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It has been almost a week since the extraction of my lower wisdom teeth; if you were to ask me beforehand if I would still be taking pain medication, I would have laughed at you and given you a nougy (not only am I a poor speller in formal English, my lack of skill spills over into the colloquial.) For some reason my right tooth did not want to go quietly into the night.
Let me back up; the sleepy-time medicine did not work for me nor did the laughing gas–I am sure I could still do long division and differential equations if I had a graphing calculator. Luckily the novacain worked. The left tooth was no problem, but the right tooth put up a fight; in an act of selfishness, the tooth somehow nicked my artery and made me bleed…real bad. Did I mention it was about 5:45 pm at this point? The normal time for dentists and oral surgeons to go home. After some phone calls, my dentist got me into an oral surgeon. Sara drove me to Mill Creek–from Everett–to have an oral surgeon’s assistant pull all the gauze out of my mouth and cause it to fill with blood–hmm, this man was sent because the dentist could not stop the bleeding, maybe some care would be part of the protocol. After vacuuming blood from my mouth, packing the hole with bone wax, and sewing it shut the oral surgeon insisted that I go the the ER to make sure I did not lose too much blood (ETA is about 8:00 pm.)
By the time we arrived at the ER, I felt like I needed some pain medication. I have a fairly high tolerance for pain–partly because I hate pain medication–but I knew after all of the finagling that happened in my jaw that I needed some medicine. On arrival my pain level was at a 2. By 10:40 pm when the nurse finally gave me two Percocet my pain level rose to about a 7.
Had I known that I would be forced into the black hole of medical care, I would have had them put me out to take out my wisdom teeth. Many people learn something after such a traumatic experience, the only thing that I learned: Percocet does not constipate you like Vicodin.
Bradie and Danielle were appalled when they found out Alex had never used a crayon; as you can see by the look on their faces, they are thinking, “poor child.”
After several hours of practice, Alex mastered crayons and drew a duck. To celebrate they all posed for a picture.
Next lesson: finger paints.
If you have not noticed my blogging has slowed down a bit (your RSS readers may have given up on me already.) Should anyone wonder, a correlation can be drawn between my return to work and the decline of my writing; but as we all learned in our science classes, correlation does not mean causation. Making such a declaration of logic, at face value, seems, well, logical; but in my mind, the fellow who coined this correlation and causation dictum must have been thinking: hmm, loophole, loophole…ah yes, I have it.” I suppose that any student who uses this correctly as an excuse should get a pony.
Although work has reduced my writing, it has not stopped my ability to think about writing. About two weeks ago my step mom Peggy called me at work to tell me that she was delivering my dad’s ashes to the submarine where he would be put out to sea. Out of Providence, I road the Sounder into Edmonds and road my bike up Olympic View Drive to work that day.
Part way up Olympic View Drive, the trees clear and a sweeping view of the Sound opened up on my port side; in spite of the chill in the air, the soreness in my legs, and the hill ahead, I felt peace. It was not until after hanging up with Peggy that I realized why I had that moment of peace.
Post Script Here is a picture of Bradie chowing down on her Birthday cupcake. PPS Click for a larger picture.
As I continue my economic indoctrination education I have found that there are now commandments for economic thinking. Economists only need 8–I think it is because any more would be to tiring.
- There is no free lunch
- Economic answers to every question begins with “it depends”
- People respond to incentives
- On average people act in predictable ways
- All economic theory can be boiled down to two curves that cross or you should be able to explain it to the average person
- Where the curves cross is important
- People everywhere are the same; it is the constraints or incentives that differ
- Ask “why might the initial received wisdom be wrong?”
I did not have the courage to ask what happened if you did not follow the commandments; I was too busy eating cookies and being predictable. Oh well.
While they tend to sugar coat economic thinking and try to divorce moral reasoning from economic reasoning, this conference is very good. For the first part of the day the teachers observe the professors teach the kids and run simulations. It is not often that teachers get to watch teaching, good stuff.
Okay I am going to not eat a free lunch. Peace out.
