Ding Dong

I think I ding donged prematurely.  As I now sit in what has been seven days of cold, rain, sleet, snow, wind and some thunder, lightning, and hail thrown in.  For whatever reason spring just doesn't want to come this year, and much as "April showers bring May flowers" in Michigan, enough already!

I didn't even spend four of the past seven days in Michigan but went to Nashville to visit Annie and Pete and was caught up in a mild depression of "unfair" weather the two full days we descended from the frozen North to the sunny Southland.  It wasn't sunny until we left on Sunday, and at least if I had to suffer all day rain and storms on Friday and cool, breezy, and cloudy on Saturday, it was green and flowering, so that is some consolation. 

I got "Annie and Pete time", and that was healing to my soul.  I got to shop a plant nursery in Nashville which is akin to putting me in a candy shop.  I talked plants with gracious, helpful Southerners, and learn and put away for future reference all they told me.  We went to Annie's place loaded up with plants and after placing the herbs and tomato plants we bought, I let Annie and Pete "dig" in.  We cleaned out an overgrown area next to her patio, pruned, and pulled out, and replaced plants.  In a couple of hour's time, it was a completely different looking area.

And I got to walk her neighborhood, and it was comforting to me for some reason to see an older neighborhood where people still seemed to care about the wonderful old homes they maintain.  Not "McMansions", but delightful brick and stone homes built in the '20's, 30's, and '40's.  Tree shaded lots, homes set on the sides of hills, with streets that wind up and down and around.  The Cumberland River a half mile away, and the lights of Opryland twinkling across the other side at dusk.  In my dreaming, I could semi retire down there in one of those homes.  Kurt would definitely have other ideas of what he would want for a few months of warmer weather during Michigan's harsh winters, and this is just dreaming, but for a few days, I could again delight in what Annie and Pete have found in their adopted city, and love it as well.

So many things of late have made me think ahead to the swift passing of time.  I will become a grandma in a couple of short months now, and my initial thought was; about time, and somehow I have not quite been caught up in the pre shopping for the new little ones as many of my friends have, and I have to wonder at times, "am I missing a Grandma gene" or something?   Or when the blessed event happens will it just burst upon me like fireworks and I will totally get it?   Not sure about either one.  I am happy for my sons as the continuation of another generation is always reason for hope that it all goes on, in the circle of life, God intended, but past that I guess I will just wait and see what its all about.

I had a tooth extraction, a week ago Tuesday.  I had noticed a lump below a tooth that was capped and the product of a root canal, almost 15 years ago.  A quick visit to my dentist and he confirmed the root of that tooth was broken and part of it had worked itself upward and was the jagged edge I was feeling with my tongue below the crown.  The dentist said a tooth extraction was in order as the remnants of the tooth would do nothing but give me problems now, and I could risk infection of the jaw bone from the broken root.   Anyone who knows me well, knows that I would rather undergo two colonoscopys in a row then have to do any kind of prolonged dental work.  It goes back to childhood and a not so happy time with a dentist I had at that time.  I endured having 10 cavities at one time and having them filled by a dentist who had not much sympathy for kid's and their fear of dentist drills and pain caused by them.  Then I went through orthodontia well after most of the kids I went to school with.  I wore braces for my first two years of college.  While that is not all that uncommon now as many adutls are correcting what wasn't done in earlier life, back then I seemed to be the only one I knew with a "tin grin".  It was something I am forever grateful my parents allowed to be done as being able to smile meant a great deal to me thereafter.  But it just seemed one of the many more dental things I always have to endure.  A root canal in my forties, while the root canal was painless, lead to the tooth breaking off above it to the point I had to have a crown installed.  I often have kidded that if I keep breaking off teeth at the rate I now am, I will be like Bambi with nothing left but nubs.

So on the morning of April 12, I just looked to getting it done and hoped there would be no complications so I could head to Nashville the following Thursday.  Lots of numbing in the area and the nice oral surgeon commenting that I had "tenacious little roots", but an hour later, mostly spent in the waiting room, I had cotton gauze stuffed in the empty socket, a numbed side of my mouth and instructions to drink only water and eat softened foods for the first 24 hours.  No coffee until tomorrow morning....RATS.    A day of yogurt and bottles of water, and not as much pain as I anticipated.  I didn't need to fill the prescriptions for stronger pain killers and got by with just regular Motrin.  By the end of the Nashville visit, the swelling was gone, and the dissolving stiches weren't dissolved yet and annoying as my tongue wouldn't leave them alone.  But hey, if that's the worst I suffer.  In a couple of months work will begin on a new bridge, and dental construction will begin.  More fun, fun. I guess its just part of the maturation process.  The first part of our lives we spend growing all kinds of things.  The middle part we spend on trying to figure out how to best use all the things we've grown, and the latter part, we start to lose all those things we've grown and we cope with how to best use what's left.....

Its still a yucky gray day, more reminscent of March than April, but that seems to be the way this weird year of weather is determined to play out, and I am okay with it.........for now.