Well fuck

Somehow and for some reason, Voldemort found and looked at my LinkedIn page.  Ruining a perfectly good evening of fake-killing a celebrity for me.

**fume**

With Teeth

I knew going in that it was going to cost a lot of money.  I hadn't gone to the dentist in two decades due to not having dental insurance, but I wasn't having any tooth problems, so that was good, right?  It meant I was taking care of my teeth properly and didn't need to.  Then last year I had one problem tooth removed, and I began to realize that I'd probably really fucked things up, and then this year I after I got my Sonic-care toothbrush I began to actually KNOW I'd fucked things up.  It made my teeth feel cleaner than they ever had; even after a few hours or a meal, my mouth began to feel and taste dirty, even if my teeth felt clean.  So before the end of the year, on my new dental insurance, I scheduled an appointment to have them looked at.

I won't tell you the price tag of the "deep cleaning" that had to be done, as it would probably buy me a reliable used car, as long as I wasn't taking road trips in it, or for that matter, popping over to Lexington much.  And it is undoubtedly overpriced (probably twice as much as it should be), but I will say it was worth it.

I honestly thought the plaque build up had ruined my teeth and gums.  It looked bad, on the lower teeth.  I looked like the lower jaw you'd find in a pile of random skeleton parts in a Halloween Store.  But no, that was plaque buildup, covering my gums, stinking up my breath... for the past twenty years or more.

(How did I ever have boyfriends?  Why would somebody want to suck face with this EC Comics horrorshow inside my mouth?  People must have been desperate, or perhaps it just built up quickly since Dayton.)

Anyway, ninety minutes later, with both the dentist (I'm sure she has a speciality title besides "Dentist" for doing this) and myself basically worn through with sweat, I saw my teeth clean for the first time in decades.

HOLY SHIT.

It was worth the money I will be paying.  There was some gum damage, but it obviously will repair itself in a short while if the tooth extraction was any indication.  And I had plaque built up so long that I had forgotten about The Gap.

I have a huge Letterman-esque gap in my lower front teeth that I had totally forgotten about.  The plaque had bridged the gap and I didn't notice.  It was like seeing an old friend... an old, scared friend who was frightened that he might be corralled into an Invisalign prison soon.

Immediately my tongue began exploring The Gap just like it used to.

My family was poor at the time my dental hygiene went to shit, and we had to decide if I got the braces to fix this gap, or my brother with the severe cross-bite got them.  I don't know how it was decided, but my brother won, and rightfully so, because this gap just looks stupid but a cross-bite is pretty much hell.  (Not that the braces were fun either.)

I had gotten better with dental hygiene in the past couple of years, but there was always some bleeding.  This is the third day after the cleaning, and there has been not a single drop of blood during my brushings.

Yes, it is worth it.  I may have to delay moving by a few months (unless my job does that for me) and I might delay getting the new laptop for a while, but it is worth it.

Now spit.