A Drive in the Cascade Mountains

We took a little drive in the mountains today and Will, with his unerring sense of direction, found an place with an awesome view where we could eat our picnic lunch while sitting on the tailgate.

We could see the snow-covered Mt. Washington and Three Finger Jack, although the peaks were covered with clouds for awhile. Mt. Washington eventually cleared. My camera doesn't photograph white peaks against a clouded sky very well!

Zeek spent a good bit of time playing with a special stick that he found. He also discovered a nearby slough and took a swim without asking permission. I must be getting desensitized, I didn't even notice a wet dog smell in the pickup on the way back!

There were many lovely waterfalls along the road.

It was a beautiful day in the mountains.

Sweet pictures

My baby will be graduating from high school in 19 days. Yes, I know they have to grow up, but it sure happened fast. It's a little harder to take sweet pictures of him these days but this week I proved it can still be done!

It helps to have a sweet dog.

And a sweet dad. Who just happens to have built the world's second ugliest but sturdiest chair.

Tomorrow is the Tangent Clean up day where you can take your junk to a place here in town. We will enjoy his sweet help in the rain for as long as we can! Thanks, Nick, we love you man!

Traumatized

Last week when I visited Dr. J (my famous long suffering secret agent dentist) he was kind enough to diagnose the annoying bump in my mouth that I kept biting. "That is a Traumatic Fibroma," he announced, and instantly it felt ten times more painful and annoying than it did when it was just a bump. I received a referral to an oral surgeon to get it removed, and in the meantime I had a little fun telling my family and about 50 of my closest friends that I was going to need surgery to remove a traumatic fibroma. It sounds so serious yet funny to me!

So today at 3:15 I left work and drove a few blocks to the oral surgeon's office, a beautiful new tastefully decorated building. It was nice to see a friend working inside, but I was bitterly disappointed with the magazine selection. Very oriented to outdoor manly pursuits. Fortunately I had my phone and could text Will so I could feel his devoted support.

The young assistant led me to a room where she went over some paperwork and had me initial each of the hundred or so things that could go wrong. Before she left the room she said, "OK, pretty soon we'll numb you up and hack it off!" Oh, boy! She was very kind though. When she told me to sit on the chair, I sadly remarked how disappointing it was that it had no arms to grip. When she came back for the procedure, she moved me to a different room that had a chair with arm rests!

The doctor seemed awfully young. He told me I probably shouldn't go home and google fibroma because it could alarm me with things that didn't pertain to this type. I told him it was too late, I had googled traumatic fibroma and learned that the treatment was excision and the prognosis was excellent, so it was all good. He liked that.

He gave me three shots of a local anesthetic before starting the procedure, which actually went very quickly. It probably took less than five minutes to hack it off and put three stitches in. When he finished, he was holding some gauze onto it for a bit and he said, "While I was waiting for the anesthetic to work, I googled a step by step procedure to remove this, and holding the gauze in place for a few minutes is the last step. It's just great how easy it was." I told him how disappointed I was that it was over so quickly, and he confessed that actually he is a baseball coach at West Albany and just came over to work for the day for a change of pace. It's kind of hard to laugh heartily when you have a few fingers and a big wad of gauze in your mouth. But I managed anyway.

Well, I still have a little gauze in my mouth, and the numbness is wearing off. I'm starting to think it might have been wise to take him up on the offer for some Percocet. But I will make do with non-prescription pain relievers. Ouch. They say the mouth heals very quickly. We shall see.

Dental Dread

With the usual fear and trembling, I entered my dentist’s office last Thursday morning. I could not postpone it any longer. Just before Easter, I became the victim of a candy-coated milk chocolate egg which was crunchier than I expected. A piece of my back molar broke off and joined the candy. My well-meaning dentist (let's refer to him as Dr. J) had advised me many years ago that I should think about getting crowns on some molars with several fillings because eventually part of the tooth might break off. I laughed in his face and said I was not doing any more crowns until I absolutely had to. Imagine setting up elective dental work! Ha!

No one needs to count how many weeks it's been since Easter. With no pain or discomfort involved, I couldn’t muster up the initiative to call the office. But eventually I forced myself to do the right thing and set up the appointment.

Dr. J is a great guy. The first thing I said when I saw him was, “Ok, now you can say I told you so.” He did. He seems to thoroughly enjoy his job, which includes peering intently into my wide open-mouthed grimace and poking around mercilessly inside my mouth with sharp tools, using drills with the most annoying grinding sounds for as long as possible, and using foul tasting strings and pastes to try and gag me. But he always has a smile on his face and a jolly laugh. He’s very entertaining to talk with. He puts on a convincing show of concern, telling me, “Now be sure and raise your hand if you feel any discomfort.” I say, “I’d rather scream.” “That works too,” he says obligingly. See why I like him in spite of the fact that he’s a dentist?

When I am tilted back into that chair with Dr. J and his assistant’s faces way too close to mine, poking and drilling and spraying, I like to have good armrest to grip tightly as I wait for that sudden sharp pain to course like an electric shock from my tooth through my entire body. I just know it’s coming; it’s happened so many times in my life. Although it hasn’t happened for quite awhile, come to think of it. Of course, my mouth stays numb for days after I have any work done. Does everyone get 5 or 6 shots of Novacaine before any drilling commences? Just kidding, but I do stay numb for quite some time, so I know he’s looking out for me. But I still want better armrests to grip. The new chairs he got several years ago have small low armrests. Tho I have advised him several times that they are quite unsatisfactory, so far I haven’t convinced him to buy different chairs. In fact, he had the nerve to tell me I should be glad I'm not in Europe because they have no arm rests on dental chairs over there!

Another reason I need good arm rests to clutch is because sometimes when I am tilted back in that chair and they are both in my face spraying me and causing all kinds of discomfort and unpleasant noises, I have the almost uncontrollable urge to push them away, leap up, and run screaming out of the office. No, LeAnn, hang on to that armrest and allow your thoughts of sudden escape to remain a pleasant fantasy.

When they first started working on me during this visit, the assistant was putting in a little more water than she was taking out. I feared drowning for a few brief seconds, and I asked him if that was what they call water boarding. He actually confessed to me that he is a secret agent for the CIA. Brilliant! Who better to torture confessions out of people than a dentist!

He does seem to appreciate some of my advice. I'm kind enough to dispense it freely. I let him know that something he used during the process tasted terrible and he really should find something better. He assured me that he has tasted everything available and that was the very best flavor on the market. I bet he did that just for me! Of course, I don’t only point out negative things. I told him the goo that set the temporary crown was very refreshing.

When I was telling Will about my experiences there, he gently said to me, “Now, you do know that you really aren’t a Princess, right? Just because I treat you like one doesn’t mean you should expect the rest of the world to do so.” I pondered that for a few seconds but I’m still not sure why he felt it necessary to point that out. After all, I'm there for a crown, and Dr. J is always wanting to give me crowns!!

I get to go back on Thursday to get the final crown. After that, I hope I don’t have to see my nice funny secret agent dentist for a very long time. It's possible, in fact quite probable, that he hopes the same!