Woohoo all nighter!

Ok, so maybe not as exciting as it sounds. I didn't get a wink of sleep last night. Yvette can partially confirm this as I was chatting to her on MSN at about 3am my time :)

I wasn't in too much pain, but I like sleeping on my right side which is the side they took the bone from and is a little tender.

My belly is also feeling quite unhappy with the drugs I'm taking. I'm taking my beta blockers (heart stuff), strong painkillers and antibiotics, which are all things I wouldn't take on an empty stomach. I'm also not eating huge amount and what I am eating is stuff like yoghurt, mashed potato, and stuff like that. I did manage some bread at about 4am though when my belly was feeling really dodgy. I can probably start eating harder stuff soon, just don't want to risk knocking any of the stitches (which are in the roof of my mouth near my front tooth, and extends to the front of my mouth up to my gums, and then along the back of the right part of my jaw right to where my wisdom teeth used to be. There's more stitches than I expected, so want to be careful for a few days to make sure everything has a good start to healing.

Anyone got any good any good anti-nausea remedies??

Operation is done

My mouth is feeling a little sore, I assume the painkillers are beginning to wear off. I have a mouth full of gauze, and apparently the sites where they operated will ooze for a couple of days. Yay.

My head doesn't feel too fuzzy though, and the local anaesthetics are beginning to wear off, so am getting feeling back in my face. I don't feel as nauseous as when I got my wisdom teeth out so that's a bonus. Although I do remember feeling fairly fine when I first got home, then barfing hours later, so maybe that's still to come.

I'd like to sleep, but I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon. Will update again a bit later probably.

Operation tomorrow

Dum dum dummmmmm. I hate needles. I hate general anaesthetic. I hate feeling like crap. Sigh.

I have a false tooth on a plate, which I've had for about 9 years now, and was only supposed to last about 5 years or so. So my options were to get another plate (which is a little annoying), get a bridge (where they file down the 2 teeth on either side of the falsie, and use them as a "bridge" to hold the false tooth in place), or to get a dental implant. I don't like the idea of filing down 2 perfectly good teeth (that's kinda irreversible), so am getting the implant.

Because the bone has recessed a little (or something...) tomorrow's operation is to do a bone graft, taking bone down from where my wisdom teeth used to be, and shoving it up in the gap to build up the bone there. Once that's fully healed in 6 months or so, I get another operation to drill into the bone and put in a titanium screw, then once that's fully healed (another 6 months or so), they'll open it up again to screw a tooth onto the titanium screw bit.

Yay me...

It's oh so quiet

It's strange to get home now and be greeted with silence. The kittens weren't noisy, but the mother cat Cleo would generally come down and greet me with meows, and the little guys would squeak when they saw me. If they were awake I would hear the patter of feet as they raced around upstairs.

Their operations went well this morning though, and I went to see them just after the last kitten was neutered. They were all on their sides with their tongues lolling out, and their little arms and legs were twitching. A couple were just beginning to come out of the anaesthetic, and were still twitching, but were responding a bit to my voice, and Bella, who had gone first was turning her head slightly towards me, and I could see she was trying really hard to focus her eyes on me.

Taking them back wasn't at all traumatic like I thought it might be. It helps that I can keep on seeing them until they get new homes, and even if they don't all get the sort of home I'd love them to have, it'll be much better then the stray life they would've led otherwise!

Kittens up for adoption in 2 days!

Well. The kittens are heading back to the shelter tomorrow to get desexed, then will be up for adoption on Thursday. They're 8 weeks, so old enough for their little op, but they just seem so little still! They're just babies!

I'll certainly miss them when they're gone, they've just been so much fun. They never had one accident outside the litter box, despite them being too young to use it when they first got here. They learnt fast, which I thought was amazing. Human babies can't manage that, and puppies can't either instinctively, but for some reason, kittens just know what to do.

The little guys have really kept us entertained with their antics. They tear around the house chasing each other, leaping, bounding, pouncing and squeaking. When they get tired, they generally just plop down and fall asleep wherever they are. I love that if I'm sitting near them when they fall asleep, they always crawl into my lap and snuggle up with me. One of the boys, Shadow, has become a real lap cat and loves to be nearby, and loves to be where the attention is. Very cute kitties. I hope they all find loving homes :(

Ride today

Woohooooo - finally, my first road ride in California! Can you believe it's taken this long? The weather has been so bad for so long, but it's finally gotten nice, and we met a girl Robin at dinner on Friday night who is another Googler, and also just moved to California from the East Coast. She's outdoorsy, and rides road bikes, so we organised to catch up for a ride.

We drove up to Skyline Boulevarde, which is up in the hills, and rode across the hill, so the ride was "undulating". My heart rate got a little too high (ave 125, max 150), but I feel confident that I won't drop dead if I do a slightly harder ride every now and again.

I forgot how much I love cycling, and really loved being out there. Andrew came along as well on his mountain bike, and did damn well. He has full on mtb tyres on his bike, so riding on the road up and down hills with that much rolling resistance would have been very hard work! He enjoyed it as well - it was hard not to with sucha nice day and beautiful scenery.

It was a good 90 minute or so ride, and we had a nice lunch in down Saratoga afterwards which was quite classy!

I also feel more confident about joining a local club's rides, since I wasn't as unfit as I thought I might be :) I'll hopefully get out on a bunch ride this week sometime.

Ski trip report

Well, we're back in one piece with no broken bones, minimal soreness, and minor sunburn for Andrew. All photos are up on our photo website.

Squaw Valley (so I'm now being told) apparently has the steeper slopes in the area, which is why it was used for the 1960 Winter Olympics. They certainly seemed a lot steeper than the stuff at Perisher, and freaked me out a fair bit. I was always fairly cautious at Perisher, but really enjoyed myself and only worried on a few slopes, and eventually went down the slopes which were generally steep but short. Here, the slopes just plain scared me. We started out, and I just lost confidence very fast which set the tone for me for the entire weekend. I was constantly losing control going down hills. and I hate not being in control.

As well as that, this is the first time I've skied since I've given up triathlons, and this is the unfittest I've been in many years. Because of this, my legs felt very weak, and I lost strength in my legs very easily which also didn't help the confidence. Add to this the fact that I still had the remains of a head cold which was giving me sinus headaches, especially at the higher altitudes and I really didn't enjoy the skiing. I also wasn't sleeping at night because I kept having nightmares of skiing crashes, which was making me more nervous and very tired.

We're also used to Perisher, where we would ski over Perisher, Blue Cow and Guthega, which would all end up in different places, and have a great old time. Here, we could really only stick to one main ski area which ended up in the same spot, so it seemed a little mundane after a while. Granted, the ski season was officially over, so a few runs that went to other places were closed, but they looked pretty bloody steep, and above my ski level, so not sure if I would have gone there anyway.

Apart from this though I had a great weekend and overall really enjoyed myself. We did a couple of runs on Friday when we got there before it all closed, Saturday we skiied most of the day, Sunday we went snowshoeing in the morning which was great fun - we saw beautiful streams and water falls, fresh, pristine, untouched snow, and blck bear prints!! Monday we skiied for a bit in the morning, then came home again.

We got to have lots of quality time together, and got to relax and enjoy ourselves which was really nice. Despite this new strange fear of skiing, I had a great time, and am keen to try out a new ski field next year. There's heaps around the Lake Tahoe area, so we'll try to find one we both like.

We did some funny moments out skiing - like when I realised one slope in particular was wayyyy too steep, and I took my skis off before I seriously hurt myself, and (initially) went sliding down half the slope on my arse because it was so steep I couldn't stay in one spot and left my skis and poles up the top of the hill! When a kind Aussie brought my skis and poles down to me, I just put them on my lap and slid down the rest of the hill and had soooo much fun! It was much better sliding down!!! I just flew down :) I had so much snow up my shirt and my pants, but it was worth it!

Anyway, here's some pics!

This is the view from the top



Falling over trying to run in back in showshoes for a self timed photo



A waterfall on our show shoeing trip



The view from our roon