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May 23, 2005

Jacked Up Teeth & Fancy Hotel

On Thursday (the day before we left for San Diego) I went to the dentist to start the procedure of getting veneers put on my two front teeth to repair the chips that I incurred from biting down on a fork. Mind you, this was just a month after I removed my tongue ring for fear of biting down on it. Seven years with that thing in my mouth and no incident, to only bite down on a fork! The tongue ring probably would have saved me.

Alas, who would I be if I didn’t digress all the time? The dentist started to grind away at my two front teeth. Then, he continued to grind … and grind. Oh, and did I mention the grinding? When it finally ended I was really afraid to close my mouth. I didn’t want my tongue to feel what wasn’t there. I just wanted him to throw on the temporary teeth really quick. I sat there with my mouth agape, my lips stuck to my suctioned dry gums, and my tongue suspended somewhere in the middle of my huge mouth cavern so as not to touch anything. My dentist looked at me strangely as he proceeded to successfully persuade me not to get the temps. The real veneers will fit better if they don’t have to grind away the glue from the temporary ones. I figured, one, I’m paying a lot of money for these uninsured jewels and two, I work from home who’s gonna see me anyway?! Sure why not?!

He threw a super huge magnified mirror in my face and said “can you live with these for a few weeks?”

At this point I felt bad because I had already agreed to go with out the temps and it looked as though he tried real hard to shape the teeth to look as normal as possible and I didn’t want to offend him. I have no backbone. I was sporting the front teeth of a 2 year old! And the surrounding teeth look like fangs.

The next day we embarked on our mini vacation to the San Diego zoo where I would feel right at home with the vampire bats. In planning our trip, I had decided it would be fun to stay in a fancy hotel and booked us to stay at this really cool looking one that is brand new. We don’t live that far from the zoo so this was just an indulgence.

When we arrived there we were greeted by a few valets, a concierge, and a bell hop. More accurately we nearly plowed them down as we pulled in front of the hotel because they swarmed our car like killer bees. I started to feel very self conscious because this place was really fancy and we are like the Griswolds on Vacation. In a lack of judgment, (and I meant ‘lack’ not ‘lapse’, we don’t have any) we didn’t even bring nice clothes. We don’t have real luggage, we used back packs (thank goodness we left the garbage bags at home this time). Our car is like a trash can on wheels and when you open the driver’s side door it makes a huge metal crushing sound. The valet actually bent down and made the motions like he was going to try and catch it as he thought he had pulled it off.

It only became more apparent that we are not used to this kind of service when my husband ran off with our bags on the bell hop’s dolly thing (see I don’t even know what it’s called). The bell hop probably thought we were trying to confiscate it to drive home in place of our “so called” car.

I’ve been so much more self conscious since being heavy that this stuff is a little more difficult for me to handle. In the spirit of my once really outgoing self, I usually muster up conversation and flash a lot of smiles to get myself through it. But this time I was S.O.L. I had my last line of defense grinded away!

Posted by hopeful @ May 23, 2005 5:47 PM