Metalmouth! (and More)

Well, the deed is done. I now have braces on my upper teeth and a retainer (for nightly use) for my lower teeth. It feels as if I have a big honkin' wire and crap in my mouth. No, wait! I DO!

It isn't as bad as it could be. After all, "metalmouth" is kind of a misnomer nowadays, as the brackets are mostly ceramic (with a bit of metal embedded), and they are affixed directly to the front of your teeth--no unsightly metal bands. There is still the main wire across the front, though. Getting the brackets glued on was not the most pleasant experience in the world--they pull your lips and cheeks away from your teeth with some kind of plastic torture device... but that was not all that bad, really. But the thingy that stabilizes your tongue? It had some sharp edges that were periodically digging into my lower jaw. Ow yeow. I was stoic, though. Eight or nine months from now, I'll have my nice, straight, evenly spaced smile again.

Of course, there's the infamous list of Things One Must Not Eat to be dealt with, including hard candy, corn on the cob (NO!), nuts (NO!), hard cookies (?), corn chips, hard pizza crust, pens, pencils, fingernails (huh?), licorice (no prob there), taffy, caramel, milk duds, tootsie rolls, chewing gum... and they advise against acidic food such as curries and red wine (NO!), because they stain the ceramic. The tech actually suggested I switch to white wine for the next three quarters of a year. Wah! It's not exactly an even exchange, now, is it--white (feh) for red (ahh)?

And why did I get braces at the ripe old age of 51? (Sorry, all you Poptarts fans! I meant 46.)

So that I don't end up looking like this:



Of course, those who know me well know that I am anything BUT a "God Warrior" who would eschew the "dork side," but the gap between my front teeth was widening at what, in my humble opinion, was an alarming rate.

But wait... there's more.

I'm going to follow up with a post sometime this week about one of the primary pains of adulthood: putting up the tree and other attendant Christmas decorating tasks, but I just want to get this particular item out of my system: After finally getting the tree up and trimmed, the tzotchkes on the mantle beribboned, and the balcony planter boxes bedecked with tasteful fake greenery and reddery and a variation on white icicle lights, we got a call from the condo president, who lives downstairs. He made a lighted star decoration. Can he come up and put it on our balcony? (We have the only balcony in the 6-flat: it is essentially the roof of the entry foyer.)

Oh, sure. Why not? A smallish lighted star might be a nice complement to the greenery and icicle lights.

Except when he showed up at our door, he was carrying a star so big that he had to slant it to get it through the jamb! Made out of a light wood frame wound with tiny white Christmas lights, this star is at least 6.5 feet wide and 7 feet tall! Well, he had obviously spent a lot of time working on it...I didn't have the heart to tell him it was way too big and garrish. So now the thing is affixed to the front of the building thanks to our balcony and some architectural embellishments on the front facade. It obscures all the greenery and reddery and even most of the icicle lights. Sigh.

Maybe a big storm will blow in off the lake and rip it to shreds. Now THERE's the Christmas spirit, huh?!!