Ah yes, today was the day--root canal day! I'm glad I got it over with first thing in the morning. My trip into Santee was fairly uneventful--in fact, parts of it were really beautiful. We are having a Santa Ana condition in the San Diego area today, which means that the wind that usually blows in from the cool, wet, ocean, is instead blowing in from over the desert in the east. Meaning that everything is dry and hot, your hair gets all staticky, you shock your cats when you pet them, and this is when things usually start catching on fire. Fortunately, we had some real rain immediately preceding the Santa Anas, so hopefully the brush fires will not get a chance to start burning things yet.
The pretty part of the Santa Anas is that the sky is unbelievably clear--cloudless and cold hard blue. When I first drove north toward Santee today, the early morning sun made deep shadows in the folds of the hills, and everything was draped in a beautiful green-gold light. The leaves on the trees even looked particularly brilliant green and translucent, glowing and flickering in the mild breeze. Lovely!
I did not, however, arrive at my destination without incident. I was nearly run down by a young man in a Giant Expensive Shiny Black Truck. I had just turned a corner to the right, and saw a line of stopped cars in front of me. Naturally, I slowed down. Mr. GESBT Man however, thought that having a green right-turn arrow meant that he shouldn't have to stop for nobody! He's not going to let a line of immobile one-ton metal objects get in his way, no sirree Bob! Ram 'em! At least, he nearly rammed me. I glanced in my rear view mirror as I finished the turn and saw nothing but huge shiny chrome radiator grill. Yikes! I think he felt immediately contrite, because he backed off right away. Or maybe he was just feeling around on the floor for his gun...yeeha!
On to the dentist's office! I regret to inform you that they no longer have "Trailer Life" in their magazine racks. As a consolation, though, they do have Field and Stream, bearing this headline: Best of the Rut! Seven Dates you Must Hunt This Fall! And then: A Million Ducks on the Cheap. Boy, that wildlife out there doesn't stand a chance. Why is Field and Stream called that? Shouldn't it be called Hunt and Kill Every Living Creature? To me, "Field and Stream" implies a sense of appreciation, if not reverence, for natural waterways and landforms and the animals who inhabit them. Just a thought.
The root canal wasn't as bad as all my nervousness promised. They really do try to make you more comfortable these days. They had a television monitor in the ceiling, which at first I was a bit unimpressed by, but then I realized it would be a nice distraction from all of the uncomfortable sensations and noises taking place in my mouth. At least they weren't playing some nasty daytime talk show or infomercial--it was an old black and white movie with lots of misty close-ups of the young actress, tears glimmering from her lower eyelids as she searched her lover's face imploringly. Oh, the drama! Excellent distraction, too. I did actually ask the dentist for a narration of what the heck they were doing to me. What they did is drill a hole into the back of my tooth, and then rout out the place where my tooth nerve was supposed to be, and then extract the dead nerve. Well, since my tooth injury happened such a long time ago, my tooth nerve had receded about halfway up the tooth, and left a path of calcified material in its wake. Apparently, it does this to protect itself; it kind of seals itself up from possible decay in the empty space by filling it up with calcium deposits. Interesting! But that did mean they had to do a lot of extra drilling to get to where the nerve was, dangit. I had to start closing my eyes when they drilled because while it didn't hurt, the vibrations were awful and it was actually making my vision blurry. The doe-eyed actress was looking especially tremulous and upset, and I was feeling a bit queasy watching the room shiver and jiggle like that.
All in all, it was not too bad. I may even decide to get that tooth bleached after all. I've been noticing in recent photos that it's really getting yellower as the years go on. I think it makes all of my other teeth look dingier by comparison. I’ve got a few weeks to contemplate it, at any rate. In the meantime, I need to find work and spend all of my spare time (which I have more of than I'd like right now) making phone calls and trying to raise money. That said, have you checked out my fundraiser yet? Read the previous post, please! I’m not above a little begging. We need money in a most desperate way. That’s right folks. Give us your money or we’ll all stand around you in a circle and threaten to cough phlegm in your general direction. Don’t think we wouldn’t!
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