Dreams, a Broken Tooth, and Jalapeño Pumkin Pie

Yesterday was our monthly local writers meeting at a Panera Bread. When I go to those meetings, my husband likes me to bring home two of Panera’s wonderful cinnamon crunch bagels for our Sunday morning breakfast. Yesterday, in addition, I picked up for myself two small, hard, sourdough rolls. I munched on one of them as I drove home and put the other in a plastic zip bag when I got here.

For some unknown reason, I woke up around 2:30 this morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. After a while, I got up, turned on the computer, and wrote a first draft of the blog that I will post tomorrow. In time I went back to bed but didn’t stay long because I got to coughing again. At some point of my in and out, my husband stirred enough for me to request that, should I drop off to sleep a any point, please don’t wake me up. He mumbled something about its being Sunday, but we didn’t argue about it. Eventually I got to settle back in bed, and I drifted into a sound sleep with one of the most fascinating dreams I’ve ever had.

In it, I had been up during the night and finally managed to fall asleep again. When I awoke, a number of family members were around, including my mother-in-law (who died in 2005). I learned they had all been to church and back while I slept. I was incredulous. I never sleep in. I told about the only time I ever slept through Sunday school and church—when I arrived home after a 52-hour trip back from the other side of the world (absolutely true). I wanted to know when we were going to eat—I was starving because I hadn’t had any breakfast. Oh, but we were waiting for others to arrive, including Ron and Judy.

We were standing at the top of the hill watching for them to drive up when I slowly opened my eyes—and was shocked to discover I was in my bed and it was daylight. I could hear Fred shaving. He had made his coffee and eaten his bagel. We were to leave for church in twenty-five minutes. At times like this I am glad for the boarding school experience that taught me how to dress quickly (anyone late for breakfast had to sing a solo). Of course I hadn’t had any breakfast (sound familiar?). I started to get out my bagel, but it was too big to deal with in a hurry. Then I saw the hard roll. Perfect.

The trouble is, if you want hard rolls to stay hard and crisp overnight, you need to store then in a paper bag, not a plastic one, but I didn’t stop to remember that yesterday. My roll was definitely chewy, but I sliced it, buttered it, and chomped away as I got ready for church. I was aware that in my hurry I wasn’t chewing as thoroughly as I might. When we got in the car, I made an awful discovery. I had snapped the front off a molar on that roll—and apparently swallowed it! Thankfully, it has a nice solid filling that comprised the center of the tooth; that was still in place, as well as the back, and I feel no pain. Guess where I’ll be going this week and what I’ll be doing with some of that extra Christmas money? So it has been an interesting day. Maybe worth writing about in my blog?

I didn’t know it wasn’t over yet.

We baked a frozen pumpkin pie, and Fred decided to have a piece of last evening’s homemade pizza before his piece of pie. He was done before I started, and I took just pie because of the sore throat that’s been bothering me for days. The first two-thirds of my piece was delicious, but suddenly my mouth started burning. If you know me, you know I don’t do spicy, or picante, except in small doses. Now my whole mouth was on fire, including the sore throat. I tried drinking. It didn’t help. I wanted my money back on that pie! But how could a pumpkin pie get jalapeño in it?

My logical husband came up with a question. Did I reuse his small plate for my pie? Y-e-ess. Of course, that was it! He likes to add red pepper flakes to his pizza—and you can figure out the rest. Needless to say, I won’t forget this day for a while—and that doesn’t even count the fact that we are finishing our third whole day without Internet access!