Care For Your Teeth

My dentist's appointment was 11AM. I just barely made it. The clouds of the past few days had stuck around, but the humidity had returned in spades. I was so sweaty from rushing when I got in. the dentist patted my forehead down with a cool cloth. Otherwise, things went very well. All they did today was fill a cavity in my right upper molar. I did need needles to numb my mouth, but it wasn't that bad. I was in and out in less than 40 minutes.

They even gave me some good news. The empty Super Fresh building is going to get a new tenant in a few months. The Thriftway on Crystal Lake Road is currently housed in a small store barely bigger than the Wildwood Acme. I don't blame them for grabbing the first larger supermarket they could get. I'm thrilled. I missed having a place to stop for small grocery loads on runs to the Haddon Township Library. (The dentists are thrilled, too. They apparently used to buy lunch at Super Fresh.)

I went in Dollar Tree and Tuesday Morning to see if I could find more hanging containers like the one I bought on Tuesday. Nope. They were all too expensive and big at Tuesday Morning, and they didn't have any at Dollar Tree. Stopped at Rite Aid for milk (their milk is $2.19 for a half-gallon of skim!), then just went straight home.

Spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning. The bathroom needed to be done badly. I put it off a week, but it was so grimy, it could not be put off anymore. The kitchen was almost as bad. I'll have to dust sometime this weekend or very early next week. I never even got to dusting last month.

Ran Care Bears all afternoon. The late-80s show was at its best in the first season. The first few episodes pick up directly from Care Bears II: A New Generation. No Heart has a more active role, threatening the Care Bears himself instead of just sending Beastly to do everything. We also see Bears and Cousins who don't turn up as much, such as Bedtime Bear, Birthday Bear, Proud-Heart Cat, and Gentle-Heart Lamb. There's brief glimpses of True Heart Bear and Noble Heart Horse of New Generation as well. Shrieky makes her first appearance as a bratty visitor at No Heart's who stays for the duration so she can impress her uncle.

My favorite episode from this batch was the sweetest of the entire series. The Care Bears discover a pair of Care Pandas, Perfect and Polite, living in what appears to be a tropical Shangri-La hidden in the Tibetian mountains in "The Long-Lost Care Bears." The rest of the crew takes them back to Care-a-Lot and gives them "belly badges." Perfect and Polite mean well (and Polite has a crush on Good Luck Bear), but they can't control their powers or catch up with the others. When they return to their valley and discover that the snow from the mountains has moved in, they learn that it's love that can help us grow...and the others find that everyone has a different Caring Mission and different ways of loving.

Some of Gram's stories were really creative. Brave Heart, Champ, Treat-Heart, and Cheer riff on "Phantom of the Opera" when they discover that the theater they're repairing may be haunted in "Mystery of the Phantom." "Frankenstein" gets the Gram treatment in "Dr. Brightenstein's Monster." Grumpy and Bright- Heart build a robot to be their friend. The robot befriends Hugs and Tugs, and the trio teach their German town a lesson in looking beyond appearances. Hugs and Tugs play Jack and Jill, who must rescue Mother Nature (Gram) from the Witch of Winter (Shrieky) in "Caring for Spring."

Other episodes with no story-telling were fun, too. Lotsa-Heart Elephant may be big and unwieldy, but she teaches Beastly and Swift-Heart Rabbit that slow and steady really does win "The Great Race." She does something similar for Brave Heart Lion when he says she's not good enough to play on the Cousins' basketball team in "Order In the Court." Champ, Cheer, and Bright-Heart are lured from their pie-baking duties by a fair...but when it turns out to be a Beastly and Shrieky trap, it's Gram to the rescue in "The Care Bear Carneys."

It had been clouding up since I was riding home from Rite Aid. The rain didn't come down until around 4:30-5ish. When it rained, it poured...for all of 10 minutes or so. It was even raining and sunny at the same time! I guess the real Mother Nature couldn't make up her mind. I decided I'd rather get wet in a relaxing, much-needed bath instead. I spent a glorious hour paging through cake decorating magazines and letting the warm water heal my poor, sore toes and heel spur.