Again, the Dentist

Quite boring, really. I was having one of those no-motivation days.

This morning I went back to the dentist for what hopefully will be the last time until my fall checkup. I got two fillings replaced, and had one of my crowns adjusted so that my mouth brace which I wear at night will hopefully fit better. I'll let you know, though I have a suspicion that I'll be going back once more for some minor adjustment.

The novocaine shot was pretty intense, and I was shaking quite a bit right afterwards. Very unpleasant; the drilling was a cinch otherwise. The dentist says the shot actually has something which triggers an adrenaline rush in it, though I wasn't clear on why and didn't feel too motivated to ask.

Anyway, I got through it. I've pretty much come to the conclusion that he's an average dentist; not quite the perfectionist that the dentist I had in Massachusetts was. I suspect I will have to take a firm hand in making sure that what I want done gets done, and it feels like I don't have a lot of energy for taking firm hands, lately.

Work was fine. Many of my cow-orkers were at a training session preparing them to do presentations at Apple's upcoming World Wide Developer's Conference (which, boy-o-boy, I'm glad I'm not going to be speaking at). So it was quiet in the afternoon.

Over lunch I saw John, who is on crutches! It turns out that two weeks ago he accidentally dropped a knife in the kitchen and (cover your eyes!) severed a tendon. He then had a lengthy horror story about wading through the manager health care system to get it looked at, and eventually had surgery for it. Augh! Apparently it ended up okay in the end, but he had to jump through an awful lot of hoops to get it done.

I've dropped a knife from time-to-time myself, and often jump into the air as soon as I realize the blade is falling, always afraid of exactly this sort of thing. (I stepped on enough pins lying around the house as a teenager that I'm pretty sensitive about that, as well!) I guess the law of averages says that someone, somewhere would actually hit themselves eventually; too bad it happened to be John.

I'll close out this entry with a cat photo and a little cat info.

Have I talked about getting my cats before? I got them in October of 1994, when I was still dating Colleen. I'd left grad school in June, and moved into an apartment in August. I knew I wanted cats; I'd always known I'd get cats, somehow. I had basically three criteria for my cats: I wanted kittens, to have the kitten experience at least once; I wanted healthy kits, and I wanted two cats that looked different from each other.

I went to the Humane Society twice a week for about three weeks, which was really hard. It's really difficult to see all those kitties in cages, knowing that if someone doesn't adopt them, then they'll probably be euthanized. It took a long time to find the cats I wanted, and I almost gave into adopting two ten-month-old orange tabbies at one point. They'd been there two weeks and I wondered if anyone would take them. They seemed really friendly. But I stuck to my guns.

I immediately asked to "interview" Newton and Jefferson when I saw them, and learned that another woman had already made an appointment to see Newton. But I made the appointment anyway, and was delighted to learn that she'd decided not to take him! Well, they turned out to be energetic and adorable, jumping all around the room and onto Colleen and I the whole time we met them. So it was easy to decide to adopt them. (They were born around April of 1994, so they're now six years old.)

We brought them home for the weekend, and they scoped out my place. Then I took them back to the Humane Society to get neutered (they were supposed to have been neutered before I adopted them, but hadn't been by mistake, so the Society paid for the operation). Boy, it was difficult to take them in and leave them overnight despite only having had them for a weekend! We bonded really quickly.

It took me a while to fully cat-proof my apartment, and I got kind of stressed out over policing them for a while. Plus, it took a long time to name them; for nearly a month they were "the little brown guy" and "the little orange guy". But eventually I worked out the names, they we all settled in pretty well as a family.

They've been just about the greatest cats a guy could have asked for.

I've been thinking that I'd like to get a third cat. I think Newton would love to have a kitten to wrestle with, as Jefferson is pretty mellow now. Also, I've lately been feeling very conscious of the passage of time: I sense myself getting older, and feeling like my life isn't really going anyway. I see people around me getting older, and I know my cats are getting older and won't be here forever. It's kind of silly, I guess, to be worrying about this when they could easily live for another decade, but for some reason I am worrying about it, and I don't want any of us to be left lonely if one (or both) of them passes away. So having a younger cat to keep them (and me) company seems like a good deal. And I think I could take care of three cats.

But this is yet another one of those "after I move" plans, along with buying a nice couch, a dining table, and a desk. A lot of my life is on hold (or feels that way) as the endless not-really-moving process plods along.

Anyway, below is a photo of the kitties lying on a blanket which I moved to my bureau a few months ago, when Mom gave me a nice throw blanket for my couch (futon). It's one of Jefferson's favorite places to lie, now that the weather's warm enough that I open the window during the day. Aren't they adorable?