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| Rocking out with my kids in the minivan, and lord but did we make the teenagers at the corner laugh.
Screw them. It's a great song.
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| Yes, two cake-related stories, one happy and one un-.
To begin with the unhappy:
//BEGIN VENT
Yesterday I took my two youngest (the twins) to the park for the morning. After a rousing time on the playset and a long walk through the wooded trail, followed by a rousing game of pick-up-big-stick-and-throw-it-at-the-tree we plunked ourselves down at a picnic bench for a snack. I got out the dried apricots, the wheat squares, the rice cakes, the bananas and the juice and they tucked in, making it a lunch really, more than a snack.
Along came a woman and her child. They sat down at the table right next to ours and she asked me if she had seen us at the Y the other week. I suddenly remembered meeting her (our kids are in the same toddler gymnastics group) and we had a quick hello. She was soon joined by two other mothers and their kids. She then produced a large box and opened it to reveal twelve cupcakes. They sang happy birthday to her son and cupcakes were handed round to everyone.
But not to my kids.
Now, to be honest, I wasn't exactly eager for my kids to have cupcakes in the morning; I'm not against treats (far from it) but, let's face it, you do need to limit it. But there was no way for this woman to know that. She sat there and handed round cupcakes, sang the cake song, with two toddlers not five feet from her, and it didn't even occur to her to quietly ask me if they wanted to have some? It's not like there weren't enough to go round. When everyone (except my kids) had finished, there were still six left (I know because she announced this), which she packed up and took back to her minivan.
Thankfully, my children were happily eating dried apricots and rice cakes and didn't seem to mind. They even sang happy birthday (long after everyone else, and several times) laughing and clapping their hands after each rendition.
I've been trying to think of a good reason for this woman's behaviour which, petty as it may sound, I find inexcusably rude and insensitive. I would never share out treats with other kids right there without quietly asking the parent if the children wanted some. Perhaps she thought I would say no? Perhaps she saw the healthy snack my kids were eating and assumed that I was anti-cupcake?
I think she was a nasty piece of work. Plain and simple.
END VENT//
Partly as a response to this event, but mostly because we are having a birthday party this weekend, I spent the nap time yesterday (and a couple of hours at night after everyone was in bed) making this cake.
 
That's not a picture of the cake I made, but mine is pretty close. The recipe calls for pecans but I substituted hazelnuts. The stuff on top isn't icing but "goopy topping"--a mixture of heavy cream, white and brown sugar, egg yolks (6!), corn syrup and a bit of corn starch. The whole mess gets cooked on the stove until it's a thick thick goopy mass and then you stir in shredded cocount and chopped roasted nuts (the hazelnuts). There's also a layer of this in between the layers of cake. We've not tried it yet but the samples I took yesterday as I baked were pretty good!
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| The root canal "procedure" went off today without a hitch. I shan't (and can't) say that it was entirely painless (there were three sliver-thin yet razor-sharp agonisingly painful moments in the initial stages) but other than that it was all right. The "area was very inflamed" so the dentist wasn't able to do the whole job today...which means I shall have to travel back to the Big Smoke, aka Toronto aka Nice-Place-To-Have-A-Root-Canal-But-I-Wouldn't-Want-To-Live-There...for the second half of the "procedure" next week.
The good news is that now my tooth feels better than it has in many a month. This is not saying very much, I admit, but any improvement is a good thing.
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| So I didn't get my root canal this week. I went in for my root canal, waited in the waiting room with an old copy of Time magazine, got into the chair and let the dentist inject the anaesthetic for my root canal, but in the end, the root canal never happened. And that's because the anaesthetic didn't work for me. Not the first shot, or the second shot, after which I could easily feel the pin he stuck into my gum and lower lip.
Ouch.
So then he apologised and gave me a third shot, this time way high up in the back of the mouth. So now I can't feel the pin he's sticking into me, but then he reaches for a piece of ice to put on my sore tooth to check for sensitivity. Now that I can feel. Can I ever feel that.
Ouch!
So he apologizes again and decides to give me another shot, this time of something different. First he uses the drill to bore a small hole into the bone just below the tooth. Then he gives me a shot through that hole, right into the bone. "Now, this is going to sting a bit," he says. And when you hear a dentist saying that, man you know it's going to hurt.
Oh yeah, it did.
After this, more ice.
OUCH!
My dentist was getting personally upset by all this. He assured me that he was only upset with himself and that he couldn't get me frozen, but I think he was harbouring some resentment against myself. This had all taken so long that my appointment had already extended past the scheduled time for the whole procedure and he had, as a result, missed lunch.
Well, back to the shots. This time a second dose of the same bone numbing one. Thankfully he was able to use the same hole he'd drilled in me before. And then, again with the ice. And you know what, I could feel the cold, but it didn't hurt. We decided to start drilling, very carefully, to see what happened.
To imagine what happened, picture for yourselves a six inch spike, of the the type used to make railways. Now picture it being hammered directly into your mouth.
OUCH!!
My dentist gave up and has referred me to a specialist. Said specialist lives an hour's drive away so I will now need to miss an entire day's work, rent a car, drive there (through rush hour traffic and into the busiest traffic in the country...not to mention the country's worst drivers...curse thee Toronto) then if I'm lucky, get a root canal and then turn around and drive back home.
Oh yeah, I am so looking forward to all this.
Really, the worst part of it all was that I had that dreadful numb-face for a day for no reason, and when it wore off all that stabbing, drilling and icing meant my tooth was throbbing painfully.
OK OK, I shall stop whining about my stupid tooth...
(...but did I mention that I have so much grading to do right now that my precious hour between 5:00 and 6:00 AM in which I write has been taken over by grading?)
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| I'm getting a root canal tomorrow. Actually, as it turns out, I'm getting the first half of a root canal tomorrow. Apparently, the procedure requires two stages a week apart.
<WHINE>The anaesthetic never really works for me. I always need two shots and I still feel everything. I can only imagine how much it will hurt as they drill into a live nerve tomorrow. Visions of Marathon Man flashing. And in the morning, before I get to go for this, I have to get up at 5:00 to get my grading done. And then immediately after the "procedure" (my sick dentist's perverse word for "torture") I have to rush home to meet a guy who's going to give me an estimate on repairing the 25 foot long stretch of fascia and soffits that have fallen off my house. Then more grading.</WHINE>
On the up side, I have discovered one of life's great joys, a Truly Good Thing: Pad Thai. I'm getting very good at it, but perfection still eludes me just a bit.
<PLEAD>Think of me tomorrow and send me good mojo</PLEADING>
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