A Tale of Three Toothaches

A few years ago I awoke in the darkness of the night with a toothache. The ache kept me awake until morning. Then I called my dentist.

My dentist said to come to his office right away. So I did that. He examined my tooth, took x-rays, and told me to see an endodontist. He recommended one. 

Soon, I was sitting in the endodontist's chair. The endodontist was a pleasant young woman with a ton of fancy equipment in her office. She examined my tooth, then she performed a root canal. Later, she capped the tooth. The procedures cost $3500. As I said, this was a few years ago, so today the cost might be much higher. 

A year or two passed, and then one night I awoke with a toothache in another tooth. This time I did nothing. The pain went away and returned around 3PM. Then, it went away again. But it returned every day for ten days. Then the pain disappeared and hasn't returned.

Another year passed, and one night I awoke with a toothache on the other side of my jaw. Just as before, I did nothing about it. The toothache lasted for seven days, then it disappeared and hasn't returned.

I'm not offering medical advice. I'm just describing my own experiences, for what they may be worth. But I cannot help wondering about that first toothache. What if I had done nothing? Would it have gone away? Could I have avoided a root canal and a crown? I'll never know.

Early Years

My commenter (LL) on my previous post said when she was young, she made 50 cents per hour. That reminded me of my first paying job: newspaper delivery. I was 13 when I started that job.

Newspapers today are a shadow of what they used to be. Newpapers were thick and heavy. I had about 80 to 100 weekly papers and about 120 Sunday papers. I delivered the weekly papers by rolling them up and then loading them into the basket on my bike. I biked down all the streets on my route, delivering papers to both sides of the street. I was bitten by dogs three times. On Thursday afternoon, I spent several hours collecting money from the first half of my route, and on Friday afternoon I collected from the second half of my route. I spent several hours each day just collecting. On Saturday morning, I would go over the route again and try to collect from the homes where no one was at home on Thursday or Friday. 

The Sunday papers were so thick and heavy that it was impractical for me to deliver them by bicycle. So my father got up early every Sunday and we would load the bundles of newpapers into the trunk of his Buick Electra, and we would begin delivery. I would grab a newpaper and run to the first house and throw it on the porch, then run back to the Buick and grab another paper and deliver it to the other side of the street. Back and forth I ran, for several miles, delivering papers from the Buick's trunk to the customer's porch. 

It was a hard job, especially when the weather was bitterly cold. And how much money did I make from this job? After paying for the newspapers, I cleared about seven dollars per week. That's right - a dollar per day for working at least 30 hours per week. 

During the weekdays, I always stopped at my grandmother's house on the way home. She would make me a big stack of pancakes, with butter and syrup, of course. I could eat much more then than I can eat now, because I was always on the go. And being young, my metabolism was no doubt higher than today.

One morning as I was leaving in darkness, I saw a dark spot in the yard. I went over to it and saw that it was a hole. I returned to the house and went to my parents' bedroom.

Me: "Dad, there's a big hole in the front yard. It's about three feet across."

Dad: "Get the flashlight and see how deep it is."

So I went outside with the flashlight. The hole was lined with brick and was about 12 feet deep. It was clearly the remains of a well. I returned to the house and told my father the bad news. That was the end of his night's sleep. From somewhere, my father acquired the side of a large crate and covered the well with it. Later that day, a dump truck arrived and filled the hole with sand.

After my parents passed away, I moved back into that house. The well, filled with sand and soil, is still in the front yard. Nuria uses it as a flower garden. I put bricks around the perimeter of the flower garden, and Nuria planted decorative solar-powered lights among the bricks.

But where did the well come from? My neighborhood was part of a plantation in the Civil War era, and the plantation may even have been much older than the Civil War. The eastern half of Virginia is full of history, and history contains its own surprises. 

Time Traveler

When I was a very young child, my parents and I lived with my grandparents. They heated their home with a coal stove. At the end of their backyard, next to an alley, there was a small shed. The shed contained a "bin" where coal was stored. Periodically, a truck would drive through the alley behind our house, and it would stop and unload coal into our coal bin. One of my chores was to go out back periodically and fill our coal scuttle with coal and bring it to the house.

I observed that many lumps of coal had impressions of plant stems and leaves on the surface of the coal. I was four or five years old and too young to know about fossils, but I thought it was interesting. These memories are from about the year 1950, but I remember them still. Though it was long ago, in my mind I can still see those lumps of coal and the fossil leaves imprinted onto them.

Also from that time period is the ice man. Many homes did not have refrigerators – the technology was fairly new and prices were high. So, many families had an "ice box", literally an insulated box into which a block of ice would be placed on a shelf inside the top of the icebox. I can recall the ice delivery man. He drove a yellow truck and he would stop at certain houses and unload a block of ice for that home's icebox. There was a factory nearby that produced blocks of ice. The ice man bought quantities of ice and delivered it to his customers.

Soon, oil heat came into fashion and coal and coal bins disappeared. Refrigerators became affordable and the ice man and his blocks of ice disappeared. How many things we take for granted today. I wonder, what will disappear from tomorrow's world? If anyone knew the answer to that question, they could become a millionaire – or perhaps a billionaire. 

Saturday Morning

In a blog I posted yesterday, I said that there was still a little snow on the ground, and more snow was due to fall during the night. And it did.

Looks like we received about five inches, just what the weatherman predicted. The current temperature is 28°F. The forecast calls for a high of 38° today followed by a low of 17° tonight. I expect to have this snow around for a few days.

Nuria is supposed to work today, and she is outside cleaning the snow off her car. I told her to stay at home today, but she is not hearing it. She is the most loyal employee God ever created.

Before I could finish writing this post, Nuria's car was clean.

But You Wouldn't Want to Live There

I was writing an email to a friend when I was prompted by an inner voice to include this text:

I think our lives -- the path our spirits travel, with obstacles and rewards -- were put in place by God so that we might learn lessons. Sometimes we learn by succeeding, and sometimes we learn by failing, but it is the experience that teaches us. Never take a measuring stick to your life, because you don't know what God is measuring. Just know that you will have to go through the experience again and again until you learn its lesson, and the lesson involves love. Love for your fellow humans and love for yourself, because you are a creation of the Creator and therefore you have the Divine inside you. Everyone does, even though not all of us may be able to see it in our everyday lives.

My friend asked me to expand on this subject, so I decided to make it a blog post. 

If there is a God, and if God is good, then why does evil exist and why is there suffering in the world?

Imagine a world where there was no suffering and everyone was happy all the time, only because that is the way God commanded it to be. If you were always satisfied and if everything went your way, how would you feel about that? You'd probably get tired of it faster than you think. Life would become boring. And there would be no escape.

An episode of The Twilight Zone titled "A Nice Place to Visit" was based upon the premise that a place where a person can have everything they want would quickly become a nightmare. There is a Wikipedia entry on this subject. You can read it here.

More Snow Coming

Snow began falling in my part of Virginia on January 5. The snowfall ended early on the 6th with an accumulation of about two inches -- a very light snowfall. But now it's the 9th and the ground is still mostly covered with snow, with patches of grass here and there. The snow lingers because the weather  has been cold, with nighttime temperatures in the teens and daytime highs of only about 33 degrees Farenheit. 

Date: January 5. Backyard (below).

 

     

Date: January 9. Backyard (below). The forecast: more snow.

Today is January 10. There is still a lot of snow on the ground. 

The forecast calls for more snow tonight.

First Snow

I posted a blog titled "The Subaru and the Snowstorm". But as night fell, so did the snow. I just took this photo from a front window in my house, the first snow of 2025:

Nuria took a photo, too, for her "girls" in Costa Rica. Of course, her three girls are in their 30s and 40s, but two of them have children that might be interested in seeing snow. Too bad they're a thousand miles away, but at least today we can take a picture and have it ready to transmit within seconds. 

It's the first snow of 2025 for my central Virginia city. The forecast calls for snow early tonight, changing to a wintry mix (rain, snow, and sleet) then changing to rain and snow for tomorrow. Fortunately, Nuria has tomorrow off work. Depending on the condition of the roads in the morning, the store may be closed tomorrow. 

It's midnight – time for me to go to bed. G'night, everyone.

The Subaru and the Snowstorm

The weather forecast calls for possible snow later today, then again tomorroiw. I told Nuria that she might have snow to contend with when she leaves work at 5PM today. Then my thoughts turned to an incident that happened many years ago.

I was living and working in Roanoke, Virginia at the time. The company was located at the Sheraton Drive exit off I-81. It began snowing and everyone went home, except for one employee named Melissa. She stayed and worked late. 

It was dark when I received a phone call from Melissa. She was at work and her car was stuck – the snow in the parking lot was too deep for her vehicle. So I climbed back into my Subaru, which had four wheel drive, and returned to the work location. Though the snow in the parking lot had gotten deep, the Subaru had no problem driving in it. I picked up Melissa and we got back on I-81.

The interstate highway was empty of traffic, except for a snowplow that was applying salt to the road surface. I followed the snowplow until I had to exit I-81 and turn onto I-581, an interstate "spur" that goes through the heart of Roanoke. I can still recall driving down I-581. There was no other traffic, in either direction, north or south. My Subaru was the only vehicle on the road. I drove to the Colonial Avenue exit and dropped off Melissa at her home, and then I drove to my apartment on Walnut Avenue. I didn't see any moving vehicles on that entire trip, except for the snowplow. I had no problems driving in the snow – the Subaru was a champ. I parked in the apartment's parking lot and returned to my apartment. 

By morning the snow was deep enough that the Subaru and I had to wait for the parking lot to be "pushed" before we could leave. That was fine; I had nowhere important to be. I looked outside at the white landscape for a while, then returned to my rocker-recliner chair, picked up the TV remote, and switched on the TV. I was prepared to go nowhere for a while.

Macy's

It's New Year's Day plus One.

Nuria left the house at 9:15 this morning, off to her job at Macy's. She loves working there and she's very good at what she does, which is to sell products and sign up customers for credit cards. She is a natural-born salesperson. She could sell snow to Eskimos. For example, while the young salesgirls in her store stay behind the counter and chat with each other, Nuria is out on the floor asking customers how she can help them. When she sells a product, she asks the customer if they have a credit card, and if they don't she asks if they would like to apply for a credit card, and she'll sign them up for that. She hustles. Nuria once worked for a clothing manufacturer. She was Administrative Assistant to the Vice President of Manufacturing. She has an impressive resume, which I blogged about two years ago here.

Nuria wants to see snow. I like snow, too, as long as I don't have to shovel it off my front walk, or clear a path from my back door to my garage. I used to live in Roanoke, Virginia, and sometimes we got a good snowfall. In fact, there were times when I couldn't drive my car out of the parking lot of my apartment complex because the snow was above my car's bumper. Even though my vehicle had 4-wheel drive, there are limits – you can't drive when the snow is above your car's bumper. That car was a Subaru. My current vehicle is a Jeep Grand Cherokee and it has higher ground clearance. It, too, has 4WD (of course). It would take a lot of snow to stop it. But today, central Virginia is sunny with an occasional cloud on the western horizon. In other words, it's a beautiful day. 

Nuria is supposed to be getting off work at 4PM. Often, her manager will ask her to work until 5PM or later. She always says "Yes" to that request. She loves working at Macy's. It's a shame the store will be closing in three months. Nuria tells me about all the shoplifting that she witnesses in the store. The store apparently is losing money despite selling a lot of high-end products. I think the store is being shoplifted into oblivion. As I said, it's a shame.

New Year's Day

Today is/was New Year's Day, 2025. My partner Nuria is at work. Yes, Macy's is open today. But only for another three months. Our Macy's will be closing forever in March or April. Nuria is so happy in her job at Macy's. After Macy's closes, I hope Nuria, if she wants it, can find a job equally satisfying as her Macy's job.

I drove to Walmart and bought a box of firelogs and a few other items. Then I went by Macy's and chatted with Nuria for half a minute. She was busy, of course, and I didn't want to take much of her time. 

I intend to burn one of the firelogs tonight. I'll put the log in the fireplace insert and I'll set fire to the log and leave the insert's doors open with its fans running, blowing warm air into the room. I like to turn off the living room lamps so that the room is reasonably dark, and then Nuria and I will sit on the sofa and watch the flames dancing on the burning firelog. It's almost hypnotic.

Anyway, I was back home with my Walmart purchases when I thought of my Jeep. In particular, I thought about the crankcase oil. I hadn't checked it in a long time. So I went to my garage, raised the Jeep's hood, and pulled the dipstick out of the crankcase. The oil level was one quart low. I drove to Autozone and bought a quart of 10W-30. I drove home, parked the Jeep in my garage, and poured the oil into the engine.

My immediate chores were complete. I returned to the house and began writing this blog post. I was tired from all the hard work I almost did. 

I hope your New Year's Day was more interesting.