I slept horribly last night. This sounds so incredibly lame but it's the first night I've slept in my apartment since I got back to the States. There have only been 2 other nights that I didn't sleep with my boyfriend, and those were because I was in Norfolk for stuff and he wasn't. I didn't have a problem sleeping alone in Japan but then again, I was also exhausted for a good chunk of my day. 
Here, I guess it doesn't help that I also have two cats who decide that 4:30 am is a good time to play 'kill the mousey' on my chest.
I put the mouse under my pillow.
So yeah, it's shortly after 8:40 and uh, yeah. Got really nothing to do today except fret about things. So I went to the dentist, right, and got a checkup. Well I went back in on Tuesday to get one of the fillings taken care of (thankfully it was just one, the tooth next to it just needed to be looked at and it's not a problem - yet) and so on. No big deal. And they fixed up some front teeth that could use a touch of cosmetic polishing, so they look much better now, I think. ANYWAY what I found out is that they had taken an x-ray of my new Problem Tooth to see what was going on with it, so we could do a root canal before the crown if necessary.
Now, I can't draw you a diagram so I want you to do it for yourself. Draw a molar. Draw the gumline. Now shade in pretty much all of the tooth that is outside of the gum. That is what my filling looks like. I said, 'holy crap. That sucks.' Better yet, my dentist tells me 'We think it's already starting to abcess and die, so you're going to need another root canal. We're going to forward your stuff to the endodontrist (root canal specialist) in Lincoln and he can tell you 100% for sure, but you wanna get that taken care of.' I said 'I've had one abcessed tooth in my life so far and that is one more tooth than I ever needed.' So, fuck. Root canals are not cheap. Crowns are not cheap. I am poor and my family will help out as needed but man, it sucks. But I'm poor not in the 'I can't eat properly' way (I went to the grocery store and stocked up on yums like pita bread and hummus, yogurt, and cashews) but more in the 'even though I am not starving I constantly worry about my health, car, and education and paying for them'. Typical lower middle class stuff, I guess, but I'm on the cusp of being On My Own and it's a pretty scary place to be when I'm like 'yes! I can finally pay off when I had to get my car fixed last year!' and then it's like 'Except now I have to pay for dental bills again! No!'. It's a never-ending battle. And it's all the little things. My car needs new windshield wiper blades for sure, and could use a few new tires, and needs an oil change like crazy. It could also use an alignment, new air filters, and fixing the oil leak. If I wanted to get really fancy I'd fix the sticky lifter, but that's a couple grand right there that I don't have. Stuff like that.
So wow, this didn't mean to end up as a rant about being semi-poor but that's what happened, I guess. That's life. On the upside though, I've already got nearly my max of 20 hours of work next week (as well as starting classes, whee) and the weekend wasn't even finished yet, so it doesn't look like my paychecks will be hurting too much. I also got a 'manual completion raise' (I can do a lot of job functions now so I get rewarded) and my yearly raise so I'm making almost a dollar more than I was when I left. So that's good. I'm hoping to become a trainer soon (another 50 cents) and finish my next manual which is easy cause I'm already 1/3 done (I just need blood and urine processing, snap flash freezing, and.. some other one that I don't remember cause we hardly ever do it) and we are always in need of processors, especially since I would estimate half the clinic left or got fired since I've been gone. So most of the people who used to process are now people who draw blood, and the people who did bitchwork (like me) gotta be moving up to be processors. I gotta admit, I'm a little nervous cause I'm not exactly physically graceful and we're working with chemicals and measurements and whatnot. Yuck.
I've wasted about a good 15 minutes writing this, I hope you enjoyed wasting part of your life reading it.
Here, I guess it doesn't help that I also have two cats who decide that 4:30 am is a good time to play 'kill the mousey' on my chest.
I put the mouse under my pillow.
So yeah, it's shortly after 8:40 and uh, yeah. Got really nothing to do today except fret about things. So I went to the dentist, right, and got a checkup. Well I went back in on Tuesday to get one of the fillings taken care of (thankfully it was just one, the tooth next to it just needed to be looked at and it's not a problem - yet) and so on. No big deal. And they fixed up some front teeth that could use a touch of cosmetic polishing, so they look much better now, I think. ANYWAY what I found out is that they had taken an x-ray of my new Problem Tooth to see what was going on with it, so we could do a root canal before the crown if necessary.
Now, I can't draw you a diagram so I want you to do it for yourself. Draw a molar. Draw the gumline. Now shade in pretty much all of the tooth that is outside of the gum. That is what my filling looks like. I said, 'holy crap. That sucks.' Better yet, my dentist tells me 'We think it's already starting to abcess and die, so you're going to need another root canal. We're going to forward your stuff to the endodontrist (root canal specialist) in Lincoln and he can tell you 100% for sure, but you wanna get that taken care of.' I said 'I've had one abcessed tooth in my life so far and that is one more tooth than I ever needed.' So, fuck. Root canals are not cheap. Crowns are not cheap. I am poor and my family will help out as needed but man, it sucks. But I'm poor not in the 'I can't eat properly' way (I went to the grocery store and stocked up on yums like pita bread and hummus, yogurt, and cashews) but more in the 'even though I am not starving I constantly worry about my health, car, and education and paying for them'. Typical lower middle class stuff, I guess, but I'm on the cusp of being On My Own and it's a pretty scary place to be when I'm like 'yes! I can finally pay off when I had to get my car fixed last year!' and then it's like 'Except now I have to pay for dental bills again! No!'. It's a never-ending battle. And it's all the little things. My car needs new windshield wiper blades for sure, and could use a few new tires, and needs an oil change like crazy. It could also use an alignment, new air filters, and fixing the oil leak. If I wanted to get really fancy I'd fix the sticky lifter, but that's a couple grand right there that I don't have. Stuff like that.
So wow, this didn't mean to end up as a rant about being semi-poor but that's what happened, I guess. That's life. On the upside though, I've already got nearly my max of 20 hours of work next week (as well as starting classes, whee) and the weekend wasn't even finished yet, so it doesn't look like my paychecks will be hurting too much. I also got a 'manual completion raise' (I can do a lot of job functions now so I get rewarded) and my yearly raise so I'm making almost a dollar more than I was when I left. So that's good. I'm hoping to become a trainer soon (another 50 cents) and finish my next manual which is easy cause I'm already 1/3 done (I just need blood and urine processing, snap flash freezing, and.. some other one that I don't remember cause we hardly ever do it) and we are always in need of processors, especially since I would estimate half the clinic left or got fired since I've been gone. So most of the people who used to process are now people who draw blood, and the people who did bitchwork (like me) gotta be moving up to be processors. I gotta admit, I'm a little nervous cause I'm not exactly physically graceful and we're working with chemicals and measurements and whatnot. Yuck.
I've wasted about a good 15 minutes writing this, I hope you enjoyed wasting part of your life reading it.