optional soundrack: Jaques Dutronc - Et Moi, Et Moi, Et Moi

NO, I did not win the HOG sweepstakes on The Learning Channel’s American Chopper show, that’s not what this post is about. That’s OK, I didn’t want it anyway…sniff. Allright, so that was a joke, but I still think I would have looked pretty cool driving a hog around Brooklyn. I coulda picked up Ruby from school with it and embarrassed her more than I already do.
What is going on here is that all of my kids are teething. My 11 year old has a wisdom tooth coming in, and the two babies are cutting more teeth. So everyone is cranky. Jack must be bionic or be taking growth hormone on the side because he already has 6 of them and at 6 months this is crazy, he bites everything and nursing him is just impossible unless he is completely calm, otherwise he is like a puppy with a chew toy (and thinks its the funniest thing ever). Marlowe has two on the bottom, and two on the top, and the other two along side of it will surface any day now. She can nurse without biting, but she will grab your hand and bite hard! I think she is going to be a wrestler, she will grab both of your ears and pull you toward her and bite your nose…she fights dirty.
Tomorrow I go to the dentist. I am scared, I haven’t been in over three years. Dr. Valerie from Bay Ridge will stand there and give me the evil eye and shake her head at me. Now I have dental insurance for the first time in my life and I am going to get everything fixed, I am going to be her favorite customer and the Center for Dental Excellence will be like a second home I will be there so often. I will be making her car payments for the next two years at least. Thanks to my Scottish relatives, I have the absolute worst teeth. I have six molars, all with root canals and big spaces in the back where I had to have them pulled when I couldn’t afford a root canal on them. It wasn’t for lack of trying, I have been too piss poor to do any better, I always had to go to the dental schools when it got that bad. They make you get an ex-ray at every step, and you have to wait for the instructor to come over and grade their work. So we are talkin’ bridges, implants and veneers. I am going to look like Tom Cruise with his annoyingly white teeth, and I am going to smile all the time like a beauty queen on a float. OK, well maybe I won’t go that far. But I do plan to be able to chew with more than one tooth on one side of my mouth as I have done in the last two years.
Poor Ruby will get braces in a month. She asked us at the dinner table a few days ago “do extractions hurt?” …oh god. The Orthodontist handed me his CV at the consultation. On it listed his years practicing dentistry in the military. Um, wrong thing to say! I explicitly remember going back in to see Dr. American Military Dentist in Germany after my crown popped off and he put his knee on my chest trying to push the metal thing into my gum…it popped out and rolled across the floor a couple of times. Nope, not something I would brag about. “So how long will she have them on?” I asked. “About 15 months” he said. That would be three years in people years I think. Expensive shit those wires and their tightening. What kind of sick demented soul chooses orthodontist for a profession? I had braces for four years, my poor parents kept taking me there, moving teeth one direction and then the other. But how were they to know…its a deep pool you jump into there, I am sure that at one point I will say “Just take them off now, I don’t care, this is long enough.” Ruby is excited because they come in different colors, but that excitement will wear off soon when she is sticking gobs of wax on them…as if Middle School isn’t hard enough.
The word “dental” should be a curse word. Or something to describe something really irritating…like: “Oh, man that song is really dental” or “I had to wait in line for like a dental amount of time” Ah well, I am lucky I can fix my choppers now so I shouldn’t complain, I was well on my way to looking like Granny in Beverly Hillbillies. After tomorrow that will be four people in the house grabbing the Motrin bottle and gnawing on the chilled teething duck and jell rings. Ouch.

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