The Great American West….

posted in: Vacation | 0

This past week I was fitted with a new mouth guard at the dentist. Apparently the purpose of this is to protect my teeth, and the millions of dollars I have spent on them, because at night, while dreaming about Mark Wahlberg, I grind my teeth.

I have to say that I do have the best dentist in the world, and were I to live somewhere else, I would travel from wherever I lived to go and see her. But there is something fundamentally wrong when you have to slide a large piece of green plastic into your mouth after you brush your teeth, before you go to bed at night. Green is my favorite color, but somehow it is not so becoming when glowing from my mouth. Apart from looking like Shrek, I have begun to sound like him because of the bizarre effect the contraption has upon my usually normal voice….now my last words before I go to sleep consist of basically just consonants, accompanied by an odd lisp as my confused tongue has no room to move. I am sure this aid will benefit my teeth, had I owned this years ago it could have replaced my birth control pills…………… Oh well, yet another joy of growing older. I did venture out of state for 2 whole glorious weeks this month!! What a blast! My buddy and I drove 17 hours straight west and had a wonderful drive. We gossiped, ate junk food, told our life stories and had good female talk. I arrived at my son’s home and spent a week with my grandchildren, and you can’t beat that for fun. I watched them hunt Easter eggs, played tag/hide and seek/spiderman/dinosaurs and loved it all. It was surreal to be at the movies with my four year old grandson as we both sat watching “Rio’ with our 3D glasses on. He looked so cute sitting in his booster seat with a pretzel in one hand and a fist of popcorn in the other. I felt pretty youthful until the lights came up,and with horror I realized it was “Grandparent movie date”,the only other people in the movie were obviously doing the same bonding with their grandkids too. I panicked, had scary flashbacks to mini-vans and soccer moms, but then suddenly felt relief as I noticed all the grannies looked and dressed normal, and accessorized. Hah, never have I felt so glad to dress “shabby chic”, have bad hair, a nose piercing and look like a hippy.

After a wonderful week with my family, my spousal unit joined me and we drove to Utah. Blimey, what a place! I don’t know if any of you have been there, but you should go immediately. One does not have to own large teeth, have an all-sibling band or many wives to be welcome in Utah (I bet they do a great trade in dental guards).

We went to Bryce Canyon, which was stunning (see picture above) and then on to Zion National Park. I was in a state of photographic euphoria, and wannabe National Geographic ace reporter! I wanted to buy khaki outfits and eat trail mix as I saw so much of Nature’s beauty. Unfortunately I also saw a great deal of my husband’s behind as I tromped up hiking trails with the miserable view of the rear sled-dog……but, in true stiff-upper-lip Brit fashion, I did enjoy myself. Through the chest pains, the lungs that refused to pump air, the realization that the paltry weight of one sandwich in a Ziploc could slow me down, none of these things could dampen the pleasure I had just being outdoors!

I did not miss working in an office, I did not miss Corporate America, but I could not get over the fact that I still couldn’t get a decent cup of tea. America just cracks me up, you can send a man to the moon and find the cure for polio, but try to get one to boil water hot enough to brew tea……it is like you all think it has to be Boston Harbour temperature or something. Some good news to share! Yours truly is now contributing articles to a publication out of Tahlequah, Oklahoma, called “The Current”. I am very excited about this as most of you know this is really what I want to spend my time doing. I will put a link to the Current on this site and you guys can check it out. I will be writing under my real name (Halle Berry). Well enough from me folks. It’s late, I have the hiccups and also have to insert the green thingy back into my mouth – ick. Hope you are all well and that life is treating you ok. Sorry for the lapse in the blog – just too much going on for this old brain to handle. Sthee you lather Jude with the mouth guard.