Funk Breaker

There’s nothing like finding a pool of water under my sink to bring me right out of a funk!

I noticed my faucet was a little loose and I couldn’t put the nozzle/faucet back into its housing securely. When I pulled it out I saw water dripping out from the washers and sliding down the hose, back through the housing and into the cabinet below.

Luckily the washer tightened right up and stopped the leak immediately which helped me to feel very grateful my visions of plummer’s crack nightmare were not going to come true.

Unluckily, a rather deep pool of water had collected in the cabinet under the sink. Everything had a delightful coating of “dew” and it had to be completely cleared out. We store the usual cleaning products and bug repellents under there. A bungee cord secures away any four footed friends. We only lost a few cardboard items but nothing huge. It was good to clean it out and get rid of a few things.

I truly do feel grateful I caught it within days. I know it wasn’t sputtering water last weekend because I was under that sink quite a bit and nothing was awry.

On another note: Today, dear friends, I’m getting my first tooth implant! I said YES to a tooth implant.

My family was cursed with pretty bad teeth. Actually they line up straight enough, and look rather pretty, but my brothers and I were prone to lots of cavities. And in the bad teeth world, cavities progress to root canals and root canals to bridges, bridges to dentures or IMPLANTS! What ain’t silver in my mouth is fake. I think I have at least 5 root canals (and another is now just an open fleshy slot waiting for an implant). Still, we Kolosey’s have a pretty decent smile, and I’m going to have mine for long, long time!

I’m not looking forward to the pain, well not the procedure either, but that will be done and over within an hour or so. The pain can “last up to 72 hours”…then there is waiting for it to heal, which takes months. Yeah, this is how my mind is working as I anticipate the procedure. I’ve got to just live in the moment, live in the moment. Stop thinking about a big drill aiming for my jaw…live in the moment.

Smoking

My friend and co-worker JC is a struggling smoker. The kind who really wants to quit, sometimes does for weeks at a time, but ends up smoking again for one reason or another. Several months ago, we established that I had no problem with her smoking while we drive together – my car or her car.

It was only yesterday that I realized why it doesn’t bother me at all, and I rather enjoy the smell of cigarette smoke.

I am not a cigarette smoker. I smoked when I was a kid, from around age 10 to about age 21 when I entered my first relationship. I was never truly addicted to smoking so quitting was a simple choice, strongly recommended by my partner at the time. My biggest struggle about not smoking was drinking coffee. I hadn’t realized that I drank coffee while I smoked, and for a short time I had to give up coffee too.

Both my older brothers smoke, one just once in a while, the other as a gripping habit still unchanged today.

My father did not smoke cigarettes as a habit, but I knew he’d smoked at some point in his life and I always encouraged him to smoke a pipe because I loved the smell of his tobacco. Many of my “daughter” Christmas presents to him were pipes, pipe holders, lighters and the like to support this behavior, but he never stayed with it.

I remember as a child when the whole family ate meals together, we sat at a bar between our kitchen and dining room. My father and two brothers sat across the dining room side of the bar. I sat at the end and my mother sat on the inside, the kitchen side. I have a strong memory of an after meal ritual – I’d finish eating and go sit on my mother's lap. She’d eat her last bites of food holding me, then, after she finished eating, she’d light up a cigarette. She smoked it while I sat in her lap. Sometimes, at breakfast I suppose, she’d have a cup of coffee too.

Cigarettes and coffee are the scent of my mother - of nurturing safety. 

And now that we're feeling all warm and fuzzy about the smell of cigarettes, this is where I’ll mention that both my parents died from lung cancer. I can’t talk about smoking without that bit of information.