One of the little exigencies of life in a hundred-year-old farm house in North Missouri is the Great November Mouse Migration. At this time all the mice pack up their little mouse bags and take the shortest route into the first available residence. They bring all their relatives and invite any other mice who might have been visiting at the time. Mice who have lived very happily and quite comfortably all summer and fall in the tall grass beneath the apple tree or under the propane gas tank or under the corner of the shed, are compelled to check out more substantial housing.
I am never ready for this and this year was no different. One night I could sit comfortably in my living room watching TV and the next you could hardly hear over the scratchings and goings on in the corners. I opened the drawer that held my important documents, (bits of old poems, calendars from 1999-2001, registration papers of cars smashed into tin foil years ago, etc) and out jumped a mouse. I was not quick enough and by the time I got down off the wall he had escaped.
A Great Mouse Migration can only be countered by a Great Mouse Safari.
So I geared up. The question was, how best to drive them from the house without endangering the legal residents, namely myself, my daughter, my son and Bingo the terrier? Hesitant to risk the side effects of all the available poisons I gave it serious thought.
I decided that the list of side effects were not as hair raising as those listed for Viagra or most blood pressure medication so I bought everything I could find. I brought home a sack full of mousetraps, four little bags of tiny pellets, two bigger bags of bigger pellets, a pack of big round cakes of green stuff supposed to be irresistible to mice and most interesting of all, a pack of little oblong things with stick 'em stuff on it that is designed to literally stop mice in their tracks.
Well, I am glad to report that all of this effort has been a resounding success in more ways than a dozen! I have been motivated to clean out all the cabinets and closets, (thanks little mice people) that haven't been touched since last year, just in case they had left their little calling cards behind. A good deal of effort has been put into finding little entry holes or gaps and all have been stuffed with steel wool or covered with carpenters cloth. Bingo, the terrier, was so inspired by the mouse trap thing that she would come running to tell me "we had another one". Mousing is one of her favorite things but obviously she never knew it could be this easy. She seldom catches anything on her own.
The only glitch was the little sticky things. I thought they worked great but Sarah wasn't too pleased. It seems the little mice people get stuck alright but tend to surf around the house for quite awhile on their little sticky surf boards. I personally have not seen this happen but she and Brian did as one of the mice people decided to surf clear into the dining room while they were eating their tenderloin sandwiches and french fries.
Anyway, I think my Great Mouse Safari has been a great success.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Monday, November 2, 2009
Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady of the World
According to Gallup Polls, Eleanor Roosevelt was the most admired woman in the world for fifteen consecutive years, from 1946 to 1961. That admiration was hard earned.
A homely, introverted child born to a family of wealth and influence her childhood was a miserable one. Her mother disliked and ridiculed her as being “ugly” and “clumsy” and upon her death when Eleanor was eight years old, her grandmother continued the same. Being sent to England for schooling as a young teenager proved to be a real opportunity for her and she blossomed both emotionally and academically.
At seventeen, she returned home and soon resumed her acquaintance with, and married, a fourth cousin once removed, Franklin Delano Roosevelt who later became our 32nd President. Eleanor had six children in ten years, one of whom died in infancy.
During this time, Eleanor also became active in politics and social causes. She campaigned for Alfred E. Smith for president, and worked for the Women’s Trade Union League, which promoted a 48 hour work week, minimum wage, and the abolition of child labor. She also worked with the League of Women Voters and taught literature and American history at the Todhunter School for Girls in New York City.
In 1920 her husband, Franklin, became ill with Infantile Paralysis and was crippled for life. She became his legs…and nurse..and secretary..and number one supporter in his run for the presidency. She suffered through his extramarital affairs and never put her good above his and the children. She began to travel, on his instructions, to see people and places around the world that he could not, carrying messages, encouragement and sometimes threats from the presidential portfolio without portfolio. She constantly juggled the “little woman speaks” thing with the power of the presidency that spoke through her in ways that no official portfolio had.
She became the conscience of the New Deal recovery program. While the federal government was developing big and complex programs to turn around the depression, she became, quite literally, the liaison between the government and individuals who were suffering. She would personally visit the slums of cities, talk to miners and destitute farmers, sit with widows and orphans and hear their stories. She was the conscience of the government by showing the human face of sympathy and concern, rather than simply an impersonal government program. She was the human face of the New Deal.
Of two political cartoons from the midst of the Great Depression, one showed dirty coal miners discovering a woman entering the mine wearing a miner’s hat. With astonishment, one says to the other, “My gosh! There’s Mrs. Roosevelt!” The other showed a shipload of immigrants in New York’s harbor. A mother and her young son were looking at the Statue of Liberty, and when the mother asks if he knows who that is, the boy responds saying, “Of course I know who that is. That’s Mrs. Roosevelt!”
After Franklin died, President Truman appointed Eleanor Roosevelt as our first delegate to the new United Nations. In that capacity, her main focus was protecting human rights. She became co-chair of the UN’s Human Rights Commission and the person most responsible for getting nations to approve the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a milestone on the road of civilization.
She was a staunch defender of the separation of church and state. It was perhaps her active role in racial civil rights and citizen civil liberties that caused J. Edgar Hoover to suspect her of being a communist. At the time of her death, Eleanor Roosevelt, the voice of our national conscience, had the thickest F.B.I. file of anyone in the country. In hindsight, this was an achievement worthy of respect.
Ref: Rev. Bruce Clear, Indianapolis, Indiana for some of this content and www.whitehouse.gov/about/first-ladies
A homely, introverted child born to a family of wealth and influence her childhood was a miserable one. Her mother disliked and ridiculed her as being “ugly” and “clumsy” and upon her death when Eleanor was eight years old, her grandmother continued the same. Being sent to England for schooling as a young teenager proved to be a real opportunity for her and she blossomed both emotionally and academically.
At seventeen, she returned home and soon resumed her acquaintance with, and married, a fourth cousin once removed, Franklin Delano Roosevelt who later became our 32nd President. Eleanor had six children in ten years, one of whom died in infancy.
During this time, Eleanor also became active in politics and social causes. She campaigned for Alfred E. Smith for president, and worked for the Women’s Trade Union League, which promoted a 48 hour work week, minimum wage, and the abolition of child labor. She also worked with the League of Women Voters and taught literature and American history at the Todhunter School for Girls in New York City.
In 1920 her husband, Franklin, became ill with Infantile Paralysis and was crippled for life. She became his legs…and nurse..and secretary..and number one supporter in his run for the presidency. She suffered through his extramarital affairs and never put her good above his and the children. She began to travel, on his instructions, to see people and places around the world that he could not, carrying messages, encouragement and sometimes threats from the presidential portfolio without portfolio. She constantly juggled the “little woman speaks” thing with the power of the presidency that spoke through her in ways that no official portfolio had.
She became the conscience of the New Deal recovery program. While the federal government was developing big and complex programs to turn around the depression, she became, quite literally, the liaison between the government and individuals who were suffering. She would personally visit the slums of cities, talk to miners and destitute farmers, sit with widows and orphans and hear their stories. She was the conscience of the government by showing the human face of sympathy and concern, rather than simply an impersonal government program. She was the human face of the New Deal.
Of two political cartoons from the midst of the Great Depression, one showed dirty coal miners discovering a woman entering the mine wearing a miner’s hat. With astonishment, one says to the other, “My gosh! There’s Mrs. Roosevelt!” The other showed a shipload of immigrants in New York’s harbor. A mother and her young son were looking at the Statue of Liberty, and when the mother asks if he knows who that is, the boy responds saying, “Of course I know who that is. That’s Mrs. Roosevelt!”
After Franklin died, President Truman appointed Eleanor Roosevelt as our first delegate to the new United Nations. In that capacity, her main focus was protecting human rights. She became co-chair of the UN’s Human Rights Commission and the person most responsible for getting nations to approve the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a milestone on the road of civilization.
She was a staunch defender of the separation of church and state. It was perhaps her active role in racial civil rights and citizen civil liberties that caused J. Edgar Hoover to suspect her of being a communist. At the time of her death, Eleanor Roosevelt, the voice of our national conscience, had the thickest F.B.I. file of anyone in the country. In hindsight, this was an achievement worthy of respect.
Ref: Rev. Bruce Clear, Indianapolis, Indiana for some of this content and www.whitehouse.gov/about/first-ladies
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Family History
Well, it's almost Thanksgiving and our thoughts turn to a day of cooking or a day of eating, whichever end of the stick you're on, but either way it's nice.
Also we might pause and adjust our thinking a little bit about that original old American holiday and the people responsible for it. If you believed everything they taught in school, that totally Godly, warmly dressed, well tooled and well armed men and women stepped off the boat, bid fond farewell to the captain and immediately joined a feast of turkey, venison, succotash, (that's a corn thing,) and pumpkin pie all over the place, Not So!
Starvation, disease and ignorance killed far more than were ever saved by pumpkin pie and family prayer. I just want you to know that our family was well represented during those hard times and the following centuries before we were finally liberated by the invention of frozen pizza and instant hair remover.
So lest we forget:
Our grandparents were Lewises, Lambs, Allans and an unknown. These predecessors had been infiltrated by the Bakers, Shaws, McDonalds/McDaniels and Wiskersons/Wiskerchen/Whiskersons.
Our first Lewis's got off the boat in 1628. This trip included a sixteen year old young lady by the name of Mary Lewis but she was so obstreperous she was threatened with a dunking. Yes, they actually dunked people, mostly women who did not act godly or talked too much or criticized someone's stupidity, and they had Mary's tank ready. But in her defense, her old Dad, Tom Lewis, had been co-owner of a thriving tavern in London Town and what sixteen year old wants to leave a party place like that for a bunch of dancing savages and pickled succotash ?
But in a document still readable in the Winthrop papers,a kindly and godly older gentleman was moved by her, (how so moved we can only guess) and petitioned Governor Winthrop for her hand in marriage, notwithstanding the age difference , in order to save her from perdition and subsequent lawful punishments.
Permission was granted for her release and marriage to the gentleman. He spent the next several years in the new world's courts trying to protect her from a multitude of defamatory charges against her "character and reputation", one of which was inspired by a gentleman who stated publicly that she "lifted her skirts" for him on several occasions. This particular defamation charge was thrown out of court because the judge said, "there can be no defamation if all statements are true and fact." Well, what can a girl do? Ultimately the nice gentleman gave up and took his girl back to merry old England where heaven only knows what trouble she got into.
So begins our family saga in the new world.
And for all you unbelievers out there..these transactions are documented in 17th century court records, the Winthrop Papers and a wonderful historical publication:,
Appendixes of the Real Founders of New England, Appendix A page 155
Also we might pause and adjust our thinking a little bit about that original old American holiday and the people responsible for it. If you believed everything they taught in school, that totally Godly, warmly dressed, well tooled and well armed men and women stepped off the boat, bid fond farewell to the captain and immediately joined a feast of turkey, venison, succotash, (that's a corn thing,) and pumpkin pie all over the place, Not So!
Starvation, disease and ignorance killed far more than were ever saved by pumpkin pie and family prayer. I just want you to know that our family was well represented during those hard times and the following centuries before we were finally liberated by the invention of frozen pizza and instant hair remover.
So lest we forget:
Our grandparents were Lewises, Lambs, Allans and an unknown. These predecessors had been infiltrated by the Bakers, Shaws, McDonalds/McDaniels and Wiskersons/Wiskerchen/Whiskersons.
Our first Lewis's got off the boat in 1628. This trip included a sixteen year old young lady by the name of Mary Lewis but she was so obstreperous she was threatened with a dunking. Yes, they actually dunked people, mostly women who did not act godly or talked too much or criticized someone's stupidity, and they had Mary's tank ready. But in her defense, her old Dad, Tom Lewis, had been co-owner of a thriving tavern in London Town and what sixteen year old wants to leave a party place like that for a bunch of dancing savages and pickled succotash ?
But in a document still readable in the Winthrop papers,a kindly and godly older gentleman was moved by her, (how so moved we can only guess) and petitioned Governor Winthrop for her hand in marriage, notwithstanding the age difference , in order to save her from perdition and subsequent lawful punishments.
Permission was granted for her release and marriage to the gentleman. He spent the next several years in the new world's courts trying to protect her from a multitude of defamatory charges against her "character and reputation", one of which was inspired by a gentleman who stated publicly that she "lifted her skirts" for him on several occasions. This particular defamation charge was thrown out of court because the judge said, "there can be no defamation if all statements are true and fact." Well, what can a girl do? Ultimately the nice gentleman gave up and took his girl back to merry old England where heaven only knows what trouble she got into.
So begins our family saga in the new world.
And for all you unbelievers out there..these transactions are documented in 17th century court records, the Winthrop Papers and a wonderful historical publication:,
Appendixes of the Real Founders of New England, Appendix A page 155
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Recycling
This morning I recycled our pop cans. This may not seem to be worth noting to you but here it is a celebratory event! We drink a lot of pop.
My method for dealing with the can situation is this. I hang a Walmart bag by the back door where it bangs us on the head when going in and out. When it bangs hard enough that means it is full and needs to be tied, taken out and tossed into the old smokehouse where Pansy, the Great Pyrenees sleeps. Maggie, the Aussie, sleeps there too although Maggie pretty much only sleeps at night while Pansy, since her retirement, pretty much sleeps day and night. The cans rattling around don’t bother Pansy any as she is ten years old and deaf. Maggie doesn’t mind the can thing unless I accidentally hit her with a bag of them.
Anyway, today was the day! I started about 8:30 this morning and was on the road by 10:00am. I told you we drank a lot of pop. There was a whole truck load of them but I don’t have a truck so it took awhile to get them in the car.
First I emptied all the Walmart bags into some commercial-sized trash bags John left up here when he last worked on the house. I had eleven bags full and could tell by the time the pile of Walmart bags was down to about knee high that the Buick was too small. Now I knew the rest of the cans had to be squashed so I jumped up and down on the Walmart bags until they were squashed enough to fit in one big bag. I made so much noise Pansy rolled over twice and Maggie hid out down by the gas tank.
I had five bags in the trunk so the lid had to be tied down with a bungy cord. I really like bungy cords. It occurred to me that it was just as well that the Proud to be a Democrat bumper sticker was not visible with the trunk up. The back seat held six bags after I slammed the door on them and one oversized black bag sat in the front passenger seat. I would have painted a face on it but thought it might have drawn attention to us.
At the recycling place the lady counted out cash for 89 pounds of cans and it was a good morning.
My method for dealing with the can situation is this. I hang a Walmart bag by the back door where it bangs us on the head when going in and out. When it bangs hard enough that means it is full and needs to be tied, taken out and tossed into the old smokehouse where Pansy, the Great Pyrenees sleeps. Maggie, the Aussie, sleeps there too although Maggie pretty much only sleeps at night while Pansy, since her retirement, pretty much sleeps day and night. The cans rattling around don’t bother Pansy any as she is ten years old and deaf. Maggie doesn’t mind the can thing unless I accidentally hit her with a bag of them.
Anyway, today was the day! I started about 8:30 this morning and was on the road by 10:00am. I told you we drank a lot of pop. There was a whole truck load of them but I don’t have a truck so it took awhile to get them in the car.
First I emptied all the Walmart bags into some commercial-sized trash bags John left up here when he last worked on the house. I had eleven bags full and could tell by the time the pile of Walmart bags was down to about knee high that the Buick was too small. Now I knew the rest of the cans had to be squashed so I jumped up and down on the Walmart bags until they were squashed enough to fit in one big bag. I made so much noise Pansy rolled over twice and Maggie hid out down by the gas tank.
I had five bags in the trunk so the lid had to be tied down with a bungy cord. I really like bungy cords. It occurred to me that it was just as well that the Proud to be a Democrat bumper sticker was not visible with the trunk up. The back seat held six bags after I slammed the door on them and one oversized black bag sat in the front passenger seat. I would have painted a face on it but thought it might have drawn attention to us.
At the recycling place the lady counted out cash for 89 pounds of cans and it was a good morning.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Guess what!! My stock portfolio is almost back to where it was a year ago when all this stuff went down. I bought Ford Motor Company at $1.30 and it is now almost $7.00 a share! I have made a killing! I wish I had bought more than 7 shares!
Unfortunately I bought twelve shares of GM stock at the same time following the old theory buy low sell high! Also my nephew, Mike works there and I was sure he would not allow the stock to go down. Well, I guess he was out to lunch the day they threw it off the Stock Exchange. It is now worth far less than good North Missouri dirt.
But I am not totally despondent. I am my father's child after all and have fond memories of Daddy's exciting schemes that had the capacity to make us all rich and catapult us into the resistant lap of the luxury we longed for.
The day a neighbor's vagabond horse came to call triggered Daddy's latent dream to join the circus. The escapee was extremely tame, (and extremely old,) so my brother and I were able to catch it and play all afternoon on it. To my brother and I it was a very satisfactory event on a summer day but to Daddy it offered a spectacular potential for gain and fame. As soon as he got home and saw that the horse would patiently "stretch", that is stick the hind legs back and the front legs forward, with only a slight whack on the back of the front leg, he took over the horse and worked diligently to discover any other circus tricks the horse might know and want to impart to us. If I remember right that stretch was the only act in his one-horse repertoire but that didn't really matter.
Sometimes the significance is not in the result so much as in the dream behind it.
Unfortunately I bought twelve shares of GM stock at the same time following the old theory buy low sell high! Also my nephew, Mike works there and I was sure he would not allow the stock to go down. Well, I guess he was out to lunch the day they threw it off the Stock Exchange. It is now worth far less than good North Missouri dirt.
But I am not totally despondent. I am my father's child after all and have fond memories of Daddy's exciting schemes that had the capacity to make us all rich and catapult us into the resistant lap of the luxury we longed for.
The day a neighbor's vagabond horse came to call triggered Daddy's latent dream to join the circus. The escapee was extremely tame, (and extremely old,) so my brother and I were able to catch it and play all afternoon on it. To my brother and I it was a very satisfactory event on a summer day but to Daddy it offered a spectacular potential for gain and fame. As soon as he got home and saw that the horse would patiently "stretch", that is stick the hind legs back and the front legs forward, with only a slight whack on the back of the front leg, he took over the horse and worked diligently to discover any other circus tricks the horse might know and want to impart to us. If I remember right that stretch was the only act in his one-horse repertoire but that didn't really matter.
Sometimes the significance is not in the result so much as in the dream behind it.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Women and Their Heroes
When asked, most women will list as the people they consider as heroes men of great reknown, or their fathers or their grandfathers. Seldom do they mention another woman's name. I find this very odd.
I find this odd because so many of the great social, religious and governing accomplishments of the last five centuries have been due to the courage, dedication and leadership of some very outstanding women.
The reason your six year-old daughter is not working beside you in a coal mine or balancing on a narrow platform in a textile mill coughing in clouds of cotton fiber is because of the decades of struggle by a handful of people, most of whom are women. You have no reason to fear the bedlam and sheer Hell of a 19th century mental hospital where women with "nervous" disorders often wound up, because of the efforts of a remarkable woman. The reason you do not have 13 children and are old..old..old at the age of 35 is because of the fight for available birth control, considered a sin by men whom, I might add, wrote the book on sin.
And not the least, and maybe the most important, was that wonderful concept of government called "Suffrage" known to us..the beneficiaries of these great women's sacrifice and work...as voting rights.
As for ordinary everyday heroes for women we might recall that in the 1960's the World Health Organization released the results of a study that showed 70% of the world's labor was being performed by women. I doubt if that has changed much.
So to all the young readers of this blog, (I am sure there are at least two), I am going to introduce you occasionally to some women who deserve to be remembered.
**************
Margaret Fell
If you hate war or are black or have aspirations of church leadership you owe a great deal to Margaret Fell or Margaret Fox (1614 - 23 April 1702) a founder of the Religious Society of Friends. She is known popularly as the "mother of Quakerism", and considered one of the Valiant Sixty early Quaker preachers and missionaries.
Born Margaret Askew in Dalton-in-Furness, Cumbria, England, she married Thomas Fell, a barrister,(lawyer) in 1632, and became the lady of Swarthmore Hall. After her husband's death in 1658, she retained control of Swarthmore Hall, which remained a meeting place and haven from persecution for the embryonic Quaker movement. She subsequently married George Fox, a founder of the Quakers. It is doubtful that he or his movement would have survived without her support.
Her formal petitions to King Charles II and his parliament in 1660 and 1662 for freedom of conscience in religious matters can arguably be the forerunner to the submission later signed by George Fox and other prominent (male) Quakers stating their case that, although Friends wished to see the world changed, they would use persuasion rather than violence towards what they regarded as a "heavenly" (i.e. spiritual) end.
In 1664 Margaret Fell was arrested for failing to take an oath and for allowing Quaker Meetings to be held in her home. She defended herself by saying that "as long as the Lord blessed her with a home, she would worship him in it". She spent six months in Lancaster Gaol, whereafter she was sentenced to life imprisonment and forfeiture of her property. She remained in prison until 1668, during which time she wrote religious pamphlets and epistles. Perhaps her most famous work is "Women's Speaking Justified", a scripture-based argument for women's ministry, and one of the major texts on women's religious leadership in the 17th century. There is no argument that her writings are greatly responsible for the Friends' stance that all souls, mens' and womens' are equal with equal rights and responsibilities.
Surviving both husbands by a number of years, she continued to take an active part in the affairs of the Society well into her eighties. In the last decade of her life, she firmly opposed the effort of her fellow believers in Lancashire to maintain certain traditional Quaker standards of conduct (for example, in matters of dress). She died aged 88.
**************
When asked, most women will list as the people they consider as heroes men of great reknown, or their fathers or their grandfathers. Seldom do they mention another woman's name. I find this very odd.
I find this odd because so many of the great social, religious and governing accomplishments of the last five centuries have been due to the courage, dedication and leadership of some very outstanding women.
The reason your six year-old daughter is not working beside you in a coal mine or balancing on a narrow platform in a textile mill coughing in clouds of cotton fiber is because of the decades of struggle by a handful of people, most of whom are women. You have no reason to fear the bedlam and sheer Hell of a 19th century mental hospital where women with "nervous" disorders often wound up, because of the efforts of a remarkable woman. The reason you do not have 13 children and are old..old..old at the age of 35 is because of the fight for available birth control, considered a sin by men whom, I might add, wrote the book on sin.
And not the least, and maybe the most important, was that wonderful concept of government called "Suffrage" known to us..the beneficiaries of these great women's sacrifice and work...as voting rights.
As for ordinary everyday heroes for women we might recall that in the 1960's the World Health Organization released the results of a study that showed 70% of the world's labor was being performed by women. I doubt if that has changed much.
So to all the young readers of this blog, (I am sure there are at least two), I am going to introduce you occasionally to some women who deserve to be remembered.
**************
Margaret Fell
If you hate war or are black or have aspirations of church leadership you owe a great deal to Margaret Fell or Margaret Fox (1614 - 23 April 1702) a founder of the Religious Society of Friends. She is known popularly as the "mother of Quakerism", and considered one of the Valiant Sixty early Quaker preachers and missionaries.
Born Margaret Askew in Dalton-in-Furness, Cumbria, England, she married Thomas Fell, a barrister,(lawyer) in 1632, and became the lady of Swarthmore Hall. After her husband's death in 1658, she retained control of Swarthmore Hall, which remained a meeting place and haven from persecution for the embryonic Quaker movement. She subsequently married George Fox, a founder of the Quakers. It is doubtful that he or his movement would have survived without her support.
Her formal petitions to King Charles II and his parliament in 1660 and 1662 for freedom of conscience in religious matters can arguably be the forerunner to the submission later signed by George Fox and other prominent (male) Quakers stating their case that, although Friends wished to see the world changed, they would use persuasion rather than violence towards what they regarded as a "heavenly" (i.e. spiritual) end.
In 1664 Margaret Fell was arrested for failing to take an oath and for allowing Quaker Meetings to be held in her home. She defended herself by saying that "as long as the Lord blessed her with a home, she would worship him in it". She spent six months in Lancaster Gaol, whereafter she was sentenced to life imprisonment and forfeiture of her property. She remained in prison until 1668, during which time she wrote religious pamphlets and epistles. Perhaps her most famous work is "Women's Speaking Justified", a scripture-based argument for women's ministry, and one of the major texts on women's religious leadership in the 17th century. There is no argument that her writings are greatly responsible for the Friends' stance that all souls, mens' and womens' are equal with equal rights and responsibilities.
Surviving both husbands by a number of years, she continued to take an active part in the affairs of the Society well into her eighties. In the last decade of her life, she firmly opposed the effort of her fellow believers in Lancashire to maintain certain traditional Quaker standards of conduct (for example, in matters of dress). She died aged 88.
**************
Sunday, October 18, 2009
The Dentist
At seventy years my eyes are decateracted and totally lasered and all my vital organs, bones and skin are now under warranty. I can see well enough to blog and drive and if I come down with scabies I can have it cured. But wouldn't you know, my eaters let me down. After acquiring every kind of insurance I thought I would ever need, my eaters have betrayed me, or was it all those cokes and Hershey bars?. Perhaps they just felt slighted in that they have been absolutely and totally neglected for almost forever.
I never thought I would say this but, I get to go to the dentist this week. My first dental visit last week produced a cost quote so painful my tooth didn't hurt for three days. But the shock wore off and the tooth began to hurt again so I saw another dentist. His cost bid was much lower for a more comprehensive effort so I accepted. He will only require a second mortgage on the farm and one kidney upon request. I tried the firstborn son thing but mine is old enough to retire and almost has and is definitely a high maintenance child.
I immediately fell in love with my new best friend, the dentist. It's amazing how quickly my emotions become involved when the painkill concept kicks in. Add a little vanity, the gaps in my front teeth will now match, one on each side, and I am a goner. My thinking on the gap thing is that people who pay attention when I speak, (actually I can't think of any right off, that's why I blog) will be so dazzled by the two, shiny center teeth standing alone they will not even notice the gap on each side.
At a later date, after I am drilled and filled and capped, I have the option of getting a "device". That sounds pretty intimidating but not as intimidating as gumming it for the next twenty years or so. Everything I like is crunchy.
I was pretty sure I would like this dentist when I went through the stack of magazines in the waiting room. No Golf Digest, Naste Travel Mags or Parenting for the Millionaire type of thing here. Obviously this guy's fees did not support the more expensive interests. His were more of the dog-eared, been read forty-two-times -with-the-recipes-torn-out kind of literature so I have high hopes. Wish me luck!
I never thought I would say this but, I get to go to the dentist this week. My first dental visit last week produced a cost quote so painful my tooth didn't hurt for three days. But the shock wore off and the tooth began to hurt again so I saw another dentist. His cost bid was much lower for a more comprehensive effort so I accepted. He will only require a second mortgage on the farm and one kidney upon request. I tried the firstborn son thing but mine is old enough to retire and almost has and is definitely a high maintenance child.
I immediately fell in love with my new best friend, the dentist. It's amazing how quickly my emotions become involved when the painkill concept kicks in. Add a little vanity, the gaps in my front teeth will now match, one on each side, and I am a goner. My thinking on the gap thing is that people who pay attention when I speak, (actually I can't think of any right off, that's why I blog) will be so dazzled by the two, shiny center teeth standing alone they will not even notice the gap on each side.
At a later date, after I am drilled and filled and capped, I have the option of getting a "device". That sounds pretty intimidating but not as intimidating as gumming it for the next twenty years or so. Everything I like is crunchy.
I was pretty sure I would like this dentist when I went through the stack of magazines in the waiting room. No Golf Digest, Naste Travel Mags or Parenting for the Millionaire type of thing here. Obviously this guy's fees did not support the more expensive interests. His were more of the dog-eared, been read forty-two-times -with-the-recipes-torn-out kind of literature so I have high hopes. Wish me luck!
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