When the blade on our lawnmower is coming loose, it gets slightly unbalanced and causes vibrations that make the motor stall out.
Of course, in the process of discovering this fact I also learned that the electric motor in the lawnmower is a wimpy little thing occupying only a tiny fraction of the empty space under the mower's cowling (the rest holds dry grass) and that the spring-loaded brushes for the motor are about halfway through their useful life after two or three seasons of mowing.
This piece of trivia almost makes up for the fact that there are now a couple of screwdriver bits embedded invisibly in the lawn near the pond.
All through July and the first half of August, as the humidty climbed into saltberg zone and above, I would hear the occasional percussive creak from the dining room as our tabletop crept out toward the ends of its dovetailed cross-braces. The rest of the house adjusted more quietly.
This morning, with 57 degrees outside and a bare 30% humidity, all the second-floor joists creaked in unison. No real surprise, I guess.
According to research presented at the annual meeting of the International Psychogeriatric Association, a synthetic marijuana compound can reduce agitation and improve appetite in patients with Alzheimer's. Is there any laidback stoner with the munchies who couldn't have told us that?
The news comes from the Meridian Institute for Aging, a continuum of senior health programs and services in Central New Jersey affiliated with Meridian Health System, so I guess this means in due time we will be able to get a (synthesized, patent-protected) buzz from the local HMO. Ain't the free market grand?
But now we do have a plan. In between bemoaning the state of research into tooth decay and telling me about new tests for strep mutans my dentist pretty much called for doing a Blandings on my mouth over the next couple years.
Well, it's not really that bad. Or maybe it is, but not as bad as all that. Just most of that. It's not worth doing really really permanent on about 14 of my teeth because they're just going to be falling apart and needing crowns anyway. Except for the one that needs an implant instead...
In the meantime, she'll do triage -- rip out all of the old fillings that have pretty much lost their way after 5 or 15 years, touch up some new holes, throw some Bondo on anything that breaks.
Oh, yeah, and I'm supposed to take better care of my teeth (as if):
floss more
keep using the sonicare
swear off the diet dr pepper
chew some fancy gum with 5-carbon sugar that confuses the bacteria
Get even fancier (prescription) fluoride toothpaste
Gargle 2 weeks out of 12 with Chlorhexidine.
That last took me a bit aback, since it immediately brought up memories of one of the most celebrated correspondents who ever graced the corridor chat of Sci Am: The Man Who Drank Phisohex. Phisohex is hexachlorophene, chlorhexidine's mean tattooed older brother, which was pulled off the general market in 1972 after tests showed that in addition to its excellent germ-killing properties it also (by absorption through the skin) had a propensity to knock the stuffings out of nerve cells, particularly among infants and children.
That day in 1972 had been a terribly sad one for our correspondent, who swore by the stuff for internal and external use. He credited it, for example, with the extirpation of a chronic eye infection that had nearly blinded him (guess he couldn't see the KEEP AWAY FROM EYES warning on the bottle) along with the curing of various other ailments that he described in abscess-draining detail.
We never did find out what had happened to him.
While I was lying around semiconscious watching one of the worst movies ever made Julie was taking a cleaver to one of those humongous chickens, rubbing the fragments with Penzy's "American" spice mix and leaving it for an hour or so on a low-fired grill.
It was yummy warm last night, and the wings were yummy cold even as I was typing this. I shall be back in fighting trim in no time.
None of this will come as news to any of you who buy their mysteries in hardback, but I'm disappointed in one of my favorite authors. Even the cloistered sensibilities of a narrator who cuts her hair with nail scissors and lives in a mid-80s timewarp (are these historical novels now?) can't really excuse this one.
Really: the gold-digging kinky lesbian stripper did it with the help of her discreetly butch schoolmistress lover? And the two of them are leading her daughter into the same seedy, deviant lifestyle (or maybe it's genetic)? Please. Is that all you could come up with, and not even a non-recycled subplot?
Or maybe I'm just getting cranky in my old age. I miss the days when my favorite fictional detective's office was set half a block from my ex-boss's boyfriend's house on the near side of Bernal Heights, and I could curse the same lousy parking she did in between visits where I made the creosote from the woodstove drip all over the floor.
It's been a busy week -- I even had a deadline -- so this is a bit late. With a deadline approaching, no wonder that wednesday morning I was half-reclined in the big club chair downstair reading some novel or other.
At 1005 it suddenly struck me that oh, yes, I had a dental appointment sometime that day. Up to my office, where mirabile dictu (I fell in love with that expression way back when Chris was writing a review of the footnotes in the new edition of Ulysses the appointment card was right in front of my computer and oh god it said 1020.
Showered, dressed, gave thanks that we don't live out in the country, didn't hit anyone on the way to the dentist's office.
I wonder if I could have my tongue fitted out with some kind of bayonet mount. Wednesday's fillings were all the way back on the bottom left, and it really just wasn't working for anyone. My nice dentist was saying maybe next time we have me sedated, and I was pondering the observation that when I lay back on the chair the back of my tongue rolled neatly into place where the air usually goes through. Oh, yeah, and this time it only took one helping of amalgam.
There was also a ocnversation going on about the circus that was in town, of which the dental assistant's boyfriend or brother or someone is an alumnus so they get in free. And the dentist is thinking of sending her three-year-old to their training campl because he likes to hang upsidedown.
This is the time of year when you almost have to stop using salt. It clumps in the shaker, turns to rock in the carton. Today, when the humidity almost went below 80% for a few hours, it seemed positively balmy. (60 degrees and 96% water in the air, and darned if you're not sweating and shivering at the same time. Air like that laughs at fans.)
It's been raining so much that the ground is full of water again for the first time since spring. Even when the sun is shining the pond continues to overflow. (don't worry, plenty of tadpoles still enjoying the tannin-colored depths)
One of these days I'll get past the driveay and out into the woods to see how the mushrooms are growing. There were some fine ones on a tree in downtown.
... whom Julie informs me may be having a root canal tomorrow.
I'd like to say that in these modern times of thorough drugging, it might be really not so bad. The days when you could see the smoke of your own cauterized nerve tissue rising from you mouth are pretty much gone.
hope it goes well