Today was a very frustrating and downer day. I found out that to fix what's wrong with my jaw will require about a year or more of braces, then surgery, then another year or more of braces. And the cost is beyond what I think it's worth. I broke down in tears in the orthodontist's office. I told the doctor's assistant that I'm not worth it and it seems like I would be vain if I spent that kind of money on myself. After all, I'll still be ugly even if my bite worked right. Jim wants me to go through with it but I'm still on the fence.

(SPOILER ALERT - if you want my xmas card to be a surprise, don't look)

I ran out of time and energy yesterday and the result was that I had no drawing to post. I did do something creative however. I printed the first color for this year's 4-color lino-cut xmas cards. This year, I've gotten more ambitious than in years past in several ways:

I spent most of tonight working on carving the linoleum plate for the first color on this year's Xmas card. I thought about using the carving as today's "drawing," but after careful consideration, I've decided to save writing a blog about the card process until after they're sent because I want to keep them a surprise. So after carving, it's NO surprise that the hand imagery is back in tonight's drawing.

Today I had a shoulder arthrogram - it's an MRI with contrast done by injecting dye into the joint. Before the MRI part, I got to watch the injection process on an x-ray. It took longer that normal because my shoulder joint was causing trouble for the needle and the doctor had to come in and wrench things around to get the dye flowing. The whole time I just prayed that it didn't all of a sudden get ultra painful (it didn't) and watched my shoulder joint on the x-ray. It got me thinking about joints and - I suppose, ultimately led to this drawing.