It's Friday somewhere

No, no. Not gonna turn this into a "Weeee-hooooo, it's party time post." I'm just saying that, owing to the vicissitudes of time zone distribution, it's already Friday not more than an hour or so east of me. Ergo, I'm posting some stuff for Friday.

As noted in Thursday's post, I have the bad teeth in the marriage, a fact that I consider so very much unfair. The Lovely Missus has white, sparkling teeth. Mine are tetracycline-stained, and make me look, shall we say, exotic. The kind of exotic where people have gray teeth, if there is such a place. Of course, The Lovely Missus never gets cavities.

Furthermore, The Lovely Missus has great gums, even though she wields her toothbrush with a pulsing vengeance while I caress my gums with the loving touch of a Swiss watchmaker. She has excellent gums, and of course mine are racing my hairline to see who dies first.

Life ain't fair, I reckon.

Where do you look, when you're being "spreeeeeeeeeened" and "graunnnnnnnnnnched" and "slurrrrrrrrrrrrrppppppppppppppped" in the dentail chair? If you do as I do, and pick a point in the room that prevents you from having to look the dentist and hygienist in the eye, then you get a lot of, "You doing okay?", as if they're worried you're catatonic with pain. And if Ilook them in the eye, I get the feeling that I'm disconcerting them, perhaps to the point of anger and dentyn destruction.

I had a root canal about a year ago, and those people knew who to throw a dental pulp throwdown, lemme tell you. I sat back in the chair, settled in, and what to my painful eyes should appear but a television in the ceiling! Hallelujah! While the endodontist did his palliatory work, I sat back and watched some Discovery show on sharks. Happy? I could have died.

Side note to those who hear "root canal" and feel its worse than death: I've had two, and neither of them was hard at all. Plus, they give you that sweet, sweet release from the pain. Pain caused, by the way, by the necrotic tissue in your tooth releasing gasses, which push against the nerve tissue. Now, run along and eat your cream of wheat.

Getting back to the dental work I had done, it was on the bottom front teeth, which mean that my bottom lip wouldn't have passed a blood-alcohol test in Moscow. I could barely keep from drooling on myself, and I couldn't say some words very well. Take a look.




Jacob is dealing better with the fact that I sometimes come and go with, to his thinking, no rhyme or reason. Of course, I still have to stop and pick him up sometimes, even if it's just for a minute or two. And, once things are slowed down for the evening, I get in the floor with him and my three four-legged children for a free-for-all. Jacob mostly sits back, watches the fur fly, and squeals with glee. More and more personality emerging, too, like the sly smile he knows can get him out of anything. Here's the bad news--I think he's gonna be like his dad and be a few bubbles off plumb when it comes to humor. Pray for my wife.

Finally, Friday ain't Friday without some weirdness, so here are Karen and Richard Carpenter attempting to communicate with aliens. Seriously. It's "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft," also known as "The Recognized Anthem of World Contact Day." (Had you deduced that this was from the seventies?) You can read about it here, and listen to it here.