For a lot of people, April 1 means they can have fun pulling pranks all day. There will be all kinds of practical jokes played on everyone, from family members to co-workers and even neighbors or customers. I have to admit that I have had some fun pranks over the years, and I do stay vigilant all day on April Fool’s day.

But April 1 was also the date of my maternal grandmother’s birth. She was a wonderful, fun loving and energetic woman and a great influence on my life.She passed away many years ago from cancer, but I still think fondly of her, especially on April 1. Thinking of you, Grandma Bobbie, today and always!

Usually we look forward to Fridays. But today we were looking forward to Friday for a different reason and looking forward to it with a little dread. My son had an appointment at 12:30 to finally get his cracked tooth pulled by the oral surgeon that my dentist sent us to see.

We got there a few minutes early – I strongly believe in being punctual. And sat in the patient waiting area for 30 long, tortuous minutes before a nurse came to the door and escorted my son back to the treatment room.

I was told to wait in the patient waiting room and that he would be about an hour. Well, they didn’t even have free Wi-Fi in their office, and I’m not one to sit for an hour and just stare at the wall. I don’t care how many thousands of dollars the oral surgeon’s decorator spent on the 4 pictures hanging on the walls of the waiting area. I’m not one to sit for an hour, so I left.

After an hour poking around a wonderful little wine shop, I headed back up to the oral surgeon’s office to collect my son, after they collected a sweet $800 from me for his services.

Although he is not home and sleeping, he will be in pain for another day or two, and we are out over $1,100 for a week’s worth of pain and aggravation, plus three trips downtown and eventually a missing tooth. No one has yet said what might be planned for replacing that tooth with a denture or something to hold that space, nor how much that is going to cost. The adventure continues next week.

Well people, this is getting to be a little crazy. My son needed his cracked tooth pulled and we drove downtown today for what we thought would finally be relief from the horrible pain he has suffered since last week.

But, no.

This “worked in” appointment was just a consultation. The oral surgeon evidently couldn’t take my regular dentist’s word for it that the cracked tooth needs to be pulled. He also couldn’t take my regular dentist’s xray – I was told it wasn’t good enough. So he took another xray and about 5 minutes of face time to tell us to come back on Friday to have it pulled. That means another two days of toothache and sleepless nights, and this little jaunt downtown cost us $201, not counting the four gallons of gas back and forth.

This morning I called our dentist and asked if they could see my son about his seriously cracked tooth that has kept him miserable all weekend. They said they would work him in if we came down right after lunch. So away we went at noon.

Although I appreciate their seeing him today, it cost me over $100 for the dentist to look in his mouth, take 1 xray (why an xray? I couldn’t tell you why that was needed when you can clearly see by eye that the crack goes all the way below the gum line.) and announce that his tooth is cracked and can’t be saved.

Now we have to go see an oral surgeon and the earliest he can be “worked in” is Wednesday afternoon. So two more days of miserable pain and then another trip downtown to get this tooth pulled.

This afternoon my son was eating a burger and evidently bit down on something like a little piece of bone or grizzel and ended up cracking his back tooth. He says he felt it crack and when he got home, he showed me his tooth and it was most certainly cracked – all the way down to or below the gum line. He says it hurts really bad, but here it is a Saturday and there’s no way to get him to a dentist today or tomorrow.

I wonder if there is any emergency dental care available anywhere in Nashville? You would think that a large city like Nashville would have some basic services available on weekends and late at night, to help the people who have problems outside of normal office hours.

For the time being, we went to Walgreens and bought some Oragel. I think we have a couple of pain pills stashed in the closet from an old prescription. I’ll have to dig through the dozens of  bottles and see what I can find to help him until Monday when we can hopefully get into our dentist’s office.

I know that I have family members with birthdays in January, but I can’t think of who they are. Isn’t that awful? I know my brothers and sister’s birthdays – in fact I remember each of them actually happening except for my sister Linda, as I was only 18 months old when she was born. But all the rest of the brothers and sisters I do remember the excitement in the household, the phone calls from the hospital, and the little babies I held in my arms that were only a couple of days old when I first saw them.

Now I rely on Facebook to remind me of people’s birthdays – both family and friends. That is one of the best features of the social networking web site – the access to people’s birthdays and current email addresses. But if you hid your birthday or fail to list it, then I won’t be reminded to wish you a happy birthday. So if I missed it, check your Facebook profile and don’t blame me!

When someone in your household is allergic to chocolate, you tend to take a fresh look at candies and sweets. So many Christmas candies and treats are chocolate-based. We decided to fight that by building a gingerbread house this year for a family Christmas project.

We were inspired by a kit at Kroger, but I don’t think we need a kit to make one of these. I found a picture of what we want to do and we can use that for a guide.

Part of growing up is realizing your own vulnerability in a violent or threatening situation. Most first instances of this happen at school or because of school. When I was a kid, one of the most dangerous places for weak or younger children was at the corner bus stop. Back in those days, children were dispatched to school with no thought of escorting them to the bus stop or driving them to school in rainy weather. You headed out for school at 7:05 am and your parents expected you to get safely to school and back again around 3:30 each day.

The bus stop was the perfect haunt for bullies. The victims were required to show up each day and the bully was guaranteed to have an audience. The weak took a beating until they either grew bigger or learned to defend themselves.

That is why I insisted on my children taking at least one self defense course in karate. There are private studios all over town and it was not hard to find a class that fit our busy schedules. The first thing I had to do was buy the kids their uniform. The school sold uniforms, but you were allowed to buy used uniforms from other students. I found an even better way to buy uniforms – on the internet.

If the kids stuck with the lessons, you eventually had to buy additional Karate Gear, such as chest protectors and weapons. Some kids stay with the classes throughout their childhood and go to competitions.

Another year already? Amazing! Have a very Happy Birthday, Lori!

There is a big box of old papers that includes all the job sheets for my DJ gigs over the years. I just realized that I have been to over 300 weddings and receptions!

When I get married again, I have a pretty good idea of what my ideal wedding will have. I have seen everything from intimate, quiet weddings with just a couple attendants to huge (and I mean HUGE) elaborate receptions with hundreds of family and friends. My ideal would be somewhere in between those extremes.

One of the most enjoyable parts of planning a wedding is choosing the right wedding invitations. If you look at the 123print.com web site you see hundreds of fabulous designs. You can spend hours looking at all the different selections before the perfect invitations for your special day.