Greg: How did you sleep last night?

Sarah: I woke up sometime toward morning. I felt like I had been in a coma, and one of my feet was missing a sock, but the other foot still had a sock on.

Greg: That sounds like a good night of sleep.

Greg and I visited the dentist today. Instead of a hygienist cleaning our teeth, they had a new dentist do the dirty work. She appeared to be fresh out of dental school — about my age — but blonder and perkier.

She asked me about my job, which I very briefly explained to her (no sense dwelling on the negative). Then she asked me what my major in college had been, and I told her journalism.

“Oh, that makes sense,” she said. “I considered majoring in journalism because I took a journalism class and really liked it, but then I liked my science class even better so I majored in cellular and molecular biology.”

“Really?” I said. “Because I thought I wanted to be a vet, but then I didn’t really like my science classes. Then I took a journalism class and loved that.”

“I wanted to be a vet, too,” she said. “Sometimes I still think about becoming a vet.”

The dentist and I continued chatting between the scraping and polishing. I couldn’t talk most of the time because of the cleaning tools, but everything she said duplicated my own thoughts. I didn’t even need to talk. I felt like I had met the person I might have been if only I had decided to take the science route. She seemed so happy with her work that I found myself thinking the unthinkable: Maybe I should have been a dentist.

On the way home, Greg and I talked about the new dentist.

“She was good!” Greg said. “She didn’t jab my gums at all.”

“I know,” I said. “I was so relieved to see that wedding ring on her finger because otherwise I think you might have wanted to chase after that girl. She’s like me, but better because she’s a dentist.”

Greg replied: “Do you really think I would go after someone who is even MORE obsessed with teeth than you?!”

As Greg and I prepared Monday night for his family’s arrival, I launched into a cleaning tirade. I was making chili for all of us to eat Tuesday night and trying to simultaneously do laundry and vacuum. When I become panicked, I lose my appetite. By 8:30 p.m., I was still running on six cylinders and still hadn’t eaten. Greg begged me to eat something. “I’m not hungry!” I kept shouting back at him.
“Sarah, if you don’t eat something, you will go insane,” Greg said. Though clearly he should not have used a future tense verb in that sentence. When my blood-sugar drops I become absolutely inconsolable. Finally, Greg convinced me to take Abe for a walk.
The cool air washed away most of my stresses. I started to feel better. Then I looked toward the elementary school we were circling and saw something … something … what was that?
It was really tall. In the shadows of the fluorescent lights, it looked like a giant dog. A great dane? My gosh, there’s a great dane running loose around the school. Is it a stray? What if it’s really hungry? I started to tug Abe across the street, away from the starved, mangy great dane. But then. No! Another great dane! Maybe there is a whole pack of these creatures roaming the neighborhood. Abe and I picked up our pace.
And then the starved great danes stepped into the light. Did I say great danes? No, I meant deer. Yes, two deer. But they were hungry. Darn hungry.