A Brief History of Tooth #9

One Fall evening when I was twenty years old, I was enjoying a late evening dinner at Hamburger Hamlet with some of my college friends. Sucking on a straw, I slurped Coke from a barrel-sized glass. Delicious. At some point, I released the straw from my clenched jaw. I tongued the back of one of my front teeth to knock (what I thought) was a little bit of food loose.

Ouch. Sharp!

It was not food. It was a splinter from the back of my front tooth.

How does that even happen? Sure, I can understand cavities in molars. I mean, there are pits and valleys back yonder, excellent nesting places for sugar and gunk that can weaken bone. But the centrals? They have no location where the necessary cocktail of bacteria and acid can find purchase.

Except in my teeth. Thanks again, Mom & Dad, for passing on teeth made of peanut brittle instead of bone.

Off to the dentist I went, where it was patched up and I received a friendly lecture about decreasing my cola/tea/coffee consumption. Right. Because college students generally don't mainline caffeine.

Cut to four years later. A distinct vertical line appeared, and grew darker. It was then that I learned that the presentability of your front teeth is directly proportional to your desire to show your face in public. Armed with my own dental insurance, courtesy of choosing gainful employment at a place that offered such a boon, I selected a new dentist who cleaned up the work of the previous dentist and replaced the filling. Actually, he pretty much spread the filling goo like butter over the back of my whole front tooth. Success!

Cut to twelve years after that. Again, I'm sitting at dinner, this time among my husband and three children, and I feel a hard crumb on my tongue. Except we were eating spaghetti, which does not at all have hard bits in it. Well, at least the way I prepare it. I don't know what you do in your kitchen.

I had a flashback to Hamburger Hamlet and knew that this would not be a good thing. Sure enough, close inspection revealed I had chipped my tooth. On spaghetti. Two days later I was in the dentist's chair, where the venerable Dr. Hickey was telling me that I would need crown for that tooth.

For those of you keeping track, this is now my third crown. And I have a gap where I will get an implant some day. At this rate I'll be in dentures by fifty.

Last week, I got the temporary crown. I requested to be jacked up with all the novocaine a body can bear, but it was still MIGHTY unpleasant to have someone up to his elbows in my face for an hour with a drill. I'm pretty sure ther's a scene from 'American Psycho' that unfolds that way.

From this experience I learned I may have an intolerance to latex being pressed up against my skin for extended periods of time. My face broke out with a constellation of pimples not seen since my adolescence. And the temporary crown? Well, it's temporary. Industry standard is to pick something that works for now, and not really to bother to have an absolute perfect match in color or sticky-outy-ness. The thing lines up so my bite isn't off, but is a micron or twenty thicker and pushes against the inside of my lip, making me feel like I constantly have peanut butter stuck to the front of my tooth. It's thicker in the back, too, so my speech is ganked up. The tip of my tongue is all, "Get out of the WAY!" when I am trying to use sibilant words, but it is fighting a losing battle with this squatter.

So, to re-cap, I am currently a lisping, pimpled, uno-horse-toothed woman. Fellas, fellas, don't bother lining up. I am married, after all.

All of this is to say I've been avoiding mirrors and pictures. I mean, I've never really been all moony over my reflection. But I'm thinking that this year's family portrait won't happen 'til after the holidays.

Yesterday, I went back to get the "you'll feel like you're suffocating but you really won't, I promise" impressions of my teeth done so that I can get a permanent crown. One that is custom-made for my face. Off-the-rack teeth don't work for me. Pants don't either, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised by this.

Anyway, to take the impression, the dentist had to remove the temporary crown. Between sessions of having softball sized clumps of wax jammed in my face, my tongue went on an exploratory mission to see what was left of my original tooth, my pal since I was six years old. Aw, it was just a little niblet of a thing. I was happy just having touched it, imagining a cheery little thing huddled under the crown. King Baby Tooth.

You can understand, then, my chagrin when Dr. Hickey returned with a disturbing rack of fake teeth, each one individually skewered and standing at attention. He grabbed one and positioned in my face, judging the color comparison. I was reminded of my mother-in-law in Sherwin-Williams, holding up swatches and going back for another one, convinced that they aren't quite right.

Dr. Hickey asked me if I wanted to pick up the hand mirror from among his implements and look at the tooth/color he selected. I wanted to say, "No." But, the aesthete in me decided I should probably take a gander.

Oh. my. God. I looked like a hillbilly vampire. My front tooth was GONE, and was replaced with this dumb little cone of a tooth which will serve as the tang for the crown.

I looked for about six seconds before I told my dentist that the choice was a good one. The temporary crown doesn't come in until mid-December, and I'm sure it will become fodder for a new post.

Why?

Because for the past couple of years I've been kicking around the idea of whitening my teeth. Here's the formula for making that decision:

Natural shade of butter + (coffee + red wine) * a lot = blecko color teeth.

When one of your front teeth is getting replaced, though, the time for making that decision is NOW. You can't really whiten a crown. So, the plan is to order the crown a couple of shades lighter, then whiten the real teeth until they match.

This plan can't go wrong, can it? Oh, wait, of COURSE it can. I'm pretty sure my teeth are going to end up looking like this:

Things that Should Be Insurance Against a Sleepover/Hookup

This morning I dropped my daughter off at Pre-K and witnessed someone learning a life lesson.

Background: the Girl's Pre-K is on a college campus. She's not a wunderkind or anything like that, though I, of course, think she's super. The program is open to anyone, but primarily serves the children of faculty, staff, and students.

Anyway, whle my daughter was happily skipping to school, lunch swinging at her side, I saw Sailor Moon trudging uphill toward a dorm. Now, I am definitely making an assumption here, but I have to imagine that this college student did not think, "You know what would brighten up my classes today? Wearing a Sailor Moon outfit!"

Nope.

My guess is that somebody got some last night. So, here's my public service announcement: ladies, get ur freak on. But, if you are dressed as a Manga character, go HOME after the hookup, under the cover of darkness.

I Don't Know How I Did This

To my thumb. It is a pulsating, injured digit. As a result of wine. Not in a deeply dramatic way. I didn't pitch a snifter at someone and stab myself with a passionate shard. Nope. I somehow managed to place my ape thumb in exactly the worst spot possible on my ballerina-style corkscrew. When I pushed the arms down to extirpate the cork, my thumbskin got all squished in the gears.

Great.

I've told you I make my living pounding a keyboard, right? So, work should be AWESOME tomorrow.

Seen in Church Today

I'm not quibbling about the style choice, 'cause hey, at least the wearer of these heels was in church. But I do quibble with the sagacity of wearing such foot torture devices to a Catholic mass. I mean, it's an aerobic workout. You're up, you're down, you're kneeling, you're walking over to your neighbor to deliver the sign of peace, you're waiting in line for Communion. It can wear on the toes even if you're sporting sneakers.

This Is Probably Not the Angle the Cornucopia Institute Was Going For

We've pretty fully converted over to organic meat and dairy. Fruits and veggies are still dependent on price point, mostly because I'm not that concerned if I'm eating genetically modified corn.

So, why the switcheroo? It's not like organic is any more nutritious, and god DAMN is it expensive. Especially if your toddler would drink a gallon of milk a day by himself if you let him. The changeover boils down to one, very simple motivator for me:

I want to stave off my children's puberty 'til they can actually handle it.

Is that too mad scientist of me? I don't know. But I'm looking around at these ten-year-old girls with breasts, and eleven-year-old boys who need to shave, and I'm thinking, God help me. Me, I was a late bloomer. Fourteen or so. But oh my LORD, the blossoming wasn't finished until nineteen or so, which is when my bra size ended up closer to the middle of the alphabet than the beginning.

Just contemplate that for a hot minute.

Can you imagine if that started when I was ten instead of fourteen? When things had, ahem, progressed to the point where I earned occasional ogling from high school boys, I could kind of handle it. But if it had been middle school? Ugh. I could barely handle algebra. Boys staring at my breasts would've pushed me over the edge.

Yeah, so, that's my story with wanting meat and dairy that hasn't been all jacked up with growth hormones. Noble of me, eh?

Mrs. Underwhelm

I don't know what it is about me, but I can't hyperbolize. Sometimes I wonder if maybe I'm still a recovering teenager, and my Doc Martens-era thing of downplaying, well, everything, is still very, very deeply rooted. My coming of age happened at the tail end of the '80's, and it was revolution against bright sparkly spandex and glitter. Okay, revolution is taking it too far. It was more of a passive resistance kind of thing. Punk rock was a revolution. Grunge was kind of laying around in flannel grumbling about things.

Do you see? Do you see how I can't even use the word 'revolution'?

Anyway, this verbal incapacity has manifested itself in a completely benign way. Examples? When I dropped my daughter off at preschool today, my farewell to the teacher was, "Have a good morning!" She told me to have a great day. So, she won, because my good wishes were compartmentalized to the morning. She shot for the whole day.

Last week, I bought milk at the local convenience store on my way home from work. As I was leaving, clutching my change and a sweaty gallon of dairy, I bid the cashier a good day. She, in turn, said, "Have a great evening!"

Grumble.

On Friday night, I went to the liquor store to pick up a bottle of shiraz and tell the clerk, "Have a great night!" And he answered, "Have a fantastic weekend!"

I could just be silly and say things like, "Have the best week of your LIFE!" But that goes against my grain. My time horizon is about four hours, so that's the scope of my good wishes to others. If I see you at eight in the morning, I'm just going to wish you a good morning, because that's as far ahead as I can think.

Random Facebook Status

Have I ever told you about the guy that I accidentally friended on Facebook? No? Well, that's a story for another day. But, anyway, this was his status update today:

"Stop telling God how big your storm is. Instead, tell the storm how big your God is."

My thought? I don't think it's all that productive to talk to storms.

This Weekend

Isn't all about 9-11 for me. A year ago, on this particular weekend, I was in Ocean City, MD, with most of my family. My mother wanted to go one last time, and she wanted everyone to come with her. She paid. I coordinated.

It was her last trip there.

Yes! We're Doing Something Right!

The Girl started preschool this week. Why preschool instead of kindergarten since she's already as self-possessed as a 24-year-old? Because BaCo schools allow you to enroll if you turn five by September 1. If you're born before October 1, then you can be tested and possibly matriculated*. If you are born after October 1, forget about it. The Girl? She was born on November 6, so, off to preschool my daughter goes.

This morning, as I was dropping her off (only moments before, we were making up after a tiff over my too-rapid brushing of her hair), her preschool teacher pulled me aside to say, "She is a beautiful child. You're really doing a good job with her."

Yay! Validation from an (almost) perfect stranger!

*Oh yes, I used "matriculated" in reference to kindergarten.

Vacation's All I Ever Wanted

Just got back from a lovely vacation with my family in Ocean City, Maryland. I KNOW what you New Jersey-ites are thinking: "Blech! Why go to Ocean City, Maryland, when you can enjoy the fruits of Ocean City, New Jersey?"

Because I like the 9-mile long carnival that is Ocean City, Maryland. Also, I know where everything is there. I don't have to worry that we're going to an iffy restaurant, or that a mini-golf joint isn't kid-friendly. I wanted a totally non-thinky vacation, and that is what I got.

Plus, it was nice just to spend time with my kids. I don't think I realize how little time I actually get with them during the week, and to have that much interrupted time to do whatever struck their fancy was pretty wonderful. I had a lot of those moments when I realized that whatever we are doing to raise them seems to be panning out. The Boy and the Girl are both funny, sweet, and can occupy themselves with crayons and trucks when needed. The Little Guy isn't quite verbal, but he makes his thoughts known. His thoughts are usually, "I want to PLAY. You there, you come play with me!" He 'tells' you this by thumping toward you, grabbing a fistful of your shorts, pulling, and shouting "Mweh!"

Some of my favorite quotes from the kids who can talk were:

The Boy: I'm just a little bit evil. (Said at the top of the Ocean City pier's ferris wheel while admiring a demon painted on the side of the Haunted House.)

The Girl: Her name is Dolphiny! (What she christened the pink dolphin she won at the dart game at the pier. The Dolphin is pink and named for the Scooby Doo character, Daphne.)

Okay, so there were probably more than that. And there was more than that to the whole vacation. But then we got back home and life got in the way of me finishing and posting this little record of our time at the beach. So, it's incomplete and doesn't even acknowledge that my parents-in-law came with us, and nobody wounded each other in the whole time that we shared a three bedroom condo. Victories all around!

Adventures in Plumbing

Super Ninja: You know, this is like every stereotypical '50's sitcom, where the husband insists on fixing the sink, and they end up having to call a plumber when the pipes explode.

Me (from under the sink): How is this like that?

Super Ninja: You, the husband, are fixing the sink, while I, the wife, am watching the children.

Me (still under the sink): Oh, NOW I see what the problem is.

Super Ninja: What?

Me: I'm using a toy truck flashlight instead of a real one.

And...scene.

So, What'd We Learn Here? (Daily Gratitude Post-Mortem)

The final post for my series on gratitude was supposed to conclude on my birthday (July 16, for those of you who want to take a minute to go jot that down on a calendar so you can shower me with gifts and well-wishes next year). But I didn't do it, because I wanted to leave you hanging. Nah. Truth is, I didn't want to rush a missive on gratitude on a day that was packed with other activities, thoughts, and wallowings.

Now that I've allowed myself these handful of days to ruminate... Honestly, there's no gut-wrenching analysis on the fruits of exercise.

On a practical level, I wanted to force myself to write--or at least think about writing--every day in a concrete, focused way. It sharpens ye olde observation skills if you're thinking about things as potential blog or fiction fodder. To go through the somewhat academic exercise of evaluating the entertainment level of a story or a thought forces you to recognize that every stray thought that tumbles through your cranium is not gold. It's helping me build up what Hemingway so classically called "a shit detector."

Oh my God. Did I just reference Hemingway? Feel free to punch me in the face if I ever, ever, ever refer to Ernest Hemingway as "Papa."

There were varying degrees of success. My natural voice is one of dissent, snark, and critique, so forcing myself into this construct of gratitude was, at times, challenging. And when you divert your natural flow, I think it surfaces as awkward phrasing. And bad, bad editing. A younger me would have gone back and corrected every error. But the current me shrugs if I happen to miss it in the Preview. Lazy, lazy, current me.

On an emotional level, this past month has been really hard for me, as I knew it would be. So, I wanted to cleave to something more positive rather than spelunk spectacularly into flashbacks to my mother's diagnosis of terminal cancer, unending days in the hospital, and the constant low-level of panic. The days when I was grateful for coffee and other completely inconsequential things? These were days when I missed my mother terribly.

And on a reflective level, I realize the common themes of gratitude splayed out in html are my husband, my children, my family, and my friends. As it should be, no?

Gratitude #62: The Boy, Hooky, and Harry Potter

Today's gratitude is a triple threat, a hat trick, a trifecta!

First, and most importantly, the Boy's birthday is today. He's seven, and he's wonderful. We're well past the point of just trying to keep him well and clean. We're raising him, teaching him right from wrong, imbuing a sense of humor, providing a blue print for life. And the fruits of our labors are paying off. He's a delightful little person, kind, funny, considerate, and loving. Okay, he can also be stubborn and a litttle emotional. But, he's also, you know, SEVEN. So, we've got a little time to help him with that.

Second, Super Ninja and I played hooky together today. Partly to prep for the Boy's birthday, but mostly to just kind of relax together. And you know what we did?

WENT TO SEE HARRY POTTER 7.2! I found it awesome that our theater was peopled not with children, or even teenagers. Nope. All adults, like us, who were clearly cutting work as well.

Gratitude #61: Bastille Day

Fooled you! I'm not actually grateful for Bastille Day. I don't deny the French their right to celebrate the end of tyranny and all that jazz. It just happens also to be the day that my sister and her family move back from England! Woot! There's gotta be some kind of Anglo-Franco joke in there somewhere, but I'm way sleepy, so if you have one, send it my way.

(from Thursday, July 14)

Gratitude #60: Venting

This has been a stressful week at work. Lots to do, all equally important. Plate-spinning type stuff. So, I am glad that I have a ocupole of co-workers with whom I can vent without (a) sounding like I'm a whiny whine-bag, or (b) making them think like htey need to do anything about it.

(from Wednesday, July 13)

Gratitude #59: Going through the Pantry

I fully recognize that I am scraping the bottom of the barrel here. Literally! Since we were away from home last week visiting Super Ninja's family in Ohio, we didn't have a chance to do the full-on grocery store shop that we normally do. Since I'm still crazy busy at work, all I had time to do was snag some staples--milk, bread, cranberry apple juice cocktail.

What? Your basic foodstuffs are different?

Here's the nutty thing, though: we had enough grub stockpiled that we got through the week without needing anything else. That was both awesome and scary at the same time. I'm not one of those, "Better have a store of food for when the revolution comes" kinds of people. I think I just buy stuff, forget I bought it, and then add more. Pretty soon, it's like farfalle is being fruitful and multiplying, and I have a half a dozen boxes of it.

(I am also not a hoarder, by the way.)

So, now I am resolved that I will only buy perishables until I whittle down my collection of frozen and dry goods, excellent sales be damned!

(from Tuesday, July 12)

Pajama Story Time

Last night, I took my oldest two kids to the Pajama Story Time event at our local library. It started at 7:00 p.m., which was the big selling point for me. See, 7:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. is the witching hour chez Vaughan. The kids are punchy, the Little Guy is usually sailing off to bedtime, and the whole span of time is usually filled with bickering and random blows. I thought the change of venue might help a little.

When we got there, I saw that the story time is intended for kids ages 2 through 5. Perfect for the Girl, not so much for the Boy. I just told him to pretend he was five, and was reminded of my father shaving a few years off of my age whenever we went to a buffet restaurant. Kids under thirteen always ate cheaper. No one ever looked askance at me. 'Tis a boon to be short sometimes.

The Girl was enthralled by story time, and I can see she is going to be SUCH a teacher's pet. Shouting out answers, doing exactly what the 'teacher' says, grinning from ear to ear when told she was correct. Oh lawd, she will love school. The Boy drifted away to the coloring sheets and crayons, which was fine by me. He could've read the selection of stories to the kids gathered together, so I could see that hearing them wasn't really interesting to him.

The whole story time took about 30 minutes. Since I'd expected to be out for about an hour, we decided to go into the library's play room, as did a bunch of the other story time kids. It comprises kiddie kitchen and food market furniture and paraphernalia. The Boy was 'running' the food market for a bit, and the toddlers would steal money from the cash register. He jokingly yelled, "I'm going to call the cops on you!" as they gleefully ran away. The Girl wanted to run the shop with the Boy, but he staunchly refused. Eventually, though, he got kind of bored with it and wandered off to play with something else, and the Girl took control of the shop.

The little ones sharing the room with us were, child by child, snapped up by caretakers to go home for beddy-bye. After most of them had gone, another child and mama entered the room to play. They were African-American. The little girl, about three years old, wandered over to the shop. The cash register drawer popped open, and she helped herself to some of the money.

I think you can see where this is going.

The Girl very happily, and very loudly, shouted, "Call the cops! Call the cops! Call the cops!" AND SHE WOULDN'T STOP. Not for my grumpy face/head shake, not for my death whisper, not for my (hopefully) subtle gesturing. But I couldn't make a HUGE deal out of it, because I knew she was thinking, "Hey! African-Americans steal!" I KNOW she was just playacting what the group had done before, but the newcomers certainly didn't know that. And if I tried to explain it to the newcomers, that would also make it a bigger deal.

Aargh.

Gratitude #58: Air Conditioning

Did I do this one already? No? Great! Baltimore is as swampy as... a swamp right now. DO YOU SEE HOW THE HEAT HAS MELTED MY BRAIN? I can't even come up with a good metaphor, a linguistic feat in which I typically traffic all the live-long day.

Anyway, the HVAC gave up the ghost at my office on Monday. Welcome back from your long weekend in Westlake, eh? I have a corner office, because I am feared and respected among my colleagues. Know what that becomes when you have no air conditioning? A terrarium.

(from Monday, July 11)

I Love the Dark, but I HATE Nature

I'm an indoors kind of gal. Always have been. Don't get me wrong. I have enjoyed many an outdoorsy weekend with Second Best Friend and her husband, Hunter. Give me a campfire, some s'mores, and a dark sky speckled with an unfathomable number of stars, and I'm a happy girl.

But, I don't really seek outdoorsy activities. Sure, I'll take the kids on a nature walk. But given the choice between a board game and a hike, I'll take the board game.

And you know what? I don't think the outdoors like ME very much. This summer has provided stacks of evidence.

The first weekend in June, I went to my goddaughter's 10th birthday party. It was a pool party. I LOVE swimming. But there was not as much swimming as there was keeping my small children afloat. One particularly daring 18-month old required that I make a diving catch to keep him from cannonballing into the pool. Said diving catch resulted in me scraping the bejeesus out of my shin. And, once I climbed out of the pool, I apparently walked past a bowl of Ebola, because this tiny, centimeter-square scrape turned into a red, puffy, hot mass of annoyance within a day. It took TWO WEEKS to heal, and I STILL boast a stupid purple scar.

Two weeks later, same house, different daughter, another pool party. Another great time. And another random patch of allergic reaction to something. I'm thinking bug bite. But, seriously, I've never reacted like this to a bug bite before. I had a coffee-mug sized angry patch on my chest. So, maybe people weren't staring at my astounding cleavage for once. Perhaps they were just horrified by the monkey bite decorating my sternum.

Two weeks after that, I'm chilling in a park with my family, awaiting the fireworks spectacular that a suburb of Cleveland will deliver to me and mine. A couple of days later, something unpleasant and...bumpy...decorates my hip. Okay, if we're being COMPLETELY honest here, it decorates the crease where my belly, if it gets ANY BIGGER, will start to fold over. I am not in total FUPA territory yet. But I'm getting close to Scary Weight. So, at first I'm thinking that it's one more depressing sign of my absolute need to commit to the gym more regularly (like, maybe TWICE per week), and is just some kind of friction blister.

To confirm my suspicion, I do the absolute worst thing possible. You might think the worst thing is to ignore it, but no, good soldier! The worst thing is to Google your symptoms. Know what Dr. G. told me? That I had ovarian cancer. Or, second best, I had an STD. My third string diagnosis was that I have shingles.

Stupid Google.

But, all of this Doomsday diagnosis prompted a visit to the urgent care facility, and I am one hundred percent sure that the physician's assistant and doctor who tended me thought that I was some ridiculous housewife crafting terminal illness out of a bug bite.

Which, by the way, is what I was diagnosed with. The doctor assured me that they see this around this time of year, and that the bug bites so deeply that he* pushes bacteria from the surface of my skin into my bloodstream, causing an infection.

NONE of this made me feel any better, by the way. Oh, omnipresent bacteria all over my skin, you say? Delightful!

We are going to totally IGNORE that I felt no bug bite, and that this can't possibly be some eruption of a heretofore undiscovered unpleasantry.

I am now the proud owner of a three-day cycle of Augmentin. So, for those of you with kids, my infected bug bite is about one-third as bad as an average kid's ear infection. I am tough, eh?

*No female would do this to another one of it's kind. Had to be a jerk male.

Gratitude #57: In-Car DVD Players

Cue the controversy! While we don't have one of those fancy-pants cars with the built-in DVD players, we DO own a set that we can strap onto the back of the center row seats for the Boy and the Girl to enjoy on long car rides. I think the novelty of being able to control which movies they watch from the PG collection provided to them is what matters most. The conversations they have while making a selection go something like this:

The Girl: Boy, let's pick something that we BOTH agree on.

The Boy: 'Wall-E'?

The Girl: No. How about 'Storyteller'?

The Boy: No.

The Girl: Ooh! How about 'The Electric Company'?

The Boy: (Thinks for a second.) Okay.

The Girl: (Claps.) Alright! Let's do it!

So, perhaps I am also grateful that our eldest two children appear to get along rather well. Also, I give you free and full permission to get all judgy about the fact that my children watch mostly my generation's kid entertainment. Also: please note that Pixar films are allowed in my home, despite my lukewarm feelings toward them.

(from Sunday July 10)