January 31, 2005
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She Has a Good Excuse ...
When Delia travels to Panama for a vacation, she always stays longer than she planned. She always has a good reason for extending her stay.
A plantain is a fruit similar to a banana except it is high in starch instead of having sugars. It has to be cooked before it can be eaten if it is to be digested well. Patacones are made by thickly slicing green plantain, frying them until they are soft, crushing them into thin disks and frying them a second time until they are crisp but not hard. They are best with a few drops of hot sauce and accompanied by hot coffee in the morning.
When Delia bit into her sister Stella's patacon, her tooth shattered.
It wasn't so much because the patacon was hard as because the tooth, after a lifetime of receiving fillings, had been weakened to the extreme. The dentist they went to recommended a crown for the shattered tooth and for the one next to it, which was also in poor condition. As he makes his own crowns, he offered to charge only $130 for each. Delia examined the crowns he had done for Stella and asked several of her other friends about his work, finding it above reproach.
It will take a few days to make the crown. The airline has accepted the accident as a valid reason to reschedule the return flight.
The timing is bad. This is Carnival season. Getting a flight back through Houston or directly to San Diego will be difficult and, for obvious reasons, Delia doesn't want to use Newark as a connection point. She would rather wait a few more days than freeze to death.
Delia needs to have some more crowns done. She had one done this past autumn and needs more. She was nervous about having the crown done here in San Diego but fearful of having one done in Tijuana, having heard numerous horror stories, well aware that the risk wasn't worth the small savings involved.
But if these two crowns work out -- and it seems promising -- it will be as cheap to fly to Panama for future dental work as to have it done here. The best dentist I ever had was in Panama, so I feel comfortable with the idea. In fact, that is one of the few things that might entice me to visit Panama again, needing dental work and not having to deal with the crooks and clowns here.
We don't know yet when Delia will return. She hopes somebody will cancel their reservation so she can get a good return flight. Meanwhile, she has a good excuse for overstaying her vacation again.
Comments (1)
hope all went well. recently went to Panama for the first time. most interesting in its likenesses and unlikenesses with its nieghbour.