At least it was her left arm

Our time in the United States has not been kind to our health. Recall my earlier whining about my broken and extracted tooth and the two-week suspension of my contact lenses.

Now we can add Lindsey's broken arm to the list. She was wrestling with her cousins and brother tonight and managed to break her arm just above the wrist. She's doing fine. She's in a splint now, and if we can get an appointment, we'll get a cast before we head back to Switzerland. She'll certainly have a fun story to tell her classmates when she gets back. Unfortunately, her last ski season in Switzerland is going to be somewhat abbreviated.

Total system shutdown

Have any of you read the children's book Parts? It's about a little kid who thinks that various parts of his body are becoming unattached or nonfunctional. It's pretty funny.

Well, I'm living that book. At a time when I'm still mourning the loss of one of my wisdom teeth, I'm now coping with the news that my contact lenses have been grounded for two weeks. I have to drop a steroid and an antibiotic in one of my eyes several times a day to clear up an irritation that's been bugging me for a while.

Sheesh. I'm going to wait a couple of months before I start to deal with what I think is a case of plantar fasciitis. One thing at a time.

They pulled it out!

Well, my tooth is gone. They weren't going to waste time and effort trying to reconstruct one of my wisdom teeth. They just pulled it. It's quite something to hear the saw and catch a whiff of your bone as they cut it apart to get the tooth out. I forgot to ask the dentist to give me the tooth to save.

She gave me a prescription for Vicodin and then told me not to drive. What? I'm here all alone and I've got work to do and places to go. There hasn't been much pain, so I haven't taken a pill yet. Maybe I'll take one tonight after I get back to my hotel room. I'll get by with ibuprofin until then.

"Have tooth pulled out" was not on my to-do list when I came to Minnesota, but that's how life goes.

Some days are like this

I'm going to bed and hoping that tomorrow will go better than today.

First thing this morning, I noticed a big red pimple right on the tip of my nose. I look like Rudolph. This was particularly timely in that I've been in meetings today with a bunch of people I've never met before. I know that my nose must have been quite a sight. At my age, one shouldn't have to worry about pimples.

And then, just a few minutes ago, I broke off part of a tooth while I was chewing a piece of gum. GUM!!!!!! What's with that? How does one break a tooth by chewing gum? Sheesh. I hope I can get it fixed before I leave Minnesota.

At least it's not snowing and it's above zero. Yup. See, that proves that I'm a glass-half-full kind of guy.

A Christmas miracle

I've written before about the whole issue of jet lag. I love having the day extended by seven hours on the day I fly over to the States, but the days after that can be tough when I wake up at 3:00 in the morning and start crashing at about 6:00 at night. The morning after I get here, I always have that dreaded moment when I wake up, pray that it's later than 3:00, and then look at the clock.

I just had that moment, and much to my surprise, I slept all the way until 4:43 a.m. I was so excited! To quote Tiny Tim, "God bless us, everyone!"

(Okay, okay, I realize that an entry like this is more appropriate for Twitter or Facebook than for the Wood family blog about life in Switzerland, but since I don't tweet and I'll never have a Facebook account, this will have to do.

It turns out that there are now only two Americans who aren't on Facebook, me and some guy living in a rundown shack somewhere in the Montana wilderness with no electricity or running water. I talked with him the other day. He's about to give into the unrelenting pressure and get a Facebook account, so then it will just be me.)

And off we go . . . .

We fly across the ocean tomorrow, assuming all goes well with weather and such. (I wouldn't mind taking a bump, but it's not looking good.) Stace and the kids will be heading straight to Utah. I'll be spending a few days in Minneapolis so that I can start learning how to deal with a real winter again after living through four wimpy Swiss winters. Ugh.

No reminders in Switzerland

Our American phone rang the other day. It was a heating and cooling company in Minnesota reminding me that they were coming to inspect the furnace the next day. I had asked the tenants living in our house to have the furnace inspected before it got too cold, and they had made the appointment. I asked the caller to get in touch with the tenants instead.

That got me thinking about another Swiss cultural norm: no one calls to remind you of an appointment. When you make an appointment to visit the doctor or the dentist or to have someone come over to the apartment to fix something, they just assume that you'll be there. It would be unthinkinable to miss it. American companies have learned through hard experience that they have to remind people about their appointments or they'll have gaps in the schedule. One explanation for the difference might be that the Swiss impose an automatic six-month prison sentence for missing an appointment.