Liquid Diet

Ah, nothing says it's the holiday season like applesauce, pudding, yogurt, and puréed soup...

Yesterday, around 1:30pm, I became a tiny bit less wise. My lower right wisdom tooth (tooth #32, the last one on a jaw chart) was removed from my head by Dr. John S. McIntyre, DMD (by the way, if you're in need of an oral surgeon, I highly recommend this guy - he's at One Hanson Place, in the old Brooklyn clocktower bank building, which, like everything else, is currently being converted into luxury condos).

All I have left of my wisdom now is #17, the lower left one...it's still hiding out inside my gums. I hope it stays there a good while, as I'm sure I'll need to remove it once it starts to surface.
According to an online chart I found, human third molars (wisdom teeth) generally "erupt" between the ages of 17-21. My first wisdom teeth (the ones on top) did not begun to erupt (nice choice of words) until I was almost 27. I have always had retarded teeth - it's true, I didn't lose all my baby teeth until I was 14 1/2. My sophomore year high school picture features a small gap in the upper right side of my smile, where I was waiting for the "grown up" tooth to make its way into my face.

I opted not to be put under during the surgery yesterday (instead taking three long jabs of a needle into my gumline, for local anesthesia)...I'd be interested to know what it feels like to be put to sleep, but not for the additional $350 fee. Anyway, if I'd been asleep, I would have missed the soundtrack to my extraction. Dr. McIntyre cranked the stereo for me while he went to work, and, I kid you not, the first track to come on was "Don't Fear the Reaper." Awesome.

So, yesterday afternoon and evening was a bit painful...well, a lot painful, even with a couple prescription-strength Aleve AND a couple vicodin swimming through me. I wonder what it would have felt like with no pain medicine at all.

Today, I am sore but most of all hungry. Yesterday, eating involved carefully slipping liquid foods into the opposite side of my mouth, avoiding the hourly-changed gauze covering the bloody hole behind my teeth. I look forward to chewing, carefully, again sometime soon.

I think I have become a New Yorker.

1) I have lived in Brooklyn for 8 1/2 years.

2) Over the last year, I have really started to enjoy Woody Allen movies.

3) Most of my friends are in therapy.

4) Seeing tourists treat my city like an amusement park disgusts me.

5) I’ve started to feel superior to people who don’t live here.

6) I can see the NYC MTA subway map with my eyes closed.

7) I am friendly but don’t like it when people waste my time.

8) I can’t imagine my life without Brian Lehrer.

9) I remember how it was before “everything started changing” (the southeast corner of 2nd Ave and 10th St was most certainly not always a Chase bank, and the Village Voice didn’t always suck).

10) I watched the towers fall from my rooftop.

11) I am homesick when I’m not here.

A (sorta) tasty menu option for the lazy and cheap

In my quest to spread my dollars ever further, I have been pondering easy ways to make cheap, tasty-enough entrees that I can stretch (preferably) into several meals.

I am a person who can maybe sometimes really enjoy cooking, but who almost always has a zillion other things that I need or want to do...therefore, I love time-effective meal preparation.

Strolling through the grocery store recently, I came up with the following super-easy yet decently-tasty meal scheme:
-half a box of bow-tie pasta
-two cans of chunk white albacore tuna packed in water
-one can of "Mexican" corn (I dunno, that's what it says on the Green Giant package...it's basically corn with some chopped green and red peppers, and extra sodium)
-one can of dark red kidney beans (preferably Goya, cause Goya is good and easy to locate nearly anywhere)

Cook, drain, and rinse all of the above that needs cooked (pasta), drained (tuna and corn), and rinsed (beans), and toss that shit together...yum, a semi-tasty meal with a respectable amount of protein.
If you've a smallish belly like me, you can refrigerate this dish and spread it out to 4 meals (lunch or dinner)!

Bon Appetit! And happy barely-depleted wallet!

Work

There are soooo many things I've been wanting to write about recently, but I've kinda been living like a robot in auto-mode, trying to get through the days, and I've had such little energy to write.

Let me explain...

I am so very broke right now. The stars converged in such a way this Fall as to bless me with a multitude of debts. The list of costly events in my life includes: moving (and all that entails - broker's fee, security deposit, man with van costs, setting up the new pad, etc...), dental work (oh, will the work -and costs- on my poor, poor crown never end?), computer dying (new Mac laptops ain't cheap), etc, etc, wah wah wah poor me.

Fortunately(?), my past lives include the livelihood that is bartending...I happily left the bar life two years ago, vowing never to return...but, let's face it, desperate times call for desperate measures, and there's no other way I can think of (that I'd actually do at this point) to turn a few quick bucks. Mmm, cold, hard, beer-soaked cash.

So I called up my old bar boss and asked to be put on the list for fill-in work. I've already worked two shifts - two Sunday nights in a row. Sundays are good, 'cause they're six-hour shifts (8pm-2am) instead of eight-hour shifts (8pm-4am), and they're not super-busy (meaning it's easier for now-older me to get back into the bartending swing of things).

All in all, I consider myself lucky to have this bartending option for some extra dough...but, man, I am so beat. See, I work full days Friday through Tuesday at my retail job, which means my schedule the past two weeks has included the following:
1) Sunday, work at store in Manhattan from 11:30am-7:15pm
2) go straight to bar in Brooklyn to work 7:45pm-2:15am
3) get a car service home (goodbye to $20 of the cash I just earned!)
4) get up Monday morning to work at store in Manhattan from 11am-7:15pm
5) go home, crash in the bath Monday night, make sure I get up in the morning to work at the store again all day on Tuesday

The above scenario is my explanation to myself for not writing as much as I'd like these past couple weeks. Yes, there are other days in the week, but, I have a life, too, sometimes (and I've been filling in Thursdays at the store, too).

Wah wah wah. I am hoping for a big tax refund, my light at the end of the too-much-debt, too-much-work tunnel.

Home

When can one officially call oneself a New Yorker?

I felt so content tonight as I made my way home to my apartment.
I love coming home to my apartment.
I love coming home to my cat (she is really due for some new cat toys!).

I was just thinking, after an awesome evening out, how happy I am and how lucky I feel to live where I do.
I have been a Brooklyn resident since August 1999...can I check New Yorker as my official status yet? It certainly feels that way.

I caught a little bit of the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC (our local NPR affiliate) this morning before work, and I learned in one of his segments that I now live in the most ethnically diverse zip code of New York City. My heart swelled with neighborhood pride...neighborhood pride is a big thing in New York, I have learned over the years...I have felt New York neighborhood pride many times myself, in a few different places that I have called home.

I like it here. I might even stick around for another 8+ years.