So. Apparently I have thin gums and thin bones (at least in my mouth). This, plus the joy of having braces as a teen and a bit of tooth grinding (I conveniently just grind upper and lower canines against each other for pinpoint damage accuracy) my gums are receding in 4 spots.
This is a pretty sexy problem, where my gums rise up (or lower down) and show the stalk of my teeth here and there. It isn't a big deal except that once you run out of gum, there's really not much that holds your teeth in your mouth… that and it can expose the tooth shaft or root or whatever it was the dental guy said when I forgot to pay close attention. It could be worse, some people have this problem due to disease. My mouth though? Not diseased.
What will happen is I will take an Advil and some benzodiazepine I hadn’t heard of yet an hour before I get to my appointment. Then they'll numb my face up and steal some tissue from the roof of my mouth. They'll then graft this roof of mouth tissue onto my gums (first procedure will be right side upper and lower together), give me a retainer thing that protects the now terribly sore roof of my mouth, and send me home telling me to eat soft foods for a week. The best part is that it costs $1300 per area, and like I said, there are 4 areas. My insurance will likely cover 50% of it, but only up to $1500 total… including the routine visits and consultation expenses that I already had this year. So, I get to write a fat check to the nice dentist guy for the rest. Then wait till the next calendar year so my insurance will pay to have some of the other side done. They say it doesn't hurt much, and if I can manage not to grind my canines, it should hold it for good.
I just hope the apocalypse doesn't come before the next calendar year, I'd hate to have asymmetrical gums in the mad max world of the future.
It's official. I passed the motorcycle school class. I got a few points off for not turning tightly enough in the u-turn box, and not going fast enough in the turn test. But here's why: the bike I'd used the day before started up and just didn't seem to get warm. I kept the choke out, I tried real hard, I revved the engine. I tried to keep a positive outlook but it started to suck more and more. I spent all my time trying to keep the bike running and no time paying attention to all of the turning exercises. It is the worst to be one of the only girls and be the one who can't manage your bike. It does not give a good name to girls, and it does not get the best treatment from all your male classmates. I stalled at every start. One instructor just kept telling me to pull out the choke (it was fully open) and the other gave a pause and said "that piece of shit is only firing on one cylinder!" He said he'd see if we could get a different bike out at the break.
He did, and then I could finally pay attention and ride the thing. The clutch lever wasn't as far a reach for my little girlie hands either… neither was the brake. I could find neutral. What a difference. So I passed. We all passed. I can't believe they unleash us on the roads like this. There is no way most of us are good enough to go out into traffic. I need to practice. I also need to ride my own nice little light bike. There will be some working on it this week, and then hopefully next weekend, a little practice run. Very exciting. Also very dangerous.
Oh, look at me go with all the updates.
What can I say, I've been busy.
So recently my sink started to drain really slowly. I tried the plunger. Nothing. I tried some Draino. Nothing. I tried stomping around and yelling at it. Nothing. Then I thought I'd check out the left half of the sink that I always leave covered... and OH MY GOD it was full of vile sludge. I had no idea. Scum and detritus and vile disgustingness. I scraped some of it away (it tried to crawl away from me, I'm sure it was going to attack me in my sleep) and threw it out. And I realized that there was a far more serious problem with my sink than I was admitting. I called my pal in a panic. So he comes over on Tuesday with a bucket and some tools and starts taking things apart. Inside? More vile sludge, a fast food straw or two (what? yah, I don't know), and generally horrifying material. He wouldn’t let me look in the bucket, so I can’t be sure, but I'm pretty sure it was horrifying.
In the process of taking things apart he broke a pipe. In the rush of trying to get to the hardware store to replace it, he got the wrong kind. So… the fixing has to wait till Wednesday. On Wednesday he can't find the pipe and tells me he is going to go look for it and get back to me. By 10pm I hadn't heard anything. I was busy complaining away to my chat pals and one of them happened to have a bunch of pipes and ran to my rescue. Really, what nice pals to deal with sludge and pipes and the smelly rotting cupboard under my sink. He totally saved my sinkless ass from sinklessness.
Now all the slime is gone, the weird smells are almost gone, and everything is draining and sparkling again. Showing with my dishes was ok, but really, this is better.
For those who used to follow and comment about my exciting future on motorcycles, I will complete the class this weekend (finally) after an extended hiatus thanks to endless rain and spending time with people who I think may have been secretly, or unconsciously discouraging me from riding. It is finally sunny out these days… well except for today, and there are showers scheduled for tomorrow, which is not pleasing me… but… only chances of showers, not an endless deluge of rainy rain. The bummer is… I am in the 7am class. Dawn is not something I generally look forward to seeing. I prefer to sleep through it.
The most exciting thing about this is… I'll be getting a new drivers license with new photo… and though I forgot to wear make up or even brush my hair that day, it looks way more cute and hip than my old photo. Hooray.
j-ra told me she thought I should change my personal ad to better reflect who I am and what I'm looking for. For some reason I have only been contacted by 45 yr old men who live across bridges. 1) What the hell? and, 2) I already tried that and with pretty pathetic results. I just don't think it's what I'm looking for. As it happens we decided that the only thing I could really say would be: "There are no words to describe the awesomeness of me!" I'm not sure that would really come across appropriately. Luckily, I've found an outlet for my flirting closer to home. Sure, it may also result in patheticness... who can say? But it is a fun springtime activity just the same.
I woke up Saturday morning with an aching knee. It's pretty surprising I made it through one of the wettest seasons of all time without a constant throbbing ache in each of them. They're both aching now, so I went by the herbalist and got some more "dirt juice" fixin's. I thought I'd ask him about my headaches too. Been having some visual problems and I'd thought they were from allergies (thanks to the heavily perfumed ladies at the office) and that may be the cause, but the visual problem is actually the aura of a migraine. It never occurred to me that it could be a migraine because the following headache is not the worst pain of my life or anything.
Here's what happens: Suddenly I get a similar sensation to that of coming from the bright outdoors into a dimly lit room. It feels like it'll take a while for my eyes to adjust. The problem is that I haven't changed location, usually I'm just sitting there minding my own business. So this sensation leads to a blind spot right in the center of my field of vision. Peripheral vision is fine, but whatever is right in front of my face is impossible to focus on. It's like my brain knows something is there, but I just can't actually see it. It's disconcerting and after it happened a few times, kind of terrifying, but totally transient. It dissipates in 5 or 10 minutes and my vision is back to normal as if nothing ever happened.
But then, 30 minutes later… The headache. Like I said, it's not the worst headache of my life but it's there, and deep, and it hangs on for a day or two. Luckily I don't seem to get nauseous, but my digestion does suffer. I get a little sensitive to noise, more sensitive to light, and VERY irritable and lethargic. Basically, I want to go home and be alone. I can force myself to go out and can manage in the world and at work, and even have a good time, but yah. It sucks. Later when the headache goes away, my neck muscles become extremely stiff. Not great since it tends to engage the chronic spasm probs in my shoulder. Yay.
I wasn't sure what was going on and didn't put the aura together with the headache with the stiff neck… it isn't only the herbalist who confirms it as a migraine though, my regular western Jewish doctor does too. She says, take Excedrin. She also prescribed better allergy meds (probably the trigger) and something for the neck/shoulders. She seemed to think going for it with the herbs was as good an idea as any.
Before I left the herbalist he did an acupuncture session. I don’t usually feel much effect from the needles, it's relaxing but I've always felt that was as much due to the 30 minutes resting in a quiet room as the needles that were sticking out of me, but this time he did some points he's never done on me before; the Window to the Sky. Mostly up near the base of the skull, and when he turned out the light and left the room I hit the line between sleeping and waking and lingered there completely lost until he returned half an hour later. It was a confusing half dream state and probably the most relaxed I've been in months…. Maybe longer.