I love my dentist

It was a really long day at the dentist. The ride alone is an hour and half and I spent a long time in the chair today. Oddly I didn't mind. I love my dentist and all his staff. But especially my dentist. To look at him you wouldn't think he was such a magician. He's very unassuming, laid back and has a little bit of Southern drawl. I have to admit when I first met him, I didn't expect him to be best dentist in the business, just the nicest.

It turns out he really is the best dentist I've ever known. He doesn't talk when he works. He doesn't hurt. You can't even tell when he's done. He's a master with the novacaine. It's already wearing off by the time you leave. And he's really, really nice. I haven't gripped the chair once since he started working on me. Of course, I do still have to take a tranq to get into the car and drive there, but that's just the residual dentaphonia. Once I get in the chair, I feel safe. I almost hate to leave the place when I'm done.

Another friend gone

I haven't quite been able to wrap my head around this. One of my dearest friends in the world died and I couldn't be there to say goodbye, not at his bedside and not at the memorial service.

Roy Warren was an amazing human being. Born on Valentine's Day. Served in Vietnam where he was badly injured. He was put together with steel rods and plastic joints and suffered through great pain every single day but you would never know it. He was one of the kindest and funniest human beings I ever met.

He and my dear friend Victoria were a couple for many years and we used to spend a whole lot of time together. Practically the three musketeers. It would take pages to tell all the stories. Some I couldn't tell because the statute of limitation may not have run out (That's a joke.) Roy taught me how to be a great card player and how to appreciate what you've got instead of worrying about what you didn't get.

I'm on my out the door to the dentist, so I don't have time to do him justice right now. Maybe I'll write more. Maybe I won't. It hurts to know he's gone and I'll never have a chance to hang out with him again. It makes me wish I had stayed in better touch since I moved down here. Isn't that always the way? You think you have plenty of time, and then, it runs out.

Rest in peace Roy. I hope if there's a heaven that you're in it and your broken body doesn't hurt anymore. For those of us left on the mortal coil, the pain of your loss will take a very long time to heal.

Another blogger gone

The worst part about getting old is that people you know start dying at a much more rapid pace. I went pretty much most of life without having to deal with the death of close friends, but in the last few years I've lost way too many.

And now the blogger known as Bane, has passed away. I wasn't a big fan. In fact the man terrified me so much, I couldn't even read his blog. He ususally pissed me off and I was always afraid he would hunt me down and shoot me for disagreeing with him. But I did love him in my own way for his obviously fierce love of his family and his uncompromising honesty. I hate the word authentic, it's so overused, but if it ever fit anyone, it's Bane. I'll miss running into him in comment sections and cherish the run-ins I had with him.

My deepest sympathy to the family and friends who knew him well. Rest in peace Bane.

The Fountain



This is fountain on the way to my dentist I've been promising to post. Finally remembered to get a shot of it last week. I went again today. It didn't rain. It was another beautiful drive on a perfect sunny fall morning.

I love my dentist. I'll have more to say about it tomorrow.

Amazing

I probably shouldn't mention this because a tornado or something will blow up out of nowhere, but for those of you who have been following the correlation of the weather and my dentist vists, I have an appointment this afternoon and it's a beautiful, sunny day. The air is clear. It's not too hot.

Maybe it's because I'm not getting any actual work done today. Danny is back from his surgery and we're going to consult on my options. I guess I should be more nervous since I assume I'll be coming home with some cost estimates. I'm sure it isn't going to pretty. But then again, at least I'll know what I'm facing. I think that's better than trying to guess.

And Tuesday's just as bad...

Two days it was like the tropics around here, humid and thick air you couldn't even breathe. Yesterday was a pretty nice day. I got a lot done. Today it's grey, wet and chilly. The economy is tanking before our eyes and I still haven't had even a bite on the dozen resumes I sent out so far this week. I don't know I'm ever going to get a job in this mess.

Some days it doesn't pay to get out of bed. I would have stayed there but I don't sleep well these days. I haven't managed more than five hours in weeks.

I can't wait until I find the silver lining in this cloud.

Old friends

I've been feeling pretty lonely lately and missing my old friends a lot. I haven't seen anyone from Noho in about three years now, so I was happy to find these photos on line. This is one of my dearest friends in the world, my former next door neighbor Jamie.

He looks so different. He's gained a lot of weight and he's lost a lot of hair. But he still seems to project that same old spark. His love for life and his sense of fun always showed on his face.

And standing behind the bar that Jamie now co-owns with his new partner Carol, is one of my other dearest and cherished friends, Mark Herschler. That's him in the middle.



He's also lost some hair but still projects the same joyous energy too. They're kind of frozen in time in my memory so it seems odd to see them aging. Then again, when I look in the mirror, I look different to myself too. It's weird to get old.

Migration

The best investment I made this summer was the five bucks I spent on hummingbird food. I just read the little buggers have started their annual trek from the north and it must be true because I seem to have more birds this week. I've counted six so far. I might have more. It's hard to tell since they're tiny and sort of look alike. The lighting is weird on the deck so it's hard to get a look at their markings but their personalities are all a little different.

Anyway, they've been amusing and a great comfort while I've been so stressed out here about being unemployed. It's clear I'll have to drop my health insurance to hang on for another month of rent. I've lost count of how many jobs I've applied for and I still don't even have a hot prospect. All my life I've suffered from bad timing and it seems the universe couldn't have picked a worse time to leave me without a job. At least some things never change.

The Bright Side of Anxiety

I've been so overwrought about the job situation and I still don't have one, that I haven't been able to eat much. The good news is I've finally lost that ten pounds I've been trying to get rid of. Silver lining and all that.

Mike's bean patch

Every year my friends Mike and Irma manage to grow a beautiful garden in the tiny backyard of my old rowhouse in lovely downtown Noho. Still at it. Some of those plants are lima beans. Shouldn't even be possible to grow them but somehow he does it.

Call me Gladys Kravitz

I'm so nosy. I can't figure out what's going on with my Oriental neighbors. You'll recall a few months back, the husband was taken out of the building at night in handcuffs. That was before the baby was born and by the way that baby is really cute.

Since then, the state police have shown up here maybe three or four times carrying some document. The cop comes in and leaves in a matter of minutes. The statie just showed up again with a paper in his hand. Looked like a warrant. He left in less than a minute with the paper still in his hand, but this time the husband followed him out and they both left in seperate cars. I'm dying to know what's going on.

They seem like very nice people. They're friendly. We exchange greetings in the hall. They obligingly linger and let me coo over the baby. They both seem to go to work everyday while their nanny, the one who wears the pajamas, takes care of the little one. I can't imagine what on earth he could have done.

I thought at first it was just a domestic spat, but that can't be it. I doubt there would have been so many followup visits. Very strange.

I loves me some Catfish

Well, it's been a busy week. Jobhunting is a lot harder than working a job and not as rewarding when you don't get one. I find it totally bizarre. I've never had such a hard time getting work. I could always as least get a crappy job until something better came along. There's something particularly depressing about not being to land even one of those. But Catfish called me up this week and cheered me up. Of all the things I like about blogging, I really love that you make friends with such great people on the internets.

Meanwhile, we had a hurricane here but it just missed me. I guess it poured buckets while I was sleeping. My deck was soaked all the way to the wall, which almost never happens but I missed it. I hear it was loud and a lot a people had flooded yards in the morning, but by the time I got up it was over. The worst missed us in any event. We just hit by the trailing edge before it turned northeast again. The sun broke out in the afternoon and it's a tropical heat wave around here now.

I'm trying to decide whether to run down to the big town and catch the outdoor Jazz brunch. I hear the band is great today but I feel guilty when I'm not reading want ads and sending out resumes. Still, it would be probably be good to get out for a couple of hours and talk to real life people.

Fetch me an ark

Sorry I've been out of touch dear readers. It's been a tough week. I've been freaking out a bit over my situation. I did get one writing gig that pays $75 a week so that was something and it kept me busy but it's certainly not enough to live on. Anyway, let me tell you about my trip to the dentist.

As I mentioned, the remnants of the last hurricane were stirring up a storm front. It poured in the morning but by the time I had to leave it had tapered to a drizzle. Unfortunately when I got to my car I discovered I had left the window cracked. The good news is there was a truck right next to me so the seats weren't overly soaked. The bad news is the whole car was damp and smelled kind of moldy. Nonetheless, I soldiered on and the ride over in a stinky car wasn't so awful.

The appointment went great. I really do love this dentist and all the staff. I didn't get to see Danny because he just had surgery and will be out for a while, but the hygenist rocks. Easiest teeth cleaning I've ever gone through.

We were almost done when one of the assistants came in, freaking out because the next wave of rain had arrived and they had just announced they were closing roads because of the flooding. Of course, I'm in windowless room, so I can't see just how bad it is until I get back to the waiting room. It was pouring buckets. I waited a few minutes to see if it would break but no luck so I raced through the parking lot, getting soaked in the process. It was a humid rain, so as soon as I got inside, the windows immediately fogged up like teenager's car on lover's lane.

Eventually, I got on the road but I didn't get more than a mile or so when the really big rain came. I used to wonder how people could get stuck in huge pools of water on the road. I mean, who would be dumb enough to drive into the middle of a standing lake? Now I understand.

Forget buckets. It was more like a dump truck constantly emptying its load on the windshield. I mean, even with the wipers on high, you get a bare glimpse of the road between swipes and the ground is so hard here that the roads flood instantly and there's no way to tell how deep the next puddle is going to be. It was so bad I tried pulling over three times and waiting out the deluge, but the rain was coming in bands that crossed my route, so every time I got a few more miles down the road, I would again suddenly find myself in flood city.

Astoundingly, I managed to get almost the way home without hitting a major puddle, mainly because the road is lightly travelled and when the cars in front of me hit a wave spitting whopper, I had enough leeway to drive around it. I didn't make a major splash until I got back to town. It was a really big pool and deceiving. It was on the flat and didn't look deep but the resulting wings of water came all up to the windows. Still the car didn't stall and the rain abruptly stopped right afterwards.

So it was a white knuckle drive that ended well enough and on the bright side, on one of my little layovers, I discovered gas for $3.42 a gallon. It's cheaper in the big town generally, but the going rate even there was between $3.53 and $3.60 so what I saved on the fill up probably paid for the ride. I think the spirits are testing my dental resolve with the bad weather on my appointment days, but apparently that was my reward for passing the test.