The last few days have been relaxing in a daze of percocet and books. I finished Patrick Rothfuss’ second in the king killer series and it’s really, really good. If you enjoy some beautifully-crafted swords and sorcery, it’s about as good as it gets (I’m normally leery of books with covers that say “awesome!” all over them but in this case it appears to be justified. Besides, John Scalzi liked it.) I also blew through the latest of the S.M. Stirling “change” series, which is beginning to seque into boring military fan-fic. Now I am working on a biography of H.L. Mencken, which is a bit more down to earth (i.e.: depressing) One thing that is nice about being at my parents’ house is that you cannot run out of books to read. It simply isn’t possible. Last night I got sucked into a biography of Caravaggio and passed out halfway through, then woke up remembering very little of it. Opiates do that to me.
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Should I fear becoming boring? Soup appears to work.
Food is not too bad a problem but there are occasional surprises. If you sneeze while you’re eating, stuff flies horizontally out through your perforce clenched teeth. Even small particles in your food stick in the wires and you can’t get them out because your normal means of extracting stuck food usually involve working your jaw so you can move your lips or tongue – oops – that’s a non-starter. I woke up in a mild state of panic because in my dreams my mouth was blocked. Little things like that are a constant low-level stressor. But not too bad. The trick is to just stay cool and not panic.
The ice cream I got has been pretty good but I have to let it melt to the soup-point then suck it up my hose. I’ve been eating a great deal of tomato soup.
I hate to admit this but two-three weeks doesn’t really look like a very long time to me. I am considering just being boring and subsisting entirely on Trader Joe’s cream of tomato soup. Simply because I do not want to waste a huge amount of time figuring out how to eat.
Yesterday I did an experiment and took some beef chili that I bought at whole foods, and mixed the squishier bits in with my tomato soup. I finished it, eventually, but it was a disaster. Even the teeny-weeny chunks of beef were able to jam behind the wires and stay there until sluiced away with 2 mugs of tea and a great deal of poking with a sharp toothpick.
I am learning that there are: things that melt, and things that don’t.
A chunk of chocolate caught between your teeth melts and vanishes. Chocolate chip ice cream milkshakes are acceptable and present no problem. A chunk of beef caught between your teeth settles in for the long haul, and laughs at your feeble attempts to dislodge it.