Springiness, Part II

I believe I mentioned that it was going to snow on Wednesday night? We got 10" and a power failure. There is some Providence-of-a-merciful-God involved because I am happy to have a day off from work. Selfish I am, yes.

Last week one of the highlights was going to new dentist and being told I was taking good care of my gums. I have never heard this from a dental person before. I got a nice dentist (if I were 20 years younger he might still be a bit young for me, but yum) and the secretary and the dental associate were also really pleasant. There are Amish quilts on the wall and interesting things to stare at on the ceiling (though the National Geographic poster about continental drift really does not have big enough print). And they told me I don't have an abscess and the pain was probably sinus trouble, which explains why it was well-affected by aspirin. I do need a crown on the upper left corner of my mouth and a fancy filling on the spalled incisor, but it beats the hell out of an abscess.

This does not mean I want to go there often.

I woke up and couldn't get the radio on. Hot water grows in electric kettles and tea is sometimes warmed up (only once) in a microwave. Sometimes it is pumped out of taps by an electric pump. I berated Doug for not buying me a hand-cranked microwave but he -- get this -- boiled some water on the stove in a kettle. Pretty swift. He is an engineer.


Snow closed the Concord schools = no work for me. This was good, although a Subaru can get through 10" of snow on a downhill driveway, as Doug proved once it stopped snowing.

There was no internet. I tried not to shake. I did have a cell phone. I called my parents, who gave me sympathy and concern, and tried to call Sarah.

I finished the Lynn Flewelling trilogy and worried because I had not seen Mena the cat for 24 hours. I thought (not hard) about cleaning my house, but as I could not wash the dishes or vacuum or take a shower or do laundry there was no point in tidying or folding already clean laundry or sweeping the floor, so I listened to NPR (batteries, radio) and knitted. At this point it was 44 and sunny, so I sat on the porch for an hour, watching Paul plow the driveway, until it grew cloudy and cold and started to snow.

I worried about the cat. She is the daughter's Own cat, and they are strangely akin with beautiful hair and a low tolerance for idiocy, I mean much lower than mine.

I finished the book, I knitted much sock, I fretted. I reached Sarah and we decided to meet for the wine tasting at the deli in Concord (Butter's, the same side of the road as the Elegant Ewe but further up, beyond the CVS) and dinner. It was 3:30. I could take my laptop and go to the mall and read my e-mail. I decided a piece of leftover pizza would be a good thing, and I fretted about the cat.

The pizza was a good thing, but I would have sworn the molar missing a distal lingual cusp was on top on the left, not on the right on the bottom. Mesial lingual cusp, too. Damn. Still, the dentist is cute. Finished the pizza. Worried about the cat. Walked around the house.

I drove into Concord. I explained to the receptionist that all I really wanted was sympathy, and she asked if it was sensitive. Hard to say, as I had only done it half an hour earlier. It was, however, bidding fair to cut up my tongue. She called the cute dentist and yet another really nice, kindly dental assistant. They knocked out half of my face (after discovering that the remainder of the tooth was sensitive, all right, and it still is this morning) and stuck a patch on it and sent me off to Butter's, where I met Doug and Sarah, who had just had a much less good time at her dentist and was numb on the other side of her face.

We ate excellent soft Indian food. Sarah complained about her dentist and I gave her my dentist's card (she likes tall men. He certainly is.) We complained about our cats. We used our cell phones to discover that the power was back on at my house. Doug and I went home and fretted about the cat and read our email, and I wondered how long I could lie to the Daughter, in Italy.

I went to bed. The cat was back on the end of my bed, looking hung over. I hugged her. "WHAT?" she said.

It's in the 30's today, nice and sunny. Still covered with snow outside,but the finches are singing like mad.