What Do Panama and I Have in Common?

This photo has nothing to do with today's topic. Isn't it gorgeous, though? Husband made it.

Hey, there, Panama!

I see you down there, with your fabulous hats and your monkeys in the streets! It's been a big week for both of us, no? We both have new canals! Of course, yours is of the $5.5 billion expansion type and mine is of the root type, but still. So very, very momentous.

I mean, a canal is a canal, amiright?

And for both of us, this was a second stab at what we had thought was going to be a one and done project. A century ago, when the first ship sailed through your famous locks (and someone first thought "'A man, a plan, a big ditch,'--dang! That can't be right!") the Panamenos probably thought "Thank heaven that's done. That construction took FOREVER and now we can finally clean up and put the sofa back where it belongs."

I thought the dental equivalent of that a couple of weeks ago, too, when my dentist took his first crack at the root canal needed in my upper back molar. Instead, he worked on it for a while then decided a specialist in the Big City should share the fun so he did the oral equivalent of slapping a BandAid over the wound and sent me on.

Yesterday the Big City specialist did his thing, or at least I'm assuming he did. By the time he came into the room the lovely assistant (who was the spittin'-here image of my favorite children's librarian--hi, Miss Jo!) had already X-rayed me, prepped me on what would be happening, reclined me back in the seat, and slipped some cool shades on me so that I could look especially fetching as I drooled.

I was completely relaxed, thanks to the combined powers of prayer and nitrous oxide, so when the endodontist introduced himself and pointed out the nasty fishhook curve in the root that he would be excising, I distinctly remember thinking "I will not be able to pick you out in a lineup later."

Panama, when your contractors began digging, did you think "No matter what happens, they are totally getting away with it because WHO ARE THEY?"? I didn't think so. Maybe you should have had a whiff of nitrous before you began? Because I don't know what I thought Dr. Whatever-His-Name-Was was going to do that would cause me to have to identify him in a lineup, but Panama, you'll feel better if you don't remember the last nine years of construction.

Over the course of the next hour I wrote half a dozen blog posts in my mind, and they were HILARIOUS. Thanks to the nitrous, they also are gone forever, as is the nasty fishhook root and everything else I thought during the procedure.

I've been able to retrieve only one clear memory of the procedure and that was when Dr. W-H-N-W said to Miss Faux Jo, "Could you straighten out that big paperclip and hand it here?" That concerned me for, oh, two seconds before I cared no more. Not only did this guy have multiple medical degrees (and Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman could have done brain surgery with a paperclip), it probably wasn't at all what he said.

So, Panama, congratulations to the both of us! We are now both done with things that we knew were necessary but that we weren't looking forward to at all.

Now you can put the sofa back where it belongs and go back to looking for monkeys in the street. Me? I'll be looking closely at everyone I see in Big City, seeing if I can actually pick out my endodontist.

I just have to know what he did with that paperclip.