Shopping And Other Sources of Pain

As y'all may remember from previous posts, I missed out on the shopping gene.

I know. Sacrilege. But there you have it.

So, it may come as a surprise to hear that not only did I SHOP today, I went to (shudder) an outlet mall. Yeah, what was I thinking? Plus, I wore three-inch heels--obviously, the sign of inexperience.

Right off the bat, it took a half-hour to park. Little did I know when I first arrived (and graciously allowed a young man to take a spot we arrived at simultaneously--hey, I figured the Parking Gods would smile favorably and act accordingly) that I wouldn't see another one for eons.

I'd only been to this place once before, but with my photographic memory, zeroed in quickly on the precise area I wanted to park near. No luck. I ended up about a half mile away in a whole other WING of the mall.

Oh well. Nothing wrong with a little exercise.

But after hiking miles around the whole blasted place, standing in lines to pay, trying on things that didn't look remotely close to the way they should have, I'm back to on-line shopping from now on. Only, geez. What's wrong with Newport News and Victoria's Secret? I tried ordering stuff from them the other day and got delivery dates of mid-July! I mean, what's the point???

In other news, the current dental nightmare seems to be nearly over (to be followed quickly, I fear, by the NEXT dental nightmare).

See, here's the Reader's Digest version: Some sort of mutant bacteria (I'm not ruling out bird flu, ha ha) took hold around a crown I'd just gotten. When the endo guy saw it on Monday, he doubled up my antibiotics and said, you'll be fine in a couple of days and we'll do a root canal next week. Then, on Wednesday, I saw an oral surgeon about another debacle, and he took one look and said, WTF is going on here? Got the endo guy on the phone for me and talked him into doing the root canal that afternoon because, er, one-stop shopping and all--the sucker needed (cringe) to be drained. When I arrived at the endo guy, he was blown away by how bad the infection had gotten. (Okay, ready for the description? Skip to the next paragraph, if you're not. Picture a blister the size of a half dollar on the roof of your mouth...nice, huh?)

Anyway, blah, blah, blah....push, prod, poke...and it was done. I'm still on killer antibiotics, but the pain is now merely discomfort and I'm a happy camper.

Particularly since this all happened BEFORE my cruise, not during it.

One week and counting!!!!

P.S. Tylenol, Advil, Alleve...I got 'em all now.