daily walk: all the blooms

debrace day!

My mouth and bite are still wonkified but good gravy, my jaw is less angry and the floss no longer gets stuck, and I am not biting my cheek anymore, and the snaggleteeth have been unsnaggled. Not too shabby for a dentist directed orthodontic adventure! She was and is amazing, and stuck with my wonky mouth. It hurt like hell but it was totally worth the two years of agony. Here's day one with braces if ya want to see the magic.

Remember when I was going to get the jaw surgery and all that but didn't because we weren't sure insurance was going to cover it, and then no orthodontist would touch me without the surgery? My dentist specializes in odd mouths. She loves the challenge and wholeheartedly believes the shape of our bite and tongue placement effects our breathing. She took impressions of the wonk and with my permission presented it to an entire seminar audience of over three hundred dentists who were looking to use the Six Month Smile program. They looked at my case and helped her come up with a plan and she did it! It took two years, ahem, but she did it! There were tears, and lasers, and deep breath coaching, and we did it! Sure, I have to wear a retainer for the rest of eternity but it was worth it.  She says she will never take on another mouth like mine, but I am so grateful she did! 

***edited to add how happy I am that I got in just under the wire before dental offices closed due to the pandemic. 

another neighborhood walk aka no dinosaurs allowed

 

meet joe

 

Joe is a neighborhood cat that has been around this one cluster of homes for a few years now. He used to have a buddy but I think that kitty has since passed. I always thought he was a stray, but a woman was out in the yard of one of the houses where we walk by and she mentioned that his name is Joe. 

I asked if Joe was her cat, and she said he chose her so she guesses so. He's a super friendly CHONKY thing and will come running down the sidewalk announcing himself to you. He's al about the pets and love to have his belly rubbed and does that cute thing with the front paws that make it look like he is dancing. 

I'm so happy Joe is around still. Whenever I need a little kitty love, he is the purrrfect (snort) remedy. It helps that I have to walk a few blocks over to get some action. Yay for neighborhood cats! 

time for a neighborhood walk

 

The mister and I are going to try to take at least one neighborhood walk a day. he's now working from home as am I. My assignment for myself is to take at least four photos a walk. Here are my first four!  How cute is that little free library? 

and so it begins

 

Well this has been a weird week. We got the call to shelter in place and the school I work at has closed the classrooms. We're all scrambling to figure out what the next step is and I'm super happy we made it to the library before the call came it. I had a written list and ran around looking for anything I could find at our branch. Seven books in twenty minutes ain't half bad. Only two of the titles were not on my list. Score! 

I placed an order for some puzzles and until then we have this classic farm house puzzle. I remember when I was a kid, we had two or three jigsaw puzzles on the top shelf of the closet in our den that we never used a gathering room. It had a desk in it and my mom's old underwood typewriter, and there was a sewing table and two enormous cabinets full of fabric. Later it became a storage unit for anything and everything, but those first few years we lived there, I remember sneaking into the closet to see what I could discover and there were these two puzzles. One was a farm scene, the other Big Ben, of course. We never put the puzzles together, and I think I just liked to put m hands in the pieces to feel how they felt. 

Stay safe everyone! Wash your hands! What song do you sing for your twenty second wash? At school I taught the children to wash together while we sing the alphabet song all the way to the end. Suds fly everywhere! It's fun! So now, of course, I still sing the abc song in my head. I'm gonna need to find a new one.