Contretemps and Other Assorted Dentistry

Had another attack of thunder-boomers again last night.  Power flicked on and off a couple times, which did not affect my computer because I have it plugged into a UPS*, but it made my AT&T whole-shebang modem** reboot each time the power went off.  I need to rethink what I’ve got plugged into my UPS and see if I can’t manage to plug the AT&T modem into it as well.

As regular readers may recall, back in August, one of my back teeth threw a shoe, and I had to have that crown cemented back on.   Well, that cement lasted until this past Sunday.  While I was eating a baked potato, off came the crown again.   I got it re-cemented back on this morning with hopes it will hold until we get back from our planned trip.

Unfortunately, the reason the crown came off again is because the stub of tooth left over from the previous root canal is slowly but surely disintegrating.  One way or another, it’s got to come out.  Of course, if he just pulls the tooth and leaves it at that, I’ll lose the tooth above it, too.  (Bone toughens in response to stress.  What keeps your upper teeth in your head is the stress on the upper jawbone that results from chewing.  If you lose a lower tooth, the bone weakens around the roots of the tooth above it and that unopposed tooth slowly but surely starts falling out.)  About 15 years ago, I lost the back molar on the other side with no option to replace it and the tooth above the empty space hangs noticeably lower than the tooth next to it.

What we’ve decided to do is to go for a second dental implant.  The tooth just ahead of the misbehaving molar is the implant I got in 2017, and I have been totally satisfied with it.  The bone graft took right away, and everything went well.  The implant process takes about 6-8 months from when the tooth is pulled to when the crown is installed.    I get the tooth pulled on 4 November.  (So not looking forward to that!)  I’ll have to be on an antibiotic both before and after the extraction because of the stents in my heart, and I’ll be chewing right-handed for the foreseeable future.   Joy electric.

In 2017, my dentist moved to new premises WAY the heck out on 122nd Street***(I live on 66th Street).  The town where I live is expanding south and west at a fairly fast clip.  Developers are building large clusters of houses (we call them “housing additions or subdivisions; the Brits call them “housing estates”) on the outskirts of town.  This photo is looking back toward town from the parking lot of the little strip mall where my dentist has his office.  There are large plots of houses to the west, south, and east of where this was taken, with a cotton field right in the middle. (Evidently this plot of land either hasn’t been sold to a developer yet, or else the developer has no plans to build on it right away and the guy he bought it from has enough time to get one more cotton crop out of it before it gets dozed and they start putting streets in.)  If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you can see that the cotton bolls (white dots) are already starting to open. (Groan!)

That means we’re moving into my worst allergy season of the year — cotton stripping and ginning time.  This is when the cotton is harvested from the plants, cleaned of plant trash, and “ginned” of its seeds.  Particles of dirt and plant trash coated with herbicide, pesticide, and defoliant, as well as fine pieces of cotton lint are thrown into the air by  both the stripping and ginning processes.  My lungs and sinuses will be having a hissy fit until about February.

Here’s one of the usual suspects in action.  The below video was made northeast of us, fairly close to the state line between us and Oklahoma.  (The land there is not quite as flat as it is where I live.)  This cotton stripper not only picks the cotton bolls off the plants, it takes the boll off the cotton and discards it, so that what it rolls up into that nice round plastic-covered bale is about 95% cotton and only about 5% plant trash.  You’ll notice the lint and dust blowing off the machinery as it heads down the rows.   Oh, and by the way, one of these little buggies will set you  back about $700,000.

In the knitting news, the BJD sweater is coming along. I’m writing the pattern up as I go along and I’ll publish it in my knitting blog. I need to mail it next week for it to arrive in time for Jane’s birthday.  You’ll notice in the picture on the left what looks like a piece of slightly bent wire.  That’s the tapestry needle that I was using as a cable needle.  I will have enough yarn to finish the sweater (whew!), and probably enough yarn left over to make a stocking cap to match. So, that.

Here in the flatlands we have what is described as a “semi-arid” climate, which means our humidity rarely goes above 60% (usually only when it’s pouring down rain) and can get down in the teens and nobody thinks too much about it.

I have one of those thick plastic mats that you put under office chairs so they will roll easily on carpet. If I’m wearing my ear buds listening to stuff on the computer, and I shuffle my bare feet on the plastic mat, I will get static sparks in my ears.  (Gets your attention, I can tell you!)

Feeding my Aunt’s Chickens, aged 3

This GIF is so evocative for me. As a child, I was a tow-headed blonde with fine, flyaway hair. When I was about 3 years old, my parents had an old green Studebaker that had bench seats, and seat covers woven out of plastic thread, (like that stuff they put on lawn chairs).  This was way back, long before the days before child protective seats.  When we went somewhere in the car, I stood on the seat beside my mother.  In order to get out of the car,  I had to slide across the seat on my tummy until my legs were clear of the edge and then climb down; and when I stood up, I looked a lot like this little girl. (Except blonde.)  (And cuter.)

*Uninterrupted Power Supply, AKA battery backup/surge protector.  I've got 10 minutes worth of battery to allow me to save computer files I'm working on so I don't lose stuff when the power goes out.

**  a cable company modem that controls everything you get from their service with a single modem.  In my case, that's cable TV, a  VOIP land-line phone and internet access.  If you lose power, the modem goes off and you have no internet, no TV and no phone.

*** Because we're in the flatlands and there's pretty much nothing but a shallow canyon in the way of putting a town anywhere you want to, my town (pop. 261,000) was laid out on a grid, with the east-west streets numbered north to south, and the north-south streets named alphabetically  east to west,  which makes 122nd Street 56 streets further south than 66th Street.