Monthly Archives: February 2020

Portland Meadows is finished. According to the Internet it opened in 1946. I went there twice. Once I saw Chuck Berry and the Grateful Dead. (They played separately.) The other time I went to bet on the Kentucky Derby. As I recall, everything was on screens. There weren’t any in person horse or dog races. But it’s hard to remember.

A couple of days ago I looked out the window from the laundry room and saw something weird in the flower bed.

I ran out and saw a dirty bandana. I figured it must be from a pet that wandered through and I could deal with it later. I had this great idea that I would put it out front and maybe the person whose pet lost a bandana would see it and be grateful to have it back.

I don’t know why I care so much about this strange bandana. Why is someone’s pet in my backyard? It’s just a bandana. People who put bandanas on pets must expect to lose a few. Regardless, I wanted to do the neighborly thing.

Sorry these photos are so awful. I took them from the bus. Even though I never went there and don’t care about horse racing, I still feel bad that it’s gone. I’m not sure of the exact plans but some sort of warehouses.

This morning I looked out the window in the laundry room and the bandana was gone.

I doubt a person hunted around and came into my backyard to find a lost bandana.

But it seems weird that an animal would come by and grab it. “Oh look, my lost bandana.” We have raccoons and opossum that wander through our yard. Would they have grabbed a bandana for their secret stash? It’s a mystery.

Here’s where all that grumping about back in October is going to pay off. Look at all those sproutlets bursting through the ground. Prepare for many many flower photos in a couple of months.

Or sooner? This baby looks like it’s going to pop any day now.

This is the main groundhog radish area. They are supposed to loosen and condition the soil. I just went back to read the instructions curious how I’m supposed to handle in the spring. Well, if I read it correctly, the ideal situation is that we would have had a hard freeze and they would die. The tops would wither and the radish would get squishy and I would rototil and plant as usual.

But as you can see, this hasn’t happened and the plants are growing up a storm. If I understood the directions correctly I’m supposed to harvest that 50 bushels of daikon radish. Luckily I got that pickle queen cookbook because unless we get a hard freeze very soon, I’m making pickles.

In case you don’t know what you’re looking for, I have helpfully made a red arrow pointing at the radish.

I looked up the history of my (dental) crowns. I got my first one in the early 90s and then one in 2008 and this exciting 2012 pre-vacation emergency, and I guess 2 in 2016. I didn’t have root canals for all of them. For the 2012 root canal the doctor prescribed an opioid painkiller — I don’t know how many, 10? 12? Shows you how far we’ve come, this time they gave me a few of those super-power ibuprofens. I didn’t have huge issues with pain for any of them.

This is from Library of Congress free wpa posters.

Don’t be jealous but yet again, I am a queen because I am getting a crown. Well, I’ll get a crown if I’m lucky. My tooth disintegrated so thoroughly I don’t know what they’re going to do with it.

It started hurting around Christmas, as in after a sip of hot or cold you’d have to peel me off the ceiling. I was prepared to live with it until after the braces came off but the discomfort was making eating and drinking difficult. I had my braces tightened and then couldn’t chew on either side of my mouth for about 36 hours.

The dentist looked at the xray and said: I don’t even know what’s going on with this tooth. It’s like it’s imploding from the inside out.

She gave me a referral to the endontist who discussed a lot of scenarios and then told me they had a schedule change and could zap me immediately.

Hell yes! I said.

The minute he drilled into it, the inside part of the tooth flew off – which wasn’t unexpected. I guess my tooth rotted inside until it was like a tooth-shell? I don’t know. I’m not an oral health professional and am not one of those people who needs to know the life history of why my tooth failed.

He did his thing and patched it up and I can freely drink cold water without flinching which is the best part of this whole mess. I have to go back to the dentist for her thoughts on what next.