Time seems to me to center around dental appointments. The date looms, and I begin to dread what’s coming, and with good reason. In the past year I’ve had two teeth pulled. Now tomorrow may be yet another date of reckoning.

Intermittent pain under my cheek bone. Just bad enough to be annoying. It could be that I have a bad tooth. Or perhaps a nerve was damaged when one of the two teeth was pulled. The bad tooth, it could be yanked out. The nerve problem, the dentist speculated that perhaps he’d have to go in and remove it. If he does this, he will have to remove the bone graft, now a bone that he previously put in.

None of this is good. I am at the point in which I can’t get much done because I am so anxious about the outcome. I would like for him to say that the bone is still healing and therefore that he isn’t going to do anything.

Alys and Raudi

And there are the three implants. The procedure is (at least in my mind) fraught with peril. They have to drill, and insert a metal piece, upon which to screw the tooth. Boys will be boys, and dentists are no exception. They are like those who do bonsai with trees – they do things in miniature.

On the upper road a resident has had the big boys digging out the old driveway, on a slope, and putting in a new driveway. The sounds of the machinery, at the distance, sound like dental tools. No coincidence – motors all work on the same principal. I don’t know a single thing about motors. I guess what you learn is what you pay attention to. Pete focuses on these things – me, I, at the same time, am thinking about human relations. A lot of good that this has done me.

I am now attempting to look ahead to the rest of the day tomorrow – more book project stuff – a zoom conference with the executive director of the Palmer Senior Center, and a woman from the Houston Senior Center is coming to pick up a bookcase and books – everything is ready to go.

It was hard to look ahead because today I was thinking about tomorrow.

On the positive side of things, I will insist on, and be given nitrous oxide. And I will insist upon and be given lots of nitrous oxide. They give you oxygen with nitrous – I am going to say, less oxygen, more nitrogen. That is, if I must have anything done at all.

Some relief will come in knowing what actually is wrong.

Maybe tonight we’ll have an earthquake, and my appointment will be cancelled. Oh my God, what if we have an earthquake when I’m sitting in the dentist chair? This could happen.

The days are again getting shorter. If I am in pain tomorrow evening, it will be easy to go to sleep earlier.

Fret, fret, fret. This is what I do best.

245. 9/7/22: Day becomes Night