grrrr....

dentistry is hard, hard, hard! especially when you are picky and want everything to be perfect. it seemed as if everything was working against me today. here's a breakdown of today's events, nothing unfixable, but annoying enough to throw a monkey wrench into the day.
-RCT on #26 is going swimmingly. i clean and shape three canals, but something tells me that there's another canal, an MB2 that has been overlooked. so right before i obturate i poke around a bit and i catch an orifice, a tiny one, with my endo explorer. i'm having a very difficult time finding it with a file, but i finally sink it right in with a size 8 and man is this thing calcified! good news: after a half hour of hard work i managed to get a NiTi rotary intsrument all the way down there and thoroughly clean and shape this thing so he doesn't have to see the specialist (sorry, ameloblast!) bad news: i run out of time so he has to come back for the obturation.

-two PFM crowns i prepped, temped, and final impressioned last week return from the lab, #35, 36. these were a beast to prep, as #35 was rotated 90 degrees and #36 was tilted mesially (it may have even been #37 after the 6 was removed, but patient has no recollection of that). take a bitewing, as i do for all crowns before i cement them to check the interproximal margins. #36 is flawless, perfectly sealed. #35 open margin at distal. it took 2 tries to get the impression right again to send to the lab. and have you ever tasted impregum? it's nasty shit!

-RCT #17 on five month pregnant lady, pulpectomy completed a MONTH AGO (she's a hairdresser and rescheduled numerous times). all is well with this RCT, no calcified canals, nothing unordinary. patient does not want me to take films during procedure, so i rely on my apex locator and i get consistant readings at each canal. fill 'em up, place a core, take a final film at my insistance and the MB and DB canals are filled beautifully and the palatal is 4 mm short! of course i let her know and she's cool, so i will bring her back after she delivers for the retreat of the palatal.

arrrrgh!!!

it's funny, though. i feel like such a fuckup, but at the each of these appointments every person was so nice, thanked me for doing "such a great job" and i was like, do you even know how i fucked up, or am i just being too hard on myself???

enough of this. i'm going to watch american idol.

so tired i'm wired!

two weeks and we've survived the following - runny noses and green snots, my first solo drive to michigan to visit nana, meeting the new dog, cookie barfing on nana's couch, trying to get cookie to sleep in her own bed at a normal, regularly duplicated hour, and five straight days of crazy dentisty. i'm tired.

i worked today, the first saturday i've been on in a while. i really enjoyed having my weekends off, but reality always sets in. this one was a doozy. i arrived at 9 a.m. , my first patient who was booked an hour and a half for Q3 resto no-showed and has no number where we can reach her. all of that was compensated for as i tried to leave twice when i thought i was done for the day, once at 3 p.m., once at 4:30, and it was finally at 5:15 when i got to go home. what is it with people that prompts them to phone in their dental emergencies at 4 p.m. on a saturday???? i recbonded a cracked veneer for a patient of my colleague (which is going to be replaced, i kinda had to do a jigsaw puzzle thing with it but it actually came out pretty nicely. thank god he saved the piece), dolled out antibiotics and pain meds for two endodontically and periodontically hopeless teeth that i will be extracting next week, cemented another old, crusty post, core, and crown that needs to be replaced but the patient doesn't want to pay for it, and adjusted another crappy denture (a nesbit appliance that the same crown patient can't seem to part with). this was not counting the recall exams and real dentistry i did as well. so much for leaving at 3:00 today! but it was nice, i had pepperoni pizza and french fries waiting for me, which i wolfed down because i didn't get to eat all day and hadn't eaten since my tiny bowl of shreddies at 7 a.m. this morning. it feels really good to be home after a hard day's work. and i'm looking foward to my long weekend.

what a week, i need to unwind...

(i kinda have been on a sean paul kick lately, his music is so up-beat and fun it's impossible not to be boucing when you listen to it!)

i'm positive everyone's seen this one so far, but it's funny enough to watch over and over again....

i like happy songs....

Suits XL "Play"

I used to be the one that never gets in the way,
never did have a single thing to say,
I used to think that I would never get any break,
nor did I think that it would be a piece of cake...
Well, well was I wrong, wasn't even close,
the only way to go is to keep moving to and fro,
Well, well who could tell, who did ever know,
the only way to go is to keep moving with the flow

Play, Today, don't you worry,
just be and play, before you sulk and say you can't
Play, obey., tear up the field, get dressed to kill and get set for real!

I always thought this could ever happen to me,
it's like in my dreams but it's reality,
the only way to go is keep playing with the pros...
and if you're like me you should know how it goes

Dont stay still, goodness grief
Don't stand there, move your feet
Take the wheel, hit the streets
Yeah, I've got to take a chance and get out of here...


another happy song that i bop along to in my office. we're tuned in to CHUM FM and the patients really do dig it, except for that one cranky old lady who once complaned that the radio was "too loud".

i have a new brother

a few months ago, nana and grandpa moved from long island, new york, to lansing, michigan, a smart move given the soaring cost of living there (that was what eventually drove us out, but that's another story for a different time). it's great because not only will they actually be able to retire in their sixties and have their mortgage paid off by then, they are only a five hour drive away as opposed to a ten hour drive away (acctually thirteen if you account for traffic in new jersey). they just bought a house in de witt county and now have a lot of room and a nice chunk of property. so who needs new furniture when you can get a new doggie!


his name is shadow, he's seven years old and he's an australian sheppard mix. nana and grandpa adopted him from a local shelter. we're going to michigan in two weeks and cookie can't wait to meet him! aparently, he and zelda are starting to co-exist relatively peacefully, but zelda is very territorial when it comes to cookie's grandpa (he's alpha) and her bones. shadow is the name he came with and nana says she sees why - he follows her everywhere!

let there be bread!

yesterday it was just way too effin' cold to do anything (i even turned down an opportunity for furniture shopping so it must be bad). canuck and i had no big plans for the superbowl and the rest of the house was freezing so i holed myself up in the kitchen and baked away. i was nice and toasty, since there was about a 20 degree difference between the kitchen and the rest of the house.

now, i love to bake and and i have about eight different books with various recipes, some just dedicated to baking and some that have a smattering of pastry, cake and pie recipies thrown in with suppers, main courses, and appetizers. i use them pretty religiously and i've gotten my pie crusts, cakes, and doughnuts down t0 a science, but it seemed like my breads where always on the dense side, kinda heavy but definitely still edible and pretty tasty. i always tried to get that store-bought softness and springiness rather unsuccessfully and i always wrote it off as, "oh, it's the preservatives that make it that way, mine is the REAL DEAL." so a few days ago, my office manager and i were talking and i found out that she also makes her own bread, with a bread machine. that's cool, i said, while simultaneously turning up my nose at the idea of a "bread machine". hah! i scoffed. i knead it all by hand, all by myself (man, i'm such a brat). and she laughed at me and directed me to the feischman's website. i'm a regular user of fleischman's yeast, i haven't yet tried the compressed cake yeast that my bread book calls for because i can't find it anywhere and i'm just too lazy to look. anyways, i saw some great recipes for NON-MACHINE, die hard, old-school-that's-what-i'm-talkin'-about users like myself and i came across this recipe for soft pretzels. mmmmm, that looks yummy. then i came along another recipe for mulitgrain bread, mmmm, i could definitely do that! but when i scrolled down the list of ingredients i was like, NO! quick rise yeast???? that's the anti-christ of bread makers like myself! yeast is yeast, how the hell can you get it to make it rise quickly without altering the composition some way, shape, or form? why does everything have to be "quick"??? is NOTHING sacred anymore??? okay, i quickly got over that and thought, what the hell, i'll give it a whirl. and canuck was just so excited about the prospect of fresh pretzels that his eyes just glazed over when i told him about my reservations with the yeast. in his eyes, the ways justifies the means, it's fresh pretzels for crying out loud who cares! i will never expect him to understand.

so off i went, and i even did something else different for me this time - i specifically used a flour that was labeled "best for bread" as it claims to have a higher protein content and yields a more elastic dough than all-purpose flour. man, what a difference! my dough was soft, pliable, very easy to work with and quickly became super elastic. and that quick-rise yeast - wow, that stuff flew! the pretzels were PERFECT, golden brown on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside. my multigrain loaf made me want to cry. not only was it perfectly shaped and sized (i yielded 2 loaves) it was spongy and light and tasted absolutely wonderful. i made canuck his lunch for work and he said the sandwiches brought meaning to his life (his exact words). everything tastes great on that bread, i have to stop myself from snacking on it! moral of the story - never be a food snob, you may just miss out on something spectacular! my next project is going to be lahmacun, turkish flatbread wraps that are seasoned with ground beef, onion, peppers, and cilantro. i'm going to stick with the traditional yeast for that one, but if it turns out like crappola i will always have my beloved pretzels to fall back on.

man, i am just soooooo proud of my creations!

mommy ramblings

when cookie is napping and canuck is still at work and i don't have to cook, clean, or do laundy and i finally have time to post!

it's been a busy couple of days, and february looks to be just as hectic. i can't believe how january flew! then february's gone and we're in march and it starts to warm up a bit, or at least the spring is somewhere on the horizon and not in the distant future. i love wearing my uggs and all, but the cold weather starts to get old after a while.

my new years resolution was to be more active. that means in everything - getting up and moving around and not sitting like a veal on the couch, being more active in my community and in cookie's life, being more active in my career, etc. the socializing and career thing i'm starting to get the hang of, the physical part, eh, not so much. it's at the point where i don't even bother resolve to lose the 15 or so pounds it might behoove me to shed, i just have to get my ass out the door three times a week. i thought about joining the gym where canuck lifts (religiously) because they have some cool classes, but none of them fit into my schedule and i know i won't go there to work out consistently so that's money wasted there. i wanted to do karate or tae-kwon-do, but again, i work evenings and i don't know how i can fit the classes in with cookie and child care and everything. it's too damn cold to run outside (i know, i did it on monday while cookie was in school and i'm still recovering from frostbite) so i bought a balance ball and a stott pilates DVD and was actually really good for about two weeks before i petered out. why am i having such a hard time getting motivated to just work out??? how the hell do people do it? i wonder how many calories one burns doing five loads of laundry up and down two flights of stairs all day. doesn't that count as exercise?

i made bread last night, a basic loaf in which i used kamut flour instead of my usual spelt or wheat flour. for some reason this loaf seems a little salty and i'm not sure if it's the flavor of the kamut that i need to get used to or if i added to much salt to the recipe (also very possible). it's okay and we'll eat it, but i'm going to plow through this loaf before i make another one (a lower sodium version). plus it's cold in my house and the dough takes bloody forever to rise! i also made corn bread last weekend to go with my vegetarian chili. this recipe has fresh corn kernals and two kinds of cracked pepper, so it was a really nice compliment to the sweeter chili. my next project is going to be whole wheat pretzels, a recipe that i found on the flieschman's yeast site. man, i have such a love-hate relationship with winter. i can't wait to break out all the cute clothes and flip-flops and i'm tired of layering, but there's no way my family eats this well during the summer!

hey, maybe i should be doing my pilates DVD instead of writing this post....