AbezAbez Is... 50% White, 50 % Pakistani, Muslim Hijab-wearing type female, Daughter of Momma, Sister of Owlie Wife of HF, Momma of Khalid, a special little boy with Autism, and Iman, a special little girl with especially big hair, Writer, Graphic Designer, Editor, Freelancer, Blogger, Inhaler of Chocolate
Right Brain Left Brain Islam poetry
Mortal Wounds BebeFiles Husbandfiles

 
My sister, De Owl

My Husband, who never updates!

Mona, who I don't visit enough

Hemlock, who I don't hug enough

Baji, the orginal robot monkey pirate

Prometheus, who buts brains to blog about Autism

Socrates, a blogger with Asperger's

Jo, a funnier Autism mom with a great blog

Autism Watch-  for logic-based information

ASAT- Assosciation for Science in Autism Treatments

Quack Watch- for current news and info on all sort of medical treatments

Expat Women Blog Directory

My Cousin- really, he's my cousin.  Wish he would update more.

 
 
 
 

Friday, August 15, 2008

If HF asks, tell him I was typing in my sleep...

HF is asleep, Khalid is asleep, Iman is asleep- why then am I awake? Because it's hard to eat chocolate cereal in your dreams, that's why.

So my bowl of chocolate cereal and I are here to share our continuing adventures in dental destiny. On Wednesday, I dutifully submitted to the dentist- a nice man who does horrible things to my mouth, and let him fight it out with my jaw for ownership of my last two wisdom teeth. It wasn't a fair fight. He had pliers and some sort of ice-pick. My teeth were unarmed. After about twenty minutes of wrangling, the teeth were out and my unhappy gums were packed with cotton.

That would have ended a painful but mundane day in dental history, were it not for the evil forces of TMJ. TMJ is a long a complicated term that, for me, means that in addition to popping and clicking at embarrassing times, my jaw is also vulnerable to being dislocated and locked open anytime I visit a dentist. So thanks to TMJ, I left the dentist with a misaligned mouth, but thanks to the anethesia, I had no idea until 11pm that night when I realized I couldn't close my teeth.

I called the dentist and he offered a simple solution-

Is your husband home?

Yes.

Tell him to place his thumbs on your molars and push your jaw open and down, when it clicks, push it back into place.

-blink blink-

Try that and let me know if it works. I'll be waiting for your call.

I headed for the bedroom, where HF was sitting in the rocking chair reading while Khalid, presumably falling asleep, was waving his feet from under a pile of pillows.

(Hey, have you ever wanted to dislocate my jaw? Now's your chance!)

HF blinked a few times when I told him the plan. He grinned nervously and said he'd give it a shot. We tried it a few times- HF with both thumbs in my mouth, trying to force my jaw open without hurting me and overall, succeeding in little more than causing my tongue to get dry.

(Don't worry, the worst you can do is dislocate my jaw, and that's what we're trying to do!)

It didn't work. HF is too nice, too gentle, and maybe even too squeamish. By then it was 11:30. I called the dentist back and arrangements were made to meet me back at his clinic. I made it there just after 1 am, and after much pushing and pulling of my jaw, the dentist succeeded in popping it somewhat back into place.

But not completely back into place- my teeth were set too far to the right, and the ones on the bottom were set exactly in line with the ones on top, when normally they are set just behind. Apparently, my jaw has spasmed, and due possibly to inflammation as well- it's stuck there. Still- even as I type this, my jaw is set down and to the right. My teeth only align if I manually push things back into place, and that too is painful.

So what now? Well, first we laugh and shake our head, but not too hard, because it's all stiff and sore. Then, we wait one more day and see if the swelling goes down. We're taking anti-inflammatory meds, and if that doesn't work, the dentist will prescribe a muscle relaxant. Me, I just wish I could chew again.

By Abez, the end.

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Wednesday, August 13, 2008

*hangs head, drags feet*

You know that feeling when you're a kid- when your mom calls you and you don't want to come, but you know you have to, so you hang your head and drag your feet and shuffle towards her mumbling 'Okay moooom.'

HF is on his way to pick me up right now. We're going to the dentist, where I will have my last two wisdom teeth removed.

HF told me to be ready in 15 min.

Okay mooooom.

Thursday, August 07, 2008

Wouldja like to take a sur-vay?

AssalamuAlaikum Every Mc Bodies who may still occasionally come to my blog. :) A friend of mine is compiling information on Muslim eating habits in Ramadan for an article, and needs help.

Can you please fill out this one-page survey?

JazakAllahuKheiran!

Up Next: RAMADAN IS COMING!! YAY!

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

The Husbandfiles: Moral Dental Support

HF: You're having your wisdom teeth removed on Wednesday, right?

Me: Yeah, the last two.

HF: So now you'll be as dumb as everyone else, hunh?

Me: Do you have any wisdom teeth?

HF: Lots of 'em.

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Sunday, August 03, 2008

Nap time, take two-

Khalid, who is laying under my desk and pulling on my toes as I type this, is overdue for his nap. He would have been asleep already, had it not been for his iron determination to be awake. Half an hour ago we did the whole nap thing- we had lunch and then went to the bedroom, where I told him to lay down and he started rolling around in bed and protesting.

Normally he protests for about ten minutes before he winds down and falls asleep, but today things went a little differently.

3:00- I lay Khalid down in the bed and then take position in the rocking chair. As per tradition, I pick up a book and start reading.

Khalid whines a bit and rolls around.

3:15- Khalid goes quiet. I assume he's asleep and continue reading. It's Going Solo, by Roald Dahl, and as I get to the part where Dahl describes the incidence of the cook's wife being carried away by a lion, I look up and realize that I can't see Khalid. I can, however, see a pile of pillows in Khalid's bed. Khalid doesn't have pillows in his bed. In order for him to be hiding under a pile of them, he must first have crawled out of his bed into mine, grabbed all three of them, and then carried them back, all without me noticing.

Also, pillows don't normally have feet.

I lift one of the pillows and see Khalid, grinning excitedly at me. I try not to laugh (which is one of the harder parts of parenting that those books never tell you about) and I take the pillows and put them back on my bed. Khalid protests and starts whining again.

I sit down on the bed, which is closer than the rocking chair, to prevent further such secretive escapes. I resume reading. The cook's wife is put down by the lion unharmed. She is wearing a red dress with white dots on it, and now she must wash it because there is lion saliva on it. Roald Dahl watches as the cook and his wife do a joyful dance on the immense brown plain and suddenly Khalid has gone quiet again. I look up from my book and see the top of Khalid's head and his wide, unsleepy eyes watching me from just over the top of the bed. Then he ducks down and they disappear.

A few seconds pass. Roald Dahl marvels at the strangeness of the situation- an old lion came out of the jungle, picked the cook's wife up in its mouth and was carrying her back, gently and unharmed, to the jungle. Dahl is paid five pounds to write his account for the newspaper. Other hunters write to the paper and offer theories on the strange incidence. Khalid's head comes up slowly again. I attempt to look stern.

I cave and burst out laughing. Khalid realizes that he's off the hook, and he jumps into my bed and we have a good laugh a roll-around.

So that was the end of round one. Round two will begin as son as soon as I finish typing this blog. It's 4:10 now, and Khalid is starting to rub his eyes and pull at his ears. I'm going to pick him up and put him in bed again. I wonder what happens to Roald Dahl next.

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Friday, August 01, 2008

Are we a superhero yet?

I would like to believe that my home is a warm and inviting place, but I would prefer to believe that has nothing to do with my resident population of spiders. Really. Big. Spiders.

To be fair, there's only been one so big I remember it in capital letters, but I digress- the Really Big Spider was just the big slow goon in the mafia of creepy, crafty, smaller spiders who are trying to muscle their way on to my turf. And they bite.

I would like to believe that the four spider bites on my arm are in no way connected to contact with actual live spiders, because I don't know if I could handle the realization that there were at least four spiders on my arm last night, or maybe one spider with impulse problems and four lapses of self control located between my wrist and my elbow- I don't know. I don't want to know. What I do want to know is- when do I get my super powers? I think I may have missed out on something here, because Spiderman only had to get bitten once, and I'm guessing that his one lil radioactive nibble didn't itch half as much as the four non-nuclear bright red dots on my arm.

If I'm going to have spiders crawling on me, I might as well have super powers.

*waits*

I'm not sure what Peter Parker had been up to when he was bitten, so I'm not sure what sort of radiation I should be trying to bask in. However, I do know that all it takes is some sort of energy field.

If the spiders need me, I'll be in the microwave.

 
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