Christmas endgame

The boxes we shipped from Boston and the one Rob's mom shipped for us from Louisville all arrived last night. We have a pretty picture! We have many books! I have puzzles! The kitties have catnip! I have Jax!

My mother always buys a pile of Jax cheesecurls for me when I'm going to be there. Occasionally she'll pack some up and ship them, a surprisingly expensive endeavor. (Favorite story along these lines: she hired a moving company to send me my Grandma's old ceder chest. When it arrived -- via FedEx, and no I couldn't have made that up if I tried -- I opened it and found it was completely full of bags of Jax.)

This time, my mother ate more cheesecurls than I did when I was back there. (She eats incessantly. I was kind of surprised. Has she always done that, and I never noticed?) I think together we went through three bags of 'em. I shipped the other four. Those four are now awaiting me in my kitchen. Mmmmm, Jax. :-)

The kitties were just as happy that this shipment arrived. They went absolutely nuts over the catnip mice. Duchess sniffed and looked confused over and over and over again, Little Girl started rubbing her face all over anything in range, and jackiecat went into Seek And Destroy mode. Don't tell her I said so, but she's hilarious in Seek And Destroy mode. Duchess is pretty funny in Confused mode too, but I'm not supposed to think it's funny because she really is a bit dim.

Now all we have to do is put everything away, and Christmas 2005 will be done.

Mail from India

My parents sent me e-mail from India last night. (Puttaparthi, I think.) Way cool that they found access while traveling! My mother says it's hot there. I'm shocked. :-)

My dad is still running two miles every day. Yay for him. I'm impressed.

(Google says I spelled Puttaparthi correctly. Wow. First try.)

Dentist

Went for my regular cleaning this morning. The substitute dentist says I have a cavity. It abuts my one and only filling, put in ages ago for a spot that "wasn't really a cavity but would probably become one some day and we could just do this now" sort of thing. Apparently that spot got worse. Blech.

According to my dentist I have deep crevasses in the mashing surfaces of those rear molars. It's probably amazing that I haven't had far worse cavities in there already. In fact, I know I've been very VERY lucky when it comes to teeth. (Except for size and placement, that is.) In my entire life I've only had that one proto-cavity. (And eight teeth pulled for lack of room, and some gum tissue dug out because I was chewing on it.)

I have an appointment to go have it drilled. They wanted to do it soon, I wanted to skip the time my guest is here. Hopefully January 30 will be fine.

I insisted on my regular dentist. He was willing to do the proto-cavity filling without any anaesthetic. I HATE NEEDLES! Now y'all know how much I hate them! The drilling was probably deeper than you'd think because it was in the bottom of one of those deep crevasses, but I'm still very glad the thing hadn't opened out into a real cavity before he caught it. A cavity that starts well inside the tooth to begin with wouldn't be any fun.

Maybe he'll let me go through this one with no needle, too. I hope I hope I hope. Everyone please beam some "let her do it!" energy at Dr. Frost of Palo Alto on January 30. :-)