Sunday, March 25, 2007

Good news/bad news

I've always had an intense moral relationship with dentistry. I grew in the first wave of flouride treatments and orthidonture, but, blessed with a resolutely old-school (and, actually, kind of old) dentist, I never endured anything more than a teeth cleaning. And, every year, I was fussed over: "Oh, such clean teeth, never any cavities, going to put us out of business."

I was/am strongly bent on being good, and took a great deal of condescending pride in my oral hygiene -- tooth decay was for other, lesser children of inferior, slovenly stock. This attitude lasted me all the way up to age 23 when I got my first cavity, the probable result of drinking unflourinated water for the better part of a year. Okay, I figured, everyone's human.

Well, there's no dental insurance on the fabulous health plan here, but it took me a while to figure that out, and then, it looked as if we were going to switch insurers because BH's company would cover us, and, with one thing and another, I hadn't been to the dentist in almost two years. Until Friday.

The good news: I got my teeth cleaned (damn, did it take a while to scrape off all that plaque). I got the fear of God put into me again about flossing and mouthwash. The hygienist was extremely nice and non-sadistic . . . unlike my childhood hygienist who always commented that the only way to know if you were flossing hard enough was blood. . .

However . . .

The bad news: I have a small cavity on my right back molar. Many explanations are possible, the most logical by far being: well, you didn't go to the dentist for two years, dingbat. Or, my current favorite: you're a bad person. Original sin has found its way into my teeth, and I'm a little nonplussed. I also have an appointment to get the cavity filled next week, and, yes, I'm paying for all of this out of pocket. Grrrrrrrr.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Hello again . . .

It's me.

I feel as if I should have some kind of massively exciting reason to have been away for weeks and weeks, but it's more a combination of things:

1) inchoate grumpiness
2) frequent travel
3) lots of little miniprojects requiring the sending of emails or the attending of rehearsals or the scheduling of schedules

leading to

4) marked inefficiancy on the major projects, like, you know, writing plays. Not been so good at doing that recently.

leading to

5) inchoate grumpiness

Nothing major or life-shattering, just the feeling that, for no good reason other than late winter, my batteries are weak, and I kind of just want to stay in bed. To put this in other terms, I have read virtually every magazine on the news stand for the month of March. I have magazine brain. Lots of pictures, few words, and the belief that shopping and/or exfoliation and/or kitchen reorganization will remake me into the person I was meant to be. Except I don't have the energy to shop or exfoliate, let alone attack the kitchen -- just to read magazines.

This isn't totally fair -- I'm caught up on laundry, I've cooked a lot of yummy meals the leftovers of which are pleasantly frozen for a rainy day. I even got a thank-you note in the mail today for a package I received on Monday, and I'm seeing the dentist (of my own volition) on Friday. So, it's not depression with a capital D, just feeling . . . "meh." And "meh" makes a hard blog post.

On a break from the magazine rack, I read Julie/Julia this weekend and it was pretty great, and reminded me that:

1) I am a better cook than I was a year ago and that's cool
2) it's okay to be young and grumpy and take it all out on absurd schemes
3) blogging can be good

It also made me realize that

4) it is highly unlikely that I will have a book deal by 30

But you can't win them all.

I guess what you can do is make cocoa while the weather still demands it, knit, and be glad there are so many magazines to read.