I just took off my headphones and stopped listening to Brandi Carlile so that I could hear the gullywasher that's wandering through. It seems like Monsoon is here. Oh, it's a nice sound. I used to really miss thunderstorms when I lived in the San Francisco Bay area - they get a lot of rain in the winter, but hardly ever thunder. You really come to appreciate these storms when you live in the desert.

The reason I was talking about trust the other day was actually something I didn't mention in that post - I'd had two teeth pulled. It happened the day after we got back from Alaska - my two root canals had both gone bad, one of them infected and the other cracked. It was something I'd planned on for a while - we'd made the appointment before we left for Alaska, of course, and my regular dentist had made a molding of my teeth so that he could cast a temporary prosthetic device.

So I sit down in the chair, thinking oh boy, here we go, and the oral surgeon comes in with his scary devices, and I'm thinking "I could still get up now and call this off. Maybe the teeth will get better." Of course cracked root-canal teeth don't heal, but when you're sitting in the chair, you want to believe in miracles. This is what I mean about control and how we don't have it. I didn't really have any choice about getting the teeth out. I could have waited until it was an emergency, of course. The only knob I really had to turn was when I did it - emergency, or pre-emergency. I chose pre-emergency, and there in the chair I began to think maybe emergency would be okay.

But I didn't get up. Getting the teeth pulled really sucked. The healing process sucked a lot more. There's a song on one of my albums now that features a sample of a swing creaking, which sounds a little bit like a tooth being pulled, and it gives me a twinge when I hear it. I'm back on solid foods now. The dental prosthetic device really bites, if you will forgive the pun, and I'm looking forward to getting a bridge installed, even though that process is going to really suck too.

And I didn't really like the oral surgeon's bedside manner, because he seems allergic to communication. Dunno where I collected that karma...

But here I am, on the other side of the process (mostly), and while I didn't love it, and am not particularly loving the aftermath, I don't have to worry about dying of an infected tooth. And man, is my oral hygiene better than it used to be. I have some really bitchen new floss that I discovered while I was getting the tooth mold made - the dental technician gave me a couple of spools of the stuff because I liked it so much. It's made in Tulsa. Who knew?

Anyway, that's what's been going on in my life recently. Andrea and I fly to Chicago next week for IETF. If all goes well, it will be a lot more fun than getting a tooth pulled.