11 May 2001
Last year: They're both great guys alone - cheerful, intelligent, enthusiastic, and friendly - but put them together, and it's like they become part of a hive mind or something and turn into two hands of Loki.
There was a Plan, and the Plan was good: The dentist appointment - a simple cleaning and checkup - should not take more than half an hour. Forty-five minutes at the outside. Another half hour to cross to the other side of town and fill the car's tank with gas. And half an hour to stop at the drugstore and have prescriptions filled. That was the Plan: I would be home around six - absolutely no later than six-thirty.
It was a good Plan. But, alas, it was not a strong Plan. The Plan did not reckon with the woman in the next room at the dentist's office, who had apparently not been to a dentist in years. The first hygienist polished my teeth and solicited my opinion on fluoride treatment flavor, and then left me to wait for the other hygienist, who was apparently the only one allowed to operate the noisemaker that vibrates tartar from one's teeth.
I fell asleep in the dentist's chair, listening to the hygienist on the other side of the room's partition exclaiming things like, "I just didn't expect it to be this bad!" When I woke up she was telling the woman that she should rinse with salt water, and could take aspirin for the pain.
The rest of the cleaning was pretty much par for the course - screechwhine of the ultrasonic cleaner, the scrape of the metal hooks, wincing when the hygienist forced the floss between the two teeth that are too close together. Wincing again when the floss caught on the edge of a filling and pulled on it. Gagging on the fluoride treatment.
The dentist came in and poked at the filling the hygienist had snagged. "Hmm," he muttered. "There's a crack in this filling," he said. "You're going to need a crown."
"What?" I exclaimed in panic, my sleep-fogged brain for just a moment confusing a crown and a root canal.
"Yep," he said, poking and picking. "We should've done it last year. I thought a filling would do, but there's just not enough tooth for it to stick to. We'll deduct the cost of the filling from the cost of the crown, since it's my fault. It's just two visits. The first one is the long one - we'll grind away some of the tooth and take a mold, then fit you with a temporary crown. Then on the second visit we'll attach the crown." He noted the panic lingering in my eyes. "It'll look just like your tooth," he promised, trying to sound reassuring.
I was not reassured. I don't care what the tooth looks like. I don't really care too much about the cost (though that's pretty frikkin' exhorbitant) or even the time it'll take.
I hate the drill. Hate it. Hate it. Hate it. It never fails to make me panic. At least by now they've got it in my chart that I'm resistant to lidocaine so they know they have to give me a double dose. I thought about sedation, but that's another $250, which I really can't afford for a relatively simple procedure.
So I've got an appointment in about two weeks for part one. Anticipate a lot of whining in the journal about then.
The good news is that aside from needing the crown, everything else was fine.
Great.
I stopped at the gas station and filled up the car, which had been wavering frighteningly close to 'E' for a couple of days already. A milestone! For the first time ever, I paid $20 to fill up my car with gas.
I went to the drugstore and handed over my prescriptions, then perused Mother's Day cards. Lousy selection, but I had to find something so we could get a card in the mail to Matt's mom by this morning. I found a few cards that weren't too awful - though half of them were blanks. I picked up some conditioner and then went back to the back of the store and debated buying a book on herbal remedies until the pharmacist told me my drugs were ready.
My poor Plan. I got home nearly an hour later than anticipated.
I just want to say that hormones are a funny thing.
I don't get severe PMS, like a lot of unfortunate women do. Mainly what happens to me is that sometime the week before my period, I'll get a little oversensitive. Usually what happens is that Matt will sigh, or say something about something that's frustrating him, or not say anything to me for maybe half an hour. And then I'll have an oversensitive reaction to it and ask him if he's mad at me for something, and then he will get irritated with me for being so insecure (but he'll try to hide it). And a couple of days later, I can't even remember why I thought that.
I was sitting up late last night, chatting with Karen and K.T. Matt went to bed before me, and I thought he was stomping around a little as he got into bed. You're just overreacting, I told myself. Don't upset him by waking him up to ask if he's upset.
When I went to bed about half an hour later, I snuggled up to him. His return hug was a little perfunctory. You're imagining things, I told myself. He's mostly asleep, for petesake. I thought I'd be cute, so I picked up the little teddy bear and put it on him. He knocked it to the floor. He's half-asleep, I reminded myself. There's no need to get paranoid about this.
It continued like that until I went to sleep, and again in the morning. I was feeling sortof proud of myself for not giving in to the hormonal-emotional response.
That's when Matt told me he had been sortof upset, because I hadn't put the computer down long enough to give him a good-night hug and kiss.
Darnit. Can't blame him for getting a little upset over that one. I've gotten into a bigger snit over lesser offenses. I apologized and promised to remember in the future, and he was satisfied long before I got over feeling guilty.
But just once, I'd like to be able to tell the difference between Matt really being upset and my hormones misinterpreting perfectly normal behavior. It would be nice.
K.T. and Kevin went out to the junkyard where their car is to retrieve their personal items from it, since it can't be repaired. Kevin took pictures, in case their lawsuit actually goes to court, and K.T. sent me a picture.
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Isn't it lovely? Even given the darkness of the picture (I lightened it a little already) it's pretty spooky to imagine someone actually being in the car when that happened to it.
Well. A long entry today to make up for the short one yesterday, I suppose. It's going to be a busy weekend; we're having dinner with the Brandts tonight, we'll be visiting K.T. some time Saturday, and since Sunday is Mother's Day we'll be having dinner with my parents. (Have I mentioned that my mom's a freak? I asked her what she wanted for Mother's Day, and apparently what she wants is for Matt and I to come over and let her cook for us. I don't get her, sometimes.)
And there's a "pot-luck" lunch in the office today. I barely remembered in time to make cheese biscuits last night. Wait; my spidey-sense is tingling! It's telling me... I won't be getting much work done today.
Word of the Day:
marplot - one who frustrates or ruins a plan or undertaking by meddling
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