I hit that

Hey!

Yesterday, I hit the jackpot!

(It's a spinning wheel with eight segments that I have been spinning almost once a day since November. Statistically, I should have hit it many times before now. But the wheel is fixed, so I didn't, until yesterday. Very exciting.)

Only Water Floss the Teeth You Want to Keep

The other day, I had some pretty major (well, pretty major for me, anyway) dental work. I will spare you the gory details, but suffice it to say there are any gory details. I'm OK now. Knock wood.

This was the fourth and last in this series of appointments, and by far the biggest deal. But the appointments have been over the course of a few months, so there's visible change in my mouth, in a positive way. Naturally, this has my friend who is also my dental assistant very excited.

She's a generous-of-spirit type anyway, as evidenced by her calling in to the dentist while we waited for my local anesthetic to kick in: "[bzzzzgrrrl] is one of the coolest people I know." The dentist looked at me, seemingly in disbelief, and I said, "To be fair, [assistant] hath a limited thothial thircle." (He and I then got into a big conversation about wines. About which I know nothing. Nonetheless, it went slightly better than our last wait-for-the-Novocaine conversation, regarding his theories on the JFK assassination.)

And a while later, when he was done with me and her part of the appointment was beginning, she showed me some Water Pik videos.

"You should do a Water Pik blog," she said.

I laughed appreciatively.

"You're probably the one person I know who is cool enough to do it," she said. "Here, I'll print out your before-and-after pictures. Look how good that looks."

It may be that she has a different idea of what "cool" means than a lot of people do.

Unplanned

Someone recently asked me how blogging fit into my daily life, and I responded with something like, "I WISH blogging fit into my daily life."

And you all know that's true, that for me blogging is mostly a way of staying in touch (though I love all my internet-only buddies here, too), and that I love staying in touch.

But also? I am just filled with gratitude for my life right now. Like, people ask how my weekend was, and I say, "busy," while rolling my eyes and almost out of breath, but the fact of the matter is, I choose my busy, because my life is filled to brimming with fun stuff and I don't want to miss out on any of it.

I've had this problem before; in college, I'd stay up late and get up early (sometimes), just because I didn't want to miss latenight conversations or shenanigans in the hallway of my dorm, and if I could get myself up in time, I didn't want to miss breakfast with a different group of amazing people.

For example, this weekend was the first in a long time that RI and I didn't have any plans — and we have a lot of heavily planned weekends coming up. In this unplanned weekend, I:

• Went to a lecture on "The Future of Truth and the Decline of America’s Moral Integrity"
• Visited with my parents and some old family friends
• Went yardsaling
• Hit the farmer's market
• Took a nap
• Started a new book (reading, not writing)
• Watched a documentary
• Had a date night out at our favorite Latin American restaurant
• Played a new game
• Set up a screen tent and a queen-sized airbed on the deck and fell asleep watching the fireflies (and woke up hearing birdsongs and the neighbor kid practicing violin)
• Went to church and heard my dad preach a really excellent sermon on the child refugees
• Took another nap
• Had a spontaneous ice cream double date with some friends
• Went to the supermarket
• Played with my niece and nephew
• Saw the very end of the World Cup final
• Read with my niece and nephew
• Had dinner with the family

I did not:

• Go to bed as early as I planned
• Get the laundry done
• Do a little writing for work
• Blog

...but I wouldn't have missed any of it. I mean, right?

Hello Muddah

An old summer camp friend of mine has a friend whose (12-year-old) kid is going to camp for the first time and was looking for advice, both for mom and kid.

I suspect I was asked because I was online at the time she had the question. And because I have worked at or attended about a dozen camps, as camper, counselor, division head, drama specialist, dorm parent, costume designer (OK, that was a theater camp), maintenance person, kitchen crew, arts-and-crafts director (very briefly and in a pinch), office administrator, and director. So I know pretty much everything.

But so do a bunch of you.

Here is some of what I said.

For mom:

• Even if you feel sad or worried about your kid, DO NOT emphasize that. Tell her you'll miss her, but not how much, and then let her go have fun — if she's homesick, let it be on her own terms and not because she's worried about you. 
• Don't  hang around a long time after you drop her off. Get there early so she can get a good bunk, help her settle in quickly and then leave.
• Write. Letters from home are some of the best parts of camp. Do it even if your kid is terrible about writing back. Do it on paper, not email, even if camp lets you email.
• Have fun while she's gone. If she is an only child (or her siblings are also at camp), have grownup fun that it's harder to have without her around, and tell her about the appropriate-to-share but boring-to-her parts, in your letters. ("Edith and I went to the teacup museum and saw seven hundred different kinds of teacups. It was so fascinating.") If not, obviously you will have special fun with your other kids, but encourage them not to brag about it until she's home and can brag back.

For kid:

• Make friends with as many interesting fun kids as you can and also at least one kid who doesn't seem to have very many other friends. 
• Try as many things as seem fun to you, even the ones you're afraid you won't be good at. 
• Eat as many fruits and veggies as you can, even if they're gross, and at least a little protein at every meal. That will help avoid whatever sickness winds up going around. 
• Write to your parents, at least once every week but no more than once a day.
• Come armed with a couple of legitimately funny jokes, and then don't tell them right when you get to camp. There will be a moment when you will be glad you have them. 
• Bring one nice outfit (not fancy, just, like, clean and makes you feel good) and save it (maybe in one of those big plastic Ziploc bags) for towards the end of camp, when everything else is kind of dirty and cruddy and gray and gross. YOU WILL FEEL SO AMAZING.

So, my many, many other camp-expert friends, including the ones I know from summer camp: What do you say? What's the best advice you've gotten? What's the smartest thing you've seen done?