i accomplished less than i wanted to over my leave, but it was good time off and away. i tried to not pressure myself to do anything and succeeded. i got started on two out of the three things i wanted to do over leave, but got much less cleaned up at my mom's than i wanted to. actually, i felt like i pretty much left the house the way it was when i first got there.

i think the time with my sister was good. talking about my mom, seeing my dad, talking about my dad with my sister. all those things were good. i was starting to feel all shut up about my mom, not really talking about her and feeling like i needed to, but not sure with who or how, and feeling really sad and hurt and bottling it all up. my leave came just in time. i got to see my sister just in time for me not to get all crazy. and now i feel ok. i still miss my mom. i still think about her a lot, i still cry whenever i think about the accident, but i think about the accident less and less frequently.

my father's really sort of come out of his shell lately. he called me the other day just to chat. my father has never done that in my entire life. i was touched. he talks more than he ever has. he's very open. and seeing this side of him, i think about my sister and i and how much she's like my mother and how much i'm like my father. i'm also my mother and jess is also very much my father, but there's tighter coupling the other way around. and i think it's interesting. i want my father to be happy. sometimes i think my mom's death opened up new things for all of us. and closed some other things down.

i had my wisdom teeth pulled almost two weeks ago friday. three of the extraction sites seem to be healing up fine and normally. the last one is a bitch and hurts like a motherfucker. saturday after the surgery i woke up fine. sunday and monday mornings i woke up in excruciating pain and it hasn't really stopped since and has only the tiniest bit gotten better. saturday i'd gotten off the vicodin and onto tylenol because i thought the vicodin would make me sleepy for the drive up north on sunday, but the tylenol (with it's doubled dosage of acetaminophen) made me sleepier than the vicodin did.

i had this foolish notion i would be fine after three days. and the literature the oral surgeon gave me implied i'd be onto solid food by day three. so i was eating sandwiches on day two. soft, little sandwiches, but solid food nonetheless. i think i started chewing too soon. and that bottom right tooth was apparently a bitch to pull out (i can't remember why though), and it's not just a little round hole like the others, it's a long gash and the gum is separated from my teeth by that gash. it has a lot more healing to do.

but the pain. i don't think i've ever had this much pain for this long in my entire life. as an experiment i went off the pain meds and denied myself tylenol or anything else of that ilk since monday (i got really ill after bay to breakers on sunday -- combo of not enough sleep or water, strong pain meds, and alcohol) and sometimes it hurts so bad i want to scratch the side of my face off. this afternoon i gave in and had some generic pain medication out of the medicine cabinet at work. i can understand now how animals gnaw away at themselves for a variety of reasons -- boredom, panic, pain. my dad's dog gnawed the skin and flesh off his leg recently (just before they put him to sleep due to old age and illness) because it hurt and he'd lost a lot of sensation in it. poor baby...i completely understand.