The Marci Rating System

Today's the day! Time to go back to the dentist, and swap my temporary crown for a permanent crown.

NOTES ON THIS EXPERIENCE SO FAR:

*LESS AWESOME:
Just in the last four days or so, the temporary crown has started feeling looser, and also everything tastes like mint. WHY are teeth so weird?

*MORE AWESOME:
Dentistry finally picked a really cool name for something! Fillings: not a cool name. Root canal: terrible name. Crown: YES!!! That's a great name. Heck yeah, make that tooth DENTAL ROYALTY.

It's raining today (finally, hooray!), so this story is actually from my Friday walk. There's a local cemetery that's popular for walking, and (at certain times of year) also popular with geese. So I wasn't entirely surprised to start down one of the roads and see a couple geese on one side, even when I realized it was actually four geese.

Best goose advice: AVOID THE GEESE

I know this advice. I love this advice! But the cemetery geese are usually pretty chill, and this isn't gosling season, so I figured 'hey, the geese are all off the road on the left, I'll just swing wide to the right and we'll all be cool about this.' That would have left a comfortable 10-15 feet between me and the geese. Not enough distance to outrun them if they decided to really go at me, but enough to put that option in the Very Unlikely category.

And then two of the geese started to cross the road. (Note: it's a looooong straight road, so I had a long time to watch this disaster unfolding.) Still, I thought 'no problem, all the geese are going to cross the road, and then I'll swing wide to the left instead, and we'll all be cool about this.'

Except ONLY two geese crossed the road. And then there were geese on both sides!

That's really the point that I should have turned around and just gone back the other way. (See: best goose advice)

But I did not turn around. I was pretty close to them already by that point, and everything had been fine so far, right? I slowed down, trying my best to look non-threatening and chill. There was, optimistically, still 6-8 feet of clearance between me and each pair of geese. I thought 'this is fine, we're all fine here.'

And then one of the geese on the right started hissing. One of the geese on the left started making an even scarier sound, like a growl (I know geese can't growl, but I'm not sure this goose knew that). ALL the geese were looking at me. I quickly moved from 'I really don't want to have to explain this choice at the emergency room' to 'genuinely fearing imminent goose attack,' but by that point it seemed quicker to keep going than to turn back, so that's what I did.

By the grace of the small-town cemetery gods, I emerged unscathed from the GOOSE GAUNTLET, with a story to tell and a significantly stronger commitment to following the Best goose advice: AVOID THE GEESE.

You know something has gone awry when I'm sitting around REALLY HOPING that I get to go to the dentist today. That something is that last Friday I lost a filling, which I 1000% do not recommend. I called the dentist's office and they were like 'ooh, too bad, we'll talk to your dentist on Monday and see if we might be able to squeeze you in.'

(And I know that they hear similar calls all the time, so it probably doesn't feel like a big deal to them, but it is a BIG DEAL to me! I am experiencing FOUR of my least favorite things: I'm in pain, I can't eat things I want to eat, I feel like I've messed up and am in trouble, AND I'm waiting in line. Sort of waiting in line. Like a virtual queue for an emergency slot that may or may not exist or be taken already. Ugh.)

ANYWAY that's MONDAY!

Going to the dentist today, and I may request that all future appointments get made for the 10th day of the month at 10 am. This has been BY FAR the easiest appointment day and time I've ever tried to remember! A true delight!

Also just went down an absolutely wild ride of internet rabbit holes searching 'who should you gift at Christmas.' (lol maybe I should gift myself a nice tip for all the haircuts I've given myself this year!)

(oh wait, that is probably covered by all the presents I've purchased for myself over the past few weeks...)

Enthusiasm: high!

Output: low!

Luckily, battleship is a team sport. ALSO! I cast my eyes upon the stats for round 1, which included the total number of works posted during the round. Then I went back and counted how many people are on the team. Based on my simple math skills, my two posted works are sliding in juuuuuuuust under the average, which is very exciting to me!

(Exactly where I like to be during any team event! Shelter under that bell curve, heck yeah!)

blergh, that feeling of it being Sunday and knowing you have work the next day...

also a tree branch put a hole in our garage roof during the last big storm, and my check engine light is on, which the internet informs me could me anything from 'probably not a big deal' to 'catastrophic failure imminent'

ANYWAY the good news is that I'm onto the second skein of yarn for my current blanket project, and I'm starting to feel better about my color choices for it, yay!

Well, it's raining again. It's been raining a lot, actually -- to the point where I checked the weather this morning and thought 'oh, what a relief, it's just a flood watch and not a flood warning.'

I have no idea what this means from a climatological (my spell check says that's not a word, but the Cambridge Dictionary says it is!) standpoint, but it feels weird to me to have gotten so little snow. I feel like I was prepared for snow! Winter! Brr! I was mentally fortified for several long, snowy months!

I was not, apparently, mentally fortified for whatever *this* is. Is it winter still? Is it spring? Where is the sun???

Most of the time I don't remember much about my dreams, and what I do remember is a mishmash of random feelings.

But every once in a while, I have (and remember!) one of those very clear moments while I'm dreaming, when I think something along the lines of 'this dream is making me work really hard, but it's a dream, I don't need to do that! I'm going to go take a nap instead.'

And last night was one of those nights! I was dreaming, and it was daytime, and I was outside with someone, and we were running -- maybe to a store? Grocery store? Mall? The store was also outside, maybe? Anyway, I was absolutely like 'why am I spending my sleeping time doing all this physical exertion? that's counterproductive! let's just find somewhere to sit down and relax.'

And I think that's great advice for the waking hours too!

I was going to go to the grocery store yesterday morning, but it was raining? And that seemed hard, and I still had food to eat, so I put it off until today. To the store!

Very Important Reasons to Grocery Shop Today:

*I've promised myself I can look at the fun fall mugs while I'm there, because treats are very motivating for me

*We're out of napkins, and I didn't realize how much I was using napkins until we didn't have any, but now I miss them

*It's a good reason to clock in a bit late to work this morning, which really meshes well with my plan to find more ways to enjoy the work day

*Happy Battleship Exchange 2023 author reveals day!

*I have never done an exchange before, so I have no idea how excited I am supposed to be -- I've defaulted to 'very,' and that seems to be working so far

*The Big Moment will be Monday afternoon a little after 2 pm (eastern time)

*Confession time: I used to call it 'eastern standard time,' but when I was in customer service someone yelled at me about it??? And they said it's only eastern standard time sometimes, something to do with daylight savings time, and they were so mean about it that I never even bothered to look it up and figure it out, so now I just say eastern time and hope for the best? (Sometimes I say 'east coast time' because at least I know for sure that's wrong)

*Tomorrow's post: my fics, revealed!