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The tool guy never saw those undies

When I was a young and restless ski bum back in the day, I found myself in a precarious position at a doctor's office. I had had a little accident on the hill. So there I sat, sans shirt, with an excruciatingly stiff neck. I had just been x-rayed. The Doctor had subsequently informed me it was (gulp) broken. Yikes. I think he said something like, "Congratulations. You broke your neck." It was just what my parents said would happen. ("Get down from there! Stop that! You'll break your neck! You'll shoot your eye out!")
"That sounds kinda bad," I said.
"Let's just say you should avoid diving into any shallow pools for awhile," he said. What a guy. So anyway, there I was, sporting my JC Penney special, when the doctor excused himself from the exam, then returned with a guy wearing a tool belt and carrying a wrench and a screwdriver. He was also holding a metal contraption with straps.
"Do you like that bra?" asked the doctor.
"Sort of," I said.
"Good," he returned. "Because you're going to be wearing it for a long time."
Tool guy approached. He put the contraption over my head. It had a chin rest and straps that held my head firmly in place. It also had padded metal shoulder thingies with a bar across both the front of the chest and back. The bar and shoulder bars had to be adjusted to fit, as did the chin rest, which sat on two metal bars that came up from the chest bar. "Oh. I get it," I said.
What does this have to do with anything, you ask? Well, last night, I waited for an hour and 20 minutes for the baggage carousel to empty upon my arrival from Hawaii to L.A. only to learn that my bags had not accompanied me on the trip. It was late; long past closing time for department stores and the laundry room at the hotel. That left me faced with the prospect of wearing the same underwear on Monday that I wore on Tuesday. Disgusting. That's almost as bad as being forced to wear the same bra for two months. Ah, but I figured out how to change the bra under the neck brace and how to shower with the thing on and dry the nooks and crannies with a blow dryer. I was equally creative with the underwear. A squirt of hotel shampoo and the room heater fan washed and dried them beautifully. The moral of this story? A little resourcefulness can always change a bad situation into a better one.
So here I am in San Diego. I spent the morning getting drilled and making impressions for an overlay for two teeth in need of repair. Dentists elsewhere always seem to want to file them down and put on crowns. But mine likes to save teeth and uses state of the art overlays instead of crowns. Cool, huh? "You have beautiful teeth," he says. "Why would someone not want to save them?" Indeed. So I'm fitted with temporary fillings right now and will have them replaced on Thursday. Meanwhile, I'll be hangin' with my pal Gail here in beautiful Encinitas while Ron does his best to hold down the fort back home to stay dry. It's still raining back at the ranch.
A hui hou. Aloha!

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