Chaos Attraction

Bad Karma, Bad Mouth, Good Hair

2004-09-08, 10:06 p.m.

Have now gone home for the rest of the week to get the wisdom teeth out. Dear God.

What a 24 hours.

Auntie Dolores is throwing another stamp party this week (tomorrow), and there's just no getting out of having to buy something from it in this family. So we had to go by there last night, even if we got in really late. Naturally, I was quite looking forward to nosy questions about my love life. I told her all the boys this summer were too young and/or too weird. Later, Uncle Bruce asked all in a rush if I'd found someone to get married to yet, and then suggested that he uh, help me take care of my dental problems. Auntie Dolores suggested he use his tongue. I was severely squicked out.

Oh, by the way, Auntie D. thinks I should write my stories down. I couldn't help but think, "Yeah, and if I wrote down all the ones about you you'd kill me."


Dad looks worse every time I see him. Now he has permadrool to boot, and the only thing I could understand out of his mouth at all since I got here was (oddly enough) "Rodney Dangerfield." Don't ask me how I got that one.

The morning was hell. I'd slept till nine or tenish, I don't really know, but I got up to do some tarot card readings. I could hear Dad making some kind of noise. Of course, I couldn't understand it for shit. I wondered if he was talking to Mom, because I'd hear phone noises. Then it occurred to me, as he kept making unintellegible noise, maybe he needs help. Maybe he fell.

And then I thought, if he fell, FUCK, there is not a damned thing I can do about it. I sure as hell can't pick him up. I can't even understand anything he says. What the hell could I do besides stand there, freak out, and look like a shitty daughter who can't figure out how to take care of her father, to her father's face?

I decided to think positively. That he was just talking to Mom, that was all. My phone got a voicemail at this point, but I didn't clue in, I thought it was probably the apartment manager or something. At any rate, I don't get reception in the house any more, so short of leaving the little minivalley the house is in, I couldn't check voice mail anyway. I tried to go back to sleep.

Then I heard the car drive up into the garage, followed by a whole lot of ruckus.

I felt like real shit. I should feel like real shit.

Eventually, I pretended to wake up and came out. Mom said that Dad had been about to fall and was yelling for me (very quietly) and she'd tried to call me. "But there wasn't anything you could have done anyway. Lord knows you can't pick him up or understand what he's saying."

I still feel evil. I should.

I deserve whatever bad shit comes to me for being the heartless bitch that I am for this. That I can't help or can't even figure out HOW to help, so I hide. I am a bastard.


Oral surgeon visit. Whee, what fun. I have to go to an actual hospital for this, which freaks me out. I do NOT want surgery. First they made me watch a video, through which I stared fixedly at the flags outside the window NOT LOOKING at it. Then the doctor came in. He's a nice enough bloke, I suppose, but this being a dental visit, I naturally was on edge/about to cry the entire fucking time anyway.

I was all, "Please don't say anything about how enormous the cavity is," because that's the kind of thing my regular dentist would rip on. Immediately he said, "Wow, look at that huge cavity!" (Figures. Give the smartass bitch a taste of her own medicine.) Anyway, he said I was lucky it hadn't acted up enough to send me to the ER yet.

Three are impacted, and the one with the cavity evidently isn't. Joy. Break out the sawing and the IV. He doesn't seem to think it'll be too bad, but I do run the risks of dry socket, having some hole in my sinuses (as if they weren't already kinda fucky), and losing feeling in my face for months. Oh yeah, I'd love some of that. But hopefully none of that will be permanent! I was ready to leave and never come back right then and there, if not for that goddamned cavity issue. Well, that and making all these arrangements and taking time off and shit.

I reiterated to him a lot that I HAVE A GAG REFLEX. I CANNOT FUCKING SWALLOW A PILL NO MATTER HOW HARD I TRY ABOUT IT. He was all, sure, fine, we'll just get you pills you can crush. This, as it turned out, was a big fat lie. I got handed (a) some kind of mouthwash prescription, (b) two pills to pop pre-surgery, and (c) a shitload of Vicodin prescription, i.e. "the really goooood drugs" that everyone talks to me about like they're already fucking stoned off it.

While I went to get my hair done (and it looks just LOVELY, but more on that later), Mom went over to Kaiser to pick up mine and everyone else's prescriptions, where she found out that (a) the pre-op pills MUST BE SWALLOWED NO MATTER WHAT, and (b) ditto that for Vicodin, which is apparently a horse pill to boot. "Well, you could grind it up, but that'd change the whole prescription." Mom got into a fight with the guy, then refused to buy the pills and called the doctor, who said, "Oh well, I'll give her one for Tylenol with codeine tomorrow." Which, lemme guess, (a) probably isn't as good, and (b) will fucking put me to sleep for days. Whee. I hate that.

(Guess I deserve it all, though. See above.)


Getting my hair done went well. My hairdresser was pretty chatty. The last time I'd seen her, Mom had asked me if she was pregnant. Considering that (a) she was wearing black, and (b) behind me the whole time, and (c) I don't fucking ask that question because then I'd be like Auntie Dolores, I told her I had no idea. Well, she was post-baby this time, so I told her this story, and she thought it was a hoot.

Another funny one: some six-year-old boy was running around the joint, and he saw the photos I'd brought in of my previous hairdo that I wanted recreated. His eyes popped out of his head and he looked TOTALLY disgusted. Then he asked how old I was, and when I said 26, he said "FORTY?!" After he left, I said to Jackie, "Well, I haven't made that good of an impression on a guy in quite some time!"

Mom evidently knows one of the other hairdressers there, and the other hairdresser (Leslie, I believe) had her dad die of ALS. So she knows the kind of crap we have going on. She suggested we make flash cards for Dad. I wonder if it'll work or not, but god knows ANYTHING will help at this point. You just can't get anything out of him. I keep daydreaming of getting him whatever Stephen Hawking uses to speak with.


I need to finish this up before I'm interrupted, and go do a tarot reading about this. Suddenly I'm quite glad that I'm not getting this done during Mercury retrograde the way I was going to before.


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