My awkward phase continues.
In a tone that can only be described as glee, my dentist (now my orthodontist) told me on Friday that my teeth and jaws are catastrophically misaligned, any any further living without immediate treatment will contribute to a whole host of horrible outcomes like cracked molars or TMJ, and pretty much guarantee an early ticket to denturehood. I have to have braces, and I have to have them yesterday. In addition, I have a tongue thrust situation which will have to be corrected with behavior modification "barbs" on the inside of my teeth making it painful to put my tongue where it automatically wants to go. Further, my palette is too high, so I'll need an expander, and the kicker is I have to wear this stuff for two years, and then a retainer for the rest of my life. But the fun doesn't end there. I walked shell shocked from the diagnosis into what's called the "financing options" office, where I learned that my dental insurance covers braces only for individuals up to age 25 (probably because who needs them after that, right?) So I will be paying $5,000 of my own money to be transformed into an orthodontic cautionary tale.
I couldn't be more excited.
When I was 15 I had a flat chest, a face covered in acne and a giant head of frizzy hair. When these facts would bother me, I would console myself with two things: 1. At least I didn't have braces and 2. eventually I would reach adulthood and all those awful things would go away and I would emerge a beautiful grown up swan with her own car and bank account.
Well friends, fast forward to 2011, where I do indeed have my own car and bank account. I'm a 41 year old swan with persistent acne, a flat chest made even worse by several months of breastfeeding, stretch marks from pregnancy, wrinkles, and now the coup de grace, braces to keep from further damaging my precious calorie intake source. In one month I will have to learn to eat and talk with a Buick Le Sabre in my mouth, without slurring or slobbering on myself.
Mason, who just got all this junk off, is finding great joy in my present predicament, spending a lot of time educating me on what hurts the most and where food gets stuck. Most of the adults in my life are trying to keep from openly smirking. This leaves me with my my last (and frankly most desperate) effort at self consolation: at least I don't need glasses yet (my vision has always been pretty good), and I don't have to walk the Marshall Missouri high school halls while wearing enough metal to send the TSA into pat down mode. Oh yeah, and I can stay out at late as I want! (I can't stay awake as late as I want, but where I fall asleep is completely up to me!)
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Friday, January 14, 2011
Seriously?
Take tonight. At dinner, I was telling my boys about two things that couldn't be effectively compared. I said, "I mean, it's like apples and oranges." Mason replied, "Why? They're both round, they're both fruit, how are they that different?" And Monte, joining the conversation for the first time, said, "What? Do we need to go to the store?"
I could be hiding state secrets for all these people know!
Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Random Things
Stuff buzzing around in my head:
1. Sometimes the past year seems so unreal, that I actually believe I'm walking around in the world's most vivid dream, and at some point I'll wake up in the Oak Cliff house back in Missouri with some serious bed hair. Of course I will have overslept in the worst way and it will be spring.
2. Stephen asked me to play air hockey tonight. I didn't want to but I did, because I kept thinking "cat's in the cradle" you know? So thanks to Cat Stevens or Ugly Kid Joe or whomever, I'm playing air hockey to the best of my ability when suddenly the score is 3 to 1 in Stephen's favor. And in the flattest monotone you've ever heard, he says, "I'm ahead. You need to try harder."
3. I've been cooking lately, but the only meal I make that my family likes is frozen pizza. I wonder if I can get on that show Wife Swap, and be sent to some Amish family that looks forward to green beans from a can because it's almost like ordering take out.
4. It's hard to get back into the exercise groove here because lots of the subdivisions are self-contained bits of land just off streets that would elsewhere be considered county highways. No sidewalks and random cars doing sixty in a forty. "How did she die?" "Well, it appears she had some winter weight on her and thought she could still cross a street." "We lose a lot of 'em thattaway."
5. Thanks Netflix for giving me back Mystery Science Theater, even if they're mostly Joel episodes.
6. We start bedtimes here at 8:30, but still can't get our kids in bed until 10. There's nothing odd or funny about that. It just is.
1. Sometimes the past year seems so unreal, that I actually believe I'm walking around in the world's most vivid dream, and at some point I'll wake up in the Oak Cliff house back in Missouri with some serious bed hair. Of course I will have overslept in the worst way and it will be spring.
2. Stephen asked me to play air hockey tonight. I didn't want to but I did, because I kept thinking "cat's in the cradle" you know? So thanks to Cat Stevens or Ugly Kid Joe or whomever, I'm playing air hockey to the best of my ability when suddenly the score is 3 to 1 in Stephen's favor. And in the flattest monotone you've ever heard, he says, "I'm ahead. You need to try harder."
3. I've been cooking lately, but the only meal I make that my family likes is frozen pizza. I wonder if I can get on that show Wife Swap, and be sent to some Amish family that looks forward to green beans from a can because it's almost like ordering take out.
4. It's hard to get back into the exercise groove here because lots of the subdivisions are self-contained bits of land just off streets that would elsewhere be considered county highways. No sidewalks and random cars doing sixty in a forty. "How did she die?" "Well, it appears she had some winter weight on her and thought she could still cross a street." "We lose a lot of 'em thattaway."
5. Thanks Netflix for giving me back Mystery Science Theater, even if they're mostly Joel episodes.
6. We start bedtimes here at 8:30, but still can't get our kids in bed until 10. There's nothing odd or funny about that. It just is.
Friday, January 7, 2011
Are We There Yet?
I'm an avid blog reader, if not a blog writer, and one of the blogs I try to keep up with (semi-successfully) is Jeni Allen's Peace and Carrots. It's a great way to see how big her kids have gotten, get tips, have something to read while waiting for my kids to get out of school and get into my car . . . anyway, her most recent post (as of this writing) referred to ways in which we gals with seasonal affective disorder (that's right, S.A.D., or as laymen--and me when I'm being real--refer to it, the blahs that occur when nature takes back all her sunlight) can effectively cope.
Specifically, I refer you to numero seis in the list: Explore! Get out of the house and go somewhere! Go to a different library, a different mall, a museum, a park. Take a drive to a part of town you haven't seen before and spend some time exploring. If your kids are older, they can help you plan your excursion and even map out your adventure!
We Ellis' did this not too long ago. It started with cupcakes. Seriously. Apparently the new thing in urban America is bakeries that sell upscale cupcakes and not much else to yuppies and ladies who lunch. OKC has five or eight of 'em, and, tired as I was of looking at the same four walls day in and day out with breaks only for church and school transportation, I said one Saturday, "Hey, we should go get some of those deliciously overpriced cupcakes, at one of those places. You know?" Monte did know, and didn't want to go which made it even more fun, but he didn't want to argue and the babies were already in the car, so away we went seeking the elusive Oklahoman overpriced cupcake. We were driving at the time, and nobody brought an iPad, so we didn't have an exact location. But we pretty much knew about where it was, so no problem.
Except we didn't know exactly where it was. And it turned out that each of the adults in charge of the route were talking about a different cupcake place (how can this be, since you each speak the same language, you may well scoff, but these situations happen and happen regularly when one of the adults in question patently refuses to learn the proper name for anything. For example he often asks his wife if she's seen that one show, with that one guy in it. You know the guy I mean.) So our exploration ended up in one crazy trip in and out and up and down and all over Oklahoma City with three screaming boys in the back. We finally found Pinkitzel (the cupcake place I was talking about) where the cupcakes were indeed overpriced and delicious. We bought six, and by the time three of them were eaten by the brothers, my van looked like a bakery crime scene. So for my trouble, I got very very lost, paid $28 in US dollars for six cupcakes (really), got my cupcakes eaten out from under me while trying to find my way home, and the rewarding job of wiping up icing and vacuuming crumbs out of the van I had just cleaned the day before.
You might believe that I'm about to say "So DON'T explore! It doesn't pay!" but I'm not, because for all the ridiculousness of that day, I will remember it fondly while picturing Stephen's face absolutely COVERED in icing. What's more, I'll probably suggest it again in the near future (maybe overpriced buffalo wings this time) because exploration is really the best and only way to have an adventure--even one that you don't want to repeat anytime soon. I guess the lesson I learned in all this is, exploration and spontaneity certainly go hand in hand, but not if you have to be somewhere in an hour. They'll also lead you in and out of Mordor and through Kevin Durant's living room, in search of a cupcake. It's just their nature.
Specifically, I refer you to numero seis in the list: Explore! Get out of the house and go somewhere! Go to a different library, a different mall, a museum, a park. Take a drive to a part of town you haven't seen before and spend some time exploring. If your kids are older, they can help you plan your excursion and even map out your adventure!
We Ellis' did this not too long ago. It started with cupcakes. Seriously. Apparently the new thing in urban America is bakeries that sell upscale cupcakes and not much else to yuppies and ladies who lunch. OKC has five or eight of 'em, and, tired as I was of looking at the same four walls day in and day out with breaks only for church and school transportation, I said one Saturday, "Hey, we should go get some of those deliciously overpriced cupcakes, at one of those places. You know?" Monte did know, and didn't want to go which made it even more fun, but he didn't want to argue and the babies were already in the car, so away we went seeking the elusive Oklahoman overpriced cupcake. We were driving at the time, and nobody brought an iPad, so we didn't have an exact location. But we pretty much knew about where it was, so no problem.
Except we didn't know exactly where it was. And it turned out that each of the adults in charge of the route were talking about a different cupcake place (how can this be, since you each speak the same language, you may well scoff, but these situations happen and happen regularly when one of the adults in question patently refuses to learn the proper name for anything. For example he often asks his wife if she's seen that one show, with that one guy in it. You know the guy I mean.) So our exploration ended up in one crazy trip in and out and up and down and all over Oklahoma City with three screaming boys in the back. We finally found Pinkitzel (the cupcake place I was talking about) where the cupcakes were indeed overpriced and delicious. We bought six, and by the time three of them were eaten by the brothers, my van looked like a bakery crime scene. So for my trouble, I got very very lost, paid $28 in US dollars for six cupcakes (really), got my cupcakes eaten out from under me while trying to find my way home, and the rewarding job of wiping up icing and vacuuming crumbs out of the van I had just cleaned the day before.
You might believe that I'm about to say "So DON'T explore! It doesn't pay!" but I'm not, because for all the ridiculousness of that day, I will remember it fondly while picturing Stephen's face absolutely COVERED in icing. What's more, I'll probably suggest it again in the near future (maybe overpriced buffalo wings this time) because exploration is really the best and only way to have an adventure--even one that you don't want to repeat anytime soon. I guess the lesson I learned in all this is, exploration and spontaneity certainly go hand in hand, but not if you have to be somewhere in an hour. They'll also lead you in and out of Mordor and through Kevin Durant's living room, in search of a cupcake. It's just their nature.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)