Some random stuff

I had my dental check-up yesterday. I don't know why, I don't know if it was related, but I was horribly anxious - like, want to crawl out of my skin anxious - all day before the appointment. (And when they take your blood pressure - my dentist does that, I suppose as a monitoring thing - it was way too high. A good 20 points higher on both readings than it was the day before when I gave blood, and even then the b.p. reading I got was higher than what I get at my doctor.)

The good news is there was nothing wrong with my teeth. Apparently my increased hypervigilance about dental hygiene is working out. (The other upside is I spend less time in the chair getting tartar crud scraped off my teeth).

Actually, it's good I keep the tartar levels down, because we learned at this appointment that I don't tolerate the sonicator. Apparently they got a new device that uses high-pitched sound waves to help remove tartar.

But, just as I said the other day my low-pitched hearing was not as compromised as I suspected it of being, my high-pitched hearing is also still pretty good. Especially when some of those sound waves are being channeled from my teeth through the bones in my head. The sonicator REALLY bothered me, to the point where I was almost starting to feel a little woozy and sick (yes, right there in the chair, with my head lower than my feet). The hygienist saw my distress and asked me if I wanted her to switch to the manual tool.

She did, and it was much more tolerable to me.

I'm just glad I don't have to go back for six more months.

***

I'm glad the campaign is over. Some days, practically the only mail I got were fliers (from either party) asking me to vote for their guy (Or woman. We have a few women actually running this year. In fact, regardless of what happens, our next governor will be a woman. And while I say I don't talk politics much on here, I will observe that neither candidate is as different from the other as her campaign would have you believe).

I don't know but somehow that made me depressed. (That and the robo-calls. I got lots of robo-calls, in fact, I got more robo-calls yesterday alone than I get real phone calls in a month).

It reminds me of the former "friend" I had, where I was never good enough to be invited to her house EXCEPT when she started a home-based business and was having one of those selling parties. Gives me the feeling people only want me when they want something from me.

The other thing is: they can't fool me. My vote isn't that important. Oh, I mean, it is, in the sense that people SHOULD read up on the candidates and issues and vote, but it's not like my vote counts any more than anyone else's.

I admit, it makes me a little sad to think of all the money that's been spent on this campaign, with all the problems there are in the world that a little money might solve... (Which is why I will never give to a political campaign but will continue to give to places like Mercy Corps.)

Frankly, I'm just disgusted at how ugly politics has become. Oh, it's probably always been fairly ugly (I remember learning about the "Ma, ma, where's my pa? Gone to the White House, ha ha ha" slam that was aimed against Grover Cleveland, alleging he had a child out of wedlock. Which is actually about the only thing I know about his presidency...According to one resource, he acknowledged the child as his (even though there was no proof; apparently the mother had several affairs about the same time) because he was the only unmarried potential father and it was said he had less to lose.) We just hear the ugliness more now, I think, both because of the 24-hour news channels, and also because I think lots of people are titillated by the ugliness.

***

I started the second of the Snow on Cedars mitts last night. I really would like to finish all the knit gifts by Thanksgiving, so I can take them up in my suitcase and leave them (I don't have to haul as much at Thanksgiving, because I'm there for a far shorter time). I still have the pair to do for the family friend (but I could mail those directly if I had to) and the pair for the gift-swap.

I also started something else. A sockyarn toy. The Itty Bitty Knitted Toys book by Susan Anderson has several of these. I'm doing the small teddy bear that's in there. I had been looking at the book and thinking how it would be fun to repurpose some sock yarn for one of them.

I found a skein of Fanny's Farmhouse sock yarn in a color called "pecan pie" (variegated browns and cream). I think I got it on either a very good sale or as part of a grab bag, but when I saw it, I was kind of "meh" about it for socks.

It looks like it will make a pretty good bear, though. (And it's one of those rare variegated yarns that looks nicer wound off in the cake than it does in the skein. A lot of yarns, I love them in the skein, but when I wind them off to knit with them, they wind up sort of muddy. This yarn was all chunky and blotchy in the skein, but prettier when wound off. I wonder if that's some version of "don't judge a book by its cover"?)