Saturday I was munching on a fresh bagel and felt a disturbing sensation of give near my wisdom teeth, followed by the feeling of something about the size and hardness of an unpopped kernel of popcorn interfering with my chewing. Nope, it wasn't an uncooked split pea or a rock that had somehow wandered in -- it was a piece of one of my molars. Dang. I am falling apart at the seams.

I called the dentist, and he said if there wasn't any pain it could wait till Monday; so today I took the morning off from work (ouch, it costs money to do that -- I don't get sick leave) and he took a look at it and handed me an estimate. My share comes to about $360. Ouch again. What with the check I wrote to my daughter, that's roughly a grand out the door in one morning -- about six days' wages in less than six hours.

He and his assistant did nice work, paring down the old tooth and putting a temporary cap on it and getting me out the door quickly enough and fairly painlessly -- for a while. I skipped lunch, got to work about 12:30, and around 3:30 the Novocaine was seriously wearing off. Thank God we knocked off by 4:30; I got home before 5:00. I still wasn't hungry -- well, my stomach was hungry, but my mouth was having none of it -- but I had to take some aspirin and I'd promised myself a double martini while in the dentist's chair, so I ate a banana to pave the way. I never had to work so hard to chew and swallow a banana before.

The worst was dinner. We had a friend over, so I opened a bottle of wine I'd been saving -- and I couldn't drink it. I had scratches on my tongue near where all the work had been done, and drinking wine was like pouring lemon juice into a fresh cut. Fortunately my wife had gone to the store and laid in some beer; it was cool and soothing.