Sebastian: Do you know which country is the worst one for a cat with a dental problem?

Me: No, what? 

Sebastian: Japan. Because there's only one cat dentist in the whole country. 

Me: So what do they do for cats with bad dental problems? Chop them in half with a catana? 

I want to remember this, because it's important. I wish I'd learned this as a child.

Get something accomplished every day.

Two days ago I got a lot done. I went to bed feeling good.

Yesterday I got basically NOTHING done. I spent the evening feeling sour and depressed, and felt pretty lousy the next day (today).

Today I got a couple of small things done: I made refrigerator cake (Sebastian's never had it, so I had him help me), and made cranberry-orange relish for Thanksgiving tomorrow. And I feel pretty good.

I let Sebastian eat one of the wafers with whipped cream, knowing that he'll be surprised as hell tomorrow night when he has the refrigerator cake; I remember myself how shocked I was at how soft and delicious the chocolate wafers became after sitting in the whipped cream overnight!

We whipped the cream ourselves, incidentally, using heavy cream we bought from Wright's Dairy. It was delicious.

As for the cranberry-orange relish, it took me less than twenty minutes to make. I feel good about that. It's nothing permanent, but at least I got it done.

I also started putting books on the new bookcase. It looks great, and it's incredibly stable.

But I really need to remember - and to teach Sebastian - to get something meaningful accomplished every day.

Today was a good day. I finished applying the second coat of stain to the pieces of the new bookshelf I'm building; that's all the staining that needed to be done. It's not a professional job, of course, but it looks fine. I'll let the pieces dry for a few days, maybe a week, and then put the whole thing together. It'll be great to be able to alphabetize and shelve all our movies!

I'll work on more shelves soon, if possible. I've heard that the price of wood has gone way up, but we'll see.

I also barbecued, and the burgers and hot dogs came out great. My technique has continued to improve. The burgers are smaller now (intentionally), but tender and juicy. Tonight I had Sebastian help by making the fries and some onion rings. I need to get him moving on learning to drive.

All in all I'm feeling good. Hopeful. For the first time in a long while.

I was kind of dragging this morning, so I ran out and got a cup of half-caf from DD to wake myself up. I normally drink decaf, so the half-caf really charged me up. I got a lot done.

One of the tasks that's been on my to-do list for months now is to get the necessary documents for Sebastian to get his Real ID and learner's permit. The RMV requires two forms of proof of address, plus a birth certificate. He didn't have most of the acceptable documentation, so we went with a bank statement with his address on it and a letter from his college stating that he's a student, also with his address on it. I'd asked him to get those for me two months ago.

He kept telling me that he'd requested the letter from his college, but was getting the runaround. He even talked to his advisor, with (he said) no luck. He also told me he couldn't find his bank statements; I told him he could download them online, but he hadn't set up his online account yet.

So today I called his college. Dialed the main line. Explained what I needed to the very nice woman who answered, and she gave me the email address to write to and the name of the document that we had to request. I forwarded that information to Sebastian and told him that I needed him to take care of that right away. I had the letter via email within three hours.

I also told him to set up his online access to his account and get me the bank statement. He did, but a new one came in the mail today; I scanned that. Made a copy of his birth certificate, too. So after two months of waiting, I was able to get ALL the necessary documentation in one day.

How do you teach your teenager to take initiative?

 Actually, the year end in review.

Christmas went well, even though some of the parents I ordered still haven't arrived. Sebastian remarked that it had been a good Christmas, which made me happy.

I had a crown break off an hour before midnight on New Year's Eve; just over three and a half hours ago, now. I consider it a very positive sign that I haven't freaked out, and I haven't needed to take any Ativan. I haven't taken any Ativan for a month or so, now.

I'm trying to decide if I should change dentists. That crown was only a year old. And the stump it was glued to broke off as well; I think that but only means I'll need an implant, but also that the crown was applied incorrectly as well.

That dental practice seems sketchy to me. That's where the prison dentist tortured me in the chair for about eight hours and did a lot of damage. He's gone, but I don't trust them any more. They're a corporate chain in a strip mall. Can anyone recommend a good dentist in the area?

I haven't made a list of the books I've read to Sebastian in a long time.

Here's what we've read that I remember:

• Mister Penny by Marie Hall Ets
• The Three Little Horses by Piet Wurm (series)
• Otto Goes To Sea
• The Chronicles of Prydain
• The Hobbit
• Doctor Dolittle (pretty much the whole series - the originals, not the censored versions)
• The Narnia books
• The Phantom Tollbooth
• The Teddy Bear Habit
• The Great Brain series
• The Portmanteau Book
• D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths
• Alice In Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass
• The Wizard of Oz
• How to Eat Fried Worms
• The Runaway Robot
• Lost Race of Mars
• Mister Penny (and the sequels)
• The Adventures of Phunsi
• The Lord of the Rings
• All of the Ethshar books of Lawrence Watt-Evans, as well as his Lords of Dus and Obsidian Chronicles series
• Rudyard Kipling's Kim
• I Claudius
• All of the Heinlein juveniles except rocket ship Galileo because it sucks
• The Catcher In the Rye
• A Confederacy of Dunces
• Make Way For Ducklings
• The Twenty-One Balloons
• The Henry Price books
• The Mad Scientists Club books
• A lot of the Three Investigators series
• The Door Into Summer
• Starship Troopers
• Black and Blue Magic
• Several of the Black Stallion books

...and that's all I can think of for now - but there were definitely more. And I've started reading him Jhereg. We're on chapter 5 tonight.

 I had some fun cooking this evening. A few weeks ago I picked up a cast iron skillet. I have never owned a cast iron pan before, but it was cheap and I was concerned that my Teflon-coated frying pan was starting to degrade.

I have been looking up a lot of videos about seasoning cast iron. They all seem to disagree with each other, which is pretty annoying. But I have been trying to season the pan, and it does seem to be getting better - food is sticking to it less and less. I have mostly been using it to make smashburgers for me and Sebastian. He likes them very much.

Tonight, though, I decided to try to brown ground beef in it. I was very worried that the meat might stick, but to my delight the pan worked great - much better than the Teflon pan. The meat crumbled much more easily, and browned more evenly. I even think it tastes better.

Anyway, I used it to make some spaghetti sauce. I I tried a variation on the sauce this time, too. I heated a little olive oil in the pot, and put in some garlic, basil, and ground black pepper (the last two being new items in my ad hoc recipe). Added some crushed tomatoes and some whole ones, and used a hand blender to puree the tomatoes - Sebastian doesn't like big chunks in the sauce. A little kosher salt was the final addition, and then I simmered it uncovered for about an hour.

It came out great. Sebastian said it was "awesome", and he had never said that about my sauce before. I'm very pleased!

Sebastian has been talking about watching the new Lost In Space on Netflix lately. I told him he'd have to see some episodes of the old Lost In Space first - specifically, "A Visit to Hades" and "The Great Vegetable Rebellion" (and possibly also "The Girl From the Green Dimension"). It was, I suspect, a revelation for him. It was SO cheesy! And Jonathan Harris is such a ham!

I was delighted to discover that "A Visit to Hades" included a scene that has been stuck in my head for over 30 years now: Dr. Smith cutting the center out of Penny's birthday cake, and then shoving the sides together and re-frosting the cake to create a smaller football-shaped cake.

I think Sebastian wants to watch more of those old episodes. And he says he doesn't think he's going to watch the new ones.

[I'm experimenting with copying a post from Google Plus to Dreamwidth/LiveJournal. Pasting the text and photo from G+ into the Dreamwidth Rich Text editor seems to work, although I had to get the public link for the photo. For some reason the LJ-to-Facebook connection doesn't seem to be working.]

My dad came over today. We've been having a couple of electrical problems, and he was trained in electronics by the army. Plus he's handy, which I, unfortunately, am not. Or not very.

The first problem was the ceiling light in the den. It kept flickering and making buzzing noises. He took things apart and figured out that the problem was that the contact in the base of the socket was depressed; it wasn't making proper contact. He pried it up, and now the light works perfectly. I'll have to look into getting a shade for it.

The second problem was the ceiling fan in Sebastian's room, which is next to the den. The light tended to go on and off randomly, and the ceiling fan rarely worked; instead, it hummed and made a burning electrical smell.

So we took it down. Dad examined and tested the wiring, and it seemed fine. But the motor was burned out on the ceiling fan. We went over to Lowe's. Teri and I wanted to get a fan much like the one he'd had, but Sebastian insisted on a short-bladed and admittedly cooler-looking fan, an allen+roth. The salesman said the fan would be virtually imperceptible, but eventually we gave in.

When we got home and opened the box, we got worried. It was complicated; the estimated assembly time was two hours! Dad and I spent a lot of time trying to figure it out. I don't know about Dad, but I'm pretty sure that my shoulders will ache for days! And toward the end we were working in darkness, since the circuit breaker for that lamp also covers the whole room.

But we got it put together and mounted. Dad did the wiring, which is good because wiring makes me nervous. It was great when the light went on! And when we turned on the fan, go figure: the breeze was far stronger than our old fan's had been. It blew papers right off Sebastian's desk.

It feels good to get something like that done!

We're still in the waiting room. Tired, hungry, and bored. The pediatrician thought it might be appendicitis and sent us here. Sebastian threw up about 90 minutes ago and feels much better...but we can't leave.

AND as I was writing this, they moved us into a room.