Let the Sun Shine In: After receiving the go-ahead from ConEd this morning, at 3:45 pm Friday, we went solar. Naturally, it’s been an overcast day, but I have confidence the sun will come out tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that and we will get the bulk of our electric power from solar panels. I’ll keep you updated on the SolarCity system’s efficiency.
False Hope: My hope to be kidney-stone free has been dashed. After days without pain a slight twinge poked my back Tuesday afternoon as I drove around. The pain has not returned again but my doc says the stone probably is still there, so keep peeing into the strainer and hope it shows up.
Meanwhile, I am beset by a different excruciating pain. I’m a teeth grinder. I wear an appliance while I sleep to protect against a loss of enamel from the grinding. I’ve been wearing a mouthguard for more than 20 years. I even wore it while commuting on Metro North. My friend Lloyd always knew it was time to stop the banter when I slipped the appliance into my mouth on the ride home from Manhattan.
Grinding also puts excessive stress on one’s jaw muscles, resulting, in my case, in temporomandibular joint disorder (TMD). Pain starts in the middle of my lower right jaw and travels up beside either the front or back of my ear to the top of my skull. I’m not sure why TMD has suddenly flared, but the pain can come, and go, at a moment’s notice. The pain can last for hours. Our dentist (a reader of this blog so I’ll have to be careful what I say—just kidding, Mitch) is taking a conservative approach. We’ve eliminated the idea the pain is tooth-related. We’re hoping a slight adjustment to my mouthguard will, over time, reduce and eliminate the cause.
If you’ve gotten the impression I bounce from one pain to another, imaginary and not, let me assure you you would not want to suffer from these real aches. Still, Gilda has challenged me to keep a pain log for one month. Today’s entry has TMD.
Pain of Another Sort: If you think my pain is stressful, imagine how Ted Cruz must feel if any of his would-be supporters clicked on the following link: tedcruz.com.
There’s a presidential candidate not ready for prime time in this digital age. His chances of being the second bi-racial, Harvard-educated, two year-freshman United States senator to mercurially climb to the presidency is more remote than my going through a full month painless.
