Tuesday's Gone With the Wind...

For the last couple weeks, I've been dreading today. I ended up scheduling my annual teaching observation for this morning and some pretty extensive dental work for this afternoon. I told Cam this morning that if I could just get through this day, I'd come home and get in bed and rest all evening. Between buying a house and fighting allergies and a sinus infection, I am completely spent.

The morning starts off pretty good. My lesson was really fun, if I do say so myself, and I felt like my observation went well. I do the same dog and pony show for my other four classes and race out of the building at 3:30 to try to beat the schoolbuses so I can make it to my 4:00 dental appointment. This is when things get interesting:

- Dentist needs to fill 3 cavities. I haven't had that many cavities in years, but I'm going to a new dentist and maybe he's just more thorough than my last one. One of said cavities is huge and is actually in a tooth that already has a filling beneath the new cavity. Dentist hopes this won't turn into a root canal, but he won't know 'til he gets in to the tooth. The decay is massive! He drills and drills until there is barely any tooth left, telling me every few seconds, "I'm really close to the nerve!" Ok dude, I don't need to hear the play-by-play. He gets to where he can literally see the root of my tooth and isn't sure he's going to be able to pull this off without a root canal. This is not a stage of dental misery I'm quite ready to enter just yet. I can't stand getting old. Finally he decides he can try just filling it, with possibly a crown. He pulls out all the stops, putting several different things on the tooth that will fight bacteria and hopefully get the tooth to regenerate itself. Then he fills the rest of it, thankfully with no crown needed. He refers to it as the "taj mahal of fillings". In the midst of this two hour filling, I get a massive cramp in my foot. Here I am--laid out in the dental chair with two different people's hands in my mouth. My cramp is getting worse and worse, so I say something and try to stretch it out. They warn me not to move, as this point in the process is critical. I try to "mind over matter" this cramp until I just can't anymore. I tell them again it's cramping (they thought I said itching the first time, probably because there were fifteen different things in my mouth) but I'm still not allowed to move. I gingerly reach down and pull my foot up to stomach, butterfly style, and hold it to get rid of the cramp, which has now moved into my ankle. This is pretty much my worst nightmare. My foot cramps are chronic, and I always knew they would put me in some awful situation like this. Luckily I held my pose until we could take a break so I could stand up on it. Eventually it goes away, appoinment ends, and I make another appointment for two weeks out so they can fill the other two cavities they didn't get to today and check on the status of my "life support tooth".

-I leave the dentist's parking lot and immediately can tell something's not right about my car. Something feels strange, but I'm not sure if it's my tires or the rough road. I drive along until I can tell I have a flat tire, make it to a nearby middle school (I just can't seem to get away from those), and pull in. My tires not just flat, it's blown out with a big rip in the side. I call Cam and he drops everything to come help me (love that man so much!). He gets there and starts changing the tire. I play on my phone calmly. I know my strengths and car repair is definitely an area where my assistance would hurt, not help. This is when things turn into an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm:

-The jack bends and Cam has to switch mine out for his truck's jack.

-He puts the donut spare tire on only to discover that it too is flat.

-I take his truck to the gas station to buy a can of fix-a-flat so we can at least get to a gas station on the spare to air it up before taking it to NTB for a new tire.

-Cam needs me to back the car up a little once he uses the fix-a-flat so it will seal, or something.

-We then realize my car battery has died after sitting half-cranked for so long while fixing the flat.

-At this point I'm laughing so I don't cry.

-We jump the car. This is when my Dad arrives on the scene. We told him he didn't need to come, but my sweet parents couldn't rest after they heard about the flat donut.

-We caravan in three different cars to a gas station to air up the tire. And get gas...did I mention my gas light had been on for a whole day by this point?

-We make it to NTB an hour before they close at 9. They convince us it's best to buy two tires instead of one, since my other one is almost at the point of not passing inspection. $400 later and it's Happy Valentine's Day to us (yeah right, we'd never spend that much on Valentine's Day)!

-On the way home, I try to turn the radio on so I can reset the clock after the battery debacle. Then I realize that Honda has this lovely anti-radio theft device that requires a car-specific code to reset the radio after the battery has been disconnected. The code is nowhere to be found in the owner's manual, which says I'll need to get some other serial code from the radio and then a dealer might be able to give me the code to unlock it. I start debating whether I really need a radio in my car anymore. After some help from the internet, I find a secret sticker in the car with the code printed on it. I would tell you the location, but then you might come steal my car radio. ;)

The End.

If you made it through this one, bless your precious heart.