So, I've been a little, ahem, busy lately and haven't been able to update my dA account. Plus, I'm on a really slow computer right now (which is driving me bonkers). It's taking forever to do much of anything. Hopefully, I can get the wireless adapter for my computer soon to jack into the house's main internet connection.

Bear with me, please. It's going to take quite a bit of time to go through messages and upload some new pieces. Haven't been doing lots with Apophysis, but there are a few things to share.

Financially, things haven't been so hot. We ended up leaving our apartment before we got behind on rent and have since moved in with my in-laws. Didn't stop the apartment from claiming we were behind by several months . (We weren't.) Right now I'm alone in Iowa with the kids because my husband is off in Wisconsin (La Crosse) attending a short school. He only has a month left, but it's been really hard getting everything to work.

We borrowed the minivan from my in-laws to take the husband to Wisconsin. While I was driving around with the kids, the transmission died, leaving us stranded. It was fun getting that drama fixed.

On the day I was to head back to Iowa with the kids, I woke up with a horrible throbbing pain in my wisdom tooth. When we had been packing up the apartment, I had a weird numbness in my mouth, but it was Friday night, and the dentist was closed. The numbness went away the next day. Since we were busy moving, I just put it behind me and didn't think much of it. Of course, now I know that it was the beginning of an infection. My top wisdom teeth came in perfectly, one of the bottom ones was a bit wonky but up, and the last one...didn't quite get there and was growing into my cheek.

By the time I got back to Iowa, my face was really swollen on one side. It took awhile to get the infection down with antibiotics--antibiotics and pain medications that made me very sick and sleep all weekend. The dentist I saw decided to remove all four, which I wasn't keen on, but was in too much pain to care at that point. He was going to do it with me conscious, which frankly freaked me out quite a bit, considering I had fully believed I was going to be sedated until I made a quasi-joke to make sure I was going to be unconscious and discovered otherwise. So, I got a referral for sedation.

I was apprehensive because I don't ever remember being sedated, but I knew that I didn't want to be conscious as my four teeth were removed.

So after all that drama, I went to the oral surgeon and when I woke up...it didn't hurt.

Sure, I was on Darvocet (this time I made sure not to get Vicodon ) and 800mg of Ibuprofen, but I was able to move my mouth without trouble and eat (relatively) normally the next day. Mostly, I just feel like my gums are swollen, but it's never been particularly painful, even when I didn't get to the pain meds on time one day. From all the stories I heard, I was expecting something in the realm of childbirth pain.

Strange. The infection was agony, but the surgery was nothing. Now, all I'm left with are four gaping holes in my gums and big bottles full of Vicodon and Darvocet.

So that's been a short synopsis of my activities lately. Hopefully the journal won't be too messed up. I'm getting too frustrated with this computer freezing every so many words. I'll fix anything that needs fixing later, when I'm more patient.

~Claire

At the moment, I am no longer taking any notes regarding CSS/Apophysis/etc. help. I have much going on in my personal life and can no longer assist dA members with these issues.

Thank you for understanding.

–noun Mathematics, Physics.
a geometrical or physical structure having an irregular or fragmented shape at all scales of measurement between a greatest and smallest scale such that certain mathematical or physical properties of the structure, as the perimeter of a curve or the flow rate in a porous medium, behave as if the dimensions of the structure (fractal dimensions) are greater than the spatial dimensions.

[Origin: < F fractale, equiv. to L frāct(us) broken, uneven (see fractus) + -ale -al2; term introduced by French mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot (born 1924) in 1975]

_{[1] fractal. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Retrieved March 15, 2007, from Dictionary.com website: [link]}