hEll0 wOr1d. Remember me?

Yeah, you. Hey, thanks for the painkillers and this wacky hole in my jaw. I survived anyway, despite your best efforts. Neener. I even had vegetables tonight - you know, those colorful crunchy things you chew? They rock my little blue planet. I was considering starting a peasant revolt if there was to be more soup.

Life axiom: you know you're getting better when you're starting to get sick of soup. Okay, so I'm not sick of the ice cream or the cinnamon-flavored applesauce just yet, and definitely not the yogurt or the smoothies, but the soup? The soup's gotta go.

I really hadn't intended on this one little dental appointment eating up my week, but in retrospect I'm glad I didn't know how Hitchhiker's-esque bad the tooth extraction was going to be. I mean, really, would you go in for a procedure if you knew that having it would cause you to swallow enough blood to make you retch for a period of days?

I guess I'd be a bulimic vampire.

So what do I do for an encore? Some of you already know the answer: piss off my ovaries. What's the fun of yanking out a vestigial, festering tooth while conscious if you don't follow it up with a coup de grâce of actual out-for-the-count surgery?

Yep, the tubal ligation's on Tuesday.

Scared? Hell yes I'm scared. If you don't think Monday's little venture scared the bejesus out of me you haven't talked to me since Monday. I make no bones about my general discomfort with being poked, prodded, breathed on, or generally looked at by anyone in a white coat or scrubs. Monday didn't help. I've decided if I'm never, ever arching backwards in a dentist's chair trying not to scream, it's still going to be too soon … and to follow that up with an actual surgical procedure eight days later seems nothing short of madness. But that, occasionally-misplaced adverbs, gleeful dispersement of cat fur, and intentional subject-verb disagreement are what this site is all about.

I've been toying with trying to answer why I'm having the surgery - why me, and not Jeff. I'm going to give an answer that I don't give often, and I don't give lightly: it's private. Suffice it to say that we talked about it for a long time, batted it around until we were tired and it was bruised beyond recognition, and we came to the realization that the right answer was for me to have the surgery. (No one's allowed any deeper into our business without chipping in on the mortgage.)

So Tuesday morning I'll subject myself to pokes & prods & x-rays and wacky weirdnesses and then eventually present my thoroughly-inspected self to a hospital's outpatient surgical desk, and I'll get to experience the fun and entertainment that is general anesthesia.

Me, I'll be fine. I'll get happy drugs. Worry about Jeff, who has to pace and wait and doesn't get any of the happy drugs unless I'm really sweet and I share.

If Brian and Suzan will ever decide for certain if they're visiting Huntsvegas, then I'll be able to set a date for the Useless Ovary Party. I'll expect you to be there with creative party hats and truly calorie-laden food. I will not, however, expect you to pet the cats. That would just traumatize Edmund, and you do not want to traumatize a cat the size of a small planet. Bad things inevitably result.

Yes, Brian and Suzan, that was a hint.

* * * * *

In the meantime, I'd like to apologize to everyone who got emails from me between Monday afternoon and Tuesday night. I don't really remember writing those emails. I trust they were appropriately incoherent and amusing.

I shall now distract you with photos from this past weekend, from the last day before I unwittingly became a toothless hag: Brian and Suzan; Mary and Wesley; Suzan, me, and Brian; Mary, me, and Wes. All photos, as evidenced by the forced smiles, were taken completely against their will. Except for Mary, who was goosing me in the final photo. Don't lie. I know it was you.

I know I should be taller. I'm working on it.