Culinary experiment gone awry

On Today’s Episode of the Daily Tannenbaum Cook:

Rice milk is a wonderful product for anyone out there who despises cow’s milk as much as I do. When I want to eat cereal but don’t want to spend the rest of the afternoon in the bathroom trying to digest the milk, rice milk is what I add. Even when I’m baking a cake or making oatmeal, rice milk is a yummy, fat-free substitute. However, when making instant pudding, you need to remember that rice milk is not half-way to butter like cow’s milk, and no matter how many minutes you wisk that pudding, you’ll still have a liquid.

mmm… mushy

I bought these groceries today. Keeping in mind that applesauce, yogurt & mashed potatoes aren’t pictured, can you guess the theme?

Not so wise

I hate long posts, so if you don’t want to read this one in its entirety, let me sumise: I got my left side wisdom teeth out on Monday morning, and it turns out that I had freakishly large third molars with an extra special third root. In response to the sudden extraction of bone that had been living quietly not bothering anybody all these years, my cheeks, jaw & neck have swollen to five times its normal size (see picture below for an example.) I’ve been prescribed painkillers and while it has been fun to enjoy the all day sleep they give me, the visions of little green men are getting annoying.
Additionally, the procedure cost about as much as a small wedding, and I got this lovely note from “Joanne” at my health care company, “In regards to your inquiry, please be advised that the extraction of wisdom teeth is not a covered benefit by your plan. I hope this information is helpful.” Helpful like a hole in my head. Two, actually.

I spent Monday morning getting my top and bottom left-side wisdom teeth removed. When I had the right side teeth out last year, it was so complication-free, I took the following day off work only because I had some shopping to do. I took about two of the painkillers they gave me and used the rest of them to bribe the accountant on a movie I worked on to fill my late check requests.

So when it came time to take out these two, I was not prepared for how unpleasant the experience could be. The first shock was the phone call I got on the way telling me the price for a double extraction was $50 more than a year ago, which prompted Birmingham to offer up his skills with a corkscrew. I politely declined and decided to go with the professional, although it was a close call. When I got there, I told the nurse that I didn’t want any of those heavy-duty narcotics since I have no accountants to bribe, and I have to drive a car to get anywhere. She called in the prescription for Junior Tylenol as I bid farewell to my teeth and headed to the surgeon’s chair.

Just like last time, I went with the local novocaine because being able to stop the operation at any time gives me the false security of being in control, (although I did have one small 9/11 related freak out when I imagined in the power went out half way through the operation, leaving one tooth hanging by a thread. I overcame the fear by convincing myself it was more likely that my hot water would run out before I could rinse out the shampoo.) The first tooth, the top one, came out with no significant difficulty. I was fantasizing about the soft food and the shopping in my near future, and was calmed by the dentist telling me I was doing “super” because its true, I’m great at sitting still with my mouth wide open.

However, half way through extracting the bottom tooth, the dentist’s “supers” and “you’re doing greats” turned into “wow” and “I’m going to need the BIG drill” and “I’ve never seen anything like this before” and “that must hurt.” I had my eyes closed, so I’m not certain about this, but it felt a lot like he had a tool inserted into my tooth, his foot up on the chair, and his entire body weight playing tug-of-war with my third molar. When the wily tooth finally gave way, he looked into the gaping hole and said “no way.” He called the nurse over to have a look, because it seems that I am a living breathing mutant with a third root. My calm, good feeling completely eroded when I realized the doctor was panting while stitching me up.

When it was done and I sat up, I got spiel of how to take care of my post-op mouth. Half way through his memorized speech, he stopped and said, “The tooth I removed was really jammed in there. Your wound is going to hurt for a week. Are you sure you don’t want stronger painkillers?” Now when, I ask you, have you ever heard a medical professional admit that something was going to hurt? Code words for serious effing pain are “pressure” and “discomfort,” and that still means a lot of pain. It seems that becuase my bottom wisdom tooth was attached to my jaw via my spinal column, opting for the mind-numbing painkillers was the only reasonable course of action.

About an hour and a half later, when Birmingham was driving me home from my soft lunch, the novocaine wore off and I felt that promised pain loud and clear. Those of you who have felt this kind of pain in the passenger seat of a car already know it, but it’s possible to rip the “oh Jesus” handle right off a ’98 Saturn.

Thankfully, the narcotics helped the pain subside within an hour, but nothing has stopped the swelling. When I had the right side teeth out, the swelling made my face look a little like I had spent the weekend eating cream puffs. This time, I look a little like I did a Dizzy Gillespie impression while somebody slapped me on the back proving the old wives tale of “freezing that way.” If I lived in Hollywood, I’d be cast as John Travolta’s stunt double in Hairspray:

$240 worth

Earlier this evening, I had to make an emergency run to the 24 hour Stop & Shop to buy a box of vanilla pudding* and it made me miss Manhattan so much. At my old place, my late night pudding needs could be filled by the bodega nestled at the end of my street. Two minutes and $4.99 later, that box of pudding was mine. Tonight, I had to get in the car, start the car, wait for it to warm up (you see, it doesn’t go into gear until it’s cozier than my cat in a pile of down comforter), get blinded by the asshat driving with his brights on, drive 5 miles to the grocery store, purchase my pudding, spend 10 minutes trying to find the perfect wedding card**, pay $0.89 for pudding, make chit-chat with the checkout girl “no that wasn’t a shooting going on outside, someone set of fireworks in the parking lot,” hop back in the car, drive another 5 miles, finally make it home.

*I’m going to a wedding this weekend, and the pudding is an integral part of my wedding present. I’d explain how, but I don’t want to alienate my readers.

**I dislike any kind of card that isn’t funny, so buying wedding cards is a real pain in the ass because they’re all sentimental. Most invoke some deity, and I can’t get behind that, and I don’t think the couple getting married can either. Almost ALL of them have glitter, which is like saying, “I admit this present and this card really are for the woman, let’s not pretend that the groom is willing to cross the room to read this card.” Many of them have these didactic statements about what marriage is. “Marriage is a commitment.” “A union between two souls is a sacred thing.” “Don’t forget to give your in-laws the best goats.” All the remaining cards have rhyming couplets, and that simply makes me angry. In the end I spun in a circle three times and pointed to a card at random. Boy, are they going to love the “So sorry to hear of your grandmother’s passing” card! I glued some glitter on it to make it more appropriate.

…And When We’re Gone From Here, Our Friends Will be Drinking All Our Beer

Rules of Kickball #2

There is a scientific reason for why one plays better after having a few beers. As I have previously described, balls thrown towards one’s person are frightening. But when you have lowered inhibitions, well, anything goes.
Our fine new team won our first game by more than 10 runs.

When you search Google Images for “kickball” the search results bring up this picture. I have no idea why.

She’s going the distance

I went running yesterday for the first time in… A really long time, actually. And yes, when I say “running” it was mostly walking with occasional bouts of “let me see if I can run as far as that mailbox” followed by blinding cramps, some possible nerve damage, and a ride home in an ambulance. Other than that, it was fantastic to get out and explore the neighborhood a little. The road I took has actual farms with actual cows on it! As I hobbled by the cows’ barn in my modified run/walk and inhaled the fragrant manure drenched air, for just a minute I recollected running on the George Washington Bridge like I used to, breathing in the car exhaust. Fresh air is for pussies.

wake me up when it’s match point

Went to the US Open with Sister Alyson and Daddy John Monday night. Like all the sporting events I’ve been to this year, it WENT ON WAY TO LONG. I’ve had it up to here with these balanced competitors. What I wouldn’t give for a quick brutal slaying of the opponent and a chance to be snuggled in my warm bed a mere two hours later.

Professional tennis is a lot stupider than many other sporting events. Because it’s just about two players, the game breeds divas like no other. For example, there are more than a dozen people judging, cleaning, and recording one little court with two players. I became so fascinated by these serfs serving their tennis lords, I took count of them:
Players – 2
Judge on a high chair – 1
Line officials (sole job: stare at a white line to see which side the ball lands on and hope that the back up computer doesn’t prove you wrong a moment later) – 7
Boom op – 1
Camera ops – 2
Security guards – 2
VIPs, or people with no discernable purpose – 6
Number of serfs that get to sit for the entire match – 8
Number of chairs given to each player – 2

This blog is not yet rated

When in New York City for the weekend, you have to take advantage of the things you can only do in New York City: the restaurants, the subway, and the movies that come out weeks before they’re shown to the rest of the world, if they even get to the rest of the world. Trends are slow to travel 90 miles up the parkway to the Hudson Valley. Mission Impossible III just opened here this weekend, on BOTH screens in the mall.

So while in the city visiting The Man of Action, the new documentary “This Film is Not Yet Rated” was put at the top of the to do list because it’s playing at exactly one theatre on the East Coast. If you live in Manhattan or if you can wait for the DVD or if the film gets distributed somewhere near you, I recommend it. What I do not recommend, however, is the short feature we saw before the movie about a man in a turkey suit wrestling a man in an E.T. mask under really bad exterior lighting. I hope the filmmaker in charge of that avant guard claptrap submits the movie to the MPAA and get an NC-17 rating so that no one will ever have to see it again.

I confess, I can be thick

On Saturday night I joined some of the girls for FDP’s bachelorette party. All five of us used to be NYC residents, and four of us have since abandoned the big apple and were quite happy to be back. Being old pros, we returned to some of our favorite establishments of eating and drinking including a Mexican place, a Cuban place, and an additional Mexican place. Despite the hurricane moving through the area (or perhaps because of the storm,) we had a great time. The other girls were professing their love for and toasting to Ernesto. Despite being a humble person of great intelligence, I had no idea that they were talking about the name of the storm system that was surging through the area. I thought “Ernesto” was the name of our waiter at one of those restaurants.

More than Words

Last night Birmingham and I met up with kickball friends at a bar. We grabbed a table with the best vantage point for people watching, because the place was filled with some classic douchebags with weird hair, some deaf guys in Hawaiian shirts, a lot of people who must have come from an 80’s night at some other bar, and a pair we liked to call “Thema and Louise” because it looked like they made a wrong turn out of Louisiana in 1991, and have been line dancing their way across the country to find the perfect denim ensemble ever since. They might have also been pre-op transexuals, but no one was sure enough to bet on it.

My favorite line of the evening came while they were flirting with the guys who were talking in sign language, and Tink pointed out, “They’re deaf, not BLIND!” And as the whitest rock and roll cover band in the world started to rock out, we all kind of wished we were deaf, too.