Today was a long day.

It was the day I had scheduled a long overdue dentist appointment for my elderly father. He already knew he had a cracked tooth, and I suspected there might be more problems, which there were. In fact, his dentist declined to schedule the cleaning and instead referred us to a periodondist due to dad's excessive plaque buildup.

But first, dad wanted to see the local barber, so I dropped him off there to lose his Santa Claus beard while I did some grocery shopping. Picked him up, then we stopped for lunch and afterward that, I brought him back to his apartment so he could brush his teeth, then went to the periodontist, who wound up not cleaning his teeth because they said he badly needed scaling.

Medicare doesn't cover dental work, and this won't be cheap. The x-rays alone were about $300, and by the time we're done with the 2 2-hour visits for the scaling, it'll be about $1700. I think scaling is where they clean the teeth below the gumline, and I vaguely remember my mother had to have this done, and she said it was extremely painful. I'm not going to tell my dad that, obviously, and I do really hope he tolerates it better than my mother.

Dad has the money, but he's a real tightwad. Luckily, he didn't balk at the price, maybe because they told him he'd already suffered significant bone loss.

So I have the 2 appointments scheduled for dad in the coming weeks, but  unfortunately, we have to travel further to their other office. I've also scheduled about 6 visits for my own physical therapy since my knee is still not better. Suffice it to say, there's a lot of doc visits in our future and I'm completely inundated with medical forms of every stripe.

I have not been able to get any of my hoped for home improvements going this year. My mason is not following through with his estimate despite my repeated requests for it. He is slammed. My electrician's father passed and so he is dealing with estate matters. He's referred me to his cousin, but I really prefer to wait for him. Super nice guy. I haven't even attempted the bathroom vanity replacement because I'm assuming there are shortages, delays and higher prices.

I'm recovered from my 2nd case of poison ivy this season. There's a lot of it growing around my yard, and the industrial strength vinegar weed killer I'm using doesn't work as well as one would hope.

I got a beautiful patio set (2 rockers and a stationery couch) from my Buy Nothing group. It's wrought iron, and there was some old rust on it. I wanted to repaint, and my neighbor suggested some paint made for painting directly over rust (assuming it's not peeling), no sanding needed. It worked really well. Took me about 5 rounds of touch up but it looks like a brand new set now. I also found some plastic plugs for the ends of the rockers, which are hollow, so they would catch some water inside them every time they rained.

I had already aquired a bunch of cushions from Buy Nothing in anticipation of eventually finding a patio set, and am short just 2 cushions. Stopped at Christmas Tree Shop last week but they were out of the pattern I wanted.

I also shopped at Whole Foods and Aldi's. It was great to get out and do that. The positivity rate in CT has been under 1% for a while now. I'm not sure how it is in the rest of the country. A friend of mine was to get her first Moderna shot a few weeks after me, and I just recently learned she felt so bad after the shot that she never go the 2nd one, which I think is a big mistake. She said she felt tired, and out of it, for 6 weeks, but she has thyroid issues, too.