Crow, anyone?

Watch me prepare to eat my earlier words about the weather.

It snowed and iced some more, and on Tuesday evening the power went out. No big deal, I thought. We have a generator, and when our power goes out it's generally not out for more than a few hours at the most. When a bad wind storm ripped through the region last year, we were without power for 8 hours while a lot of people were out for 10 days.

The first day passed, and I became concerned. I cannot even remember when our power was out for an entire day. Then the second day passed with no power, and the salt trucks and snow plows did not come near our road. My mother and sister had also lost their electricity, and my fiance and I tried to get down to my mother's house to check on her. Our road was a disaster area. It was covered with ice and littered with fallen trees, shattered branches, and downed power lines. We had to turn back because our road is a dead end, and our only way out was blocked by power lines and a tangle of tree branches.

Thursday afternoon finally saw us able to leave our road. Neighbors with tractors had been pulling the debris off the road and moving the downed lines off to the side, because the road crews wouldn't come near our road. We bundled up in layer upon layer of clothing and made our way down to my mother's house. Her driveway was completely blocked by massive branches. It took hours to clear it. Massive limbs from a maple tree had ripped her fence to pieces, and I had to patch it with a spool of fencing wire. It had to be laced back together like an old boot.

The electric company wasn't able to tell us much, beyond "oh, you'll get your power back by the weekend." Except the weekend came and went and no one had been up to assess the damage, let alone attempt to fix it.

We finally got power back today. It's certainly been an experience...I know there are still several thousand people who will be without electricity for at least another week.

I did get some pictures in the 3 days I was stuck here.

Behold, the icicle as long as I am tall. I'm 5'5, so that should give a good idea of size.

Touche, John Belsky.

Here I am, at home. I should be at work. Should be, but it would appear Mr. Belsky was right for once...it iced and snowed and sleeted and now my driveway is one long slick crunchy sheet of snow, and our road has not been salted nor plowed at all. So here I sit, trapped on this cursed hill for today and possibly tomorrow.

Living in the country has its advantages. Those advantages disappear once winter hits. If I lived even 2 miles away, I would have been able to get to work this morning. My road is off a state road, which they have scraped, sanded, salted, and plowed so that it's nice and easy to drive. Since I live on a steep, narrow, curving nightmare of a rural road they plow it whenever they feel like getting around to it. Which is not often.

I've already e-mailed pathetic messages to my co-workers, complete with pictures of my road (because I am paranoid that they don't believe me when I tell them how bad it is, seeing as they all live in the city where the roads are well maintained). I suppose I'll try to do something productive with my day, other than watch my Fiance play Dragon Ball Z all afternoon (if I hear "we are a mighty race. don't underestimate us!" one more time from the Wii, I'm going to snap).

Damn you, John Belsky.

Our friendly local weatherman John Belsky is warning of ice and snow tonight. The predictions started last week, and have turned from one or two inches of snow to six to eight inches of ice and snow. Naturally everyone at work is in a tizzy over it. It's as though once you get past a certain age, you are only allowed to discuss 4 subjects, with the weather being main subject #1. All day long everyone speculated about how much snow, if the roads would be bad, and compared stories from snow storms past. This is Kentucky. We don't get much in the way of snow anymore. Apparently there was a bad snow storm in the 70s, which of course I was not around for, not even being alive yet. I was here for the 20 inches that fell overnight in 1994. Our power was out for 3 days. There are few things worse than being a kid faced with thigh-high snow and not being able to play in it. Especially when you originally came from Florida, where 50 degrees is considered colder than weather has any right to be.

So here I am, talking about the weather, just like everyone else. My world seems to revolve around snow and dental work.

My fiance and I went to the grocery store tonight to do our usual weekly shopping. The store was a frenzy of people buying milk (the person behind us had 5 gallons), bread, and eggs. Why is it always those three things? Do people trapped by snow live on french toast until the world thaws out again?

I am convinced that John Belsky is actually in league with the grocery stores. He gets on the news and gives dire predictions of snow and ice and doom, and people rush out to the stores and stock up like radioactive waste is going to be falling from the sky and bread and gallons of milk are their last hope of survival. Usually we don't even end up getting anything, and everyone grumbles about how he's never right, but a few weeks later he's on the news again warning about snow and people race off to the grocery store to once more empty the shelves of dairy products and baked goods.

Oh well. Such is life...and maybe Belsky will actually be right and we'll get some snow. If we do, I'll be sure to have french toast. I'm pretty sure that's what I'm supposed to do.

Her perfume smells like burning leaves...

I love fall. I love the colors, the crispness of the air, the depth of light. There's a different quality to the light in fall. It's mellow. More golden.
I especially love the scent of the leaves. That sweet, sharp smell that's especially strong after rain. I wish someone would bottle that and turn it into a perfume.

But this time of year also means that the colder weather is coming. Try as I might, I just cannot get used to it. I have been in KY now for most of my life, and while I can handle the cold better than I did when we first came here (from Florida, in the middle of January. To say it was a shocking difference is an understatement), I have never fully adjusted. It doesn't help that when the temperature starts to drop, my joints all ache. My hips have always given me trouble, but as I get older, they get worse. I can now accurately predict rain because my hips start to hurt about two days before an impending storm. Screw the weather channel. I don't need them. I've got my very own storm tracking devices!

It's not even winter and our bed is already heaped with every spare blanket we own. There is a regular comforter, a fleece blanket, a down alternative microfiber comforter, a cotton blanket, and a little fleece throw for my side of the bed. Currently, my fiance is sleeping on top of all the other covers but underneath my little throw. It doesn't cover him very well. He's twice my size, so his legs and chest stick out. He is also, might I add, on my side of the bed. This will not do. I see cold feet against bare shins in his future. That's my other problem with the cooler weather. My hands and feet go icy and don't thaw out again until spring. Thick socks and gloves don't help much. I can have on insulated wool boot socks and my toes still feel like stubby icicles.

I don't look forward to scraping ice off my windshield, or being able to see my breath, or having to wear layers of clothing every time I venture out the front door. I hate how dreary everything gets after this season of wild color and melting light. The fields turn brown and gray and the trees become ghosts of themselves. Crows replace the goldfinches and indigo buntings. There is some sort of stark beauty to it all. Sometimes I love it. Mostly I wish it were over.

Smile!

I've had more sessions than I care to count with the student dentists. Each appointment consists of some new torture. I've had so many x-rays taken that whenever I brush my teeth, I look in the mirror and can clearly picture each blue-white phantom of roots and pulp. I know what each of my fillings look like, where the cavities are, and the empty gap where my molar used to be.

They took molds the week after the x-ray session, which was one of the more unpleasant experiences. I have never had dental molds taken before. The paste tasted like mint and windex, and it crept towards the back of my throat like some terrible swamp-dwelling blob. If the molding process was unpleasant, the removal of the molds were even worse. It felt like my teeth were getting pulled out as slowly as possible.

Last week's session was the mounting of the freshly made replicas. This involved a device that measured the angle of my jaw. It had two extensions that hooked into my ears and a metal plate covered with impression gel that I had to bite down on. They tightened the plate with a vice handle. I felt like they should have been wearing robes and asking me if I had consorted with the devil while they did it. After yanking the metal plate out of my mouth, they took the plaster replicas of my teeth and gums and mounted them to the whole contraption. It was rather creepy looking, to say the least, like a prop from a horror movie.

I have a break from them until the 21st, which is when they'll start working in earnest. I'm afraid of what else they have in store for me.

The cost of it all is rather daunting, but it's not something I can ignore any longer. I'd rather not get to the point where I need root canals (though one tooth might already be there). We have set a limit on Christmas this year, which is something I was already panning on doing, especially after my insurance company sent me a letter telling me my premium was going up. Not by much, but enough to make me wince a little.

But my jewelry sales have picked up somewhat for the holidays, and I've got a roof over my head and enough to cover my bills, so I'm thankful for that. I can live without new shoes for a while, and even with a limit on christmas I can get some pretty good gifts for everyone (I am the queen of bargains).

Fixing a Hole

Today found me once more in the dentist's chair. Since I had my wisdom teeth removed I have not been experiencing the terrible tooth aches, ear aches, head aches, and neck pain that I'd been having off and on for the past few years. I was rather optimistic about the remainder of my dental work. My previous visit to this particular dentist had not yielded much beyond instructions to get my wisdom teeth and molar removed and then come back so he could get a better look at the rest of my teeth.

Unfortunately for me he peered at my x-rays and muttered various ominous sounding dental gibberish to his assistant. Then he informed me that I need 3 crowns. My stomach started to sink as I mentally calculated what that might cost me. When his assistant brought in the estimate I felt downright ill. $2,150 for what I need done. Ouch. That hurt almost as badly as those toothaches did. She told me that I'd get a $177 discount if I paid it all in full right then and there. Sadly, I do not have that much money just laying around waiting for me to throw it at my impossibly young dentist. My wisdom teeth, car insurance, and glasses all hit me within the same month. Hear that sound? That's not my wallet begging for mercy..that's my wallet begging on the street corner for any scrap that someone might throw.

Ah well. There is one small mercy in that I'll be having the crowns done at different times and so I can space them a few months apart. Give myself a little time to scrape together the money. Perhaps my jewelry sales will pick up enough to help me out a little more.

In the meantime I'm making a voodoo doll of my dentist.

Eye of the beholder

Yesterday I had an eye exam. I get one every year. I used to have them whenever I could be bothered to remember, but when you get engaged to an Optician you can't get away with that kind of thing anymore. Every year I resist getting a new eye exam, and every year he drags me kicking and screaming to the eye doctor. I'm also not allowed to clean my glasses on my shirt. Apparently it's bad for the lenses. Hmph.

This time I was pleased to learn that my prescription has barely changed. I have some minor change in my left eye. Usually my eyes get steadily worse each year. Perhaps they are finally levelling out.

My eye doctor was pointing out various things on the Optomap scan, telling me how this nerve or that random blob with some impossible to pronounce name looked fine. Then he told me that I have some "thinning" in my right eye, but not to worry because while it is rare, it isn't abnormal. I wanted to ask how something could be rare but not abnormal, because if it were normal, it wouldn't be rare, right? But I figured he's a good eye doctor, and if it's nothing to be concerned about I won't worry about it.

But I want to know why I can't have something rare happen that's actually worthwhile. Winning the lottery? Rare. Finding a diamond mine in my back yard? Pretty much impossible. Discovering a priceless artifact in my basement/attic/tool shed? Nope, sorry. Nothing but mice to be found there. Coming home to discover Orlando Bloom naked in my living room? Fate has other plans and he remains stubbornly clothed and located thousands of miles away with no knowledge of my existence.

Thinning of the eye? Yeah, that's the one I get. My sheer awesomeness is a wonder to behold.

Oh well. It could be a far worse kind of rare. At least this rare is the "nothing to worry about" kind, as opposed to the "limited chance of survival" kind.

It ended up costing just over $600 for the exam, my contacts, new glasses, and prescription sunglasses. That's after my fiance's discount, too. Ah, eyes and teeth..what expensive things they are.