*is a great big scaredy cat*

I have a dental appointment this morning, and I am practically hyperventilating. I'm petrified of the dentist, always have been.

Well, maybe not always. I was fine when I was younger, but after eighteen months of wearing braces, dentist visits became unbearable. Luckily for me, I have good teeth. On the downside, my gums are not so clever. The amount of movement that went on when my teeth were being straightened left my lower gums prone to what the dentists call 'pockets'. This means that they need a scale and polish more often than most people. Trouble is, each time I have a scale and polish, the 'pockets' get a little deeper.

For the last five or six years I have been unable to have a scale and polish without the aid of several injections to numb the gums. I'm usually fine with needles - I had so many throughout my pregnancies, not to mention the small surgeries I have had, that I'm immune to them. But when it comes to my mouth, no way. I'm sat here cringing as I imagine myself in the dentist's chair in a hour or so. I'll need at least six injections before they start, and each and every one lasts for around ten seconds. OK, that's only a minute of pain, but honestly, I would rather go through childbirth again if I had the option (and my labours were rough).

I know a fear of injections is pretty common, but it still doesn't make me feel any better. I took my seven-year-old last week for a filling, and she was giggling so much that you would have thought she was being tickled. She winced for about two seconds, but when asked, she explained that it was because the dentist had accidentally brushed against a small ulcer. Go figure. My daughter is ten times as brave as me.

I'm such a scaredy cat, that I had to take someone with me when I had to have a wisdom tooth removed a couple of years ago. Seriously. A thirty-something woman needed someone to hold her hand. The dentist (who knows what a wuss I am) suggested I get some Valium prior to the extraction, that's how bad I am.

Anywho, I don't have anyone to hold my hand today, and it's a double whammy. Not only is it my six-monthly scale and polish, but I need a small filling too. I made sure to get two appointments right after each other, that way the injections from the scale and polish will cover me for the filling too. I can just about muster the courage for these visits once every six months, but twice in a week?  There's no way in this world that's ever going to happen.*shudders*

I'll be there in an hour. *cries* But in two hours I'll be home again. *tiny yay* Of course, I'll be drooling for the rest of the day because my jaw will be number than a bum that's been sat on a cold floor for too long. On the plus side, my nervousness has meant that I was up early and have thoroughly cleaned the entire house, and written my blog too. When I get home, I can concentrate on my NaNo stuff. Of course, I'll need to make sure the keyboard stays dry. A combination of scaredy cat tears and dribble from a slack jaw could prove to be a deadly combination....

Pointless Ramble

So here I am, sat with my laptop on my lap (*squee*), and wondering what I am going to blog about today. There are a ton of things I could ramble on about, but nothing is leaping out at me as one specific topic.

I could blog about my kids, I suppose. But much as I have about a million things I could say about them, it's picking something that would occupy more than a couple of paragraphs that's causing me trouble.

Then there's the writing thing. Boy, I could ramble all day about that, but again I would have to find a specific 'something' to witter away with. Today my brain is a-buzzing with about a gazillion things, and nothing is staying put for longer than ten seconds. Bah humbug (speaking of humbugs, I LOVE them, but they seem to be something of a rarity these days unfortunately. Bah humbug indeed).

And another thing.... I was re-reading my blog from the other day (it's silly, I know, but I'm obsessive about re-reading my own stuff) and it occurred to me that I totally forgot to mention Watership Down in my list of movies that make me blubber. Crikey, what an oversight! (Actually, I could have mentioned Watership Down in my blog about songfics too, seeing as I wrote a lyric-based short fic using one of the songs from that movie). I can't believe I forgot about those poor, fluffy rabbits (ooh, that reminds me, I need to finish that update for my Lupin fic that I started the other day).

You see what I mean? My brain's all over the place today. I suppose it could be something to do with the fact that I'm feeling strangely hyper today. I actually had a decent night's sleep last night for a change. And for the first time in a long time, I wasn't awakened by the sound of my kids arguing (my daughter had a sleepover at her aunt's house last night *second squee of the day*, and my son slept in too).

To top it all, it's Sunday tomorrow. Usually that's a bad thing, but it's actually a nice thing this week because the kids are at the start of their half-term break. Yay! No rushing around like a mad-woman tomorrow! I'm hoping that my less stressful Sunday will be conductive to writing a 'real' blog, rather than the mish-mashed effort of today.

Then again, I will no doubt fill tomorrow's post with more pointless rambling.*snort*

Sooky Saps

I'm a great big cry-baby. *nods* I'm by nature quite cold normally; I'm not given to hugs and kisses (except with my kids), I don't cry easily, and I'm not someone who says 'I love you' on a day to day basis. My Internet Persona is the opposite; I hug and glomp people all of the time. It's not that I'm being false, I just don't find it easy to show affection in the real world. With the internet I can be as loving as I like without feeling embarrassed about it.

Anyway, to get back to my original sentence, I'm a cry-baby. But didn't I just say that I don't cry easily? To clarify, I don't cry easily when it comes to real life stuff. Real life sucky stuff may get me feeling down and depressed, but I rarely cry about it. But when it comes to movies and books, I'm a great big sob-machine.

I could name ten movies right now that had me turning into quivering wreck - heck, I could probably name more than that if I thought about it. A prime example is The Green Mile. Man, I cry buckets of tears whenever I watch that, it's pathetic. The first time I saw it, the story was new to me (I actually read the book a few months ago and thought it was one of Stephen King's better offerings), but as soon as Michael Clark Duncan's puppy dog eyes lit up the screen, I knew he was doomed (thus I was doomed too). I had a sore throat for the last twenty minutes of the movie because I was struggling to swallow my tears (hubby teases me dreadfully when I have a sappy moment). To this day I can't watch it without that lump forming in my throat.

Another movie that gets to me is Philadelphia. OK, the movie shamelessly stereotypes the main characters, but it's very effective. It probably helped too that Tom Hanks and Denzil Washington, two of my favorite actors, played the main characters. I can watch this movie almost to the end and I am fine. I'm even OK when Andrew Becket finally succumbs to his disease. It's that final scene that gets me, the collage of memories playing against the haunting tones of Neil Young's voice. Blubbering Wreckdom, here I come.

It's not only serious movies that get to me either. When Mufasa cops it during Disney's The Lion King, I cry more than the kids. And I'm actually too scared to watch Bambi, even though it's probably the only Disney movie I've never seen.

Moving on....

As much as I should have a little sympathy for fellow saps, I'm actually the opposite. There's nothing I enjoy more than making people cry. Wait, that doesn't sound right. What I mean is that I love making people cry with my writing. For all that I am a relatively cold person, my stories usually lean heavily on the emotions. I can be funny too, and with a certain degree of success, but making people cry is a specialty of mine. And I love it, I'm just evil that way.

I'll never forget my first big emotional fanfiction. I was responsible for many a person trying to type through a river of tears. Heck, when I reposted the edited version (me being a Typo Queen, edited versions are compulsory), I cried buckets myself. *snorts* I don't know how it's worked out this way, but I seem to have a talent for making people sob.

I guess it wasn't a surprise that my novel would end up being the same way. OK, it's not written yet, but Soul Identity is a tearjerker, make no mistake. (Yes, I'm being brave and publicly announcing the title, it's part of the 'if I talk about it, I'll write the darn thing' plan). I'm being sneaky though. The story is not going to be a slow builder, with a great big cry-until-you-die ending, instead there are bite-sized pieces of emotionally draining scenes peppered throughout, chipping away slowly but surely so that the ending should totally wipe you out, even though it's not actually a big climax at all.

At least, that's what I'm hoping for. Ultimately, my aim is to get people emotionally involved in the story, and if I can get them to shed a tear or two along the way, I'll be a very happy cry-baby.