  There is still a long white scar on that finger that if someone looks closely at they stop and ask 'what the hell happened there'.  I have another check-up for the dental in a few weeks, but I will keep in mind that there might be something there that needs to be looked at.

My nose DID stop hurting, finally - after being an added torment to the other mouth pain for almost all of the past two weeks.  I can now do the 'bunny rabbit nose' thing without a shooting pain, and the mobility of my upper lip has also returned, which you don't really realize how much that is used in talking, drinking and eating until you have about half-capacity in it (or none) and that still hurts when I move it a lot, but mostly around that spot I think the tooth shard might be under the plate.

 Most of the rest is going well.  I spent several hours today reading a silly book.

When I brought the turnip in from the store, Esme and Mark looked at it and asked 'what IS it?'  I was surprised - the lady at the store was young, and she knew what it was.  I said: 'C'mon people, it has purple on it, it's a turnip!'  Mark said 'Those don't turnip around here often'  *groan*  I had to try to tell Esme as much as I know about the differences between turnips, rutabagas, and everything else.  Info-dumped on her and I know she understands that is just how mom is *ha*  I cut it open and had her smell it, too, as she likes the smell of onions.  I told her I couldn't explain it but that, to me, it smelled something between an apple, an onion and maybe a radish.  The soup turned out excellent, but I couldn't convince her to try it.  Especially not when Mark had pizza to offer.  It will be a good while before I can eat pizza, or even a peanut butter and jelly sandwich without a knife and a fork (but I did do that today, and did succeed).

The turnip soup:

1 turnip, about 1.2 lbs. according to the grocery receipt, washed, peeled and diced

in enough water to cover in a big pot

added a tablespoon or so of olive oil

salt, black pepper, rosemary garlic seasoning

let that boil on medium for at least an hour

added some zucchini, onions and kielbasa from the freezer

let that boil a bit longer, maybe another forty minutes

removed from heat, then blended smooth

poured up in a clean glass jar

 

It is sweeter than potato soup, and has less of that 'mealy grainy' taste that potato soup sometimes has.

 I've been studying mostly Czech, Welsh and Spanish the past few days.  The Czech is in review mode, the Spanish is normal and the Welsh is in super-hard 'Am I going to use this vocabulary? mode'.  I haven't done too much with the to do list, but I did remember to do a few of the things that I had on it, like take the garbage up, and do some laundry things.