lost an old friend

The thing I had been dreading for months has finally come to pass, yesterday, when I had one of my front lower molars (OK I don't know the names of teeth, only that they each have a name or at least a number) removed in a one-hour exercise that didn't really hurt but which was stressful because I guess I had been prepped to imagine there was a possibility of things going wrong. Indeed I am not entirely sure yet that things haven't gone wrong because the tooth in question was somewhat infected and there might not be enough bone, or good enough bone, to put the implant in. I don't know. I am still to be honest not entirely sure I need an implant but I guess I have to bear in mind that if I don't have it my face might get weird(er) looking and while I wouldn't have to endure that, others would. 

Anyway at this point, I miss the tooth. I'd had it, I guess, 46 years or so and we had a good working relationship all that time. I had noticed it develop a fracture earlier this year (actually, I thought something was stuck in it but no, it was a crack) and it was unsalvageable, apparently. I guess it wasn't a thing with feelings, just a tooth in my mouth. Its absence is sorely felt though, and I'm not trying to be funny. 

Yesterday was a bit of a write-off then* but today I have spent quite a bit of time at the PROV scanning reports on Fishermans Bend so you can imagine I'm fairly chipper. This afternoovening I am going to write a thousand - you heard me, a thousand - words on a chapter intended to serve as a model for a joint-authored book. It's going to be about 8000 words ultimately (the chapter is), and it will be quite interesting but not panic-inducing or OTT. 

Image from Australian Woman's Weekly 2 July 1980 p. 109

*thank you to Laura for taking the day off to care for me. 

broccoli

Mia tells me that broccoli in summer needs a hundred toxic chemicals to make it grow and you eat those when you eat it. i was just reminded of this when I had to take some old yellow broccoli up to the compost bin. The dogs always follow me when I go up there, because most of the time, there's something in it for them. In this case there was. It was a biscuit each. Charlie got the heart and Barry got the bone. It is rare for either of them to get a full bone-shaped biscuit because these ones are easily snapped in two, unlike the heart ones, which crumble. I can see Barry right now, up the hill, sniffing around. He has a vivid if solitary private life.