Starting to Relax

 I'm finally starting to unclench a little.

Last post, last Monday, I said that RedBug had escaped from his crate and dived under the bed.  There he stayed.  He seemed content there, and wasn't on meds any more, so I saw no reason to drag him out to lock him up again.  I moved a litter box to beside the bed, and could slide his food and water to him.  If I lay down and reached under the bed he would stretch and purr and butt my hand.  I spent many hours sitting on the floor by the bed keeping him company - often reaching under for some love, one time falling asleep on the floor with my arm under the bed, he asleep with his head in my hand.

So that's how it went from the Saturday where he escaped to this past Thursday, when we hit a turning point.  I finally tended to myself and got that molar pulled.  It was kind of rough - it didn't want to come out and he had to put some muscle into it (and, once again, it would have been nice to have someone to drive me home and maybe bring me soup, sigh).  I did a quick reach under the bed to say hello, but then I really needed to lie down - on the bed and not on the floor.  After awhile he crawled out from under, gave me a look that said "What the hell, Mom?" and then jumped up to join me!  He now spends most of his time sleeping on the bed, and sleeping at night cuddled up next to me.  That makes it so much easier for me to check on him during the night.  Instead of crawling under the bed at 3:00 a.m., I just drift a hand down to ruffle his fur.

That was Thursday.  Today is Sunday.  My jaw still aches.  This surprises me; the last time I had a tooth pulled I don't remember it hurting like this.  But there are some differences, even though they were both molars.  This one is the last one in back, so it was in there pretty well.  It's been acting up for the last year, so the gums have been a little swollen and tender for awhile.  But I think the main thing is the circumstance.  The last one I had also been fighting for awhile.  There wasn't quite enough tooth to be able to hang onto the crown, which would tend to pop off with annoying regularity.  It came off while we were preparing to go to Gainesville, and I told my dentist to go ahead and pull the damned thing.  He didn't really want to - but I definitely didn't want to be calling around in a strange town trying to find a dentist to glue it on if/when it came off again, when I needed to be focusing on Bob.  At that point we were getting things ready to go, so whether or not my jaw hurt was simply something I didn't notice.

But I feel like I'm waking up.  I've gotten a lot of things done this weekend that I had let slide (like cleaning and replanting my aerogarden, cleaning out Bug's crate and putting it away, and doing some real cooking and cleaning).  Today I really thought about starting to deal with that big tree that came down months ago.  But I had to admit that even doing some lifting (I had a 40-pound bag of kitty litter in the car that had to be offloaded into a couple of buckets to bring into the house) made my jaw throb, and as taking apart and burning that tree is going to be a heavy job I'll let it wait another week.

But all in all, tentatively I'm starting to feel that maybe I can relax.  I've been having problems with that bridge for a year now; the lump on Bug's leg showed up three months ago.  Both those problems have been resolved.  He can get on and off the bed with no problem, and doesn't seem to have any discomfort at all.  My jaw will settle down soon.  Eventually I'll likely decide that I hate the gap there (I already do- the back two molars are missing) and might get at least one implant, but in the words of Scarlett O'Hara - I won't think about that today.  I need to heal for a couple of months anyway.

So - until the other shoe drops, things are going OK at the moment.