Cavities, car repairs, and book disappointments

This week was filled with certain challenges. The flight home, the reacclimation to regular life, the daily grind reasserting itself. Then there were the biggies.

On Thursday my long-term great good fortune with my teeth ended. I have two cavities. It's been years since I've had any and I've only ever had one. But now I have two. I was worried that I might because I could see one of my back molars had some staining and I couldn't seem to brush it out. And that turned out to be the case. So in a couple of weeks I have to go back and write a check for $150 so this little problem can be corrected. My dentist assured me that "the fillings won't show - they'll be the same color as your teeth." Apparently this costs more than silver fillings since insurance companies are still lumping porcelain fillings under the "cosmetic" heading. So it's perhaps a mixed blessing.

Then on Thursday night, on the way home from V.'s, my brakes went out. I almost went through an intersection because I could NOT stop. Freaked me out. Max was in the car an everything. I had just put "Fix brakes" on my list of things to do, but it turned out to be much more immediate need than I'd imagined. This morning J. dropped Max and I off at Muffler Man, and the news was worse than I expected. Both sets of brakes were shot; apparently they'd never been replaced - these were the originals. The total? $660. Which, with J.'s car's problems in March pretty much wipes out our entire tax return. It took almost 5 hours for this brake job to be done so Max and I walked home, having no other transportation alternative. It was lucky that the weather was good.

Finally, I got my Amazon shipment, including Charmed Thirds. Took a week to get here. Apparently it was being shipped by sled dog and several of the huskies perished on the way. In between the time I got the email that it had shipped and now, I read this review which, along with the reviews at Amazon made me decide not to read it. I'm am truly bummed about this. Really. I had high hopes, but based on readers’ comments I don’t think I’d like the college Jessica and I don’t think I’d like where McCafferty is taking the relationship between her and Marcus (which is kind of why I wanted to read it anyway). How depressing. I’ve been looking forward to this book (in an abstract way) since the summer of 2004 and excitedly since January. But sometimes you just have to know when to fold ‘em. I’d rather end with book 2 when they are still happy and life is somewhat less messy and ugly.

Strangely enough, despite all of these little incidents, I'm not really in a bad mood. Must be the weather. Spring has finally arrived in Michigan. The trees are blossoming, it's been sunny and warm, and I've been out doing yard work so I'm feeling very productive and unclaustrophobic. So there you go. That's my week.