The Coronation

Well, yesterday began the arduous task that is putting a crown on my tooth. As you'll recall, I alluded to this last month or so in another blog.

It wasn't really as bad as I was expecting, but it was an odd thing. I arrived bright and early at Dr Guts's office - it was snowing, it was cold. I went inside to find that if there hadn't been a roof over the building it could have been snowing inside. It was that cold in the damn place.

I waited my requisite 15 minutes or so and was called inside, thinking, well, at least it has to be warmer in the Tooth Rooms, away from the door. Wrong. I swear it was no more than 50 degrees in that place. I sat for most of my 2 1/2 hours there in the "cold position," meaning, I slipped my arms out of my sleeves and held them against my naked flesh. (This is a common position for me, and I've gotten to not be the least embarrassed about assuming it. I spent a goodly portion of the TheCompanyIWorkFor meeting Tuesday sitting the same way.)

After the necessary molds were made of my teeth (that's not nearly as nasty as it used to be), Dr Guts came in and administered The Needle. Once again, as with my recently filled tooth, one shot wasn't enough. I sat and waited, and when he came back my lip wasn't "feeling big" as he asks it to be - it was only "tingly." So, one more shot, and another nice (albeit cold) wait, and then he was back to start the task.

I really like Dr Guts. But there's one thing about him. He just looks so nebbishy, all skinny, with pointy face, straight hair, and glasses. (The skinny comes from being a triathlete, so I guess he's not nearly as nebbishy as I imagine.) However, with that quiet look, when he says something funny, I just tend to lose it. It happened last time when he exclaimed in seeing my hands whilst drilling, "Boy, you've really got the death grip there!"

Well, yesterday, when he came back in and checked to make sure I was numb enough, and I was, he sat down, rared my chair back, and said, "And here we go - the world's first chicken to human brain transplant!" That, plus the uncontrollable shivers, put me in complete Giggle Mode.

I should have known it was going to be an interesting experience when the assistant gave me glasses to put on. Big clear glasses like they wear on PBS woodworking shows. And I understand why. Once the procedure began, there were the most interesting things flying from my mouth - water, bits of tooth, it looked like a regular Fourth of July celebration. And every time stuff would fly up, well, I'd giggle.

Another problem I had was my pants. I have these dark gray pants that I really like, but they're not really dentist-worthy. They're more for sitting with your feet on the floor. They kept riding up, showing the piece of calf between the hem and the top of my socks. I spent the whole time while I was numbing reaching down and pulling them back taut to my shoes, an interesting sight seeing as how my arms were not in their sleeves, but under my shirt. But once the fireworks began, I had to use my feet to try and push them back down every time they rode up. Which gave the impression that I was squirming, although Dr Guts was nice enough not to say anything about it. Maybe the occasional sight of my naked calves clued him into what I was doing. I wonder what he thought of my empty sleeve hanging down about his knees while he was working.

After the drilling and biting and fitting and suctioning was done and it was just the assistant and myself left, she gave me a cup of water to rinse with. So I took the cup in my left hand, which was, remember, still under my shirt, and rinsed. And spat. And here is my confession - there may be a few small things I do well, but spitting is not one of them. And yesterday was no exception. I spat, and of course the water went halfway into the bowl and halfway onto my dental bib. That's when I broke down and came clean, and admitted that when I come to the dentist I just lose all sense of grace. It was a breakthrough worthy of the psychiatrist's couch, upon which my pants would also ride up were I lying prone as I was in the dentist's chair. "I laugh, I squirm, I don't numb, and I just can't spit," I confessed. The assistant started to laugh. (There was also a fair amount of blood in the rinsing bowl, which after all that folderol with the drill, I still wasn't much expecting.)

Then the assistant did something completely new for me. She washed my face. Well, she took a damp cloth and wiped it off, for I had tooth and red clay and yellow clay and God knows what else on it. I thought that was quite a nice and caring touch.

And so I paid my $300 at the desk (the next $300 comes with the real coronation, the crowning, on the 31st), and was on my way. It was still cold outside, but oddly driving isn't one of the things I do in the "cold position." Just as my car got warm enough to thaw out my feet, I was back at the office. Damn.

I didn't get any feeling back in my face till about 3pm. Then at 5, it was time to jump in the car and head to - band. That was interesting. A woodwind sectional at 7, then practice in earnest at 7:30. About 40 minutes into things, my lips were totally shot. I was blowing and flutzing and pbbbbting and everything else.

Oh, and the high school where we practice? It was freezing. Luckily, playing clarinet is another thing I don't do in the "cold position."

Betland's Olympic Update:
* At the first of the year, our little office at TheCompanyIWorkFor started a new practice. Each girl has to call five people a week in our client base - and simply thank them for choosing TheCompanyIWorkFor and tell them how much we appreciate them and their business. I find this a kind of neat thing to do, and I'd certainly like it if someone did it to me. So why is it so hard for me to call people? I try to call people I know will be easy to talk to, but I just agonize when it's time to call. From here on out I think instead of targeting nice people I know, I'm going to target people I know won't be home and have an answering machine.
* Tomorrow begins the annual Girls Weekend at work, the one weekend a year the boss takes us out of town to a nice hotel and buys us drinks and meals and we shop, goof off, giggle, and generally have a good time. So I won't be around for the weekend, and I seriously doubt there will be a Picture Sunday, either. Which, speaking of, I got a new set of recipe cards! I got Series 5 of the set, which contains one recipe that looks positively X-rated.