The rats and their fleas are gone and, of the three failing root canals, two have been extracted and one has been repaired.  Dr. Bertino once again saved my mouth when other dentists had made good but not good enough repairs.  What was supposed to be two extractions turned into two extractions, a gum flap repair, a couple of tooth reshapings, and a cavity filling.  Dr. Bertino understands my mouth and if I had my preferences I'd go to her for every type of dental care, not just periodontal.  She looked at the infection that was swelling the gums over my recently stitched root canal repair and determined that she couldn't clean out and tighten the flap without first reshaping a tooth and filling a nearby cavity which may have been the source of the infection, and which would have been impossible to see and treat after the gum tightening. 

Dr. Bertino knew by looking at me and my mouth that I eat nuts.  Being part squirrel on my Father's side, nuts and seeds are among my favorite foods.  She guessed granola, which is wrong, but she understood nuts and seeds; enough to tell me that I need to stay away from eating them, especially small seeds, for a month.  Even the juice I frequently drink (achai) has micro seeds in it. 

If I think about it, it makes sense and I should have known, but somehow I assumed that full page and a half that Dr. Samyn had given me (which I read and reread) contained everything pertinent, and was already plenty restrictive.  My bad.

I'm making global changes in the code behind many of my pages.  I made all my blogs dating back to 2006 disability friendly by splitting one stylesheet into two;  the stylesheet that maintains the layout, and the removable stylesheet that contains the monthly colors.  I also started updating some of my link pages, but that is going to be a long process until I get all of the links into a database; another job I have started but not completed.

Not till after Hallows.  Between party preparation and my deep meditation time I've already got plenty on my plate.

Hallows is rapidly approaching and I'm reflecting on those who are no longer with us.  My Dad is in my mind, as is his Mother.  Both of them shaped the way I see the world and many of my values.  I'm also thinking about Nita Micossi, who died in December 2008 on a biopsy table (yes, that can happen) after an earlier elective surgery went awry.  Ask me why I have such trouble trusting modern medicine. 

Nita is in my mind because she was a writer, and after her death, her surviving husband (my uncle Bob) and daughter (cousin Sofia) collected columns that she had written for their local newspaper over a decade and assembled them into a book entitled _My Philosophy of Life_.  To give the author and book proper respect, I started reading it in a hair salon.  I found a brief reference to myself in that book.  I was glibly reduced to her 'hippy niece', but since I've never so much mentioned her in any of my writings until now I have no reason to complain.  The whole family knows that Nita was a writer.  I doubt that any of them think of me in that context. 

Reading that book it is obvious to me why Nita and I weren't that close;  her view of the world, and the things she enjoyed are mostly very different from mine, although I am already familiar with a good portion of the world as she knew it.  But two other thoughts came up too;  Nita had other experiences that I am not familiar with (places she had been and things she had done) and I would have loved to hear about them from her.  If I had had this book before she died, I might have phoned and asked if she could tell me more about them.  And Nita and I did have common ground that went beyond family ties, my problem was that until I read this book I didn't know how to access it in language that would have been common to both of us. 

Last blog I wrote about a "female rose breasted grosbeak", and that was probably wrong.  Instead, she was more likely a female black-headed grosbeak, common in the Puget sound region (although they usually leave by early October).  The id book that I was using did not have distribution maps on the same page as the id and I didn't think to look because the drawing definitely resembled the rose breasted more.  But it turns out that the drawing was deceiving me due to inadequate detail.  My mistake - should have checked the map and online images to be sure. 

I haven't seen or heard the Douglas squirrel in about a week.  The juncos and Anna's hummingbirds are in my backyard in full force, taking over fearlessly as if the yard were theirs.  The stellars jays, like the Eastern gray squirrels, come to my backyard window when they want me to feed them in the front yard.  They definitely know that the person in the house supplies the food and that the food gets put out in front but that they can communicate with me in back.