~:: What Happened on Monday ::~

First, may I say that I am growing to hate capchas of any kind with a deep and abiding hatred?  Well, I am.  And the darned things are getting longer. Isn’t there another way? Counter-bots that follow the dang spammers back to their nests and blow up?

I’m afraid I might be in a sort of foul mood.

Here is what happened this week:

Wait. No. Here is what happened last week.  When did we go to Gin’s last? The second of March.  Right. That was twenty days ago?  We flew. It was short. But as always when I get back from being anywhere, I have this ghost left in the back of my mind, and when I think about doing anything, it says, “but you better hurry, because you have to leave next week.”  When I don’t have to leave.  When I have all the time in the world, it still says that.  It makes me nuts.  So I said to G last week: “Tell me I don’t have to go anywhere next week.”  And he did.  But now I can never trust him again.

Because of children.  Because being a mother is knowing that, whatever you think you know – you don’t.  Whatever you think you are going to do, you won’t be. Whatever you don’t plan WILL HAPPEN TO YOU.

Driving through the woods on a frozen morning

There are tooth aberrations in my father’s line. As of about five years ago, he still had at least one lateral incisor that was still a baby tooth.  You know that expression, “long in the tooth”? Well, he is, but that tooth isn’t. Long. But old, yes. And I inherited this. I had – I don’t remember – one? Two? Baby teeth without adults to follow. And some of my kids had the problem.  But Murph? Five.  FIVE TEETH that came without replacement parts.

Please note the cliff at the edge of that icy turn up ahead. And Chaz’ pink Foster Grants, the burden of a true cos-player.

Braces shifted my whole set of teeth around so you almost can’t tell I’m tooth deficient. They pulled the baby ones and crowded all the other teeth into them. But you can’t shift around as many teeth as Murphy has to deal with before you’d have to slap a brass plaque on his chin announcing that his mouth had actually been designed as an abstract impression of the Rocky Mountains. So we always knew that implants loomed in his future.

I was once a dental assistant. It lasted for a year. I assisted in deep bone surgeries and easy restorations and root canals, but mostly, I just made appointments and paid bills. During that time I conceived a deep disregard for prosthetics like cap and bridge. Especially bridge: what is the point of destroying two perfectly good and very personally shaped teeth so you can fill in between them? Implants speak to me.

But you have to have jaw bone to screw them into.  Jawbone is shy.  Sort of a use-it-or-lose-it affair. If you don’t keep it healthy, your teeth start to drop out of it like apples out of the sky on a warm autumn afternoon. Adult teeth that burrow their roots in the right places are not a problem. Baby teeth that outstay their welcome are.  So when Murphy began to have pain in one of his teeth, went to a local dentist and found out the baby tooth was dying an ugly death, we knew that the final process of building Murphy an adult mouth had just precipitously begun. And since Gin’s Dr. Kris has sworn to make it happen, there is where we had to go.

It was Murphy’s job to shoot this as I drove. This is why he likes driving.  So I can shoot my own darned stuff.

Murph had to drop everything and travel down to Santa Fe right away. Before the jaw bone decided to recycle itself and disappear. Things being what they were, he was determined to drive himself. Mothers being what they are, I couldn’t let him do that. Chaz being what she is, she wasn’t about to let two weary people weave their ways south through the mountains without the company of a responsible adult. So suddenly: ROAD TRIP.

Never mind the fact that the second worst blizzard of the year was also scheduled for Monday, we threw our stuff into the Highlander and headed for the adventure.

Eleven hours down, through two blizzards. One day running around town. Eleven hours back the next day.  I am now sitting on the couch pretending to be sick. This morning, I found a massage person who lives three blocks away, got her to work the kinks out of my neck and shoulders and driving arms and gas peddle leg, and I’m waiting for two days’ supply of Dr. Pepper to drain out of my system so I can stop traveling in my head and finally sleep.

Warm, oblivious Sully.

We had a ton of fun. Grave discussions of all aspects of existence. Terrible puns.  Hamburgers. Life-threatening conditions. Cute Sandy. Cute Max. Native American treasures. Sully. The mouth-dropping beauty of red rock. Santa Fe trip as ususal.  And they read one of my manuscripts to me all the way down and back, thus doing for me the work I had planned for this week—only much better than I’d have done it alone. I am still lost in the magic of that story and the rhythm of the road. And I am one tired little old lady.

Gin is actually taking professional, dentist like pictures.  She is not just taking advantage of her brother’s undignified moments.

Ummm. I, on the other hand, AM taking advantage.

This is Murphy again, trying to get a shot of the magnificent Shiprock. Maybe next time.

Once again, may I celebrate the blessing of useful children who take care of each other? In the end, this is the greatest of all things: that those you’ve invested in, invest in each other.  That we should all make God that kind of proud. (read that last bit with a bit of Yiddish)