Growing New Teeth

            On Saturday morning I uploaded I uploaded "Daisy Temple" by Serge Gainsbourg to Christian's Translations and prepared it for blog publication. It was almost ready but I wanted to include a few notes on the words in the song that I didn't translate: 

 A "boubou" is a colourful African robe. 

 A "nounou" is a nanny and common enough to use as it is in English. 

"Cachous" are little candies often used to decorate cakes and pastries. 

            I weighed 88.9 kilos before breakfast. 

            At 10:30 I started getting ready to leave for my appointment at Midtown Dental and left at about 10:50. I locked my bike just north of the northeast corner of Yonge and Bloor. Instead of walking through the Hudson's Bay Centre to get there as I did twice before, this time I went to the east end of the block and went inside from there because the dental office is just inside the door. I filled out another covid symptom form and then sat in the waiting room readng a couple of not bad poems from the 18th Century by Mary Robinson. I followed an assistant into a room and had to rinse my mouth with hydrogen pyroxide. It has a horrible after taste and I asked why they don't doctor it up. She said it used to have a fruit flavour but the patients didn't like it. I was at the dentist's for almost four hours but I was in the chair for a solid three hours. Before we started Dr Ramlaggan said if we had time we could start another procedure but I told him I couldn't afford anything else. He asked what kind of music I liked and I said Leonard Cohen and so his assistant found a full live Cohen concert online and played it while displaying an endless movie on the big screen in front of me of waves washing up on a beautiful beach.

            The first half of the procedure involved preparing the space for the crown and then there was a long waiting period while the crown was being made based on a digital 3D mold. The doctor showed me the 3D images of the teeth from different angles. I asked if they laser print the crown and he said that is done sometimes but the materials are not very good. This process is something like it but different. I said in Star Trek they could probably transport the old tooth out and the new tooth in. He told me that in Calgary they are doing research with stem cells on people being able to grow back their own teeth. This sounds pretty interesting and so I looked it up later. So far this doesn't seem to have gotten past tests on rats and mice but they've been successful at that stage. A scaffolding has to be built to guide the tooth as it grows but theoretically this would be far cheaper, far more adaptable to the mouth and far less painful than implants, which can be painful and not adaptable to the point of failure. I wonder if they'll have that procedure ready in my lifetime though. 

            The two assistants were talking about David, the other assistant and one said she hoped he wasn't in trouble. The other assured her that he wasn't in trouble and so I assume he's in trouble. 

            One of the assistants said her boyfriend is making up with her by taking her out to a drive-in movie. The other asked, "Do those still exist?" She didn't know where it would be. I looked it up and there's a drive-in movie festival this week at Ontario Place. 

            I think I spent about an hour just sitting alone in the chair near the end, feeling restless, tired and testy with the freezing having worn off. The dentist refroze my tooth to finish putting the crown on. He said my gums were not liking it and there was bleeding. He wanted me to come back in a week for him to check on it. I paid a little over $750 for the rest of the procedure. When the receptionist asked when I could come in I was ready to tell her I wasn't going to but then I found out that the follow up is free and so I agreed to come in next Friday. My tooth hurt a bit for the rest of the day and was more sensitive when I ate than before. I guess that might be the gums reacting to the crown. We'll see how things go before I come in again. 

            I rode down Yonge to Queen. It was a warm day but not hot like on Tuesday. When I got back to Parkdale I rode past my place and went straight to No Frills where I bought two bags of grapes, one bag of cherries, a pack of thinly cut eye of round steaks, a jar of Basilicata sauce, a jug of orange juice and some skyr. 

            After I took my food home I was on my way back out to buy some beer when my upstairs neighbour was coming in. I asked him if he wanted anything at the liquor store and he said a six pack of Molson Canadian. I said I'd pay but he insisted on giving me $50. I had the exact change and later tried to give him back the $50 but he wouldn't take it. 

            I weighed 86.9 kilos at 16:45. I had a very late lunch of Ritz crackers with five year old cheddar and a glass of lemonade. 

            I took a siesta and slept almost two hours, getting up at 19:23. I wrote in my journal until it was time to start dinner. I made pizza with naan, the rest of the Bolognese sauce and old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching two episodes of Mayberry RFD.

            In the first story Sam hires a farm hand named Rudy who is very charming and good at almost everything. He's raced cars and piloted crop dusters and so Mike is very impressed with him. He's more interested in hanging out with Rudy than with his father and Flora the housekeeper is concerned. Sam tries to do special things with Mike but Mike seems only half interested. Sam buys a model of a car similar to Rudy's for them to put together. They work on it together but can't quite finish it until Rudy walks in and figures out right away what was done wrong. Soon however Rudy figures out that he is causing a distance between Mike and his father and so when Mike comes to Rudy for help on a school assignment about his goals in life, Rudy deliberately gives Mike bad advice, such as that he should pay the best essay writer in his class to do it for him. Mike goes to his father for real help and after the corn crop is in Rudy goes away. Sam only realizes later what a big man Rudy is. 

            The second story is the beginning of a travel story arc featuring all the main players on the show. Their old friend Selma, who has married a millionaire returns for a visit and invites Sam, Bee, Mike, Goober, Howard and Emmett to spend a couple of weeks at her home in Palm Springs, California. The house is empty because she'll be in Europe with her husband. Everyone is willing to go but the problem is that Mike is failing fractions in school and if he takes time off of school then it might be detrimental to his success at conquering the problem. His teacher says that if he improves for his next test then he could comfortably take time off. Everyone is anxious for Mike to succeed and try with varying degrees of success to coach him. There seems to be an excessive amount of pressure on the kid but that isn't really dealt with in the story. The day of the test Goober, Howard and Emmett are actually sitting in the hall outside Mike's class waiting for school to get out as if a baby is about to be born. After the bell rings and Mike tells them he doesn't know how he did, his teacher comes out and tells Mike that she marked his test right away and he got a B. That means he can go to Palm Springs. Goober grabs the teacher and gives her a big kiss on the mouth, which would be considered sexual assault nowadays.

            The teacher was played by Jessica Myerson, who played Lily Paine in the short lived series "Thicker Than Water".