Trials and Travels

It's been one of those weeks, the kind that you'd rather forget. Just when we were enjoying a lovely visit with Josh's college pal and his parents, I accidentally mowed over a yellow jacket hive in the back yard. At first I didn't know what was happening. My legs started to sting and I looked down to a patch of yellow creatures swarming my shins. I sprinted, leaving the mower to sputter out on its own. Fortunately, I got ice on them right away and the actual stinging lasted just an hour or so. But then the itch-to-end-all-itches set in and I was miserable for the next 72 hours. I was so drugged on Benadryl that I can't really remember what happened. Somehow I kept feeding Augie, and fortunately, he wasn't mowing with me.

But unfortunately this horror overlapped with some shoddy Kentucky dental work and I ended up with a bad crown that has now morphed into head/jaw/neck pain (e.g. the give-me-the-root-canal-now pain). This particular pain recalls another dental misstep in my past: the elective "operative procedure" that I allowed a UNC dental student to perform on the same bad tooth so that she could graduate. That was a pity filling. This is a crap crown. Tooth #29 has always been my Achilles' heal.

With my itching legs and a throbbing face, we drove to Michigan yesterday. Our usual trip took just an extra hour or so. Augie was a great traveler and he slept most of the way. We pulled up at dinner time and immediately breathed deeply and started to relax. I'm hopped up on Advil, and I may need to find an emergency dentist tomorrow or Monday, but at least it's not 90 degrees and humid. Instead, it's 64 and I'm sitting on a porch looking out over the lake. I have a couple dogs asleep at my feet and two yellow finches at the feeder. I'll watch fireworks over the bay tonight and introduce Augie to his youngest aunt.

It's good to be home.