A Dear Readers Note of Apology for My Failure to Respond to Comments Here

Dear Friends — a quick note to update you on why I'm not making headway with responding to most of your very welcome comments here right now. I'm frankly pretty worn down by the tooth issues with which I've been struggling, and not finding a lot of energy to do more than post some pieces here, and then let you do the discussing.

Readers who were following the blog will know that last week I had a root canal after several days of severe tooth pain. The root canal knocked me for a loop for several days. And then two days ago, the crown on the tooth that had had the root canal procedure fell off, so it was back to the dentist for me yesterday. (You won't care to know all the gory details, but suffice it to say that the dentist who put the crown back into place discovered that the tooth beneath it, which had the root canal procedure, is pretty much kaput, since the crown had a hole in it and the tooth has been slowly decaying with the crown on top of it.

So I'm looking at a new crown as soon as they can work me in — which is not soon enough, as far as I'm concerned — and it appears the insurance folks will balk at covering this after a root canal. But if it's not done as soon as may be, there may be no tooth left to crown, and the dentist warns me I don't want to go down the road of a tooth extraction. These tooth issues are not ones to be cavalier about, in the case of folks dealing with diabetes.)

All to say, I'm a bit tired with seemingly unending visits to tooth doctors, and with pain that never quite goes away now even after the root canal (and worry that also never quite goes away). And that makes it hard for me to keep up here. 

As my husband Steve also told me at lunch today, he had read my blog posting this morning — something he usually doesn't have time to do as the breadwinner of our household, and I fully understand this — and he realizes that we're both more than a little despondent because of the news about the papal meeting with Kim Davis. Steve is a far better person than I am, a holier and gentler one. 

The closest he can come to saying an ill word about that meeting and anyone involved in it is, "When I read the news that the pope had met wtih that thing, I felt like someone had kicked me in the stomach."*

So there you have it. Tired. Dragged down more than a little bit by this and that. And slow to reply to your very welcome comments here. Please know they are welcome — very much so. And please send some good thoughts my way regarding the seemingly intractable tooth issues!

*"That thing" is not Steve objectifying anyone. It's about the closest circumlocution his Minnesota-polite culture will permit, to enable him to avoid using an earthier, more barnyard-like term for someone acting uncivilly. It's that — the uncivil self-promotion, the over-the-top religious theatrics, the narcisissm — that gets Steve's goat in Ms. Davis's case. He cannot stand seeing people play at religious theater in that unseemly way. It's my Anglo-Celtic Southern culture that's far more likely to use a pithy scatological phrase to deal with people like this. I grew up in a world where, to quote a distant cousin of mine quoting his grandmother recently on Facebook, people said things like, "If you don't do a little drinking on Saturday night, what you goin' to have to talk to Jesus about on Sunday morning?"

And that line would be just the start of a raucous conversation that got a lot bawdier after that.