Toof

My "F"'s are thick, and there is now a hatchway for fresh air to enter and escape.  This has happened because the problem child of my upper incisors let go of the expensive crown last night, during night-night tooth brushing. There is now a gap punctuated by a dark grey fang-stump left from the root canal/capping that startles people when I open my mouth to speak.  It's appearance is that of a gruesome extrovert, the guy on the street crumpled against a brick wall at 4 a.m., the one with the personality of an auditor from the 1963 Internal Revenue Service rolled into one dental hooligan.

There is good in this event, as the pain that I thought might be continued infection has disappeared, as well as the cadaverous flavor exuded by whatever got caught inside the little bastard.  Putrescine: we all have it.  Yet however now painless, this open gateway to Tonsil City needed closure; after research online, I found the product touted as the miracle cement for temporary relief and not scaring children.  Recapit, printed out in slanty lettering emphasizing the speed with which remedy would occur.  Yay.  I love stuff that can be fixed myself.

Ate lunch, cleaned the fang, and noodled some of the glue gunk into the top of the cap, the inside of which is some sort of soft metal, and tried to insert the porcelain devil back into place but guess what.  My liberated gum line had advanced, relaxed, ordered a pina colada and resisted being put back into place like grandpa at the Legionnaire's Post hot lunch, thus preventing the errant crown from settling in nicely.  Oh ho no, this thing will go back in, sez I sez I.  Wiggling and pressing, I got it reasonably located with just a little too much overhang, but now, by using continued pressure from clamping down in the ferocious bite of determination, the thing seems to have migrated into domesticity.  Takes an hour for the cement to solidify, then, as the package says, You Can Eat.

I want this to work until I can call the dentist for an allegedly permanent conviction of this villain tooth, so all food will be pulverized, broken into tiny bits to be shoveled delicately into the left side of the cavern.  This artificial mastication eliminates any fancy display, for all the pureed food looks alike, and is deviated only by color, like cat food.  Guess what's red, guess what's brown, guess what this greeny stuff once was.  Meow.  Really, all the fancy crisscross squirts of designer sauce goes to hell when it comes down to the basic mechanics of eating.  Arugula?  Roquette?  Ten dollar a pound Belgian endive?  Put it through the processor and you have undefinable green smoosh sans the foofoo advertisement.  But hey, didn't I can applesauce this past fall? What a smart kid I am, preparing for the toothless days that were ahead.

This pain in the behind situation is small potatoes compared to the larger outlook of life.  I have a butternut squash in the oven, am roasting a knucklebone for making soup, and have a Shiitake mushroom kit to open and rev into production.  Little cat Min is having the problems of old age with hypoglycemia, which creates convulsions in her tiny frame: they are coming closer together after a half-year hiatus, and I know what that means.  Either a slow decline with palliative care, or an end brought quicker when they are too many too often.  She just had supper and so is well for the night.  It's when she forgets to eat that her blood sugar dips into dangerous low levels.  Oh Min, my last stray cat who found a home with us.

Tonight, I will sing a song of tenderness to my newly cemented tooth.  It is cockeyed, but not terribly so, and certainly passes into acceptable company unlike its inner, monstrous Mr. Hyde pointy barb.  Tonight is the evening of the time change backwards, and so tomorrow we luxuriate under covers for one unplanned extra hour that happens in the middle of the night, while our eyes are closed.  Time.  Pushed into 24 neat packets, orderly as a row of white teeth so that we can count birthdays and appointments.  What does it mean, this substratum?  Why 24 and how did an hour become 60?  Days grind, years fly.  Sleep well, tooth, sleep peacefully little cat, hover over us, winged seraphim,  and make us remember where we come from and why we do the things that we do.  Sleep well in innocence, you are.