I came to this realization last Friday as I walked through the area of Boston known as the South End, while waiting for a friend. Ahhh Boston, my first love and my home. Yet even as I walked the streets and gazed at the Hancock building in the distance, I realized for the first time in a long time that something was different. I didn’t really want to live here. There was another place that was pulling at my heart strings and begging me to move to it. That place? New York City. To be more specific, a borough of NYC – Brooklyn.

My sister currently lives in Brooklyn in the Greenpoint neighborhood. I have been there countless times since she has started living there. I know the driving route so well I don’t even need my navigation anymore. I can always find parking. The neighborhood is full of fun places to eat, drink, and be merry. The food is almost always amazing anywhere we go. The bodega that my sister frequents has the nicest man in the world running it. The ferry over to Manhattan is only a couple of blocks away, and let me tell you, taking that ferry on a beautiful sunny day is such a great ride.

So I’ll admit it – I’m head over heels in love with Brooklyn. I want to move there. I want to be able to hop over to Williamsburg on a Sunday and hit the flea market or go out to one of my favorite restaurants PT. I want to be able to board the ferry and take the 10 minute boat ride over to Manhattan. I want to jog down the road on a nice day and people watch as I enjoy the scenery. I want to head over to the Brooklyn Brewery on a Saturday and drink some drafts while petting Monster, their pet cat. The vast amount of cool places that this area has amazes me. While some people think NYC is dirty, I think it’s beautiful. Viewing the graffiti that fills the area is like visiting an art museum for free. Everything about this place is a piece of art in my eyes.

So while for now I live in Massachusetts, in a city other than Boston, I dream of the day I make the move to NY. I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for you Boston. As the song says, “Love that dirty water, oh Boston you’re my home.” You will always be my hometown, but NY is where my heart is.

Guess what? A portion of the graft didn’t heal right. Yup, that’s right, you heard me – my gums hate me.

What now? Back for more surgery! I can hardly stand the anticipation. While I’m really not looking forward to round 3 of this Chrissy vs. Gums war, I can at least say that I don’t have to have surgery again until September and they aren’t charging me. Free dental work? Never heard of such a thing before now. I’m guessing it’s because the periodontist couldn’t control that my gums didn’t feel like healing properly. Free works for me!

This time I won’t have to have tissue removed from the roof of my mouth either, so that’s another bonus right there. Instead, they are moving tissue over from the area next to the tooth that didn’t heal properly. So only the bottom will be affected. I’m thinking this time around it’s going to be A LOT easier to deal with.

I just have to remember to have a taco before my surgery this time. Although, who am I kidding, I’ll probably still crave them anyways.

Did I mention the surgery is the day after my 3 year wedding anniversary? You know I’ll be celebrating the night before with lots of delicious food!

End rant.

I’ve had this done once before. It wasn’t fun then and it still isn’t fun now.

On Friday April 20th I went to a periodontist to have a gum grafting procedure done. They take tissue from the roof of your mouth and stitch it to the area that you have receding gums.  I had the procedure done back in 2006, only they didn’t use my own tissue. At that time, they used a substitute, and it didn’t work to help my gums not recede. Since then the two center bottom teeth in my mouth have receded severely and I have started to have bone loss in the teeth because of this. So back in for procedure #2, only this time it was necessary to use my own tissue.

Overall, the procedure itself was not horrible. I wasn’t knocked out, much to peoples surprise. I was just severely dosed up on Novocaine. I even drove myself home after the surgery was done! Talk about a trooper huh? The worse part of my time at the periodontist was listening to the soft rock on the radio. I knew I should have brought my iPod!! (Consider that a little bit of advice to any of you that are going to have this done.)

It has been 10 days now since the surgery and I am FINALLY not in that much pain. On the one week anniversary date, I was starting to get really nervous because I was still in an incredible amount of pain. Not where they grafted the tissue to my gums, but where they took the tissue from the roof. They put packing on that area but the first night it fell off while I was sleeping. Thankfully, I didn’t choke on it (I can hear the news anchors now – girl chokes on packing from gum surgery, details at 11).  Since then it has been…lets call it a challenge to eat and not have my tongue hit that overly sensitive area. It has been so bad that the pain has actually spread to my teeth, making it feel much more like a toothache than anything else. Eating was the most unenjoyable event for me, and in case you couldn’t tell from previous posts, I love eating! Work was torture because I had to talk and by days end my mouth was throbbing. All I looked forward to was getting out of work, doing my school work, and by 8 taking my codeine and going to bed. I felt like a pill addict.

So here we are. Sunday. Day 10. How do I feel? SO much better than I have felt since the night before I had all of this done. This is the first day I haven’t taken any pain medication. Last night was the first time I had any alcohol since the procedure. Did the red wine cure my pain? I can’t say, but you do the math!

I’m still eating carefully because although the tissue has started to heal on the roof of my mouth, it still isn’t great. All I’m craving is a taco…and I don’t care what happens I’m eating one on Cinco de Mayo come hell or high water. My follow up appointment is this coming Friday so I’ll try to update you all with details on how it has all went. I have packing on the gum line and can’t see what it looks like. I feel like the people that get revealed after having plastic surgery on those reality shows. Let’s hope the audience doesn’t gasp when they see me!

End rant.

I highly recommend that you DO NOT do what is listed in the title of this post. My thumb is throbbing right now and typing without using your thumb, while possible, is quite uncomfortable.

How did I come about injuring my thumb? Simple. I was rushing and absentmindedly shut my thumb on my right hand into my car door as I arrived at work. Now to avoid completely horrifying you, I will not post photos. Thankfully I didn’t completely shut the door so that it latched and locked, but I did shut it hard enough that my right hand thumb has been out of commission for the day.

What happens when you show people what you just did to your thumb? Well there were a variety of reactions. Most began with the “Oww!” and “That looks horrendous!”  Then it was followed mostly by “Oh my, you are gonna have to drill a hole in that nail to let the blood out.”  Yes, a lovely pool of blood was collecting under my nail and making all sorts of shapes throughout the day. Sorry if you don’t like reading about blood, but again that is why I posted no photos.

Now most people know that when a child falls you shouldn’t panic and react because that is what sets fear into them most of the time and causes them to panic and cry.  This continues into adulthood people! As everyone overreacted to my thumb incident I began to panic more and more. For most of my work day I sat there staring at my thumb honestly expecting it to shrivel up and fall off unless I cut a big whole into my nail bed. Oh and did I mention everyone telling me I’m going to lose my nail completely? Yeah all of this helped so much.

Well guess what? That didn’t happen. Here’s what has happened: its sore, sensitive, and looks like crap.  If I put pressure on it…well I just am trying not to do that. However against my better judgement I made a little hole with a pin into my nail bed. It bled a little and the pressure feels slightly better but that big ugly blotch is still there.

Let me clarify here so no one gets all bent out of shape: I appreciate all of the input people gave me today. I just don’t think people scaring the crap out of me really helped the situation.  So really all I’m getting at is that if someone hurts themselves and you react to them – do it gently people! Most of us are just big kids who want people to calm us down when we get hurt.

So far my thumb nail is still here and I can still type, just slightly slower and more gently than I did before. Here’s hoping it heals with no problems and I don’t have to become left handed.

End rant. Goodnight world!

As I said in my previous post, I apologize for neglecting you for the past three months. School full time and work full time will drain every ounce of spare moments you have as well as your energy to make your brain function. So here I am with a little over two weeks until the next semester starts so let me catch you up.

First of all, I finished my first semester towards my masters degree in journalism.  Although it was trying at times, I really enjoy being back in school! (As my niece would say, I’m not a geek I’m an intellectual badass.)  Now I don’t want to brag but I did get all A’s in my classes which means my grade point average is a 4.0.  Not bad for my first semester back in school after six years! My social life may have suffered but I kicked some academic butt.

Secondly, I went back to work full time as I said way back in September.  Since then we have been going through a buy out from the corporate office (we were an affiliate before).  It was nerve-racking because corporate couldn’t offer us jobs until we were no longer affiliate employees.  So on December 30 the sale happened, we went home from work, and waited all New Years weekend to find out our fate. Now we were all pretty sure that we would have jobs, but nothing seems guaranteed in this world anymore. So needless to say when we gathered for the corporate welcome meeting this past Tuesday at 7:30 A.M. we were all slightly edgy.

Guess what happened? We all still have jobs. Just like we’d thought but stressed about for quite awhile. The benefits are great, the pay is the same, and I’m personally going to be doing something entirely different than what my job function was before. I welcome the change with open arms! I’m just happy to have a job.  Plus it will be fun to learn some new duties of the office.

Is everyone happy? Of course not. No one ever is. There are the typical people there who were complaining before about everything and are still complaining now. Honestly they will probably be complaining until the day they drop dead. It truly amazes me how people play the victim in life and don’t take responsibility for their own actions. It’s your life people – if you aren’t happy do something to improve it!

I don’t know who said it, but I once heard that the only thing constant is change. It’s the truth. People hate change. They like routine. I like it too.  However I know that change is going to happen and all  you can do is accept the changes and adapt to them, or figure out a way to change your life around it to be happier. I’m trying to have a new attitude toward change. Change can be a good thing! It’s all how you choose to look at it.  So if you are encountering a change in your life, attack that b*tch! You can conquer anything!

Enough positive ranting for now. As always, thanks for reading!

I’m sorry. I’ve been neglecting you. It wasn’t intentional. Life has just gotten pretty hectic in the past couple of weeks. But I’m back! Here for your entertainment or the cure to your boredom. What has kept me so rudely absent? Here goes…

First off, I was accepted to the masters program for Mass Media & Journalism at Clarion University in Pennsylvania. The whole program is online and I am attending full time, which is 3 classes. I’m really very excited to be doing this. I love to learn and have truly missed going to school since I graduated back in 2005! So its taking me a bit to adjust but I’m loving it. First week in and I feel good.

Second, I’m going back to work. Full time. At the company that I was laid off from back in February, prompting me to start this little blog. So unfortunately for those who were my cohorts in the land of unemployment, I will no longer be posting about being unemployed.  I got the call the other day that a girl wasn’t working out and they wanted me back. I already knew the job and the people, plus its going back to the same hours, pay, etc… You can’t go wrong with that. In this day & age when you have this kind of opportunity you have to take it.

Will I be giving up blogging? I think not. I really love this little world of mine on the web. Is anyone reading it? Who knows. In my mind there are a ton of you and you cling to every word I say. So lets just go with that.

It may take some time for me to learn to balance work, school, my love for food and the blog but have no fear! We will continue on. There will be more food reviews because, lets face it, a girls gotta eat! Till next time my cyber friends, I bid you adieu.

So what does one do when they feel trapped in their own life? I am feeling the ropes getting tighter around me as I search for work and try to find some sort of direction for their life path. So I did what any unemployed, college educated person would do – I applied to go back to school.

I know what some people are probably thinking – she has a Bachelors degree and can’t find a job. What is another degree going to do? Well first off, it will give me a sense of purpose in my life. Right now I work 2 days a week. I can’t find a full time job and believe me, I’m trying. If I have classes and work to do I think it will give my time the structure that I need. I need a schedule. I thrive on having too much to do, it’s when I am at my best.

Secondly, I love school. I didn’t when I was in high school but something changed when I went to college. Probably the fact that I was paying for it myself. Yet in all truth, I just loved learning new things. I was in control of the classes I was taking. I could study subjects that interested me. It was like a whole new world that I could explore! I loved the first week of classes. Getting new books & supplies.  Meeting new people in classes. All of it was a bit of a rush for me. Call me a dork or a nerd…whatever you want, I still loved it!

So the option of going back for my masters has provided a little spark in my life that seemed to be missing these past few months. I have that giddy, back to school feeling in my stomach. Most kids dread the month of August because they know school is only a few weeks away. I’m basking in it!

So here I am. 34, application to school submitted, and waiting for my acceptance. I have a few more things to submit to the school so that I can have my application fully processed but I’m working on those as we speak. I feel alive again. I feel like I’m putting a purpose back in my everyday life. I feel alive again. It may just be what I need to kick my ass back into the high geared overachiever that it used to be.

It was on July 5th, 2010 that I got a phone call no one can ever be prepared for. A good friend of mine, that I’ve known since I was 14, had been killed in a motorcycle accident. I couldn’t believe it. How was this possible? He was such a loving, caring soul who would have done anything for any one of his friends & family. It just didn’t seem fair.

A year has past. Events have come & gone. Lives have gone on.  That loss of a friend though still lingers throughout all of these things. It has taken the place of what once housed the existence of my friend. The group of friends that I have, that he was part of, are very, very special and what we have is rare. We’ve all pretty much been friends since we were in our early teens. Some of us longer than that & some of us shorter. Yet we somehow formed a bond that couldn’t be broken. We’ve moved apart and sometimes don’t talk or see each other for quite awhile. Some of us have married. Some now have families. Yet every time we do get together its like nothing has changed. We all still love each other just as much as we did when we were younger. A bond like that doesn’t come along very often.  So with that type of connection, the loss of one of us feels like a link is missing in our chain. It will never feel the same again.

As today marks the one year point of our friends death I found myself out of sorts and pondering my own life. I feel like we all have a guardian angel looking down on us now and I want to make him proud. I want to live my life the best I possibly can. I want to be able to make my friend proud when it comes time to meet again. All I feel I can do is love my friends and family & treat everybody as I want to be treated. He was an awesome human being who saw the good in so many. He will be forever missed and I can feel his presence every day. Rest in Peace Roma. You’ll always be a great friend to me even if its from a different plain of existence. XOXO.