Post #701: Home Sweet Sharkles

After an amazing two-week trip (post and pictures to come shortly) we made it home at 3 AM Wednesday. We were supposed to be in at midnight, but considering all the east coast craziness with blizzards and flight cancellations, we felt fortunate to have had no bumps and only a few delays out of Philadelphia and San Francisco.

Still, 3 AM is tough when you have to roust yourself out of bed three hours later -- TO GO TO WORK! Yes, Mick was my hero that day, because not only did he manage to function in spite of time changes and travel, but he got to work that morning and had 13 emergency cases to handle. (Apparently everyone had been waiting for that dentist office to open up!) I think 6-8 emergency cases from 8 AM to 9 is his usual bigger load. Then, after 13 of those cases, his regular appointments ALL started showing up at 9 (also a rarity.)

So, he wins the big toughie travel and work award.

I, on the other hand, slept a few hours later than that and then emptied suitcase after suitcase and did laundry load after laundry load. There are still huge piles of trinkets and papers and randomness on our bar counter. Putting that stuff away turns out to be the real pain.

The kids and Colleen of DogGoneFun  with Sharly when we first got her.

In addition to unpacking and doing laundry, I picked up a few groceries and... SHARKLES!

Sharly got to come home from R&R Pet Resort where she'd spent the past 14 days. We were all so excited, wagging our tails, fetching squeaky bones, scratching our ears. :) It's been great.

What was your favorite (or most exhausting!) part of the holidays this year?

Stepping into the Story Garden -- and the Mouth and Some Friends' Houses and the Kennel...

Doesn't that all sound magical???

I'm headed to Redmond, Washington, this weekend for a whirlwind conference. My writer-pal Jennie and I drive the 9 hours north tomorrow, hob-nob with other writers that evening, and then take all-day classes Saturday and Sunday - all in hopes of getting a better grip on the Young Reader's (and Writers) world. In case you're concerned, of course I'm going to sneak a quick dinner in with my one and only Karen on Friday night, but other than that, it's work, work, work. Learn, learn, learn.

Mick is away at the Oregon Dental Association Conference in Portland, Oregon, this weekend, frequenting coffee shops and skate parks in between classes with his pal Justin. Needless to say, because we're doubling up on the adult learning, we're, boo hoo, farming our kids out to family and friends.

Alas, the kids are beside themselves with excitement: Dane gets to spend the weekend with Logan, and Aubrey gets to spend the weekend with her cousins. (Hopefully, she won't bring and attract any sickness -- she's missed three days of school this week with the Flu. Fingers crossed.)

And Sharkles? Sharkles the dog? She's doing some doggie daycare and overnights at the R&R Pet Resort. She should be having herself some fun (even though she'll miss us!) as she plays with other dogs and tuckers herself out for each night of sleep.

VOTE FOR A STORY OF LOVE AND TEETH

Last day to vote. I'm a little bummed.

Two awards will be given: one based on writing merit, another on popularity.

Bum 1: I'd love to win the writing merit award, but think a certain Jak Wonderly's essay is a major contender for that one.

Bum 2: I'd be fine with winning the popularity award, if it meant a little prize money and more opportunity to write for the website; however, a certain Fruit Basket's got 10 points on me.

So, there's nothing I can do about Bum 1, but wait and see. However, regarding Bum 2: If you please, drop what you're doin and swallow what you're chewin. Go to this link and click on the little number next to my title on my essay page. To vote for the teeth, of course.

Thank you.

The End

MONTH TWO WRITING GOAL ACCOMPLISHED:
PUBLISHED IN FEBRUARY!

My essay, "The Making Of A Dentist: A Story Of Love And Teeth," was published yesterday at WorkLifeGroup.com. It's a finalist in their Career Stories contest.

Feel free to give it a Thumbs Up on their site if you like it. (The Thumbs Up sign shows up faintly, as a number next to my title on the essay page.) I don't know if it'll help me win, but it can't hurt.

What's the win? Well, because I keep it real here on my blog, it's 500 smacks. And a chance to be paid to write for their website in the future. Two things I'd love, natch.

While you're there, read some of the other stories, too. They're fun and inspiring. I already gave a Thumbs Up to "How An Elephant Taught Me To Write" and "Creating True Beauty In The World."

If you use any of the links above, once you get there, you can click on the "Career Stories" link in the right-hand margin and get access to all the stories.

Leave a comment here and let me know who you turned your thumb up at!

HoMe AlOnE

Mick's headed to Portland tonight for three days at the Oregon Dental Association (ODA) convention. He gets plenty of Extended Learning credits, so that's great. He also gets to hang out and drink lots of Stumptown coffee, so more power to him! In the meantime, the kids and I will stay here: they'll go to school, I'll write, they'll have ball practice, I'll take 'em, we'll bike, we'll walk, we'll read, etc., etc. We'll miss Mick, but somewhere in there we might just do this Spring art project and desperately hope the weather warms up:

I randomly found this blogger and I like her ideas.

MARRIED TO A DENTIST

A Story of Love and Teeth

When asked what it's like to be married to a dentist, my first response is glib: I get razzed for being the only parent who sends their kid to a sleepover without a toothbrush; I have a school debt load as big as a house mortgage; and, I'm expected to have perfect teeth and even better breath, which, in my experience, is not necessarily always simultaneously possible.

But then there's the response that's not glib, but heartfelt -- as true as anything I've ever believed -- and the only way it can be expressed is to put it like this: I can't separate out my particular dentist guy from his dentist job. Together, they make him the dentist I'm married to.

Let me explain.

My particular dentist guy was once an unfulfilled manufacturing and plastics engineer who drew computerized pictures of a 737 airplane's wing rivets for The Boeing Company, and, later, designed waterski and wakeboard bindings for the likes of world class skier Andy Mapple for O'Brien Watersports. Cool enough stuff, to be sure, but that same engineer guy would come home disappointed that he'd sat at a machine all day and/or had only spoken to one or two other human beings -- about nothing that meant anything to him -- throughout the course of a day.

Then my particular engineer guy got laid off and couldn't find more engineering work and fixed houses as a contractor for six months -- and somewhere in there he observed his younger brother at work as a new dentist. There, he saw immediately how he, too, could use his hands, his head, and his heart all in one fell swoop: by being a dentist guy.

After watching his brother treat the whole person -- seeing how the mouth was the gateway to health for the rest of the body (doctor), watching his brother's hands move in intricate and detailed ways in a small space (engineer), and listening to the care, banter, and concern shared between patient and dentist (human being) -- he decided to make a career change.

He returned to college at 33, taking three years of pre-requisite classes from the school where he'd graduated seven years earlier. During his final quarter of pre-requisites, he filled out dental school applications, wrote a killer statement of intent (thank me very much), and earned himself a seat in the University of Pacific's three-year program, the only one of its kind in the nation.

After a mighty garage sale where we sold everything we could think to sell (mostly the quiver of free wakeboards he'd aquired) we packed up our 3-year-old and 4-year-old kids and moved ourselves to San Francisco for a life of school, loans, and part-time work.

We've never looked back.

School was challenging and scary -- after all, we'd put everything on the line to pursue this -- and sometimes the requirements felt elusive. But, in the end, it was fulfilling and thrilling.

My dentist guy, who's just bizarre enough to think it's funny that the time to go to the dentist is "Tooth Hurty," and who thinks Eugene Levy's nerdy dentist character in that Christopher Guest mockumentary, Waiting for Guffman, is highly quotable -- "People ask me if I was the class clown [smug nod]; I tell them, 'No, but I sat next to him, and I studied him' [smug nod followed by pathetic Johnny Carson impersonation]" -- comes home from work happy every day, deeply moved by the lives he's encountered.

Staying true to HIPAA's confidentiality code, he tells me no names or places, but his eyes water nearly each and every night as he tells me about hardship, victory, silliness, or gratitude he's seen or experienced in the mouths or lives of his patients. He never got that as an engineer. Granted, some engineers don't need it, and, admittedly, some engineers manage to get it somehow, but my guy needed something extra and dentistry is how he gets it.

So when he leans against the kitchen counter at age 41 and talks to me about his work with tears in his eyes, I'm very clear about this particular guy who loves his particular job, and I hone in on that soft smile. I hone in on his lovely, if slightly imperfect teeth and his occasionally bad breath, because, well, sometimes you just can't have it all -- but I know you can come close.

Ahhhh....

Mick's been in Eugene all week for the second week in a row, training for his new job. Here's what he had to say on the phone the other night:

This job is sweet, Anj. I've got assistants cleaning up all my messes! I do the work on one mouth, an assistant comes and takes me by the elbow, saying, 'Dr. Reynolds, we need you in the next room now,' and I leave all my instruments just where they are and move on to the next task. No clean-up required.

Yeah, it doesn't get any better than that, does it? I warned him not to try that at home, though.