Self-Medicating

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The rain against my window looks like someone's blasting my building with a fire hose. The wind is intense. I hear things knocking around in the yard and I worry for my old, beat up tarps. I am NOT going out there to look! But it's nerve wracking.

My muscles are so sore from long rides on the scooter. Holding myself on by the handle bars causes sharp, deep pain in my shoulders, neck and upper back.

And my teeth are giving me fits. I have an old crown, under which a molar is rotting. It aches. And an upper tooth has a deep cavity, to the nerve. I tell myself, as I have with the others, the pain is only temporary. Within a few weeks, both teeth will finally be dead, and won't hurt anymore. But right now, they hurt from my eye to my ear and down my throat.

So, I opened the bourbon. No mixers, no bs: straight bourbon, swirled in my mouth and swished through what's left of my teeth. Burned like a you know what at first. But then the pain all subsided as the alcohol cleansed the infections.

The pain in my back, neck and shoulders has reduced to a dull throb.

And my nerves aren't jumpy from the weather. I know I weatherproofed everything just as well as I could, before the storm. All I can do is wait for morning, daylight, and drier weather before I can make repairs.

I shut off the heater vents in the front of the house. They still blow a slight amount of hot air up there. There's a blanket over my front door and plastic over my windows.

There's a drapery that seperates my bedroom from the rest of the house. The heater, which has only had to kick on three times today (I have the thermostat set to fifty degrees, as it's in the front room). My bedroom is good and warm.

Most of the cats are lounging in the livingroom. Poor Snuffy got caught in the first ofthe storm and thought he'd have to spend the night on a blanket, inside my doghouse, in my yard. I went out and rescued him and he hasn't moved from the easy chair I set him on. The two girls, Miss Thing and her daughter, Osa, curl up on the bed with me and Porkchop for awhile, then go out front to hang with the boys.

This is a short term storm; it should pass by tomorrow and, within a few days, the temps will be quite pleasant again. So I have no fears of cabin fever, either for myself or for my animals.

I wish I could get these teeth fixed. I worry about a staph infection, so close to my brain. I also worry about gangrene. The bottom molar, with the cap on it, smells dead. The taste in my mouth is hideous. I can smell pus, too.