I finally uploaded my photos from our trip to California. You can view them in a photoset at Flickr here. I won’t write much more, because I already wrote a lot about them at Flickr.

What are you waiting for? Go look at them!

…but, nevertheless, about one week after my wisdom teeth extraction I am beginning to feel like a human being again. I may still be popping ibuprofen like candy, and I may not be able to open my mouth all the way yet, but at least I have lost the permanent puffy-cheeked grimace and I can eat (with real chewing! On my teeth!).

Going to work on Monday night was an interesting affair. They stuck me in the back of the store, where I was likely to interact with the fewest customers. But I got the distinct impression that each customer was a little unnerved by the fact that I, you know, couldn’t really open my mouth very wide, and I had to lean a bit closer than usual so they could hear me, and whenever I did pry my lips open to speak from between my puffy cheeks it looked more like I was going to hurl a spit ball on them than help them find whatever they were looking for.

At any rate, most of that is behind me now. Now I just have to deal with the fact that I have four large holes sitting in the back of my mouth. And, actually, so far that has been not too fun… (Squeamish people may want to skip this part.) Today was the sixth day after the surgery, which is the day that they say you are supposed to “cleanse your sockets” or something like that. They gave me this little squirty syringe that I was supposed to fill with water and use to rinse out the cavities where my wisdom teeth used to be. “Sure, no problem!” I thought. But I was not prepared for the dried blood and little bits of food that had crept up in those sockets to come dribbling out of my mouth. And the taste… Ughlghaghblarghshivergross. I almost had another dental panic attack.

I tried to explain my fear of the sockets to my parents at dinner tonight, as I sat there simultaneously being thrilled to be eating real food and at the same time terrified of getting bits of it stuck up in those darned holes.

“Dad,” I finally said, with a hint of desperation in my voice, “I feel like maggots might come boiling out of those holes at any moment.”

He just raised his eyebrows and said “Well, you can feel that way if you want to.”

Sigh.

(Squeamish people come back now.)

Okay. No more wisdom teeth (or lack thereof) stories, I promise. Well, I mean, I guess I shouldn’t promise, because who knows what kind of interesting blog-worthy complications might come up, but I’m fairly darn sure that I won’t have any more posts on this subject. So there.

Also… if you all have not been following my Flickr photos already, it is never too late to start! I am currently slowly but surely working my way through this summers’ photos and putting them online in a set called Oregon Summer 2006. Go check it out to see some of what I’ve been up to.

Also… it appears that Canon has just released an upgraded, super-duper gotta-have replacement for my camera. I cannot say that I am overly thrilled by this news, since I purchased my Rebel XT a mere two months ago, but I figured you all would want to know. (Don’t worry, camera, I still love you!!)

I’m sure nobody remembers, but way back in April, I mentioned that I would need to get my wisdom teeth out sometime this year. Well, today was my lucky day.

I’m no stranger to dental work. Before I was thirteen I had had two sets of braces and a Herbst appliance (a contraption with medal rods to move your jaws) and palate expander (a metal plate that sits on the roof of your mouth) jammed in my mouth at various times.

I still remember sitting down to dinner the night after I got the Herbst appliance and the palate expander put in. The kindly orthodontist’s staff had assured me that I would be able to eat soft foods by the end of the day. So I enthusiastically shoved a bite of soft pasta into my mouth… and then tried to chew. And tried. And tried. And succeeded only in grinding the metal rods together and getting a piece of pasta wedged up in between the roof of my mouth and the palate expander.

And then I sat there and bawled. Because although I am in general a reasonably sensible person, in that moment of blind terror I was completely convinced that that damp pasta would be clinging to the roof of my mouth FOREVER. And obviously since my jaws could not master the art of closing together with those awful poky metal sticks getting in their way, my parents would be forced to pour cans of instant breakfast down my throat three times a day FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE. I felt exactly like Randy in A Christmas Story. (”I can’t move my arms!! I caaan’t mooove my aaarms!!!”)

I would like to say that that incident was the last time I cried over a dental operation, but I would be lying, because that is exactly what I did this morning when I discovered that I could no longer feel my face. I was okay through the trip to the office and even for the insertion of the anesthetic needle (This is, believe it or not, the first time I’ve had a needle poked in me since I was a little kid, so I was afraid of that part in particular mostly because I could not remember what it was like.).

But after my groggy trip home and after Mom sat me down in the living room, I somehow got around to bringing my hand up to my chin and lips and discovering… that THEY WEREN’T THERE. At least, as far as my chin and lips could feel, they weren’t! And as I sat there grabbing what felt like this huge, swollen, chunk of flesh hanging limply off of my face, I couldn’t take it. I started crying again. In my defense, I was still heavily drugged at this point, so that probably made the whole situation much more overwhelming than it should have been.

In general, however, I’ve been doing all right since this morning. I’ve been planted in front of the TV with rolls of gauze sticking out of my mouth pretty much the entire day, living on jello and milkshakes. It’s only been in the last several hours that I’ve had enough energy to move around. But I can feel that energy fading. And I just took my vicodin, so it’s time to sleep…

I’ll leave you with this, though… although I am not quite brave enough to post photos of myself in recovery , I will share some of the notes I wrote to Mom this afternoon when I was not supposed to speak, for whatever meager entertainment value they might provide:

Oh, and one more thing, being put out is REALLY weird. Especially when they don’t even tell you that they’re doing it! I had never had a general anesthetic before. I just remember being relieved that the needle insertion was over, and the next thing I knew I was slowly coming to in the recovery room. All day I’ve been remembering little details of that room and the nurse and the walk out to the car. But I was still extremely out of it. I wouldn’t say it was an extremely pleasant experience, losing a chunk of time from your life in which you have NO idea what happened to you or what you might have said or anything.

In conclusion: I got my wisdom teeth out, but I’m okay, if a little out of it. So if this post is disjointed I blame it on the drugs.

That’s hopefully the only time I’ll legitimately be able to say that.

Last time I wrote I was sitting amid piles of clothes waiting to be packed. Tonight, a week and two days later (oh dear!), I have barely finished unpacking those same piles. Of course, Mom and I have been home in Oregon for three days already. But, unlike my Mother the Mightily Organized, I do not possess an innate desire to unpack and sort and fold and put away all my clothes and accessories the moment I arrive home from a trip.

My unpacking method is a bit more subdued—I tend to pass by my half-opened suitcase, abandoned unceremoneously on the floor, ten or twelve times, thinking that if I will only believe hard enough, my shirts and socks and pants will grow legs and crawl themselves back into their appropriate drawers.

Suffice to say, my room stays messier longer than Mom’s.

I meant to write a blog entry every night that I was in California. But every night Aunt Annette and I ended up talking or surfing the web together or watching a movie into the wee hours of the morning. (Or all three, often. ) I decided that quality time with my Aunt (who I hardly ever get to see) was more important than regular blog entries. (Besides, one can never see A Knight’s Tale too many times!)

On the first night (Sunday night) I wanted to tell you about the long car ride down during which we only stopped once and during which we had to endure an audio book that sounded like it had been recorded by a chipmunk on crack.

On Monday I wanted to let you know about my early 18th birthday present from Grandma, which was a new lens for my camera (picked out by my uncle the photography buff)! (It was an EFS 17-85 mm f/4-5.6 IS USM, for those who care. They also gave me a UV filter, a polarizing filter, and a lens hood to fit the new lens.)

Tuesday I would have written that I loved my new lens and that we visited the beautiful mission at Santa Clara University to take pictures, but that I made the mistake of switching to RAW format on my camera for half the afternoon, only to discover that I could not download the RAW pictures onto Aunt Annette’s computer with any of the software that she had (or if I could I couldn’t figure out how).

On Wednesday I would have mentioned our visit to Hakone Gardens in Saratoga, and maybe Uncle Tom’s book on portraiture that I found very helpful to peruse.

And on Thursday, perhaps I would have told you about the haircut that Aunt Annette gave me, or the photoshoot of me that she orchestrated in order to practice lighting and camera operation. (She is thinking about getting into professional photography… professional pet photography, to be exact, but I am choosing not to draw any unsettling conclusions about her choice of model on this particular day. )

But though I would have mentioned all of those things, you all probably would have seen right through them if I had not admitted what was really on my mind: my grandma.

In a lot of ways, this trip down to see her was not as difficult as I imagined it would be in my exhausted pessimism the night before we left. Imagination is often worse than fact in these situations. But, it was still plenty hard.

I think this anecdote sums up the experience pretty well:

One evening, we were stopping by a pizza place to get dinner. Mom and Uncle Tom had walked inside to get the pizza, and grandma and I sat outside in my family’s station wagon with the windows rolled down. For the first few minutes we sat there in the slightly awkward silence that has come to characterize my time with Grandma in the last few years. Whether because she is lost in her own thoughts or because she is too disengaged from her surroundings to make meaningful conversation, I don’t know. But I made a few attempts nonetheless.

“It sure is hot out.”

“I wonder how much longer they are going to be with the pizza!”

She would chuckle a bit at these pronouncements, but then she started to become more engaged in our conversation.

“I like your shoes!” she announced at one point, looking at my tennis shoes.

“I bought these shoes for work, because I have to wear close-toed shoes there, even in the summer time!” We both chuckled. She started asking me questions about work, and I explained my job. Then we talked about some of the people going by the window and a few of the shops we could see.

Among the many things about my grandmother’s body that are shutting down, her memory is failing. I knew this. I have known this for quite some time. But I could not stop myself, knowing that this might be one of the last times I would ever talk with her, from bringing up things that used to be meaningful to both of us—phrases that she used to use, and stories that she used to tell.

After a remark about food, I said, “You know, Grandma, you always used to say that you were not a picky eater; you always said you would eat anything except snails and frogs’ legs!” I had heard this phrase at least once a visit from her my entire life. “And it’s still true!” she said through her almost-toothless grin. It hurt, because now she can only eat liquids and she rejects most things set in front of her. But I was still glad I said it.

“Grandma,” I said, “do you remember Brian (my brother) when he was a little boy? Do you remember him splashing through the mud puddles?” She had told me the story of Brian in his slicker and boots splashing through the mud puddles so many times that I knew it by heart. Now, her eyes became distant as she fought to bring this memory back to the surface. “Yes,” she said, finally. It hurt, because I did not know if she was telling the truth, and this had always been one of her dearest memories. But I was still glad I said it.

“Grandma,” I tried next, “do you remember when you and I would go shopping together? Don’t you remember, we called our outings “adventures”?” Before my grandmother’s health declined so much, she would take me on a trip to the mall every time she visited. It was a highlight of her trip. This time she was really struggling to remember. “Okay, if you say so,” she said. And it really hurt, because I knew she did not remember, and those times together had been precious. But I was still glad I said it.

“Grandma,” I said, “you have been a fantastic grandma. I’m so glad you are mine.” She turned and looked at me. For a moment, her eyes were not distant or staring. They were fixed on mine with a clarity I had not seen in them for quite some time. I saw in them a spark of the stubborn, spirited personality that has carried her through life and made her the person that she is. “Thank you, Sweetie!” she said, sounding genuinely surprised and grateful. And that moment hurt and was sweet with all the bittersweetness I could bear. But I was very glad I said it.

I may not have typed out all the stories and emails that I meant to while I was in California. But, in real life, I think I said exactly what I needed to say.

Here I am sitting in my room amid piles of clean clothes and dirty clothes and luggage and explosions of hair accessories. I’m supposed to be packing for our drive down to California, but the whole night I have been hemming and hawing and subconsciously avoiding the urgent preparations beating down my door.

Add to that the pressure of all the pictures I haven’t posted (that you’ll love) and all the awesome things I’ve done (that I’d love to tell you about) and all the various responsibilities I’ve accumulated (that I’d love to fulfill). Since the Webvisions conference I have attended two country weddings and a birthday party, spent a weekend in La Pine, OR, and shot my first two professional photography gigs. Needless to say, my hard drive is sighing under the weight of all those unprocessed pictures that are just waiting to be distributed to clients and family members and my flickrstream.

But I really can’t ignore the fact that tomorrow at 9:00 AM my mom will expect me to pile myself and all my accouterments into the family car and drive with her down to the bay area.

So why am I sitting here writing instead of getting ready?

I’ll be perfectly clear: My grandmother (my mom’s mom) is, as far as any of us on this earth can tell, at the end of her life. She has been sick for several years, but now she is losing weight and vitality more quickly than ever before. She could have a few more months, but it doesn’t seem that way.

So Mom is making an unplanned trip down to California to see her. And I am going with her—partly because I managed to get the next week off of work, partly to visit my aunt, but mostly because… I think Mom will need someone there with her. This is not going to be easy.

Honestly, I am terrified. Fear is not Jack the Ripper or spiders or goblins. Fear is driving nine hours down to an assisted care facility to visit your dying grandmother.

Thus my subconscious unwillingness to fold my clothes into my suitcase and decide what to take with me. How does one prepare for a trip that is probably goodbye?

The answer: in some ways, one doesn’t.

But holding onto the fact that God is good and He is in control is helpful. No, it’s more than helpful… it’s everything. Even if this trip is endlessly painful and awkward and terrifying, He is still at the helm. And I’m counting on Him to give us strength when we need it most.

(I will be staying with my aunt and we will have internet access, so I will still receive any comments or emails while I am away.)