Tag Archives: “losing things”

Tooth, pills, and trust

I arrive early, per usual. Two of us wear masks. Three of us chat about how we seem to all have appointments at roughly the same time with the same periodontist. I’m here for crown and tooth extraction and an implant.

They’ve double booked the 1:00 slot. They call the other patient in first.

The remaining woman and I chat the way women who’ve just met sometimes do — with a casual intimacy. We both have osteoporosis and a history of failed implants. She likes Waze. I do not. She’s a gym rat, doesn’t trust meds. I tend to rely on meds but agreed the science on fosomax is iffy. You get the idea.

But let’s go back a little.

Fifteen or so years ago, my dentist prescribed the anti-anxiety med diazepam for me. He got it. All these years later, I had one left. I was relying on it hard.

You know how when you’re anxious you make big and little preparations — TO BE READY?

I’d already had my stern talk with Deedee. How she couldn’t come with me. What her reward would be. When I come back, we’ll rewatch that satisfying opening to The Hit Man and then take a bubble bath.

I filled a glass with water. Set the pill next to it and went back to some random barbecuing show that I’d put on for Finn during my absence. The plan was to take the pill exactly one half hour before my appointment and then walk over.

Damn dog licked it off the counter! I could not believe it. To the usual line up of worries (failure of Novocain, a cracking, difficult-to-remove tooth, swallowing a chip), add the worry about coming home to a dead dog.

He’s a fast metabolizer, my brother had said after a second chocolate incident early on. No throwing up. No diarrhea. Just guilt.

He looked guilty, Finn, when I stood dumbfounded in front of the counter where my pill was supposed to be.

I had earlier given him half of one of my statins by mistake (don’t ask. Just don’t ask) and then correctly, half of one of his allergy pills. Five milligrams of diazepam in the mix?

But here’s the thing: with the office running so late I’m spared the worry about the pill’s effect wearing off before they finally call me to the inner sanctum.

Here’s a more important thing. Having already had one procedure with this doctor, I know he’s good. He has a crackerjack team. They’re ace communicators. They work FAST. The day’s snafu is asking me to trust them. And I do. It’s not even a stretch.

Two more things: sharing the story about the pill made the assistants laugh and got us talking about dogs, always a good thing.

And this (don’t judge me): I called up an angel and one appeared. She is Black. Called Deandra. Don’t you have little Black boys to protect? I mewled. She hushed me and stood by for the full hour.

UPDATE, next day

Omnipresent dark cloud gone! So much relief. I’m feeling the kind of relief that tells me anxiety was tagging along everywhere and all the time, whether I knew it or not.

Now get this — I will be goddamned if I didn’t come home and find the anti-anxiety pill sitting next to my glass of water. A little orange rebuke. Or better yet, a prankster in the annals of developing trust. How did it happen? Was it under the glass somehow? Befuddling for sure. Perhaps I need to add this to my Losing things and finding them post.

Never mind! Today will be ravioli-making day! I ordered cutters and have 00 flour. I have ricotta and even, truffle oil (just for a few. I don’t like it all that much). Can’t wait.

Don’t share your guesses as to who I am!

Lost and found AGAIN

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So my car fob went missing a while back, possibly as long ago as our trip to the Berkshires in early February. I checked every pocket. I looked in bowls and baskets. K took down the suitcase from the birthday trip and I checked its every pocket. No luck.

This was such a sustained case of “Where’s My?” that I had a chance to develop a new search trick. Get this, rather than looking in every zippered or unzippered section of every purse you might have used recently, carry all your bags out to the car in a fistful and see if the door unlocks. A short cut!

I regularly use: two hobo dog-walking bags (that I made), a smaller zippered pouch (that my mother-in-law made), a beautiful new voluminous bag that Ginny gave me recently. I occasionally use two other small-ish shoulder bags.

Even if my trick arose out of a pathetic lifelong flaw and will only work with car fobs, I’m very proud of it.

The loss didn’t hamper my style for two reasons. One — I hardy go anyway these days. Two — I could borrow my husband’s. However, given my predilection for losing things, using my husband’s fob came with an unspoken but shared concern that I would eventually misplace it too. Then we’d be out some bucks.

So not ideal.

Anyway, this morning five seconds after I announced with a weary sigh that I didn’t think I was gonna find my fob — ever — I found my fob.

It was in one of my BlueQ zippered pouches. I use these funky little pouches when I travel for things like dental floss, thread nippers, and hair clips. This practice was necessitated years back when I started using a messenger bag that one of the boys left behind, a big roomy thing with no inner divisions (clearly not designed by a woman).

Is she still taking about bags?

It’s a shame you can’t fake the belief that a misplaced item is not coming back. Otherwise, I’d have feigned my fatigue and said it’s gone with breathy resignation five weeks ago!

PS. I’m not wringing my hands over this. It’s kinda funny, really. I am still thinking about a post of Grace’s from 12/28/2014, linked to her most recent post. She talked about her beloved dog, Tay, who recently passed, and how she was a little immune to shaming words, and to praise as well. How healthy is that? I was inspired.

Another harder reflection was to note the date, see my absence from the long line of comments, and to wonder what life-sucking drama was playing out in Salem then. My sister was born on the 27th of December, so chances are I made the effort to see her on that day, but rarely a year went by without her making a stink about being neglected around her birthday. It’s a time of year I’ve historically dreaded even as I tried to prevent her lonely victimhood with generous gifts. I am going to resist the temptation to pull out a journal and see the particulars.

Blood and money

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The other night, I clipped one of Finn’s nails too short and it bled. And bled. Oh, and it bled some more! The special powder had turned to rock, so while K held a paper towel on our poor alarmed pup’s paw, I whipped up a concoction of corn starch and baking powder.

The bleeding stopped, as bleeding usually does. But later, after settling on the pillow that he sleeps in at the end of our bed, Finn worried at it some. I didn’t know it then, but the nail bled again. The next day while making the bed (or what I call ‘making the bed’), I was astonished to find a perfect heart of his blood on our coverlet.In writing class last week (and weirdly, I can’t remember if it was before or after this nail incident), I wrote (and wrote) about blood. Oh how I wrote! If this is the year for making myself uncomfortable with risk-taking, then I ought to share it, oughtn’t I?

Meanwhile, I lost my progressive lenses two days ago (my $600 progressive lenses!) It’s disorienting and distressing to say the least. I have tons of three dollar reading glasses which I lose all the time with little consequence. But these? Until two days ago, I had considered my successful tracking a function of respect for the price tag.

(That’s $600 with insurance, by the way. If St. Anthony doesn’t come to my aid, I’ll be looking to Warby Parker for cheaper replacements).

Coincidentally, I recently recommitted to a babysitting job that kinda ruins my Thursdays. I didn’t want to say ‘No’ and I didn’t want to say ‘Yes’ either. In the aftermath of saying ‘Yes’, I decided that earmarking my modest earnings as ‘mad money’ might ease the ambivalence.

And then I go and lose my glasses. I lose my glasses something like ten minutes after the ‘mad money’ idea — glasses that cost almost to the dollar what the babysitting will produce in income.

Maybe they’ll turn up. Certainly, I won’t spend $600 to replace them. But correlations like this make me pay attention and ask questions.

Questions like: don’t I deserve to spend $600 on myself? (this from a woman who recently purchased a sweet grass basket in Charleston for $270 and considered it a deal). Or, is the designation ridiculous, given the amount of our resources spent to keep me nicely clothed and in bath salts?

Could it be an old lesson — that old, old one about the dangers of saying ‘Yes’ when I want to say ‘No’ (I thought I was done with this one).

Or maybe it’s about losing focus. Pure and simple (although, what’s simple about that?)

Such first world issues I leave you with today.

UPDaTE: I re-thought the Thursday commitment. Relief. ‘Hear that glasses? You can show up now!’

Losing things and finding them

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Are you a person who loses things a lot of the time or just now and then? A recent New Yorker article by Kathryn Schulz takes a beautiful wander through the topic. Subtitled, Reflections on Two Seasons of Loss, Schulz examines not just the business of losing things, but also the topics of losing our minds and our loved ones.

Things go missing so much in this house that I have categories for lost objects, not unlike the childhood game of calling out ‘warm’, ‘cold’ or ‘HOT HOT HOT’. I usually can tell that I’m going to retrieve a lost object before I find it and often sense its general vicinity. Lest you think that gives me some sort of advantage, know this: even a ‘hot’ lost item with a felt sense of place can take DAYS to find.

In my early twenties, my checkbook went missing so often that the bank tellers on North Street in Pittsfield rolled their eyes to see me coming. I’ve gotten somewhat better. Keeping a neater house helps. Fewer distractions helps.

In spite of my incapacity, family members are right to ask me where things are, since in addition to being an over-the-top loser of things, I’m a good finder. Is that uncommon? My mother used to call me “old eagle eyes” and ask me to round up her scissors.

When the “where’s my” question is posed to me, it feels like more of an imposition than it might otherwise, because I’m kinetic. Being kinetic means taking notes to remember anything and moving my body to find a lost object. When both boys were home over Christmas, I really enjoyed cooking for them, felt neutral about loaning the car, and got very annoyed with the “where’s my?” routine.

“Where’s my jacket?” “Where’d I leave the car fob?” “Did you move my paycheck?”

I was asked to find things I hadn’t used, touched, or even laid eyes on. Being winter, I’d have to unearth myself from a blanket, heating pad, and lap top (that’s two cords and a lot of fabric). My joints hurt sometimes. I’d groan. Then I’d wander around the house, maybe finding their lost thing, maybe not.

Objects can move from one category of lost to another. ‘Fucking vanished’ is a category, but believe it or not, a mutable one. Some things that I could swear after a vigorous, multi-day hunt have been taken by leprechauns do in fact show up (‘taken by leprechauns’ is a whimsical name for ‘fucking vanished’). The reverse happens as well. It’s hard when something that felt retrievable shifts into the ‘permanently gone’ category.

Frequently losing things teaches you about attachment, sharpens intuition, and inspires resourcefulness. Humility is involved. But those are topics for another time.

Let’s instead descend into my studio, which is really messy (also a topic for another time). Yesterday when I went downstairs to find some xerox color copies I’d gone to some trouble to make a few months back, I wasn’t sure how readily I would find them. That they were pretty much right where I’d thought they’d be felt like a gift.

There are about forty-five collages ready to be mounted to card stock. Then, at last, they will be SoulCollage cards.

Because I hate to measure and really suck at it, it took a good long while to mount just five of the collages. At five a day, I’ll need eight days to get through the pile. But guess what? After an especially demoralizing day of writing, the task actually satisfied. I took my time. I enjoyed working toward a goal with manageable and discrete steps — so unlike finishing a novel (am I finishing? is it a novel?)