A New Smile!

Everything moves so fast this time of year. Thanksgiving in three weeks, Christmas in seven, next thing you know it’ll be 2014!

NEW TEETH. Mom got her new teeth yesterday. I don’t know when I’ve seen her look this happy. She has plenty to get used to when it come to wearing them, but she is truly pleased with her new chops. For those of you who haven’t seen Mom since the surgery it didn’t leave her horribly disfigured. We had all by this point come to not pay much attention to the difference, but then, it’s not so easy to overlook something like that when it’s your own appearance.

I must say that I am proud of Mom. She has held her head up and carried on with life these last six months, and I am glad she now has these new teeth to help her enjoy life all the more. She certainly has an extra sparkle in her eye and lilt in her voice that wasn’t there before.

TRUNK OR TREAT. I mentioned last time that we had postponed our Trunk or Treat due to the forecasted weather. First of all, Halloween night did turn out to be windy and somewhat rainy so we made a good decision. Fortunately that was the worst there was. Several groups in our community rescheduled their events and if kids played their cards right they had the opportunity to collect candy three or four different nights!

Sunday evening turned out to be very pleasant for us. I don’t know how many came but I was busy handing out candy from the back of our van the whole time. I know they ran out of hot dogs.

We didn’t dress up with a family theme this year. Jenna and her friend Maegan decided to be Halloween Fairies at school so Jenna reused her costume Sunday night. The rest of us were going to be stick men but at the last minute Vicki and Nate decided to be mimes. Nate has a dramatic flare about him and he really got into that act. This, of course, got me going on all sorts of lame puns and since Vicki had to stay in character she couldn’t even groan aloud, though she did like it when I asked her if she would be mime. She got the last laugh of the evening when she had taken her makeup off and said, “Well now I can’t think of anything to say!”

PRACTICE GAME. We had a practice game at Knox Doss Middle School last night. Our team looked really rough out there on the court. Ben and his fellow seventh graders are facing a whole new game with middle school ball and they’re going to need some time to wrap their minds around that. I think they are about to start playing practice games against the high school team which wouldn’t be much different from what they were up against last night.

SOUND SLEEPERS. I used to be a sound sleeper but that is changing as I get older, but the loud crash that happened at our house around 3:20 this morning should have awakened the entire family. It certainly woke Maggie up because she started barking and she sleeps outside on the back porch!

I knew the sound came from the boys room upstairs and it didn’t take me long to discover what happened. The boys have Pauline’s old TV upstairs. They’ve set up a whole gaming corner with the papasan we bought a few months ago. In all the rearranging of furniture the TV stand is right next to Ben’s bed. I learned at breakfast that Ben was having a dream where he was falling and this caused him to kick the TV. I also learned he was awake but playing possum when I came up to check on them.

HEALTHY DOG. I’m not easily startled but Maggie got me really good one day last week. I was working on a little project out in the shop and was running a 2x4 through the table saw. It was warm so I was wearing shorts and had the doors open. That dog walked up behind me and stuck her cold nose on the back of my leg. Fortunately I had caught sight of her tail out of the corner of my eye or I would have jumped over a running table saw.

Joe