It was the worst of beginnings, it was the best of endings. Waking up early in the morning to go get your teeth drilled is unpleasant enough, but a string of even unpleasanter things befell me before I had even been awake for an hour. First, I could NOT make myself get out of bed on time, due to some really nasty bouts of insomnia that have been plaguing me lately, of which last night's was particularly unrestful. Okay, so I'm running a bit late. I walk out the door after pocketing a key and then realize that I don't have my usual keyring. I'm locked out! And I don't have my car keys. Fortunately, after a minute of stewing and panicking on the front landing, I think hard about which key I DO have in my pocket. It is the spare front door key given to me by my neighbor so I can have a copy made. Saved!
So I let myself in, retrieve my real keys, and off I go, in slightly more of a hurry than when I left the first time. On the freeway, I very nearly rear-end someone while going 55 miles per hour. Holy crap! And it would have been all my fault, too. I was on the onramp to the 8 freeway, which is about 1/2 - 3/4 mile long before you hit actual freeway. I kept trying to get into the leftmost of the two lanes to facilitate merging onto the 8, and then all of a sudden the car in front of me SLAMS on the brakes because the cars in the right lane are pretty much stopped, as they are not trying to get on the freeway but rather to another street that exits off to the right. I brake so hard that my tires screech and my car wobbles. Thank god that I wasn't checking over my left shoulder again at that particular moment. So now my heart is beating at about 200 beats per minute, and I am feeling even less relaxed about my impending drilling session.
Onward I go! However, my mind is in some other place due to the distress I've already encountered thus far in my morning, and I don't notice the exit I'm supposed to be taking until I'm passing it from 3 lanes over. Holy crap!! So I take the next exit, El Cajon Boulevard. They are resurfacing the road there, so there is only one very crowded lane exiting, and I can't turn around to get back on the freeway for 3 whole intersections. And in the early morning, everyone in the world and their brother is trying to get on the 8 east and it is quite crowded, to put it very very mildly. I had glanced at my clock when I got off the freeway, and by the time I get back ON it, it has taken me 15 minutes. Oh my oh my.
Then something happened that made me feel a lot better. A man was waiting next to the crowded onramp with a sign asking for help. I had a dollar. I gave it to him. That made me feel really good. Helping another human being is the best cure for feeling lousy, it truly is. And please don't tell me about how all those homeless folks really aren't homeless and they are just going to use it all for drugs or booze and they make a hundred bucks a day begging. Even if all of those things are true, I really don't care. The act of giving makes me feel good. Even if he is making a fair amount of money per day doing this, he is spending a lot of time near the freeway encountering lots of carcinogenic emissions and unkind stares from drivers. No matter what kind of life he's living, I can guarantee you that the bottom line is that my life is much more comfortable than his, and therefore I feel good about sharing some of my good fortune with him if I can.
Wow. Now I feel much calmer and ready to face my three fillings head-on. Plus, I just called the dentist and they said that the person with the next appointment canceled, so even if I was much much later, it would still be all right. Relief! On the way, driving through Santee (see part 1 for a detailed description) I am sitting at a stop light and I can see out of the corner of my eye that the guy in the large, raised pickup truck next to me is checking me out. A lot. This does not flatter me. It frightens me. I don't dare turn my head for fear that in Santee, making eye contact with a man in a big-ass truck constitutes a civil marriage ceremony or something horrendous like that. Don't look don't look don't look!
I arrive at the dentist safe and unmarried to any local hick-types. Right next to their office is an empty suite with a sign saying, "So-and-so Day Spa Comming soon." Comming? As in dot-comming? Are they opening an online business? Argh! The spelling and grammar nazi in me rears to life. These situations always make me wonder what happened here. Did the people who ordered the sign do so under a "no returns or refunds even if we make horrid spelling errors on your sign" policy and didn't want to spend the extra money on a new one when they noticed the mistake? Or did they send the order to the sign-makers that way and the people making the sign thought, "Well, that's what they ordered. They must want it spelled like that for a reason!" Or did neither party notice the error at all? Hmmmmm. I am very curious, indeed.
Now I am home and the entire left side of my face is numb and drooly. I had to make some business calls about the fundraiser this morning, but put them off until I could speak with relatively little word-slurring so that they wouldn't retract their donations because they thought I was drunk at 9:30 a.m. I am not an animal!!! (movie reference alert) Walking up the steps I noticed a HUGE beautiful type of green spider that I've never seen before clinging to a leaf right next to my staircase. It was gorgeous and amazing and alien-looking. I took a zillion photos which I will post on Flickr as soon as I get more uploading space. Green is my favorite color, and spiders are good luck, didn't you know?
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