news of the world

• feeling better physically today so i kept my dreaded dental appointment where mrs. stephens the dental hygeinist scraped my teeth and told they looked much better than the notes on my record indicated. i bled a bit at my last appointment a month ago. i am also very flinchy at dental appointments due to my recurring nightmares about crumbling and or loosening teeth. also, i always feel guilty when i go to the dentist because as a cocky undergraduate whenever i would get writer's block i would moan and moan and get drunk and tell everyone that i was going to quit writing and become a dental hygienist, like working in dentistry was the worst imaginable fate. i know better now.

• last night we looked at a house for sale in nunhead, for the uninitiated in south london neighbourhoods, nunhead is a little sketchy. not like detroit sketchy (i don't actually believe that anyplace in london can compare to detroit in terms of sketchy scary or bad but this could just be my american naivite) but you know, higher crime levels, fewer bus lines, etc etc. it was a nice house though with hard wood floors and a pretty garden. we're going to look at it again on saturday morning so we can see it with natural light.

• the french estate agent proved the international inability to pronounce my name once more. no matter how many times i stress the short i sound in that last syllable the citizens of europe remain unable to say carolyn. they can only manage caroline and are simply unwilling to attempt any other variation.

• no more news on my dad as yet. he should have come home from the hospital yesterday afternoon. i expect i will have an email from my mom when i get home. i can't yet tell how worried she actually is. her emails are always very low key even when she's at the highest code red state of emergency. plus she just ignores unpleasant things. she's spent the last, gosh, 10 months now, denying that i was ever seriously ill despite all evidence to the contrary. it's what she does, she's got a gift.

• oliver was sorely disappointed to see that i was not staying home again today. not because he likes me or anything but because when someone is home all day he has free access to the garden whenever his manic little heart desires. otherwise, he is locked indoors since there isn't really a decent shelter for him out there when it rains, an it always rains. this is london after all.

• we're going to copenhagen the weekend of 1st december last night jeremy called me to the computer and showed me a google map of a european city and said "know where this is?" and i said "no." and he said "that's the square in copenhagen where we got in a fight about change" (and he didn't mean like the idea of change as in changing jobs or moving or the possibility of a tube stop in or neighbourhood, no he meant change as in money and yes we did get in a very heated argument about it that ended with him saying "why don't you just shut up?" and me glaring at him and considering divorce, but we got over it and still remember that trip to copenhagen fondly which is why we are going back) back to the narrative, i responded by saying "oh yeeeah, you were being an asshole," and he said, "well you were being weird." so i biffed him on the head and then he panned out a bit and showed me the location of a restaurant we tried to go to but couldn't because it was fully booked. we'll reserve a table this time. somehow i think the secret to our love is wrapped up in this ability to have blow out arguments in a public square in a foreign city and then remember them with good humour. this is only a theory though.

• that's all, i just thought one more bullet point would be nice.