Resilient

Back on June 4th, I posted about my dentist’s advice that I have my four top front teeth capped.  In case you missed it, the essence of the story is that my childhood dentist … an Army buddy of my Dad’s … improperly filled some cavities in my front teeth, and although my current dentist has done his best to repair the damage, my sixty-something year old teeth are getting brittle. Once I got over the shock of the $4000 price tag for my new choppers, I decided to wait until after our anniversary and my granddaughter Savy’s birthday.  An unexpected trip to Arizona last week added one more week of delay.  Unfortunately, Saturday night, one of the teeth snapped right off on a piece of sourdough bread.  Coming as it did at the end of a dark week, I momentarily disappeared into an emotional black hole but recovered quickly enough to have an evening worthy of Monday Smiles.   Yes, I’m Resilient.

Best Laid Planz

Since I’ve been participating in the BlogDumps meme, Top Sites Tuesday … where we get to offer Two Thoughts on Tuesday … I find myself searching for topics as Monday rolls around.   Usually, I’m looking for something to incite my Inner Curmudgeon, since he seems to be the most popular of my online personas.  Yesterday, driving home from a trip to Trader Joes to pick up Kitty Treats for Mr. P, my son’s Siamese cat, I noticed a sign by the side of the road, advertising the local youth soccer league.  Here it is:

The Ouch Method

Last Friday, while Muri and I were enjoying lunch at Duke’s Cafe, a semi-fast food restaurant featuring Greek food and just about anything else, I noticed something amiss on my right upper jaw.   After carefully swallowing a mouthful of Greek chicken salad … actually Greek salad with California chicken …  I discovered roughly one quarter of a molar missing.  Top right, second from the back.   Fortunately, Dr. H, our dentist, was able to see me right away to fill the hole with something akin to plumber’s putty.   And yesterday, after Muri and I finished delivering Meals on Wheels, I headed to Dr. H’s office to be prepped for a crown.   This will be an easy one, he said, because it’s on the top.  As I recall he said that about the last crown on the bottom.  It makes no difference … I’m a white knuckler at the dentist, even though Dr. H makes the ordeal as bearable as it can be.  To understand why, you have to go back sixty years.  To the Ouch Method.

Just a Tooth

Do you ever attach extra significance to some little thing, making it a symbol for something important in your life?  Let me explain what I mean with an example.   Two years ago, my business was headed into the Bangladesh Bunghole (as Johnny Carson liked to say).  The business had actually been moving in that direction for more than a year but I was in denial.  As a person who had never been out of work … and not officially ready to retire … I was frantic.   That means genuinely scared to be living on our savings.   Toward the end of the year, I felt a hot ache in the right side of my lower jaw and in the mirror, I could see that my gum was red and swollen.  My dentist took one look and sent me to an oral surgeon to have it pulled … it was an abscess.    It was an extra expense at a time when we didn’t need any.