Key Lime

One Day at a Time

I had a dentist appointment on Friday. Just a regular checkup and cleaning (although I haven’t finished all of my work from the previous appointment). Only one new cavity. THAT is DAMN good, for me! In 9 months, since I had my checkup in June (and got all that work added to my treatment plan because it had been years since I’d gone to the dentist). One new cavity! Sounds stupid to most of you, but I have never had a report that good at the dentist’s office since I was a little kid. Part of that is simply because I’ve had a bad habit of waiting years between making appointments, so obviously that’s plenty of time for stuff to build up. I’m determined to stay current this time. I only have $1500 of work left to complete on my teeth, which is great, considering I have $6,000 of work to be done when I started. All I lack is one crown and three fillings. I had this overwhelming dread and worry that the condition of my teeth would continue to deteriorate faster than I could afford to pay. But that doesn’t look to be the case. Not at the present time. And probably never, so long as I take care of them and keep my regular checkups. I’ve scheduled the crown for next Thursday and then I will quickly get the fillings and knock this whole thing out. I have more than enough money in the bank at this point to cover what’s left of my dental work. I’m just going to knock it right out and not have to worry about it anymore.

Don B. celebrated 25 years at the meeting tonight. Twenty five years of sobriety. He gave me NO warning that he was going to ask me to be a part of his program. None. The first I heard about it was his sponsor, chairing the meeting, mentioned my name when he said, "Don would like the following people to come and read . . . ". Jeez. Shocker. I was not prepared. But you know what, that was OK. I think it worked out better that way because if I had known beforehand I would have had plenty of time to overthink everything and get real nervous. But I didn’t, so I wasn’t nervous. Cool, huh?

Key Lime CAKE (not pie) was Don’s choice for his celebration. I normally don’t go for the cake at events like this, not only due to the ick factor (I generally hate any kind of public eating event and/or buffet style scenario), but also because it’s just easier not to bother. I saw GREEN cake, and I could not help myself. I HAD to try it. Had to. I mean, have you ever seen GREEN cake? Not just green icing (that’s pretty normal), but GREEN cake. Yes, key lime, and it was actually quite good.  Also, in case you didn’t know, GREEN is my favorite colour, by far, so yeah, I just really could not resist GREEN cake.  Wow.  Heh . . . I’m weird, I know.

Another yankee accusing me of not having a southern accent (it was the speaker at the meeting tonight actually, commenting about my reading of How It Works). This happens from time to time. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it’s because I indeed have a very neutral (probably midwestern) American accent. But still, why bring it up at all? Especially in this day and age when so many people are not from the region where they currently reside anyway? I am from the south. Born in Montgomery, Alabama in 1981, and lived in Georgia (Augusta or Atlanta) since 1996. Texas before that, Louisiana before that (still all southern). I did live 6 months in New Jersey when I was in 3rd grade. Or Giessen, Germany from 1986 – 1989 (ages 5 – 8). My dad was in the military. I’m sure it was my educational exposure to kids of all regional backgrounds as well as moving around.

Daylight savings time is on the way, which will be great, except for the fact that it means one hour less of a weekend, and one hour less for me to sleep. Since we are springing forward with the clock, this will exacerbate my already existing problem of staying up way too late. If I’m used to going to bed at 3 AM, this will put me going to bed at 4AM (worse), after the clocks are changed.

The extra daylight hours will be good though, as it will be an extra hour of daylight for me to have the option of running (although I have no problem running after dark, it’s just that we aren’t quite warm enough yet for running after dark to be comfortable).

-AR