Blue-Footed Musings

On Saturday I dusted and reorganized my bookshelves. This was necessary because 1. The books and shelves had gotten mighty dusty, 2. Livia had borrowed a bunch of books and then returned them after I’d filled in all the gaps with new books, and 3. I took back the books that Marshall had borrowed. Even with the space left empty when I disposed of my stereo, there wasn’t enough room for all the books. My stomach sank as I realized that, once again, I have to get rid of some books.

With that thought in mind, I picked up a small book that I’d had for a while but hadn’t read yet. It was The Lump of Coal by Lemony Snicket. It only took a few minutes to read.

In this odd little Christmas book, a lump of coal dreams of being an artist and of cooking barbecue–typical dreams for coal, I’d say–but the world doesn’t welcome him in those roles. When he settles for being a lump of coal in a kid’s stocking, his wishes finally start to come true. It’s a cute story, and only a tiny bit annoying in the Snickety way (by defining words for the reader), but I don’t love it. I put it in the donation pile. Whew. I feel so much better now. That’s one whole tiny sliver of space cleared on my shelf.

On Sunday, as we were out shopping for lake houses, we passed by a used-book store and couldn’t resist stopping in. I came home with four books. <sigh> I can’t help myself.

My husband built a wishing well to conceal our house’s wellhead. The local robins thought it was swell. They kept attempting to build nests on the roof beams. My husband got so fed up with them that he tried putting nails (a.k.a. “robin deterrents”) on the beams, but the birds reportedly “used them as a loom to facilitate their nest-making.” <snicker>

I have watched so much TV lately. Too much. But, I’ve found some movies worth not only watching but rewatching, and that’s not a bad thing. One of those movies is Champagne Problems, available on Netflix.

In this romance, workaholic Syndey travels to Paris to acquire a struggling winery for her company. Having promised her sister that she will take time off for sightseeing, one of the first things she does in Paris is to visit a bookstore, where she meets a cute French guy named Henri. And so the romance begins.

The two main characters are delightful. I love the meet-cute in the bookstore, and I love that the French characters frequently speak French (crazy, right?). The characters talk about their past and present troubles with real emotion, but there’s a lot of silliness in the movie to keep things from getting too heavy. For example, one character (Roberto) wants to buy the winery just so he can keep drinking his favorite party champagne. I could almost hate Roberto for being so god-awful wealthy, but he’s so endearing that instead I want him to be my friend. His dialogue, sometimes featured, sometimes off-screen and in the background, is by turns funny and sweet (“It doesn’t matter if you’re a glass-half-full or glass-half-empty type of person. All that matters is that the glass is refillable.”).

The movie is rated only 6 stars out of 10 at imdb.com, so perhaps it’s not for everybody, but I have added it to my list of go-to films for those times when I need a little pick-me-up.

At work, now that I’m no longer shackled to that unpleasant project, I feel a little less mopey. There’s nothing on my schedule, and I can work on whatever I please. Mostly I’ve been writing and editing documentation, a task that I enjoy. I do that work in MS Word, the latest version of which has a built-in “Editor.” I know my writing isn’t perfect, and I would appreciate some good advice, but many of the Editor’s recommendations are questionable. For example, it always tells me that I should get rid of the word “very,” which is reasonable, but then it suggests that I replace “very” with “ridiculously” or “extremely.” Ugh. No.

I have forgotten so much about the years when my kids were small, and that makes me sad, but some things have stayed with me. I still can’t read the word “triangle” without hearing it in my head as “trigingle,” which is how Marshall used to say it when he was very young. This and other random memories from that era are blessings to me, and I am grateful for them.

After 25+ years of living with a guy, you think you know him. Then one day, out of the blue, he does an amazing Cookie Monster impersonation. I mean spot-on and absolutely hysterical. And to think I never knew he could do that. Wow.

I had said I would create a pseudonym for work, and I chose a beautiful one. But then I didn’t use it. I decided that I deserved credit for the new material, which I’d edited to meet my standards. As for the recycled material, it was selected by another editor whose name will also be on the masthead, and I figure that he can take the blame for any errors found in that material. I’d also meant the pseudonym to be a form of protest, but upon further thought I don’t see any value there. If vocal protesting has no effect, then such a quiet, subtle protest doesn’t stand a chance. So I continue to be me.

I mentioned an article about ticks recently. The article had an interesting (to me) line about how deer stay close to people’s houses during the day, then move in at night to munch on the hydrangeas. Ain’t that the truth. The deer here have chewed one of our hydrangeas down to a nub. I hadn’t realized how much the deer love hydrangeas. It would have been a good thing to know before we planted hydrangeas in front of the house, don’t you think?

But the deer only seem to love that one particular hydrangea plant. They’ve left the others, which are a different variety, mostly alone and it’s too bad, because now we have one overeaten and the rest overgrown. The deer also razed most of our hostas and all the pretty red plants we bought last year, among other things. I guess they’ve been extra hungry. But judging by the giant thistle and the shrub-sized mint growing in the same vicinity, they don’t care for those types of plants. So from now on we will do all our landscaping with thistle and mint!

Just kidding. Thistle is mean plant. There’s not a part of it that won’t give you a vicious needling. I’d hoped to see our giant thistle bloom, because I think the flowers are pretty, but it had gotten downright dangerous, and we removed it when we weeded the flowerbed last Sunday.

As for the mint, it’s blooming now, and I love the minty smell of the flowers. But I should probably remove them before they go to seed. Otherwise the plant will take over the landscape, and then the joke will be on me!

My hair had become so dry, brittle, and unruly that I bought a satin-lined cap to wear at night while sleeping. I’ve worn it every night for a couple of weeks now. It makes me feel silly, but it’s definitely helping my hair. I used to wake up looking like one of those wild-haired troll dolls from the ’60s, which is sort of ironic, because I used to have a troll-themed nightshirt with the words “Crazy hair? I don’t care!” But now I do care about crazy hair, and since I started wearing the cap, I wake up with my hair so smooth and neat that I hardly need brush it. Fantastic.

I was flossing one night last week when I felt the crown (on one of my lower left molars) shift.

Dammit!

I have always tried to be extra careful when flossing around the crown, because my dentist warned me against putting any upward pressure on it. The old version of Glide floss was so forgiving–hardly ever catching on my teeth–that my occasional carelessness never caused any trouble. But the new Glide sucks, and every other floss I’ve tried as a replacement has equally sucked. And on this particular evening, using a sucky floss, the string caught on the crown and loosened it.

When I went to the dentist a few days later, he said that the post had snapped off and I’d need a whole new crown. As a temporary fix, he glued the old one down, but warned that it might not stay in place. Sadly, he was right. Just a couple of nights later, as I was having a little snack, suddenly I felt as if I had a marble in my mouth. Bye-bye crown.

The dentist won’t be able to fix it until mid-August, meaning I’ll have to live with this big, ugly, rough gap in my teeth for over a month. Two visits to the dentist will be required for fixing it, and it’s certain to cost a pretty penny.

I didn’t need this extra nuisance (or expense) in my life. I am not happy. But there are a few positives. For one thing, I got 25 years, give or take, out of the old crown. Not bad. When it came loose, I didn’t swallow it (I’d been a little worried about that possibility). The gap may be hideous, but at least it’s in the back, where other people aren’t very likely to notice it. My daughter insisted that I show it to her, and when I did, she said, “That makes me want to brush and floss more.” Yes!