Partial to the bean…

As suspected, Sammi has an abscess in/under a tooth that has a small cavity. The tooth in question, though, is a baby tooth, and the dentist says it’s very close to getting loose. So there’s no point in doing anything to fix it unless Sammi’s having pain, which she isn’t so far. We’re doing a course of antibiotics to try to knock down that abscess, then we’ll try to keep it down to a simmer or less with a homeopathic remedy that my dentist loves — I have some left over from when Alice was younger and had this same thing happen to her. Basically we’re just going to be hoping that the tooth falls out before it starts to hurt. If it does start to hurt, we’ll need to pull it out, either in the dentist’s office (if it’s already pretty loose) or at an oral surgeon’s (if it’s still in there tight).

Sammi woke up this morning with a good-sized soft bump on her gum, at the base of a tooth that has been giving her low-grade discomfort on and off for most of a year. Looks like we need to head to the dentist today, which makes Sammi so unbelievably upset that you cannot even imagine the misery here right now. Alice had this happen a couple of times – I’m pretty certain it’s a little abcess. If I recall correctly, the dentist will look at it today and confirm my diagnosis, then give us some antibiotics and/or a homeopathic remedy, depending on how severe it looks, and then we’ll probably do a drill and fill in a week or so. Sammi has never had dental work without at least some sedation being involved, so hopefully I’ll be able to get her a prescription for something to calm her before we go in for the second appointment.

This is not how I was envisioning today. *sigh*

This is the most beautiful thing I’ve seen all day: Inside Insides – Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Foods

As we enter the waning days of Summer 2010 (oh, don’t look at me like that — yes, there’s another month+ to go, but you can feel we’re on the downside as well as I can), allow me to post the last batch of pix from Summer 2009.

Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve added any recipes to my recipes page! It’s not that I haven’t been cooking (well, I haven’t been cooking much lately, but I’m getting back on the horse this week), but more that I just haven’t felt like creating and uploading the pages, so there’s a small pile of links in my “Upload these” folder. So let’s get to that, shall we?

Quick and Easy Home Fries

Baked Corn Casserole

Scalloped Potatoes and Ham

Thai Pork with Peanut Sauce

Ham, Potatoes, and Green Beans

Roasted Pork Butt with Gravy

Pork with Glazed Onions

Banana Walnut Bread

Lemon (or Lime) Blueberry Bread

Eggnog Pots de Crème

We mailed out the first two thank-you notes from Sammi’s birthday (6 weeks ago) today. For those of you who are expecting to receive one of these suckers, thank you for your patience (and your gift!), and please continue to be as patient as possible. Writing these notes is extremely frustrating and difficult for Sammi, and she literally sweats over every single letter of every single note. Mean Mommy’s making her do them, though, because she’s never going to get any better at writing notes (or happier with her handwriting) if she doesn’t practice. What an ordeal, though… Oy!!

Sammi made $8.25. (Someone paid her $5 for one cup!) She’d still be out there now, selling to the home-from-work crowd, if there wasn’t a thunderstorm is brewing.

I’m pleased for her that she made so much money, except now she’s probably going to want to do this every dang day. Heh.

Wow, it’s been a few days for this blog, huh? I have been feeling so drained lately — no sleep is enough, I’m up too early every morning, and every afternoon I find myself collapsed in the air conditioning, so exhausted that I feel like crying. I hope it’s just the heat sapping all of my energy, because otherwise I am sick or depressed or maybe dying.

It’s not too hot for Sammi, apparently, because she’s out front with a lemonade stand right now. I’ve been periodically dissuading her from setting up a lemonade stand for most of her life; we live on a cul de sac with very little traffic, and so every time the idea has percolated to the front of her brain, I’ve shot it down as impractical. Today I surrendered, possibly because the heat has left me unusually pliable, or possibly because I’m finally ready to let her risk failing at this if she wants. She’s out there in the shade with a cooler and some cups, and she’s made about $1.75, counting what her sister bought from her.

Speaking of Sammi’s sister, she had an exciting weekend: On Saturday, she took the Red Cross babysitting course, so she’s now certified. On Sunday, she had her first job! Two kids, 3½ hours, and everyone had a blast. If you’re local and you need a sitter or a mother’s helper, Just Call Alice!

This is kind of neat, and not too long…

Alice is off her crutches now — she was pretty much crutch-dependent all weekend, could limp around a bit by Monday, and finished up with them yesterday. It’s weird, though: She hit her hip so hard that she couldn’t walk on it for 5 days, but it got only the tiniest of faint little bruises on it.

Today we’re visiting some friends. Tomorrow Sammi has an evaluation for possible speech therapy. On Friday we’re visiting some other friends. On Saturday Alice is taking the Red Cross babysitting course. Busy, busy, busy!!

Last night I made a loaf of this to use up some blueberries that were laying around and threatening to get moldy. I skipped the nuts and lemon zest, used lime juice instead of lemon juice, and increased the blueberries by ½C (because that’s how much I had). It is great.

And here is a batch of new pictures from last summer. We had a lot of fun that day!

…here are the pictures from Sammy’s 8th. Gosh, that was only a month ago. This post is like a year early, when you think about it!!

Alice will turn 13(!!!!!) in just over a month, so I thought it was probably time to post the pictures from her 12th birthday. Heh.

Can I just say that I absolutely love being able to do all of my produce shopping from roadside honor stands? My plan for today was to make a run to the store for piggy food (and food for us, too), but that got scrapped when Alice got hurt (see below). I’m so happy that I was able to get pretty much everything I needed (cucumbers, zucchini, onions, blueberries, tomatoes, and peaches) by pulling up to various rickety tables in various front yards on the way home from the hospital.

Today Alice and Sammi were playing around, dancing and being silly, and Alice lost her balance and fell very hard onto her hip. It was really really painful, so we took her in to the hospital for X-rays, where she had fun being pushed all over the place in a wheel chair. The X-rays came back negative — no break visible, so our doctor recommended rest, ice, acetaminophen or naproxen for the pain, and Arnica for the injury. If she’s not better by Monday, the next step would be an MRI to check for microfractures.

So our weekend plans just got a lot simpler, and I had to run out to buy her some crutches, because she is just too darn big for me to carry her to and from the bathroom these days. I think I’m dealing with all of this very calmly, except for the fact that I am craving a huge bowl of buttery noodles. Comfort food, pleeeeez!!

I’m being productive today.

- I made a vet appointment for the piggies, to take them in for a general checkup and some guidance about clipping their nails — either I want to be taught how to do it, or I want to confirm that doing it is such a PITA that I’d rather take them in and pay the vet to do it as needed. (I know that it’s not a very big deal to do it, but these guys are still pretty small, still pretty squirmy, and their nails are black which makes it tricky to see where the “quick” is. If I can’t get the hang of doing it without hurting or upsetting them, it might be worth the money to pay for it to be done well.)

- I surfed around and found a cheap and air-conditioned Fun Thing that we can invite some friends to tomorrow — Sammi’s been wanting a playdate with her BFF from school, but it’s Too Damn Hot™ to meet at a park or even at the pool, so I had to put in some ingenuity figuring out what we could do instead. I’m hoping that everyone will dig on some super-cheap all-ages art classes at the mall.

- I finally called the speech & hearing clinic where Alice had her therapy a few years ago and scheduled an evaluation appointment for Sammi. She’s gotten to age 8 without developing the ability to pronounce the “r” sound, particularly in vowel-R-consonant combos like the word “word” or the word “earth”. It noticeably affects how clear her speech is, and I want an expert opinion on it at this point. She’s really not keen on the idea of therapy, even though her sister and I have both tried to reassure her that it is fun and easy and nothing to fear. We’re taking it one step at a time — the evaluation is a one-shot, and it will be very low-key and positive (unless they’ve massively changed their methods since Alice was there). I don’t think it’ll take more than a semester or two of therapy to get her over this “r” thing, but I really want her to get over it.

I hope my US-centric friends had a nice long holiday weekend! We are hot here — highs in the 90s and 100s this week, ugh. We’ve laid comparatively low since Movie Camp ended on Friday, although we did attend a very nice low-key grillout/pool party with a couple of friends yesterday. Today we dragged Anth to see Toy Story 3. Alice and I loved it, Sammy says it was “pretty good” and “really cute”. We were ecstatic to see the reference to My Neighbor Totoro. Alice wants a “Death By Monkeys” button for her birthday. It doesn’t have to do anything, but she wants to be able to push it as needed.