We have had about 3 weeks of unbearable heat. The temperatures have been close to 100 degrees every day, with high humidity and very little breeze. The “feels like” temperature has been about 105 – 110 degrees. Even late at night, when I am walking my dogs, the temperatures are still in the 70′s and 80′s. This is very unusual for us to have this long a spell of high heat this early in our summer. I have a bad feeling that my electric bill is going to be very high all summer because of the extra air conditioning that we are running. We can’t even open the windows at night for fresh air. It’s just too hot.

The month of May is only half over and we have already set a record for the most rainfall in one month. The floods were horrible and spread out all over middle Tennessee. Many people are still not close to being cleaned up, and here we have two more days of rain this weekend. I am so sick of the mud and the humidity! We need a week of no rain and a little wind to get things dried out and back to normal.

Three days of rain and we are having serious problems with flooding. There are areas of homes completely under water. Other areas have people trapped in their attics and on their roofs with no way to safely escape the rising waters. Flash flooding has made many roads impassable.

My home is on high ground and I’m sure that we are safe here. But I am very worried about many friends and co-workers who live in other areas and may be in danger.

There was a terrible, tragic accident last week on an oil drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico. The platform was on fire, men died, and BP Oil is on the hook for repairs and lost revenues.

But even worse is that the oil is spewing from the ocean floor and they can’t find a way to stop it. It is an horrendous environmental accident. Millions of gallons of oil wasted and flowing freely across the Gul of Mexico. They expect the oil slick, already the size of the island of Jamaica, to reach landfall this weekend. God help the animals and birds and other wildlife on the Gulf coast. This is much worse than the Valdez accident, many years ago. And so very sad for America.

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.

The only news this week seems to be centered on the huge partisan fight in Congress about the health care bill that Obama wants them to accept. It is a huge change for Americans and I realize that is was a big part of his campaign promising change. But I don’t know exactly what is in the bill and it seems nobody else knows, either.

I’ve heard very condescending quotes from various public figures that say after the bill is tweaked and approved that the public will be informed of what they decided was best for us. Now, if they truly are saying and thinking that, we have a very BIG problem with our elected officials in Washington. They are there to serve us – they are not there to decide in various back room deals what should be shoved down our throats.

This whole thing is very upsetting to me. I’m not convinced that Government run health care is the right way to handle this and I am concerned that Washington no longer cares what their constituents what. It’s turned into a huge political battle based on party lines. That is not in America’s best interest.

A good friend of mine, Jim, has been caring for his dad the past year or so, but his health has been failing at an alarming rate these past couple of weeks. He has had to rush his Pops to the hospital several times each week and they keep telling him to put Pops in a nursing home. But they both feel strongly about staying at home for family to care for Pops and they never did make the arrangements for a nursing home or even hospice.

Sadly, Pops was rushed to the hospital again late last night with chest pains, and this time he didn’t come home with Jim. I know Jim did everything he could for Pops and was a great son to the end. RIP Pops Walker.