week's muse

It's been a nice week, apart from Tuesday, and just this morning I had my first taste of school since - well, it kind of feels like it's been ages since school. In fact, I hadn't even been aware there would be school today, and I probably wouldn't even have shown up had I not been fortunate enough to receive one of those automated telephone calls from the school itself just the other night reminding students and parents. Bless those automated telephone calls.

Tuesday was a whirlwind of events. It began with an early rising and some hurried preparation for my job shadow at the orthodontist's, and from eight-thirty to noon I was immersed in the world of teeth and dentistry. It was a highly fulfilling experience and I learned much more than I'd expected to, but it left me brimming with anticipation for when I'll be able to step foot inside a dental office and carry out the tasks that were simply being demonstrated and described to me on Tuesday. I've decided that I find the environment of a dental office to be appealing and relaxing and I appreciate the slightly-upwards-of-steady, but well-maintained, pace of work.
Buoyed by the success that was my job shadow that morning, I was in relatively good spirits when mother bird offered to buy me some treats from Cobs Bread for lunch. I indulged in this delicious little pizza roll and a pretty cranberry custard danish that I can only dream of ever possessing the skills to replicate. We stopped by Sobeys on our way home and it was there, somewhere between where we parked the van and the sliding doors of the store, that one part of my retainer dropped from my coat pocket and fell onto the snowy road.

Why, you wonder, was my retainer in my coat pocket? There can only be one answer, and though not an answer that places me in a particularly favourable light, I will share it: carelessness. I am always so careless! I stuff my retainer in the strangest of places whenever I am at a loss of secure containers or pockets in which to store it; oftentimes I can make do with a zipped pouch in my handbag, and the majority of the time, when I can remember to be good about it, I do bring along the plastic little retainer case, but I hadn't anticipated we would be buying treats from Cobs and so I hadn't foreseen any need to remove my retainer to eat.


So, fast-forwarding through all this babbling about my retainer, I'll skip to the part where mother bird threw a fit and was in a storm about this, because I've lost both parts of my retainer before, and might I mention that a retainer is not a pacifier. If it's not worn, my teeth, which have been carefully arranged into beautiful, straight rows from the costly labour of headgear and braces, will shift and move and resemble the crooked parked cars of a market lot in the slums. (Heaven forbid!) Retainers come upwards of a hundred-twenty dollars apiece, and neither my mother or father was very pleased to pay it forward the first time, so I can understand their frenzy about this time.


Luckily for all of us, but mostly for me, when I returned to the orthodontist's this morning to have the impressions of my teeth redone for a new retainer, I brought donuts from Tim Horton's and a thank-you card, for allowing me the opportunity to spend a morning in their offices as a bothersome little shadow, and the lovely receptionists Julie and Renee (who I've gotten to know quite well by now) asked the Dr. whether or not I could go free-of-charge on this retainer.
He agreed!




This has been a really long post (so far) about nothing but my retainer, so moving onto today's events. I've been stuck with an incredibly challenging teacher this semester, a teacher who is known for pushing his students to great heights and lengths and whatnot, but personally I can't thrive under this sort of pressure. I prefer to be in an environment that places as less stress on me as possible, one that allows me to manage my own time and assignments, set my own pace, learn my own way. I've already campaigned my counsellor for some rearrangements in my timetable, and frankly it's all I can think about since I've left her office. I'm itching to e-mail her right now but all I can think to do would be to ramble on about how much I need to have things the way I want!

Something that I've been looking forward to is my birthday. My birthday happens to be on Valentine's Day, somewhere around nine in the a.m. according to mother bird's memory, and it's a family tradition that there is no birthday party. I can't remember the last time I threw a birthday party - maybe when I was twelve, or thirteen? For a few years now, it's just been a night at home with a cake, and presents I could count on the fingers of one hand, but I have no complaints. I love to love the little loves in life and I love that all the birds around me love me. That's really all I could ask for. Recently it's been a recurring theme in our birdhouse, though, to treat the bird-of-honour out to a dinner on the town for the occasion.



I still have some recipes that I'd like to post on the blog when I can find the time to, and although all the time that had been spent mourning my late retainer, celebrating my new one, grieving about school and anticipating my upcoming birthday in this post could have been exchanged for posting a recipe, I feel like I really had to get all of this nonsense off of my mind in this week's muse. Sometimes you just need an outlet, and when you're too lazy for old-school journalling, too creatively exhausted for music, too sleepy for exercise and too busy for artsy projects, blogging's the only way to go.


I bought bite-sized dried prunes, natur-a organic soy milkboxes, and laughing cow light swiss cheese wedges from Superstore this afternoon. I've been scouring produce departments for fresh prunes, but it seems like they're nowhere to be found in stores. Are they simply out of season, or are they only available at fresh-fruit vendors, like farmer's markets?
Nevertheless, I'm pretty thrilled about these purchases. Now my lunches will be coordinated and pretty.


Mother bird is heating some lasagna in the toaster-oven while she rambles about nothings to her sister-in-law over the telephone. Not only does her voice occasionally distort my thought processes, the aroma of hot cheese, pasta and meat sauce wafting throughout the house is seriously distracting.

She makes the best lasagna, hands-down. To drive this point home, I think I'm going to neglect the momentum videos my teacher asked me to watch and plant my butt on a kitchen chair just to wait for the oven timer to ring.