Rain Rain Go Away

My gills are drying out.

They say it never rains in California. I'm here to tell you that's a big fat stretching of the truth: it does rain, though only certain times of year. When it starts it sometimes feels like it will never stop. When I first moved here, to Los Angeles, it rained for the Biblical 40 straight days. The sky was so luminous, the air so crisp, when it finally did stop, though, that it kind of seemed like all was right with the world.

It's been raining on and off for weeks. More on than off, it seems. I went off to NY during a rainy week, telling myself it would be back to sunny loveliness when I returned. But no. More rain. And of course, as any diver knows, you can't dive when it's rainy: the run-off that heads into the ocean from the streets of LA will make you mad sick. So... though I am only 4 dives away from my milestone of 250, I am in a holding pattern.

I spent a good chunk of last week in Tijuana, Mexico, where I had a whole bunch of dental work done by Dr. Erich Wolley, a holistic dentist with a big, warm, magnanimous personality. Unfortunately, I seem to have been in the beginning stages of the flu when I went down there, and by the end of a few days with me Dr. Wolley was good and sick. I apologize to anyone who had an appointment with him this week. Something tells me you may be rescheduling.

I can't say much about the affect of the work yet; a few days of deep flu kept my mind off of it, but now that I'm feeling better my jaw aches like crazy. I had the mercury (amalgam) fillings in 9 teeth replaced with tooth-colored composite. It was a lot of work for Dr. Wolley, who was able to restore teeth any L.A. dentist probably would have pulled, or at least crowned. I did end up with one crown, and it is a thing of beauty. But the sore jaw... oy. I hope this gets better soon. It's probably just aching from about 8 hours over the course of two days sitting in the dentist chair with my mouth open, full of anesthesia. The crowned and filled teeth are also still quite sensitive, but I imagine that will go away, too. I'm supposed to go back in about a month to have the bite adjusted among other things. I'll keep you updated.