Pulling teeth, wiping up poo, and gas

For all of you too weak to walk to the corner paper box, or too cheap to shell out three bits, here's a link to my column "Blessings amid Recession".

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Yesterday was a pip. Immediately after dropping the girls off at school I headed off to the dentist for an extraction.

Once I was in the chair, the dentist took a look and said the tooth was badly infected. He launched into a long explanation as to why this meant pulling the tooth was a no-go, something about acid and base and the anesthetic being rendered weak. Blah-blah. I asked him what he wanted me to do.

"You should go home, take antibiotics for a week to ten days, and then come back for an extraction," he said.

"But?" I said.

"But . . . you have a good tolerance for tooth pain. I would forgo ten days of constant pain, deal with pulling the tooth now, and take a few minutes of bad pain in exchange for feeling nothing at all in a half hour. But you will feel some of the extraction."

So we went for it.

The extraction was one-two-three, but the tooth did break, costing us a few minutes.
"It boke?" I said, after he quietly cursed.

"Of course it did. Why should my day be easy?" the dentist said, lacking a wee bit of perspective.

Yeah, the extraction hurt more than normal, but it wasn't anything compared to living with the thing. I'm A-OK now, and was fine within minutes of the pull.

Afterwards, I filled a prescription at Walgreens, where I sat and talked to an old man named Zimmerman visiting from Whitewater. He was named after his uncle, the former sports editor of the L.A. Times, and had volunteered to sit with his ill son-in-law while his daughter was at work. The in-law in question was a Vietnam vet, but he also mentioned having a son-in-law who fought in Korea.

"Korea?" I said. "That's almost sixty years ago. Was he much older than your daughter?"

He had to be; a Korean vet, even one that caught the tail end in '53, would be at least seventy-six. Mr. Zimmerman was in his mid to late eighties, but not much older.

"Oh yes, he was. But he's passed away now."

Huh. There are great stories to be found everywhere, if you just keep one ear open.

When I got home, a (bad) surprise. The gas company, which has been tearing the hell out of my lawn for weeks laying pipe, needed access to the house. They were turning the gas off, and once it was back on they wanted to verify all the pilots were re-lit. That meant they needed to go on all three levels of the house (we have two furnaces), which meant . . well, it meant I had a couple hours to get three floors of a house whipped into passable shape. That . . . wasn't fun.

Worse yet, just before the guy showed up Ginger shat her pants, then scooped it out and rubbed it into her hands, face, blanket, and bedroom furniture. I'm talking 'mud bath'/Al Jolson coverage here.

Disgusting little kid.

Then, a complete reversal of the days weather. The sun came out, temperatures were in the sixties, and it was a pleasant reminder of summer. I took the opportunity to cut the grass, which might have been overdoing it for the day, as it wiped me out. The rest of the day was grocery shopping, dinner, baths for the kids, a bit of the Phillies clinching the NLCS, and of course, Glee.

And after that: the first uninterrupted nights sleep in weeks. Heaven!