Otter's Dental Update and Other Stuff

(Only 152 days left until Christmas!  Better get busy.)

Anyway, where was I?  Oh yeah, Otter's dental adventure.  She got the first filling she's ever had, I think 19 years without a cavity is a good thing.  She said it wasn't too bad, not even the shot - of course, she'd already had nitrous oxide (laughing gas) by that point so she might not be a really good judge!  The dentist took more detailed x-rays and she can do the wisdom teeth extraction herself, so no oral surgeon.  We scheduled the surgery for August 18.  It's in the morning, and the dentist said it will probably take about an hour.  I didn't want to wait until that close to her first day of college, but the other option was the day before her orientation and she really needs to be clear-minded (and pain free) for that.  But the surgery is on a Thursday and she will have Friday, Saturday and Sunday to recover before school starts.  The dentist is on vacation the week prior to that, so we really didn't have much choice if we wanted to get it done before school.

After I brought my loopy Otter home, I went to the grocery store and one of the items on my list was the ice cream she'd requested.  Also, lots of jello!  We usually have jello on hand but we were down to our last package.  About a week prior to her surgery, she's going to increase the amount of jello she eats.  I don't know if it's just one of those stories or if it's true about jello helping with blood coagulation, but it can't hurt!  Besides, jello is just good.  And good for us, as well.

We didn't have a lot of rain yesterday, but it was enough to cool things off a bit.  This morning, it was just barely drizzling and there was also a "cold" front that came through so we didn't even top 100 today.  It was nice, but we're supposed to be back to hot again tomorrow.

I'm thinking that it is probably a good time to clean out the rain barrel.  It needs a periodic cleaning out, and it's pretty empty now so we'll probably get to it this weekend.  Basically, Bill unhooks it and then I use the garden hose to rinse it out.  It's pretty easy.

We're also beginning to think about winter.  I know, it's hot as blazes at the moment!  But it's time to start thinking about firewood.  Last year, Bill and a guy he works with split a huge trailer load of wood from a mill in Arkansas.  It was pretty cheap and we got a huge amount of wood out of it.  But a lot of it was bark - basically, the sides left when a board is cut out of the center piece.  Bark is still wood, it burns just like logs.  But it burns faster.  Which we knew beforehand.  But we didn't think we'd go through it as fast as we did - however, February's record blizzard had a lot to do with that.  I think we're going to get "regular" firewood this year.  Bill's friend decided not to get the wood from the mill this year, otherwise we would probably go ahead and at least get some.  I'm possibly going to order it as soon as this weekend, Bill found a different place to order it from, other than Bubba and Bubba.  The wood we've gotten from them the last couple of times has not been the best quality.

Otter made brownies Saturday.  I think I hear them calling my name.  And so is the ice cream!  (Froggy, remember the little mouse that always ate the corner out of the peach cobbler?  You know, the one that looked like our father.  Well, my house has one of those little mousies too.  It likes brownies!)