Mostly All Better

I know why dentists are so cautious of pregnant women. In a word: LIABILITY. Plus probably their training regarding pregnant women, which according to my dentist is to never do anything unless you really have to.

Liability has, of course, a few sides: a genuine caution about the issue at hand, a distressingly well-founded fear of litigation, and the paranoid fear most pregnant women - egged on by society, stupid books, ill-informed medical professionals, and a truly useless drug rating system - have of, well, everything. Another pregnant mom asked me today, in tones of incredulity, if it was safe to have a root canal while pregnant. I was tempted to say, "No! It might kill my baby! But I did it anyways!" (In fact, novocaine is considered very safe, and so are most opiates, in moderation- five days of vic0din isn't going to do anything terrible to my preshus.)

All the same, the midwife was right: Get over it. I had to bully the dentist into filling a small cavity on the other side- next week- because... surely it could wait another six months. Or! They could do this totally safe procedure NOW!

In any event, I feel that the root canal was much like childbirth: by the time you get around to it, you're so uncomfortable that everything after is an improvement.

As much fun as a...

... root canal tomorrow. The on-call dentist, predictably, wanted to 'check' with my midwife, and my midwife, predictably, said, and I quote, "Get over it." And then she called me in some Vicodin.

I love my midwives.

Errrrrrrrrgh

Folks, I was not this sick last time. This time, if a virus so much as wafts by, I spend a day on the couch, wishing I were dead.

And I think I probably get a root canal later this week.

WAAAAAAH.

Pesach

Happy Pesach, all! May your next week be full of joy and matzah, in about that order.

Let me share with you my non-professional summary of one of my very favorite Talmud passages (the other is the one about how many sins can one person commit at once? A Kohen is eating a tithed fruit on Yom Kippur while wearing shatnez and....)

The rabbis of old engaged in a lengthy debate about rodents and wheaty goodness in one's house on Pesach. For instance, if a rodent leaves crumbs, must you search the house again? What if a white mouse comes in and a black mouse leaves? What if there is also a weasel, which eats mice? What if....

And the answer, in the end, is, "Come on, people. Don't be CRAZY."

(Were we to suspect [that chametz would be taken] from house to house, we would also have to suspect [that chametz might be taken] from city to city. There is no end to the matter. -- There is always the possibility that chametz will be taken from one house to another. Hence, the Sages decided to ignore this possibility entirely.)

Leaven-free

It is almost Pesach; therefore, I am engaged in Jewish Spring Cleaning. (I really should scrub my stovetop clean more than once a year.) One would think this would grow less odd after many years of doing it, but it never does.

Now I must go ritually sell all my bread to someone!

Dentally

Oh, for goodness sake, I should have gone to the dentist before I got pregnant. Because a batch of more cautious, paranoid people, I could not imagine. My mouth is up here and the tot is all the way down there. Do the frigging X-ray already! And no, I am not concerned about Novocaine, except that, perhaps, you might not use enough.

Heaven forbid they might do anything requiring opiates.

Assorted, Various, etc.

My darling child is taking an unusually long nap. (Now, of course, he will wake up and yell.) This may be due to the fact that, of late, day or night, he wakes up every 30-60 minutes to utter something profound like "YOGURT!". Then he goes back to sleep.

We re-did our landscaping. The plants appear to have survived, even the scraggly yarrow and the much-abused lilac bush, which was living between three large rocks and under another large bush, before. We hope to have materially improved its circumstances. I am sprouting various things though, strangely, the lima beans have twice been overtaken by mold now. I am considering bleaching the outsides next.

The neighbors, who apparently have a driving deficiency, have left a large rut in our yard. We would be irritated with them (see also: your dog is barking... again) but they're so... sweet. They bring us veggies in the summer. They drove me to the doctor when I cut myself. They give us kid things they and their children don't need any more- piles of clothes for Bug, and, last week, a very nice, almost-new bicycle in the next size up.

I am not enjoying being pregnant. I don't mean as in, I am an ungrateful wretch for the felicity and ease with which I get and stay pregnant. I mean that, no matter how glad one is, ten weeks of constant nausea and stabbing pain are a trifle difficult to endure, especially when one expects them to persist for some weeks-to-months yet. Plus, the toddler elbows me in the stomach and generates very stinky diapers. Plus every time I change altitude, my vision goes all black and sparkly.

Er.... my spouse folded all the laundry, though! Good for him, eh?

We Interrupt

our regularly scheduled radio silence to tell you: I feel really, really nauseous. Still. Of course. I will genteely omit all details, but suffice it to say: I fed my poor spouse a very distressing brown bean soup, with tomatoes apparently still floating on top, last night, because I could not bear to go into the kitchen to stir it.

Fortunately, he understands that the natural outcome of "Complaints Filed With Pregnant Management" is "Fury, Wrath, and No More Dinner."