This is not about the snow

We have snow. All the snow you need. Get your snow here. We've plenty. A surfeit, in fact. An overabundance. We also have the concomitant snow days and stuck-in-the-houseness, added to a three-year-old who sees snow only as an inconvenience you have to go through in order to get hot chocolate, and sometimes you can get the chocolate without even bothering with the snow if your mother has been worn down enough, in just the right way, by multiple viewings of The Incredibles - here, we got you Nemo, watch Nemo, will you? No, you want The Incredibles again? Sigh - and random acts of obedience interposed between terribly noisy antics that endanger the life and limbs of your sibling, who has been running circles round the couch wearing various hats and pracising her new word which just happens to be "No!" What I'm saying is, snow, and more to come. We have not lost power and for that I am grateful, and keeping my fingers crossed; and we have the vital supplies and more, so we'll survive. But it will be nice when it's Spring.



I wasn't going to talk about the snow at all. I was going to tell you about this fascinating thing that's going on with my mouth. I have an inbuilt stress indicator, it seems. All I have to do is open my mouth, and - uh. Hey, I can't bite into this burger. I must be stressed.

Last October at some point I had a sore arm; I pulled something or strained something and it hurt to move it around, even though I could still use it to pick up and hold a 20lb baby while cooking dinner with no problem at all, so that was lucky. I did not take it to the doctor, and it went away. Some time during the arm thing, I started having a mouth thing. I realised I couldn't open my mouth very wide at all. Like, I had to turn my toothbrush sideways to get it in. This seemed, well, not normal. I thought perhaps I'd dislocated my jaw in my sleep. Perhaps. I'm sure you can do that. Then it started to ache a bit, and click when I chewed (my well cut-up pieces of food that had to be inserted carefully through the letterbox of my mouth with a deft fork manoeuvre), so I actually did bring it to the doctor. She diagnosed stress and gave me muscle relaxants, and told me to find a dentist.

I have yet to find a dentist, due to tedious insurance things and the tedious tedium of finding a dentist. And really, either my mouth would be fine and he'd wonder what the problem was or it would be stuck at almost-closed and he wouldn't be able to see inside and find that I'm grinding my molars to dust in my sleep, or whatever it is that's going on. I try to consciously relax when I find that I'm clenching my jaw, which is usually while I'm trying to fall asleep as a small nocturnal animal gnaws rhythmically on my nipple. Any time I want to check my stress levels, I just open wide and see how many fingers I can fit inside.

Now for another cup of tea and some more cut-up muffin.