Visit the kelpforest....

Well, well. Off to get my first crown in a few minutes. At least the temp one gave me no problems; when runsamuck last had one the temps kept falling off before the permanent ones came from the lab. Have to go home first and pick up Avalon as she has an appointment just before me. Funny how that works. Found a fitting icon to match last night too, haha!

John broke yet another of his teeth. And not one that's been worked on before either. I'm tempted to just tell the dentist to pull all of them out and put in implants. Except that won't be covered either. He won't be able to go until after the first when we have a new deductible.

He broke a tooth just before last Christmas, too, I think. What is this, number 5 in the space of a year? I keep telling him the M&M's just before bedtime are a bad idea.

Cookies in the breakroom...my day is suddenly better. The office coffee is damn weak this morning, though. I always sneak a little extra in there when I make it. Who decided three scoops for a 10-cup pot, anyway? The instructions on a can of coffee clearly say one tablespoon per cup, therefore three scoops is only enough for six cups. I realize we want to stretch it as much as possible, but that's a little much, doncha think? In the words of Jasmin, in Bagdad Cafe', "Is not kaffee, is brown water!"

Angus got a visit from the Tooth Fairy this morning. I guess the going rate for a tooth is about $2 these days, with inflation and all. ;) He came running into my room yesterday with it in his hand and we put it in the little tooth fairy box in the hutch. He did ask me if the Tooth Fairy was real (inspired, I think, by that CoinStar ad, where the tired fairy lugging the gigantic bag of coins falls down the stars) - I just said, "What do you think?" He decided that, for now, she is. When was she going to come?

When you're not looking, kid. He now has a gap on either side of his new incisor, which looks gigantic next to his baby teeth.

Funny, Gareth hasn't lost any of his baby teeth yet - granted, Angus knocked two of them out. The dentist said not to worry, but one of his primary incisors has been missing for over a year and hasn't grown in yet.

Click for Neil Gaiman's bad parent moment...

*snerk* I can just imagine getting the same thing in a few years.

(oops, meant to post this to badparents, but I'll just leave it here, too)

(edit: feed link broken, but I think it must have have been his July 10 entry:

Maddy's Molar
"Right, Dad. I'll be asleep soon, so you'll want to remember to take the tooth out from the envelope under my pillow and put the money in. Er, I mean, if you're talking to the Tooth Fairy you may want to make sure that she doesn't forget this time, right? Well, good night."

I treasure the way our children nurture our illusions. Or at least humour them.

Came home from work yesterday to find John had broken off another one of his teeth. We weren't planning on more dental work 'til next January for him - we already went about $600 past his deductible. He was going to refuse to go at least until next month, but I'll be damned if we're going to live with a grizzly bear until then. We're not going to be any more solvent then, either.

Dad already offered. Damn, I hate borrowing money again, but it's got to be done.

On the up side, I stopped by a coffee shop on the way home where a BookCrosser had left some books, and a whole stack of them was still there! I took home two - I have too many in my "To be Read" pile as it is. I need to go add some - he set up an official Zone, it looks like.

Hmmph! I had two paragraphs written in my client, left the room for a while, and came back to find that someone had erased them because they wanted to play Snood.

Dentist again today. Three more fillings and the Dr. pronounced me done for a few months. Finally. He's a funny one. Last time I told him to please call me by my name and not call me ma'am, because it makes me feel old. He's older than I am, although we have kids the same age, I think. He complained that Leeanne was two syllables and ma'am was only one, and why was I making things hard on him and why are you reading PC Magazine? You're always so serious, don't you want to read People? One a previous appointment, he dropped Digital Fortress in my lap, telling me I should look it over while I was getting numb - berfore I knew it I'd read a hundred pages. He loaned it to me and told me to send it back with John who had an appointment on Monday. This time he told me he was getting The Da Vinci Code back from someone else he'd loaned it to and I should come in and pick it up on Wednesday.

So now my teeth ache a little. I've never had my front teeth worked on before. That was kind of weird - I was wondering whether anything would show, but apparently not.

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The jacarandas are blooming. Sometime I would like to have a jacaranda tree in my yard. I see them on my way to work as I pass some neighborhoods where they are planted as street trees or some in people's backyards, billows and clouds of lavendar. My father always grouses about all the flowers falling on the pavement and the mess it makes, but to me, it's no worse than leaves. And then they get the loveliest ferny foliage when they're done.

When I was an exchange student at Queensland University, there were several gorgeous jacarandas on campus. They would not only be cover with blooms, but they'd leave a carpet of purple on the ground underneath them. They always bloomed during finals and the other students told us that if a jacaranda flower fell on you, it meant you'd fail a test. We would joke that we'd walk by a tree and the branches would creak.

I remember seeing an end note in Sunset magazine one time, about all the jacaranda trees at Rancho Los Alamitos, a historic park near where I work. They dealt with the fallen blooms by letting the park's Clydesdale horses loose and they would nibble them up like candy. They didn't have to worry about a mess at all. Hmmm, that place is in the same city I work in, but I have no idea where it is. I should go visit at lunch sometime.

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I'm up too late because I've been halfway waiting for John to come in from the garage. He's trying to get VT's anniversary gift box done. He's only got one more coat of wax to put on and he's done. I hope she likes it.