Well, the tooth is out and I am trying to get used to the empty space. I had thought I was going to leave it as is because it’s in the rear and can’t be seen, but I don’t like nothing there. Area is still sensitive and I am still chewing on one side only.

Ed and I like to watch house-hunting, renovation shows, and one of the commercials on that channel lately is for really, really tiny houses – it’s the new trend, these 20-somethings enthuse, “giving us time to do what we really love," they burble.

Well, I know stuff can own you, but living in a house the size of a toilet has its negatives too. I love space. I love lots of rooms. I love hiding out in a different nooks and crannies, and somehow, I still get time to do other stuff. Smaller is better doesn’t work for me.

It’s like when I pack for a short trip and I am trying to get myself to travel lightly. Well, in our last trip to New York, I was thinking I wouldn’t need much because we were only going to be there four days. Well, I had to borrow a handbag because a tote wouldn’t work for a dress-up night out. And this happens every time when I try to limit my choices. Also, when traveling in the spring to anywhere north, you have to take clothes for both warm and cold weather because you never know what you are going to get.

Jack Reacher, author Lee Child’s favorite character, is a nomad and if he has a toothbrush in his back pocket, that’s enough. When he gets rancid, he goes into a cheap-o store, picks out a new outfit, changes in the fitting room or men’s room, and trashes his old stuff. God forbid he needs an aspirin. Tom Cruise played him in a recent movie and he did a good job considering he was nothing like the image conjured up by the author. My pick for that role would have been a younger Nick Nolte (before the booze and the bloat).

Speaking of aging badly, Ed let an old Chevy Chase movie run on and I didn’t change it right away because I was busy. I never liked him. His movies are full of clichés and tired gags, and the stock in trade of his one character, is a Step-in-Fetchit style hysteria. (Step-in-Fetchit was a black actor who played the chronically frightened-to-death sidekick or servant in a lot of 1940s B horror movies). Everything spooks him and that is supposed to be funny. I Googled him to see what he looks like now and he is fat fat fat. I mean FAT. Of course that condition also happened to people I really liked, like Orson Welles (absolutely mesmerizing in “Jane Eyre”) and Marlon Brando. If you are too young to know what Brando looked like in the 50s, Google Marlon Brando photos.

Chase, incidentally, comes from a prominent family. His father, Ned Chase, was a major publishing figure whom I missed meeting when I left Times Books just before he joined that firm. In a jury I sat on, the defense lawyer was Chevy’s brother.

I want to add that I have developed some sympathy for Chevy as a person since I have read that he had a very abusive childhood in the household of his mother and stepfather. Beatings and time outs in a locked closet. His bio father, Ned, had remarried and had a new family while this was going on. Chevy didn't tell him because he didn't want to worry him.

xx, Teal