A couple nights ago, the crown on tooth #2 (top right, back molar) popped off again, for the second time in as many weeks. It chose to do so in the evening, after my dentist was closed. Instead of bucking up like a brave little toaster, I ran to my phone and scrolled madly, finding a 24-hour dentist. Weirdly, he’s located directly across from my work. I half expect the building to be gone the next time I pass by, a Brigadoon-like romance. He shows up when you need him, disappears when you don’t. That is, if a character from a Scottish play can be of Pakistani descent, instead of haggis and whisky, exuding the scent of Asian spices (and garlic, dear god, the garlic) from every pore. I hadn’t eaten dinner. Every time he leaned over me I had the urge to bite him.

He cemented my crown back with a composite so strong he said my real dentist will be pissed off. At first I’m thinking, “Great! There’s no way it’ll pop off again before time to get my permanent crown.” Then, I realized my dentist will have to break out the TNT to pop the mother off.

Awesome.

I hope he knew what he was doing. His office certainly looked professional. It had one of those blinding search lights they use to find you if you try to bolt, a chair that lays back beyond horizontal so all the blood rushes to your head and your nerves throb even more vigorously, and all those pointy, proddy instruments. The odd thing was, once he was finished and we were leaving (my son happened to be getting off the train coming back from the city 20 minutes after I sent up a distress flare, so he drove me) we had to be lead out of the building via the flashlight on the dentist’s wife’s phone.

That’s normal.

The building’s under construction, and for whatever reason, the power in the hallway was out. The elevator worked fine, mind. And the electricity downstairs. It was just that outside their office, in the space of time I was sitting in the chair, suffering like a whiny little beyatch, it cut out.

Nothing in my life can be 100% normal, can it.

In reading news, there isn’t much reading news. The Olympics have been a seductive little siren, plus my son’s stopped by a few times during his extremely busy semester. The break hasn’t been a bad thing.

 

 

My library’s Great Books group is reading Jack London’s lesser work Martin Eden for discussion next week. There’s a reason it’s a lesser work. I’m about 85 pages in, and it’s exclusively about an uneducated sailor’s desperate attempts to impress a pretty girl named Ruth, a university student who runs in literary circles. Already bent on self-improvement, it’s made that much more urgent by his obsession with the girl. But there’s no other storyline so far, in nearly 1oo pages. It’s grating. London repeats the girl’s attributes, and the young man’s devotion, over and over. I’d throw it across the room, but it’s on my Kindle.

It was chosen because one of the members is a London fan, yet, another member doesn’t like the American writer’s subject matter about snow and ice and wolves. So, there’s Martin Eden, Jack London without the animals.

HINT: Generally, when a classic writer’s known for a certain quality it’s their best. Don’t like wolves? Just don’t read Jack London.

The Olympics are tough competition for my attention, but there’s a lot I need to get read before the end of February. I may just have to turn the sound off and glance at it every now and then. If you’ll recall, I’m paying extra for the television channels, so I’m not about to stop watching. It’s about balance, splitting my attention.

I haven’t even bought any books, I just realized, though I did receive a gift in the mail from the Scot. How he knew I love vintage Puffins and symbols of Edinburgh, I don’t know.

Intuition, I guess.

 

 

Though I didn’t buy any books, I did buy a bookshelf and found this lovely painting at Goodwill, for a mere $ 2.50.

 

 

Not bad, if I do say so myself.

That’s been my week. Partly awful, partly pretty okay. Expect more book talk next time. And, for gawd’s sake, please let there be no more tooth news save it’s taken care of, and my long nightmare is finally over.