Entry tags:
Neighbor emergency; dentist visit; The Barchester Chronicles
Our excitement this weekend had nothing to do with the kennels. A couple of weeks ago I came home from a shift and noticed our elderly neighbor's dome light on in her car. Seeing her living room light was on, despite it being 5 a.m., I decided to take the chance of stopping her heart and ringing her doorbell to let her know. She didn't answer though. The next day the light was still on so I tried again, with the same result. Ah well, much longer and it would be a moot point, so I gave up.
Then we never saw her again in the subsequent weeks. Her car stayed in the same spot day after day, even when we were ordered to clear the parking lot for sewer line work. Tery saw half-full drink glasses sitting untouched on her coffee table. We tried not to think the worst, but she was very old and sickly (had a stroke last year, and is a devoted smoker). On the other hand, she also has family that visits her occasionally; surely they were on top of the situation?
So it was with great trepidation indeed that I came down the stairs on my way to work Saturday night to see three uniformed policemen struggling to get into her front door. They asked me if I'd seen her lately and I had to admit no. They asked for contact numbers, anything, so I called Tery to see if she could help them after I left. She called me regularly to keep me updated. She gave them the HOA emergency number, thinking they had to have personal information, but apparently all the numbers they had for her were disconnected. Tery said she heard them knocking on everyone's door looking for contacts, even the FCW's (Tery said, "I was going to tell them not to knock on that door unless they wanted to open a whole new can of worms," because yea verily Tracey is back to carrying things into her unit in covered plastic bins and, one memorable night with a large male friend's/customer's help, muscling some sort of very heavy air conditioner-size piece of machinery up the stairs and inside. Of course, it might have been an air conditioner).
There's a happy ending, sort of. When Tery told them her name they were able to put out an APB to the hospitals and found her in one. Not good news that she's been there so long, but certainly better than dying alone in her condo and going undiscovered for weeks.
It's very stressful living near elderly people.
~*~
My love for my dentist remains intact. I saw him yesterday. He's still hot as ever, but the point is he looked at my mouth, declared it to be in "good shape," and admitted that my bridge was still functionally sound, it was just a matter of aesthetics whether to replace the missing tooth. He said there hadn't been many advances made in bonding porcelain, and if he tried sticking the original back on I'd be back within a week after it falls out again. The other alternative is ripping out the entire bridge and starting over, and that sounds expensive and hugely unappealing. So I said if it was just a question of aesthetics, I'd live with the missing tooth. He shaved down the rough edges, charged me for the visit and the x-ray and sent me on my way (after insisting that I really should still have a yearly cleaning, which I plan on now).
~*~
Speaking of my love for older men, I finally got The Barchester Chronicles from Netflix, a very early BBC series (well, 1982) featuring the Rickman. Hoo boy, guess there's no avoiding the truth anymore: I am obsessed. ( ::cutting because I'm absolutely positive no one cares about this but me, with possibly one exception:: )
I thought all the scenes without Alan were unfathomably dull, but there are scores of rave reviews over at IMDb, which I suppose makes me an uncultured heathen.
Then we never saw her again in the subsequent weeks. Her car stayed in the same spot day after day, even when we were ordered to clear the parking lot for sewer line work. Tery saw half-full drink glasses sitting untouched on her coffee table. We tried not to think the worst, but she was very old and sickly (had a stroke last year, and is a devoted smoker). On the other hand, she also has family that visits her occasionally; surely they were on top of the situation?
So it was with great trepidation indeed that I came down the stairs on my way to work Saturday night to see three uniformed policemen struggling to get into her front door. They asked me if I'd seen her lately and I had to admit no. They asked for contact numbers, anything, so I called Tery to see if she could help them after I left. She called me regularly to keep me updated. She gave them the HOA emergency number, thinking they had to have personal information, but apparently all the numbers they had for her were disconnected. Tery said she heard them knocking on everyone's door looking for contacts, even the FCW's (Tery said, "I was going to tell them not to knock on that door unless they wanted to open a whole new can of worms," because yea verily Tracey is back to carrying things into her unit in covered plastic bins and, one memorable night with a large male friend's/customer's help, muscling some sort of very heavy air conditioner-size piece of machinery up the stairs and inside. Of course, it might have been an air conditioner).
There's a happy ending, sort of. When Tery told them her name they were able to put out an APB to the hospitals and found her in one. Not good news that she's been there so long, but certainly better than dying alone in her condo and going undiscovered for weeks.
It's very stressful living near elderly people.
~*~
My love for my dentist remains intact. I saw him yesterday. He's still hot as ever, but the point is he looked at my mouth, declared it to be in "good shape," and admitted that my bridge was still functionally sound, it was just a matter of aesthetics whether to replace the missing tooth. He said there hadn't been many advances made in bonding porcelain, and if he tried sticking the original back on I'd be back within a week after it falls out again. The other alternative is ripping out the entire bridge and starting over, and that sounds expensive and hugely unappealing. So I said if it was just a question of aesthetics, I'd live with the missing tooth. He shaved down the rough edges, charged me for the visit and the x-ray and sent me on my way (after insisting that I really should still have a yearly cleaning, which I plan on now).
~*~
Speaking of my love for older men, I finally got The Barchester Chronicles from Netflix, a very early BBC series (well, 1982) featuring the Rickman. Hoo boy, guess there's no avoiding the truth anymore: I am obsessed. ( ::cutting because I'm absolutely positive no one cares about this but me, with possibly one exception:: )
I thought all the scenes without Alan were unfathomably dull, but there are scores of rave reviews over at IMDb, which I suppose makes me an uncultured heathen.