No, not the guardianship and control exercised by a deity, or that horrible TV show with Mike Farrell from MASH–but the city in Rhode Island where Brown resides and Lee and Christopher got married. The trip back east got off to a somewhat inauspicious start, as we missed our connection from Chicago to Providence because our flight was late leaving San Francisco and the last flight we could have taken was cancelled. So, we spent a complimentary evening at the lovely Doubletree O’Hare in Rosemont, IL before flying the next day to RI. But the wedding itself was very nice, if a bit odd. The mostly traditional Jewish wedding had its strangest moment when the groom’s relative, the official priest of Logan airport in Boston, joined the Rabbi for a final blessing (insert ‘priest and rabbi’ joke here). But all in all, a fun wedding, and a good time had by all.

The bite Molly received on her butt seemed to heal itself just fine, but apparently she also got herself a puncture wound to the stomach which has become infected. Nothing too bad, just discomfort and 10 days of me showing antibiotics down her throat twice a day—plus, of course, the dreaded blue collar. Of course there’s a good reason for it—keeping her from licking her infected wound with her bacteria-filled mouth—but Molly doesn’t quite see it that way. So I look forward to lots of head shaking and coming home from work to find the collar on the floor and Molly gnawing on herself.

I’d gotten so comfortable with my temporary filling, I’d almost forgotten that I needed to go back and have a crown made. It actually took longer this time around than for the whole root canal. The dentist took an impression of the area, then drilled out the temporary filling, shoved some things in my tooth hole, inserted and glued in a gold post, ground down much of my remaining tooth, filled it with something or other, took more impressions, then fit and cemented the temporary acrylic crown on my tooth (sorry, no pictures this time).

Now I have two weeks when I’m not supposed to chew on the tooth, or really brush or floss it. Then I go back and get a cool porcelain crown. So what am I supposed to do if the temporary crown pops off over the Labor Day weekend, as they are want to do? Go buy some dental cement and glue the damn thing back on myself. Hopefully it won’t come to that.

Just got back from my first root canal, and I have to say it wasn’t that bad. (During a short break, I used my cell phone to capture this lovely image–apparently dental dams ARE still used in dentistry.) With all the drugs they injected into my mouth, I didn’t feel a thing. But it seems I’m some sort of freak–the tooth has three canals (which is normal), plus an extra little one (which occurs sometimes), but the extra one was in an unusual spot. All of which means I need to go back in a few days to have more stuff done.

It was hard to tell exactly what he was doing, but it seemed to involve drilling several small holes through my tooth, sticking some mini pipe cleaners in the canals to scrub then out, sticking some more things in there and drilling some more, and filling them up with some sort of goo. Did I mention he filled the canals using what looked like a soldering iron, complete with strange, sweet-smelling smoke? And then out of the corner of my eye, I could see a Bunsen burner, which he used to heat up (or possibly sterilize–but I hope modern science has come up with a better way than using fire to accomplish that) some instrument that he poked in the holes after filling them.

He asked if I thought I’d need something for the pain (which I hoped meant Vicodin), and then handed me some 400mg ibuprofen (Advil). That’s the same as taking two of the regular size ones you’d buy in the market–I guess he figured one fewer pill to swallow at a time could be considered a minor victory.