Pain

Yah, I know that I promised a 'no angst' blog, but some things just get your attention.

I recall a quote that goes something like "Pain focuseth the mind wonderfully".

I really wonder what that guy was thinking. You would think that a quote that survived from way back when would have some truth to it.

OK, so it does have some truth. Pain does focus your mind -- on the pain. If you want to focus on anything else, you can just forget it.

Which brings me to why I haven't updated this blog (or written a single line in my story) in several days.

To put it succinctly, I had an abscess in my tooth. Why do these things always happen just before a weekend, anyhow?

I didn't know what it was exactly. My teeth pain me on occasion, but it generally goes away. This time, however, I ended up using the various OTC pain meds. Then I went to the local store and got some hooch. I did that because I ran out of the stuff that we had on-hand (we generally don't have much). Bacardi 151 rum did the job, for the most part. Just a bit will augment the action of some of the pain meds. If the pain is really bad, a couple ounces will do the trick. You'll still feel the pain, but you won't really care.

And then I find out that acetaminophen (Tylenol) and hooch will harm your liver. You think they would put that on the bottle.

Oh wait... it does hint that you need to talk to a doctor if you consume more than three alcoholic drinks every day. I need to do a little research before trying that again, in any case.

Of course, acetaminophen will harm your liver all by itself. Pity the poor girls who take a bottle of the stuff in a suicide attempt. The results are very painful, and permanent. That's why I decided to use more alcohol than pain medications. Acetaminophen will damage your liver right now, and alcohol takes years of dedicated use to accomplish that end. It's easy to mess up your dosage on pain meds, but you have to really try very hard to overdose on alcohol.

Anyhow, it made for an interesting weekend. The dentist did a pulpotomy (almost a root canal) on Tuesday, and all I have to deal with today is some residual soreness.

So, I updated our finance program (Mary found the statement, so I reconciled our check book), fixed my computer (before doing the finances, of course), downloaded some stuff, and now I'm back to writing. Of course, the animals needed to be fed. The children did, too -- and they're pickier. But that's OK, because they can eat what I offer or go hungry.