Sunday, September 22nd 2002 - Ground Teef I'll have you all know that Tim is holding frollicking hostage until I write a journal entry. Yeah, he's got your back. So, the big, bad news that Tim has mentioned in his entry is that I'm in dental hell right now. I had a general checkup/ teeth cleaning last Tuesday, and the news wasn't good. Part of this is because it's been two years since my last checkup (no insurance there for awhile) but the main cause for my dental distress? Grinding my teeth as a response to stress. Let me just state, for the record, that I take pretty damn good care of my teeth. I brush regularly and floss every night and I even scrape off tartar with this little rubber squeegie once a week or so. But it turns out that I grind my teeth so much that I'm causing them to split, crack and chip. It's also making my gums weak, all that pressure, and it all adds up to lots of bacteria being welcomed into my mouth and served the expensive wine. In other words, I have a bunch of cavities. (By the way, the grinding also is the likely cause of my chronic headaches, neckache, heretofore unexplained earaches, TMJ and the occasional ringing I get in my ears. Lovely. Had they told me all this two years ago I would've popped the $350 for the mouth guard, but they just said "You're grinding, buy this pricey mouth guard your insurance doesn't cover." and I said, "No.") The really, really bad news is that my insurance sucks. It might cover 30% of all this, if I'm lucky. This is bad enough, given the number of cavities, but then there's the possibility of two of these, which are located under old fillings, turning into root canals, and I just want to hide under the bed. So, yeah, we've been a little worried about money, lately. We've mostly figured out where we can scrimp and save to scrape together enough to pay for all this. I just wish I wasn't already scraping to pay for grad school applications as well. So, other than that . . . let's see. Tim's been invited to read at Writers With Drinks which makes me very proud (and a bit envious, I admit). This is an ultra-cool, hip-kid reading that's done every month or so, and it's awesome that he gets to read. We've had a pretty good weekend. It always startles me how satisfying getting some chores done can be. Today we did laundry, grocery shopping at Safeway (where they accompany the veggie sprinklers with a thunder soundtrack and flashing lights to simulate lightning; our ghetto grocery is trying to gentrify, yo) and did some sorting in the dining room (including my crafty corner, which likes to spill over its boundaries and eat surrounding space). Yesterday Tim and I walked around Berkeley, buying him shoes, and buying us books and CDs and such. We also priced pieces of rock strapped to metal, and I got myself very excited for what the future might hold . . . Basically, it's been a lovely weekend with my wonderful boyfriend. So, I'm supposedly doing this short story dare with Sean Klein and Tim, but I'm lagging way behind. I'd hoped to have revised one story and had a new one drafted by now, but instead I'm still poking at the revisions on the old one and no new drafts have even been started. Sigh. I need to learn to take things more lightly at work, I think, so I'm more in the mood to write in the evenings; as it is, I come home and have to concentrate on chilling out, relaxing. It's tricky, as I'm trying not to stress as much and go easy on myself (and my jaw/ teeth), but if I'm not writing, I get annoyed (and stressed) at myself. Striking the balance is so tricky, y'know? Anyway, I'm going to go bug Tim and see if he's still feeling frisky. Hope you all had a lovely weekend . . .

Exercise Log: Swimming. Walking. Writing log: Wrote a new poem tonight called "Stray Cat". Am revising "WWW12", thanks to Greg's speedy crit re-inspiring me about this story. Sent some poetry to Gardner and a story to that hip-kid antho, "Say . .. Was that a Kiss?", which I'm determined to get into, dammit. Current Publications: The Children of the Moon in Strange Horizons. In the Shade of You nominated in the long poem category for the Rhysling and will be reprinted in the 2002 Rhysling Anthology! "How to Suck" reprinted in From Porn to Poetry: Clean Sheets Celebrates the Erotic Mind I've been reading: Currently Reading: Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett Read recently: The Last Continent by Terry Pratchett

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