Country Dentist

When we were preparing to move to our Puget Sound island, a filling broke and I needed a dentist in a hurry. I decided to bite the bullet, so to speak, and go to a dentist on the island. The phone book listed two dentists in the nearest small town to where our home was being built. I called one. The receptionist I talked to presented her boss and office very well, but the best day for me at that time was Friday, and that dentist closed his office on Fridays.

So I was left with Frank. I did a search for information about Frank on the web. I found one odd but promising comment on the web site of Powell’s books (the leading bookstore in Portland, Oregon.). I came across an interview with a moderately successful writer who told a charming and admiring anecdote about Frank the dentist. I won’t put it here because it has too much distinguishing detail, but if you really want to read it, email me and I will link you to it if I trust you. If a fairly successful author plugs a dentist on Powell’s Books, that’s good enough for me to give him a try, so I made an appointment. Apparently all of Frank’s patients have used him for many years, so his receptionist must have been a bit surprised to have a new patient call her out of the blue, but she handled the surprise with aplomb.

When I went in to see Frank and to get my painful tooth attended to, I met a tall, laconic man about a year younger than myself. His pleasant, competent, attractive receptionist is also a dental assistant, but I was a bit surprised to discover that Frank almost never called her in to assist him.

Unlike every other dentist I ever had, Frank did about 95% of his work by himself. He grabbed all his tools of torture by himself. When it came time for my six-month cleaning, Frank did the cleaning himself instead of using a hygienist.

“Do you ever use hygienists?” I asked him.

“Oh, yes, I have a few times, but they always have babies and move on, so finally I decided it was easier to do it myself,” he replied.

I figured if my dentist does the cleaning himself instead of handing it down to a hygienist, I am either getting the best dental service in the world, or I am living in a world of delusion.

“Did you ever work with another dentist, or have you always been a sole practitioner?” I asked him.

“Yes, I tried working with other dentists,, but it just never works out,” he told me.

He always has jazz and blues playing on a stereo in his office, and he had a large painting of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans (with Roy holding a guitar) on his dental chair room, as well as an actual guitar hanging in the same room.

“Do you play the guitar?” I asked.

“Yes, but as my arthritis has gotten worse, I can’t play much any more.” I wondered a bit as his handling of dental tools seems deft enough, but I decided not to worry about it until a drill slips enough to make me scream.

“Did you ever consider music as a career?” I asked him. He said he enjoyed playing music, but the dedication necessary to be professionally successful took all the enjoyment out of it. (This is a bit similar about RG’s Mommy’s comment about her reasons for abandoning her one-time goal of being a concert violinist.)

One time he told me, “The first year I worked as a dentist, I joined another dentist in Alaska. The oil drilling and pipeline construction was at its peak. We worked 12 hours a day and charged whatever we wanted. Boy, I made a lot of money. However, when winter came I had never been so cold in my life, so I left Alaska at the end of that winter. There was no way any amount of money would compensate for being that cold.”

I could identify. One of the six high schools I attended was in Wisconsin, and I still remember waiting for the school bus when the temperature was -38 degrees. I swore once I became an adult, I would not live some place that got that cold.

“How did you decide to become a dentist?” I once asked him.

“When I was in college, I couldn’t get the classes I wanted. I noticed if you were in pre-med or pre-dental, you got to the top of the list when it came to getting classes, so I told the university I was planning to become a dentist. After a while, I actually applied for the dental school, and, to my surprise, they accepted me.”

I told Frank how a friend of mine once related the following anecdote to me.

My friend said, “My dentist was working on me and suddenly exclaimed, ‘When I think about the 18-year-old kid who made this career choice, I could kill that kid now.’”

Frank chuckled but indicated that dentistry wasn’t that painful for him.

He mentioned a wife once, so I asked, “Do you have any children?” He immediately answer in a manner that mixed a charming combination of determination, strong opinion, self-awareness, and cheerful geniality, “God No! I hate kids!”

I said his exclamation reminded me of comments by W. C. Fields such as:

Children should neither be seen or heard from – ever again.

I never met a kid I liked.

I like children – fried.

I began to put together a portrait of a person who had arranged his life fairly quite well to suit himself but cheerfully makes adjustments as he has to.

His final comment to me was, “Pretty soon every doctor and every dentist will be working for the government; it’s inevitable. Fortunately, it will be too late to get me.”

 

Kindergarten News

A few days ago, my daughter called. Mama (my daughter) and Mommy (birth mother of Random Granddaughter) have tickets to a concert or play or something.

“Will you babysit for us?” she asked. “We thought we could save some money as you don’t charge us anything.”

It’s nice to know Mrs. Random and I are loved for our loveable selves and not just because we provide free babysitting.

“How does RG like kindergarten?” I asked.

“She is having a great time. She loves it.”

I thought about how great it is that our little genius of a granddaughter gets to be around other small children almost as smart as she is at the private School for Very Smart Children.

The other little smart-ass children will keep her in her place. Or she will organize them into a conspiracy to take over the world by the time they have reached second grade.

“She has gone out for cross country running,” my daughter continued.

“When kindergarteners run cross country, how far do they run?” I asked in amazement.

“I think they go 1/2 mile.”

I listened in amazement and awe. I keep forgetting to measure the exact distance, but it’s about a quarter of a mile along the private road from our driveway to the mailbox on the country road. It was not very long ago when RG would whine and asked to be picked up and carried if we made her walk all the way to the mailbox with us.

The next time she comes to visit us, I will insist that she run all the way to the mailbox and run all the way back to our little house in the medium sized woods, or no dessert at lunch for her!

Mary from Peru to Visit

Some time back, I wrote about hosting a party at the mommies’ house for my two favorite volunteers: Mary (not Maria) from Peru and S from Romania.

My wife was quite taken with Mary. I think because they are much alike. Each is very intelligent but does not think she is. Each does exactly as she pleases regardless of what other people think they “ought” to do. Of course, they are different as well. Mary has a Master’s Degree in Industrial Engineering. My wife took one college class.

In any case, I asked my wife, “Do you want to invite Mary to visit us?” My wife seldom wants people to visit us unless she had decided to invite them. However, in this case, she said, “Yes.”

Mary said she has bought a condo and that things are going well at her job for a utility company and that she will visit us next month.

My wife said, “Be sure to tell her we will pay for her ferry ticket.”

I let the mommies know about the visit, but their lives are so busy and complicated I don’t know if they will join us. Perhaps Random Granddaughter can invite her entire kindergarten class from the school for very bright children. On the way, they could stop and visit the used car dealer that sells used fire trucks and as a project they could take a fire engine apart and put it back together.

The Heavy Door

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My wife tells me that I am a very negative and pessimistic person. She is just as negative and pessimistic as I am, but she refuses to admit it. Every morning when she gets up, she grimly says to herself, I will be positive and optimistic.

Front Door with Inset

It takes her a couple of hours and several glasses of tea for her determination to take effect.

 

I meant to write this story about five years ago, when our house was being built. I was optimistic, but I am finally getting around to it now.

 

My wife is a person with a highly developed aesthetic sense. It is very important to her to be surrounded by things she finds beautiful. For example, our garden is full of many nutritious food plants, but it is also full of beautiful flowers. It took four years for the garden to reach its full flowering. We are now harvesting our fruits and vegetables, which have been abundant, and sniffing the flowers, which are beautiful and provide beautiful scents.

 

When we were working with Tom, the contractor we hired to build our house, my wife said, “We will purchase the front door and bring it out to the construction site.” She said this because she didn’t want any old door. She wanted a door that represented us and our values and aesthetics.

Tom, the contractor, a very nice guy who did a good job for us in building the house, explained that we should purchase two doors: the permanent door and a temporary door. The contractor would use the temporary door during construction because it might accidentally get damaged. He would only install the permanent door near the end of the job.

We found a “door store” near where we lived on the mainland.. The large showroom includes racks and racks of doors in various sizes and designs. Many of the doors have glass or plexiglass decorative insets.

My wife, as is typical of her, spent hours studying different doors and beautiful decorative insets until she found just the right ones; a combination that would create a front door that would say “Us” to the world. We also picked out a cheap temporary door. Both doors were very heavy. Two strong employees helped load them into the back of my wife’s pickup truck.

We took the doors home, to the duplex we owned at that time with daughter and her partner on the mainland. Again, they were too heavy for us to lift by ourselves. Fortunately, some teenagers were playing football in an empty lot across the street. We asked them if they would lift the doors and put them in our garage for us. Welcoming the opportunity to show off their youthful strength, they cheerfully lifted the doors and put them in the garage. It took two of the husky young men to carry the main door.

We delivered the doors to the work site. We got our next door neighbor at the time, Tim, to help us get the doors into the truck. My wife has a bad back; it was not very safe for her to help me lift the door. I could not do it by myself.

The contractor said to take the “real door” back as he could not store it safely at the work site. It was a little irritating to drive the door back to the duplex where we lived and get my neighbor to help me unload it again.

The contractor typically worked on three houses at a time. At the time, his business was going well and he had a fairly large work crew. One Saturday morning we arranged to deliver the “real” door to the island. Terry the foreman, was supposed to meet us at the work site at 9 am.. To get there on time, we had to get up at 5 am in the morning. I arranged with Tim, our next door neighbor, to help me load the door in the truck, even though it meant he had to get up at 5 am on a Saturday morning. My wife had taken a dislike to Tim before she ever talked to him because he always had a dozen cars sitting on his front lawn, most of them in various states of assembly, dis-assembly, and repair. My wife thought Tim’s constant auto repair projects made our neighborhood look like a white trash headquarters. But, in fact, Tim proved to be a very pleasant neighbor in various ways, not least when he cheerfully agreed to get up at 5 am on a Saturday morning to help me load the door into our truck.

We loaded the door at 5 am, caught a ferry, and arrived at the work site about 9 am. The not quite finished house stood empty. There was no sign of Terry. We knew Tom, the contractor, was off island on other business. We did not have a phone number for Terry, the foreman. We sat around the work site in our truck for about an hour, extremely frustrated and irritated.

In the early days of his blog, David Rochester would write little stories about the irritations and frustrations of his life I called “Rochesterisms.” This was clearly a Rochesterism; not really a disaster, but certainly maddening.

We debated what to do. We were irritated at the prospect of making the long trip back to the mainland, unloading the door, and doing it all over again another day.

We drove the five miles back into the nearest town on the island. We stopped at a pleasant coffee shop and had some tea and pastries to console ourselves in our irritation and frustration. Having a house built is a stressful and anxiety producing activity. My wife and I stared at each other in gloom. We wondered if we should drive the five miles out to the work site just in case Terry the foreman had arrived. We decided to take the trouble.

In gloom we drive the five miles in silence. We drove down the gravel private road to the site where our house was being constructed. There was no sign of Terry the foreman.

We trudged up the driveway to our truck. Just as we got up to the truck, we saw Terry’s truck pull up.

He got out, explained that an problem had occurred at one of the other work sites. Apparently a building inspector had decided the other house did not meet code, and Terry had been forced to rush to the site and deal with the problem while his boss, Tom, was out of town.

We drove our truck back down the driveway.

Terry, the foreman, is a man of average height and build, as am I. I prepared to help him lift the door. Terry lifted the door by himself and carried it to the house by himself and propped it against the wall next to the construction door and my wife and I stared in amazement and admiration.

“There,” he said. “I’ll have the crew install it on Monday.”

My wife and I thanked him effusively, got back in our truck, and drove back toward the ferry dock, our load lighter and our hearts singing.

 

Sweet Peas

 

 

 

 

Verry Berry

My wife and I live on a very fertile island in Puget Sound, a kind of temperate zone jungle. Berries grow very well on our island.

We grow and pick quite a few kinds of berries. For example, we grow strawberries. Strawberries are very well behaved. They have no thorns and grow well. I can envision strawberries sitting in neat rows at church on Sunday.

We also grow boysenberries. Boysenberries are a California crop more than a Pacific Northwest crop. Growing boysenberries brings back memories of her youth in California to my wife. Her family didn’t grow them, but they went into the countryside to buy them.

They grow quite happily here in Washington. They seem vigorous, but they tend to be “sickly.” They also are rather thorny.

Two years ago, they produced a lot of fruit, but then the vines looked very sickly.

At the end of the season, my wife cut them back to the ground. This year they are growing well, but it takes two years for them to produce fruit, so they are just practicing this year with lush vines and no fruit. Boysenberries go to church, but their attendance is a little spotty.

We grow raspberries. Raspberries are a little rambunctious. They produce well, and have a few thorns. They go to church, but argue with other church members when they serve on church committees.

The pastor would just as well the raspberries would pass on joining the committees, but they always do. In our garden, little raspberries side sprouts are always popping up.

We grow blueberries. Blueberries sit quietly in the pews. They don’t stand out much, but the pastor knows he can depend on the blueberries.

We grew tayberries. Tayberries go an odd church on the outskirts of town. If they drop into your church, the pastor would be just as happy if they went back to their odd sect. Pete, a fine and long-time reader of my blog, sent me some bushes. My wife was very suspicious of them and wouldn’t let me plant them in the garden for a couple of years. After they grew in the garden for a while, my wife said, “I don’t like the berries very much. The roots are stealing nutrients from the currents and the potatoes. I want to get rid of them.”

I asked Pete’s permission. It seemed rude to me to dig up a gift plant by the roots. Pete, kindly and patient as always, said, “Sure. Good luck.”

At my wife’s request, I dug up the tayberries. However, they are difficult to eradicate. They will keep popping into the church from time to time, just to be difficult. The pastor may have to spray these congregants with Round Up.

 

We also pick berries that grow wild. For example, we pick salmon berries. Salmon berries taste rather bland. Salmon berries are kind of like slum children from the “working poor.” They are harmless, but there are always a lot of them wandering around on the streets and playing pickup football and baseball games. If they come to church, they are restless, and sit in the back.

 

Then there are the blackberries. There are two kinds of blackberries. The native blackberries are very small. They are hardly worth the trouble of trying to pick and eat.

 They native black berries send their children to school, and they don’t go to church very often, but they don’t cause much trouble.

The Himalayan Blackberries are troublemakers. They ride loud motorcycles or drive souped up cars with no mufflers and play their radios very loudly as they drive by. Himalayan Blackberries hang out in bars. When they bartender sees a Himalayan Blackberry come into the bar, he makes such his blackjack is handy under the counter and the phone is within easy reach so he can call the sheriff’s deputies in a hurry.

 

So far I’ve been mostly using feminine metaphors describing berries, and mostly describing them in terms of members of a church congregation. I’ve always had a weakness for mixed metaphors in my writing and my Himalayan Blackberry metaphors are hopelessly out of control, as are the vines and the berries themselves.

 

Blackberry vines are guys. The kind of guy who looks like Marlan Brando when he was young. The kind of guy who has no trouble attracting women.

If you marry a blackberry guy you will have to call the cops because he will beat you.

 

The berries themselves are girls, the kind of female known as “jail bait.” They look ripe and luscious before they are of legal age. They are surrounded by vicious stickers that will sting for a long time after they rip into your clothes and your arms as you try and pick them and even your legs as you try to get to them. The stickers are the brothers of the Himalayan girls, and they’re always looking for a fight to defend their sisters’ “honor.”

If you get a blackberry when it is really ripe–a period that last for about two days–they are incredibly sweet. A ripe blackberry comes off in your hand easily, and tastes delightful. After about two days, they start to dry up and they are not so good anymore.

 

Neither the blackberry guys nor the blackberry girls age very well (just as Marlan Brando did not age very well). You probably don’t want to marry a blackberry. It’s probably a good idea to wear protection, such as gloves, when you go out to pick blackberries. I picked a bowl of blackberries today. When I held up my hands to my wife, they were stained with juice, and they were stained with blood.

 

Good luck in getting a Himalayan Blackberry to go to church.

Completion of County Fair Post

Pebbles in hand (or pocket) Random Granddaughter and slightly extended family headed for the county fair on the island.

Plan was for the mommies to follow us in the rental car Mommy’s mother and step dad had rented for the trip to the Olympic. We were separated and parked in separate places, but Mrs. Random and I found them waiting to buy their tickets at the head of a long line, so we had them buy our tickets as for us, allowing us to jump the line and perhaps the shark as well.

We were all ready for lunch. Mommy’s step-dad is fit and lean from all his hiking, so he indulged in a big sandwich. Mrs. Random and I purchased hotdogs. Random Granddaughter now associates events such as fairs with a chance to purchase cotton candy. As a child I loathed cotton candy; as an adult I still despise it, but I see no problem with the rare indulgence for RG.

She has been an exceptionally food-persnickety child, but she is gradually entering the world of normal eating via a typical child-preferred meals. Pizza is good she now thinks, and for lunch at the fair, she considered a hot dog perfectly acceptable when mixed with bites of cotton candy. I watched with delight as she ate one hot dog well-slathered with mustard in a steady, methodical manner.

Off to the 4H exhibit where she considered bunnies and chickens with happy concentration. The second delightful observation for me was that she was in a good mood and obviously enjoying herself, with only one minor tantrum, involving application of sunscreen and branches and twigs in a sleeve.

She then watched some young ladies taking horses through paces in competitions. Will their be a pony living at the little house in the city? Will Sylvie the world’s most extroverted little cat learn to ride a horse?

RG was fascinated with the judging and awarding of ribbons. Later that evening, my wife remarked to me that perhaps RG is too fascinated with awards and prizes. I don’t know. My uncle George got a Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur Genius Award for composition in his seventies or so; my daughter was spelling champion of Oregon in fifth grade; perhaps RG will get a similar award in kindergarten, or perhaps she will wait until first or second grade.

We then watched the alpaca race. When I was in junior high school my family owned a cow and then a couple of goats. I milked the cow and one of the goats. Goats have personalities similar to cats. It is easy to become attached to them. (Unfortunately, our goat got sick and died and I had to dig a grave for it.)

Alpacas look like giant poodles that suffered exposure to radiation and then mutated; their personalities seem to be similar to goats.

The race worked like this. The 4H participant had to guide the alpaca through an obstacle course, holding the alpaca’s rein in one hand and holding a spoon with a raw egg perched it in the other hand.

“The eggs are from prize-winning chickens; they have been around here for a few days, so they are pretty ripe by now,” The Mistress of Ceremonies told us. She seemed to be having as much fun as one is allowed to with clothes on She also explained that the young competitors weren’t supposed to drop the egg. But not to worry, she reassured the contestants. “If you drop the egg you can pick it up again and put it back on the spoon. As long as it does not break. If I see yolk, it’s all over for you and I will toss you out of the race,” she chortled.

A couple of years ago, my wife and I observed a “cat Olympics” event at the fair, where cats were supposed to go through an obstacle course. The cats, naturally, regarded the whole exercise with a bemused, “You want me to do WHAT?” air. One cat even set itself down and immediately went to sleep.

Although none of the alpacas took a nap, and it is difficult to read the expression on an alpaca’s face, they seemed to regard the obstacle course in a similar fashion. Among with overcoming other impediments, they were supposed to walk though some tires on the ground; some jumped the tires, others headed for other parts of the fair, dragging their young keepers with them.

One young man, announced with much fanfare as last year’s champion, dropped his egg half way through the race. “Oh my, I see yolk down their on the ground,” the announcer crowed with much delight. 4H is not for nynnies (Finnish word for “sissy, as I just discovered last week).

After a few more exhibits and contests, Random Granddaughter, mommies, and alternative grandparents headed back to the city. Mrs. Random and I headed back to our little house in the medium-sized woods.

Random Granddaughter Visits the County Fair

Yesterday (Saturday) we went to the county fair with Random Granddaughter, Mommy (RG’s birth mother and my daughter’s partner), Mama (Random Daughter), Mommy’s mother (B1) and her step-dad (K).

K is an enthusiastic hiker and for love of him B1 has become an enthusiastic hiker as well. Everyone went hiking in the Olympic mountains. Random Granddaughter had been a enthusiastic whiner when she had to walk a block in the city or a quarter of a mile to our mailbox in the county when she was four, but Mama told me she hiked several miles in the Olympics without whining, so we were suitably impressed with RG’s progress at the age of five.

We met at the organic farmer’s market where my wife usually volunteers on Saturday morning, serving drinks and her home baked wholesome goodies. My wife got permission to take the day off. When we arrived, we greeted her boss who was serving coffee instead of Mrs. Random.

“Mrs. Random decided to skip work today, but she is so dumb she showed up at the work place anyway,” I told her boss as she served us tea.

My wife tells me that hardly anyone is interested in the scones, muffins, cookies she bakes for the market. However, when she showed up with no baked goods in hand, at least half a dozen adults approached her and whined as loudly as Random Granddaughter at her worst.

Random Granddaughter loves to collect interesting pebbles and rocks. She finds many at our five acres, but her mommies make her leave them on a porch step instead of hauling them all back to the city.

At the market, my wife took RG to a stand where a man sells agates and other semi-precious stones, fossils and petrified woods, and similar fancy pebbles. As he greeted RG, he held out a tray of pebbles and said, “You get to choose one for free.” RG poked through the pebbles thoughtfully and chose the largest one.

She had to be reminded to say, “Thank you,” by my wife, but did so with such enthusiasm that the seller was quite charmed. He showed her a petrified horse tail plant and several other fossils and forced two more glamorous pebbles on the quite willing child, who remembered to say “Thank you.”

We headed out for the fairground. (To be continued).

That’s Just Plain Wrong

“What is that?” I asked as I pointed at some white flowers in the beautiful garden my wife has created in front of our house “It looks like the lavender.”

My wife said, “It’s called white lavender.”

“”That’s just plain wrong for a flower to be named ‘white lavender,’” I said.

“I think it’s going to have to go,” my wife said. “It’s growing to big and it’s overrunning the sage.”

I looked up ‘white lavender’ on the Internet. The complications of this flower’s name are much more complicated than I first thought. This is a flower with issues.

It’s not just plain wrong; it’s very fancifully wrong.

By the Pricking of My Thumbs, Something Wicked This Way Comes…

 

Actually, it is the pricking of my fingers.

Every six months or so, my doctor orders some tests for me, some involving drawing blood. As a person suffering from high blood pressure much of my life, I am an especially good candidate for kidney failure or diabetes.

I would go to the HMO’s lab door, take a numbered ticket, and wait my turn. As the phlebotomist struggled to find a good vein, I would grit my teeth, look the other way, and make a sour joke about drug addicts who stick needles in themselves on purpose.

Eventually, the HMO would tell me that I don’t have kidney disease or diabetes, much to my relief.

However, after my last test, my lab results said that I was “pre-diabetic.” When I emailed my doctor asking what I should do, he said I should be tested again.

A few days later, I had to go in for a pre-cataract surgery checkup. My doctor was away (probably goofing off), so I went to a substitute doctor. I asked him what pre-diabetic meant.

He told me it was a natural part of aging. “We all become diabetics eventually,” he told me cheerfully, ” though we can put it off for a long time.” He told me to eat green and blue foods and instead of junk foods. I told him we have a large garden and grow our own lettuce, broccoli, and blueberries.

“Good,” said the subdoc, with the weary air of someone whose patients lie to him all the time. However, in this case, I was telling the truth, though my wife’s nagging gets most of the credit. Also, I have lost about 40 pounds over the last two years, my blood pressure (which I now test myself) is at respectable levels, and my constant treadmill plodding has reduced my resting heart rate to something like an athlete’s, though I am not going to enter the Tour de France next year.

The subdoc also told me I should start testing my blood glucose levels and scheduled me with a nurse for training.

A few weeks later, I met with an eqally upbeat nurse who provided me with a kit of equipment and educational materials. She showed me the monitor. “First you program in the date and time. Then you draw some blood and test it with this little strip. Though first, you use a drop of control solution to make sure it is working.” She told me all this quite expeditiously, as if I understood what was going on.

She warned me that each pack of control strips has an identification number. The number on the monitor screen has to match; if it doesn’t I have to push little buttons until it does. Then she showed how the test results appear on the tiny monitor screeen.

 

Then she got to the good part. “Here is the lance. You twist this little cap off, then you insert it into the slot. Then you jab yourself in the finger so you get a drop of blood. You touch the end of the strip and after a few seconds your score appears. Then you can choose from various comments, such as if your test is before you eat or after you eat. This booklet will tell you more about the process.

“Here, you try it. Stick the needle into the side of your finger. Good, there’s some blood. Put it on the strip.” After a few seconds, a number appeared. “That’s a good number. You may not need to keep doing this very often” she said. That sounded too good to be true.

 

She also gave me a confusing plastic box for the safe storing of my used needles.

With the cataract surgery going on, I kept convincing myself to avoid sticking myself. But as my eye healed, I decided I had to force myself to confront this unpleasant task. Naturally, I had forgotten everything the nurse had shown me. The instruction booklets she had given me were written for diabetics, which also depressed me. After lots of blundering and smearing blood around, I eventually got the hang of the process.

It was not clear to me how often I should be testing myself or what score I was looking for. There seemed to be something about doing it before I ate and again two hours after I ate, and leaving notes on the monitor whether I had been exercising before the test, or ill (I presume with swine flue or the like).

I came up with six scores (recorded over three days), sore fingers, and considerable self pity. Today I am going in to see my regular doctor where I will discuss my scores and how often I need to stick myself. I am grossed out by the whole business, and no doubt you are also by now. I just wanted to give you something cheerful to look forward to when you grow old.

It is just getting light outside and I will look out the window for a bunny aiming to poach on our garden. If so…it will be the last garden it raids.

 

Oh, no! Did We See the Randoms in a Church?

The following story will take several parts to tell. This is part 1.

My wife and I have been married for 43 years, though we are about 80% incompatible. My wife became pregnant on our honeymoon, as quaint as that sounds today. Not all adult children get along with their parents, but our daughter still speaks with us and visits us of her own accord, so we probably were not too awful parents.

My wife and I are both introverts. A danger as we get older is that we will become isolated on our five acres in the woods on a large island and not have enough human contact to keep us emotionally healthy, or we will get into trouble and not have anyone to help us.

Our “neighborhood” consists of four five-acre lots. At the moment, two of our lots are occupied.

The people I call the Friendly Neighbors live on lot #1.

Lot #2 is owned by Joe and Melinda, who married in their forties (though Melinda had been married before and has an adult son). They work on the mainland. At the moment, they are having a small home built, more of a vacation home than a permanent home.

We live on lot #3. We chose it because it had a permit for a “standard septic,” which saved us quite a bit of money, though even after the savings, it cost us quite a bit of money to put in a septic system.

Lot #4 is owned by a young couple with a five-year-old son. They live on the mainland, also, and probably will not move to their lot for a number of years.

My wife and I are both volunteering as a way to keep ourselves connected to others and to give us something useful to do besides kill each other, which is a possibility now that we have to be in each others’ company most of the day.

Next: the Friendly Neighbors slyly draw us into their church.