The Dangerous Existence of Madame Lee

(The subject line was a favorite tag of my grandfather's.)

Today, I am old. Or older. Whichever. The weekend was nothing special; lolmom bought me shoes and clothes, as she promised to do, and I was injudicious at Sephora and bought myself a pair of sandals off Amazon (because the brand's official website, of course, had already moved on). Yesterday we had salade niçoise for dinner, which was not my birthday dinner but was still pretty good, and lemon pavlova for dessert, which was my birthday dessert and was reeeeeeeeeeeeally good. Damn, I love lemon.

Today, I accomplished exciting and amazing things such as shaving my legs (a godsend, since I went swimming after work and somehow managed to kill most of an hour doing laps, even though I didn't do that many and kind of pussed out), not eating crap for breakfast, and...dun dun DUN DUN...calling the oral surgeon for an appointment, during the course of which I learned the following things:

+ Most people have their wisdom teeth out in their teens or twenties. (Well, mine didn't start erupting until I was already out of my teens, and it was not medically necessary to remove them until they started decaying a year and change ago. See, there's this novel little concept where if things don't bother you and aren't going to go on to bigger and better trouble, you leave them alone.)
+ They usually offer IV sedation. (Over my cold dead body is anyone going to put me under for something as badger-sputumly inconsequential as yanking a couple of teeth, with apologies to the late great Douglas Adams. They're not impacted--both erupted fully. I don't have epilepsy, convulsions, or other problems that would render me unable to control my limbs. I said, nicely, that I didn't feel comfortable allowing them to anaesthetize me just for a couple of extractions, and also that in any case my insurance won't pay for it, which is true. I HAVE PROOF, in the form of the explanation of benefits I printed off the HR website.)
+ They'll need to see my X-rays. They may need to take a Panorex. My dentist and I were going to do this in December, since it would be easier to get the insurance to cough up for that. Y so complicated insurance. (Also y u no let me print card.)
+ I am Not Enthused. The temptation to call lolmom and beg her to come to the appointment with me is overwhelming, but so far I have resisted.

+ Dinner was sweet and delicious. I'm kind of glad I didn't order a full portion of the ahi tuna sashimi and just have that as my meal, although from the weight-loss standpoint I probably should have. (I went over my limit by 400 calories. Yeek.) It was tasty, but it wasn't authentic; I think I vastly prefer honest-to-God Japanese-style sashimi.
+ This weight-loss stuff is hard.
+ This not-cussing stuff is hard. I already owe me $1.50.
+ Our kitchen smells like SWEET, DELICIOUS CARAMEL. This is going to be the best birthday cake EVER. (Until next year.)
+ Mom got me some coasters! Hurrah!
+ I now have "Tarzan Boy" by Baltimora on MP3. This makes me unreasonably happy. If t3h n0v3l ever gets made into a movie, I want "Tarzan Boy" to figure in the soundtrack somehow. This is because I have bad taste. (It doesn't have to be, like, the main theme or anything; the soundtrack people could make a subtle reference to it or just use the chorus and I'd be happy. Actually, the lyrics don't really fit with the story, so sampling the chorus may work best.)
+ The neighbors are setting off fireworks. Callice does not like loud banging noises, probably due to her Angsty Past. (Callice was a year and a half old when she came home with me. She was a feral kitten who was turned in to the shelter; she had been living in a bus engine, and when the bus operator unwittingly started the bus, she was burnt over her back half. You can't tell where the burns were now, but the fact that she was living in a bus engine, combined with some of her other idiosyncrasies, makes me think that she lost her mother early.)
+ Callice would also like the sun turned off.
+ strawberryjulia, I was just kind of idly wondering if there is, to your knowledge, any Maori-language children's TV programming. I don't watch TV, but I might make an exception for that.
+ I was trying to grind some coffee earlier today and accidentally spilled some of my coffee beans on the floor. The only good thing about this is that our kitchen smelled like coffee for about five minutes, until I swept it up.
+ I seem to have given the lolmom a summer reading program. We were at the bookstore last night and she said something about wanting to read The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett), which I have, so I lent it to her, along with The $64 Tomato (William Alexander), which I thought she might like. I've stacked a bunch of other stuff I have that she might like.

I wrote several paragraphs' worth of unalloyed whining, apparently with the intent of letting everyone on my flist see them. On looking at them in the cold light of day, I've decided to just say that the post-unemployment depression has kicked in and leave it at that.

In more constructive news, I've decided to do the 101 tasks in 1001 days thing, starting on my birthday (thus giving us an end date in late March of 2011). I'm debating whether to make my list public (even in the narrow LJ-friends-only sense), since it is kind of personal and there are some things on there that I don't want to really go into a lot of detail about. (I guess I could always post the bulk of it and just censor the parts that are too personal for discussion, thus allowing you to engage in lurid flights of fancy and pretend they're worse than they really are. augustuscaesar will probably figure most of them out anyway, being The Uncanny Tara.)

I don't know what kind of shot I have at actually doing the 101 things in question, especially since I'm still stalled on the last couple, but I figure it's worth a shot. It'll be a good experiment in self-control and discipline...

...or possibly in murderous rage and self-loathing. THE SUSPENSE WILL KILL SOMEONE YOU!