Could You Hold My Tooth for Me?

Christmas is over and New Year's Eve is approaching. I have this week off thanks to my company realizing that people would rather have this week off than an office party. This is the first year they've done this and they claim that it will also be the only year. We'll have to wait and see on that front. I think it'll be too popular to eliminate. But I'm also not that bright so you can take that at face value.

So what's been going on? Just stuff. I'm getting excited about the vacation that the Wiff and I will be taking to Ireland soon. Check this out. This is my schedule from last Monday, December 21st until the end of January: Dec. 21-23 were working days. Then I have 11 days in a row (including weekends) off. I return to work on January 4th. On January 7th I leave for Ireland for vacation. I will be off for another 11 days (7 of them in Ireland), returning to work on the 18th. Then on the 21st I fly to England to do a training at our Oxfordshire office. The Wiff will also be flying out to meet up with me after I'm done with the trainings in London. We'll fly back to Boston on the 24th. Then there's just a week left of January. Oh, and in the middle of the trip to Ireland I'll be turning 40 fucking years old. Crazy.

Guess what I did yesterday? No, not that (ok, yes that too). I made beer in New Hampshire. My friends Matt and Adam (who are brothers by the by) and I went to this place called IncrediBREW and spent a couple hours making our own beer. Ok, so technically it's a recipe that the place provides but we did all the mixing and cooking. It was pretty cool but I'm willing to allow others to brew my beer for me thank you very much. There's lots of steps and everything is so very precise. In a couple weeks we get to go back and bottle it all up and we should get about 4-5 cases of 22 oz. beers. Niiiice. I won't be at the bottling portion of the deal since I'll be in Ireland being a drunk. I suggested that we start our own "Brew your own whiskey" business. People would come in and whip up a nice batch of whiskey from recipes that we would provide for them. And then in a short 12-18 years, they would come back and bottle it up. Matt and Adam weren't convinced that it was genius moment. It may not be the best business model I'll admit but I'm looking into the licensing anyway. So back off people, it's MY IDEA.

On Monday I went back to my dentist to have my crown put in finally. I had scheduled the appointment at 9 am so that it would be over and done and I wouldn't have to think about it anymore. What a silly goose I am. I should have realized that nothing ever goes so smoothly. I've had this temporary crown in for a month or so and it isn't the most comfortable thing in the world. It's slightly wider than a real tooth and the texture is all wrong. My tongue keeps checking it out to see if it has somehow become a real tooth during the last few seconds. "Is it real yet? Nope. How about now? Nope. Better check again. Nope, it's still a giant Lego piece jammed in my face." My dentist has assured me that the actual crown which is porcelain baked over gold (oooh, fancy!) will match my original toof (minus the giant crack in said toof that started this nonsense in the first place). Ok, doc. Let's do this shit.

So I'm sitting in the chair when he comes in and without so much as a "Hey, how are you doing?", he reaches into my mouth with these big honkin' pliers and yanks the temporary tooth out. Um, ow! Thanks for the warning skippy. He then proceeded to use his evil assortment of tools to hose out the area with ice cold water. You know what sucks? Exposed nerves coming in contact with cold water. That sucks. Then his minion used the sucky-face thing to attack my tongue. Seriously. She went right for it. I dunno what my tongue ever did to her (HEY-OH!) but she clearly hates it. Then he did a dry fitting of the new crown. After asking me to bite down on these little strips of cardboard material he then took out his drill (!!!) and started shaving down the crown so that it would fit properly. He then took the crown and left me sitting in the chair staring at the light. Those dentist chair lights always look like the space ships from the original War of the Worlds movie to me.

He came back after a few minutes (here's the extent of the small talk his minion and I shared: Her: "Do you have any kids?" Me: "Nope." Her: ....) and said that because of a defect in the porcelain, he cannot put in ("install"? is that the right word? "put in" seems wrong. "insert"? that sounds dirty..how about "fasten"? yea, I like that one) fasten the crown. And since the place that made the crown is closed this week, I'm going to have to come back next Tuesday afternoon so he can do it then. Fuuuuuck. Ok, fine. Put the shitty Lego toof back in and lemme outta here. Sheesh.

Cut to yesterday and after we made the beer, Matt, Adam and I grabbed some food at this mexican place up the street from the brewing place. After dinner when Adam and I were headed home (I drove since he lives close by my house and it seemed silly to have us drive up separately), he offered me a piece of gum. "Sure, why not", I said. I'll tell you why not: The toof. Yep. About 15 seconds after popping the gum in my mouth, it yanked the temporary crown out and I had to hand the whole thing over to Adam. That's nasty I know but he has a small kid so he must be used to gross things by now. He separated the gum from the toof and tossed the gum out the window. Luckily it was actually the gum he tossed and not the toof.

And since I was driving and it seemed unlikely that I'd be able to pop it back in with any level of success, he held onto the toof the entire trip home. I appreciate that sir. When I got home I cleaned it up and pressed it back into place. It has this putty stuff on the underside that seems to be holding on for now. I just have to chew EVERYTHING on the other side of my mouth so that it doesn't come loose again. I only have to deal with this for 6 days. I hope it doesn't come out during the night and I end up swallowing it. That would suck ass.