Teeth & The Storm

Well, the princesses got their teeth looked at, and they're all doing really good. We had two issues come up -- one bigger than the other. The simple one was that Rock Girl needs to brush her teeth better, and she was given some pointers on what she's missing. The other is something we suspected, but weren't sure how it would be dealt with.

The Socialite has a really small mouth because of her small size. Well, small mouth does not translate into small teeth, so when she lost her two bottom incisors, she started growing in those enormous adult teeth -- those adult teeth that are too large to fit in the tiny space between the outer baby incisors. With Rock Girl, the dentist shaved the sides of them to they fit, but with the Socialite, they are going to take a different approach -- remove the outer baby incisors.

I'm not sure how I feel about this, since they should fall out when they're ready, and pulling them early might be painful for her. Granted, I'm no expert at these things, and I doubt the dentist would cause her undue pain (despite the clear fact that dentists are sadists by nature -- you've seen Little Shop of Horrors, right?). Personally, I've never lost a tooth unnaturally, but I'm sure if they ever get a look at my mouth, they'll want one of my wisdom teeth gone since it's in there sideways, and I know that's something I wouldn't look forward to.

This one is so happy all of the time and has such a big heart to everyone that it kills me to think of her going through something like this just because she is so little. Man has survived for thousands of years through things like this, so it almost seems unfair to put her through it, but at the same time, this dentist hasn't steered us or anyone else we know who has gone there wrong, so there is a level of trust we can put in his opinions. And of course, we can clearly see that the adult teeth are too large for the space in her mouth. I just don't want it to go wrong.

That's two out of three, but what about Sassy Pants? Well, being three, she was skittish to begin with, so they tend to start very easily with that age group. She allowed them to count her teeth. Not even brush them. She opened her mouth and allowed them to count away, that's it.

The only other interesting news was the storm that we had on Tuesday morning around here. I have for your approval three stories from the storm that occurred at various times throughout the night. The storm itself was quite a gusher. It poured rain all night along with bouts of wind and hail to the point of there being tornado and flash flood warnings.

The earliest instance began at my parents' house where they have a dog we'll call Grumpy (ha!) and two cats: Pouncer and Calico. Now while I could go into interesting points about the cats (my own family got themselves up to 18 or so at one point through two simultaneous litters of kittens), I wouldn't want you to think we're the source of the Cat Woman, so we'll stick to the tales at hand.

It was near midnight when Grumpy caught some kind of movement underneath my parents' bed and started growling. My parents and The Engineer (who still lives there) were concerned over this since he is a good watchdog and wouldn't react unless there was actually something there to react to. Now, granted, he reacts to me, too, but in his defense, he doesn't see me that often (though I didn't appreciate being driven up a tree at one juncture, but I digress). As soon as he starts nosing under the bed, they hear a squeal and a scuffle. Yeah...something is under there.

They get off the bed and get the mattress up in time to see a fluffy brown tail disappear under head of their bed. By this time, Grumpy is going a bit nuts trying to chase this critter who found his way into the house somehow. Before they know it, there is a squirrel trying to get out of that room, but it quickly found itself trapped in my mother's (um...) collection of fabric.

Now, I never got out of the Engineer exactly how they got the thing out of the house, but he did tell me how it got in. They had suspected squirrels of being in the attic of the house already, and he discovered yesterday how they'd gotten in there, but from there, there really isn't a good entrance from the attic to the house that is open...well, normally.

After some digging, he discovered that there was a hole in the ceiling where the water heater pipes went up and through the roof to the outside. This squirrel had gotten himself into the house down this pipe opening, but since there was only the pipe running through that hole, there was no way for him to get back to the attic. He was trapped.

The second story isn't really a story, so much as it is an interlude to how uneventful my life can be at times. We woke up to the sound of rain followed by the sound of a thousand ice stones hitting the roof and the fireplace pipe and the windows. The hail was working over the construction of everything we had at 3:30 in the morning, so it wasn't long before Rock Girl needed to sleep with the Queen and I. We curled up with each other to give Rock Girl enough room on one side of the bed to sleep.

I did get up and check our fireplace for leaks, and I opted to see how things were looking outside given the amount of hail and rain we had with minimal leakage into our fireplace (it usually leaks like a sieve). But when I passed by the front door, I saw a dark shape on the front porch. To explain our front door, it is solid wood with amber-colored, textured glass. Kind of like the type of window you might find in a bathroom to allow you to see shapes and light, but no detail.

Well, I double check our porch light to make sure it was on, and it was, but the shape was not activating the motion sensor on the light. I did want to see if the car was doing all right out there, but I was concerned about this shape on our front porch as well. I waited behind our glass at the porch just watching it to see if it moved at all. The lights were all off inside the house, so if it could see in, it couldn't see me. If it were something, I figured it would have reacted to my turning on the living room light a moment earlier when I checked the fireplace and activated that sensor, but still no movement.

Finally, I decided it probably wasn't alive, so I took a chance and unlocked and opened the front door. It was our stroller. The Queen had gone walking earlier that day around our neighborhood and Sassy Pants had ridden in this stroller. She was in a hurry earlier and had just left it outside. Our neighborhood is ridiculously safe, so nothing would have happened to it (and as a matter of fact, it remained there for a good part of yesterday as well), but I didn't appreciate the willies it gave me at 3:30 in the morning...

But our final tale takes the cake as the one that sucks the most. In the household of my friend, Optimus Prime, the rules of time are a bit skewed as he is the only one with any kind of schedule. His wife and son tend to be up at any given hour and on that evening, their son woke up around 2am with more energy than your average nuclear reactor. Well, his wife was already up reading (she likes to read...a lot), so he played.

Around 3:30 (isn't that weird??), she went into the bedroom and heard water dripping. Optimus was sleeping on the bed, and she mentioned the water coming in the closet and rapidly soaking their clothes and laundry. She'd gotten a bucket and he sat up. Over their bed is a ceiling fan that was on at the time this was happening, and no sooner had he sat up than water began to flow in from the roof over this ceiling fan drenching the bed (and him) in nice, cold rain water.

Well, water flowing over an electrical object (especially one that uses a full 120v like a lit ceiling fan) is a very bad thing, so he told his wife to turn off the fan. I heard this story from both of them, and they both agreed her next move was not the smartest thing in the world, and she said it would have qualified her for a Darwin Award had things gone wrong. Instead of flipping the switch on the wall some distance from the fan, she reached up through the water and pulled the chain on the fan itself to turn it off. Fortunately, the potential "zzzzap!" didn't occur and she lived to tell the tale.

The rest of their evening consisted of swapping buckets and bowls to catch the in-flowing water and eventually, he got their trashcan and placed it accordingly to catch the flow. As for their energy-induced son? Well, while he has been known to be quite rambunctious at times, on this occasion, he had the good sense to recognize when he was better off out of the way. By the time they realized he was no where to be found, they discovered him curled up on the couch...fast asleep.

The only upside (and possible irony) to this tale is that they are moving next week at the latest into a house they've been working to purchase, and like all good house purchases, that's a drama in and of itself that might be worth telling at another time.

But we all survived the storm and the next day was perfect once it cleared up. Today is supposed to yield another similar storm, so we'll see how much drama comes out of that. Until then, however, life goes on.