A whole new world

So, it has been a while since I posted. Here is an excerpt from an email I just sent my siblings a minute ago:

As for me, I’m alive and well and the big accomplishment is that I have kept up on all of my reading so far. It’s a trend I hope to keep up. When I had braces they needed to widen my upper jaw. The orthodontist put this nifty little crank device in the roof of my mouth and I would crank it a few times each day and slowly a gap formed between my front teeth that grew to almost a centimeter wide before I was done. The first few days of this whole cranking business really hurt as the not quite sealed part of my upper jaw pulled apart. I feel like the same thing is now happening inside my skull. Each day I crank a few times with books, analysis, and classroom discussions and several times a day my head just feels as though it is being pulled apart in all different directions. My hope is that it stops hurting so much, just like with the braces, and once it’s done expanding, I’ll hopefully be able to put everything in its right place again.