Later today I will have a high-tech laser shot into my mouth to vaporize decaying & infected tissue, followed up by an injection of my own blood, pre-spun in some kind of centrifuge or something, to stimulate the growth of new tissue with some healthy bacteria. I’m torn between finding this really cool and really gross. Really gross, mostly. But also kind of cool?

Sometime next year I will have a far more complicated and probably unpleasant (also expensive) procedure done to restore gum tissue by moving healthy gum tissue from the roof of my mouth to the front of my mouth. It’s going to include two weeks of recovery wearing a plastic mouthguard to protect the wound. I’m decidedly unenthused, made even more so because that problem has been caused because the tooth in question is misaligned with the others and gets over-brushed because of it. I really have to wonder whether if I’d never had braces, I would currently have this problem. Bah.

The infection, though, is… well, it just is. Not caused by anything I’ve done, not related to the work I had done in Costa Rica, just a body with a lousy immune system not doing a good job of fighting off a basic bacterial infection. The worst-case prognosis was terrible, of course — the infection is in my dental implants and it’s really not great to have an infection in your face eating away at your bones — but hopefully this expensive laser is going to fix everything up and I will start to feel better more or less immediately. I’m extremely anxious about the whole thing, but I also absolutely have my eye on the prize — no more weird face pain, no more worrying about what’s happening inside my head. Well… I suppose I’ll be worrying about whether it’s actually worked. But I’m going to have faith that it will.

In other more appealing news, I told my housemate yesterday that a golf cart turns every outing into a magical adventure. Thanks to my wonderfully generous parents taking advantage of a sad opportunity for me (short version: their really nice neighbor passed away and his kids were selling his golf cart for a great price), I now own a lovely golf cart that I can ride into downtown Sanford and around my neighborhood.

Apart from the sheer fun factor, here’s a great golf cart discovery I made: when you are riding on a golf cart with a really cute border collie style dog by your side, every single person you pass smiles at you. About 50% of them wave, too, especially the little kids. I’ve driven it down the farmer’s market a couple times, to the park once, and to visit Christina and Greg a couple times. On Saturday, I had dinner with Christina and Greg and had it out after dark for the first time — I knew the headlights worked, but it also has two lines of sparkly bright blue lights that made it feel very Christmassy. Magical, in fact.

I just skimmed through my photos from the past six weeks of silence, looking for one to include, and I’m amazed at how much I did that I haven’t written about. I felt like I wasn’t writing because I was processing election grief and dealing with infected dental implants and working on other things, but along the way, I went to the Magic Kingdom with Jamie for one last visit to Tom Sawyer Island (it’s disappearing forever next year, turning into Villains Land or something like that, which does seem like such a metaphor for the move from Disney as the celebration of childhood to the celebration of greed); Epcot to the Food & Wine Festival with Christina and Greg; and the Cirque du Canines at the Ritz Theater, a dog show with dogs doing clever tricks, with Christina. Also all the usual stuff, of course, farmer’s market and thrift stores with my friend Joyce and hanging out at Celery City.

Poor Sophie has her paw on my leg and is attempting mind control, and I’m going to succumb, because she’s not wrong: we should be walking right now. It’s another beautiful day in which I will probably choose to spend more time outside with her than I do sitting at my computer. I keep telling myself that I should bring my computer outside with me and work there, but mostly I’ve been sitting in the backyard and reading escapist fiction obsessively while she watches the squirrels. Really, I have so much to be thankful for, including high-tech lasers.

Happy Thanksgiving!