Dentist

It's hard to make yourself write about something, especially if you have as repetitious a lifestyle as I.  But my friend is hounding me to try and post at least every other day.  If anything it's so he has something else to read on a day to day basis while bored at work.

I guess what I will talk about this time is going to the dentist.  Don't let your eyes glaze over with cliche protection, I'm not going to talk about how much I hate the sounds of the drills or the other patients screaming (which I did hear by the way), or the boring small talk.  Alright maybe I will mention the small talk in this post, can you blame me though, this is about going to the dentist.

I set my alarm last night for 8:00 in the morning since I knew I had to get up and get this appointment over with at 10:30.  I thought it would give me some time to get settled into the day and not have to rush things.  So inevitably I stay up way too late watching Six Feet Under while constantly compromising with my sleep schedule.  "It's 2 o'clock now so I will still get 6 hours of sleep that should be fine."  "It's 2:30, I'll live with just five and a half hours no biggie."  3:00am - "I guess I should change my alarm to 9 to get those 6 hours."  4:00 - "Wow it's fucking 4 o'clock already? I'll just set my alarm a little later."  This situation works out to me going to sleep god knows when and waking up to my alarm clock at 10:07, my only guess is that I changed it to 10:00 am and my R.E.M. sleep allowed me to bypass 7 minutes of the staccato buzzing.

For you locals reading this post, I live in Chesapeake and my dentist's office is inside DePaul Hospital, in Norfolk.  I have now given myself twenty three minutes to get out of bed, get dressed, brush my teeth, (half heartedly but what am I going to do?  Leave the house for the dentist without some quick maintenance?), find my keys, and drive to the dentist.  Bear in mind following the speed limit it takes about 25-30 minutes to arrive at the dentist's office from my house.

I walk in the office door with about 3 minutes to spare.  I'm greeted by 3-4 older women who have all worked there since I was born.  I sign the sign-in sheet showing I had arrived even though it was like I had just walked onto the Cheers set.  I pick up a Highlights, the magazine I have always read whenever waiting in the dentist's office ever since I could read, and get this I'm sitting there reading and waiting for at least 20 minutes.  Good thing I rushed and tiptoed along the line of "you're going to jail for driving that fast".

I finally get called in by my dental hygienist.  I'm ushered to the same familiar plastic covered green chair whose color could only have originated in the fifties.  I get a bib put on me (the only situation someone will do that to me in my life post-highchair and pre-senility).  The chair lowers me into position for cleaning and I open up.

The thoughts going through my head circle mainly around my hygienist as the inside of my mouth is the most uncomfortable it has been for the past six months.  There's always people in life that will see you twice.  The first time they meet you, you will be too young to remember.  The second time they meet you they don't have access to any topic of conversation other than the first time they met you and that you were "thiiiiiis big".  This woman that sticks her hands in my mouth every six months is someone I actually relate to when she talks about my childhood memories that I should have.  Every 6 months for 22 years I have met this woman, and each time is as awkward as the last.  There is no way that I can go to this dentist and not engage in the social faux pas of idle conversation while settling down to open my mouth.  When I was little I was scared of her, and now when I'm grown up I'm scared of the social awkwardness of a forced lifetime acquaintance.

Every time, no matter my train of thought, my mind will wander to the same things:
Does she use a crazy high power pneumatic toothbrush at home like the one she's using on me?
Does she know how bad this toothpaste tastes and how gritty it is?
I hope she doesn't ask me something while my mouth is open limiting my answers to AHH, UHH, or UH-UH-UHHH (the last one is "I don't know").
I wonder who does her teeth.  Can she clean her own teeth?
I would try with my mind powers to get her to pour extra water for me when it was time for me to rinse and spit.

This time at the dentist was different than my last 43 visits (give or take).  I had a secret weapon, an ace up my sleeve.  I have been flossing for the past two weeks.  The only thing to keep my oral hygiene regular enough to brush twice a day and floss at least once was the thought of my dental hygienist and my dentist saying to me, "Foster!  After 22 years of telling you, you finally flossed! Yay!"  Guess what they said?  Not a damn thing.  The flossing part of the routine came and went without a word.  Usually it would be the normal barrage of "Now Foster do you floss?" "Kinda, I try to when I remember." "You need to be flossing everyday to get between those teeth." "I know :( ."  This time I was excited about how the conversation would go.  Never did I suspect that my two weeks of fastidiously wrapping string around my fingers would lead to only a culling of the mild assault, I thought I at least earned some praise and maybe a pencil with a tooth shaped eraser.

After leaving the dentist almost heartbroken I drove home at a pace slower than the one in which I had arrived.

Banana Nut Bread Castration

I've made this rant before on facebook but these hateful feelings were triggered again today so I thought I would move it over here.

So I was heading to work. I usually give myself 50 minutes to get to work which normally takes about 32-35 (yes that exact, seriously I've got this down to a science). I work at a hotel along the oceanfront of Virginia Beach. It's a smaller hotel when compared to it's neighbor the Holiday Inn Express and the towering giant of a Hilton a few blocks away. This small hotel provides parking both "on campus" and "off". Since I work there I am never obliged to use the on campus parking which is saved for the customers, so I must park a block and a half away.

Now this may not seem like a huge walk. Some of you are thinking to yourselves, are you kidding me I have to walk to school five miles everyday, barefoot, uphill, and it's usually snowing, and I feel for you I do but I deal with a bigger problem called temptation. Working at the Front Desk at this hotel I am not allowed to leave the desk for anything so what I go there with in my backpack are the supplies to last me the rest of the day. This temptation that I face is in the form of a very conveniently placed 7-11 right next to my satellite parking lot. I park my car with 20 minutes to spare before my shift officially begins, of-fucking course I'm going to go in. Everyday I walk into this 7-11 out of boredom and pure convenience. Half the time I'm not looking to buy anything when I go in and about 25% of those times I actually walk out without buying something.

Today on one of my 7-11 checkin' out detours I was asking myself the question I always ask. "Do I want anything?" this time the answer was yes, then I usually ask myself as a formality "Do I need anything?" the answer is most often no, but why would I listen to myself now? I'm already here and I have 20 minutes.

I make my way around the store looking at all the possibilities. Passed the first shelf obviously. I'm not looking for aspirin, toilet paper, or magazines featuring ebony beauties and monster trucks. I quickly go through the candy and chips marking off in my head that I don't want anything to do with those. I end up at the muffins and I think to myself "huh" and that's about it. Strangely I was staring at the flavors for a lot longer than any normal person should and I realized that I wasn't thinking anything. I was just looking at these flavors with a completely blank slate. I started comparing. Blueberry, Chocolate Chip, Lemon, and Banana Nut.

I'm going to digress for a second and try connecting with my readers. Have you ever encountered (and don't say no because then you'd be lying) something that you haven't had in a really long time and you think that it is completely harmless and you dive into with an air of "Why the hell not, I haven't had such n such in forever!" Then when you indulge in your "why the hell not" product you figure out why you have steered clear. Lewis Black has a sketch where he finds that every year candy corn becomes available and everyone buys it to sit around their house. Then no fail people take a few pieces and think, hey candy corn! why not? ::bite:: SONNUVABITCH! We all know that candy corn sucks but since it is seasonal we aren't consistently reminding ourselves so we forget, every year. This also happens with Slurpees, they are a fucking awesome idea, but then when put into practice you either drink them too slow and you end up with melted syrup or too fast and you get a brain freeze. I had this experience today when I decided to buy a banana nut muffin.

Banana bread is quite possibly my favorite bread. Ever. Look at my face, this is my serious face. No joke, banana bread is delicious. Bananas are good and bread is awesome (doubt me? one word: cake. Yeah that just happened), so where can this go wrong. I'll tell you where it goes wrong. When those bakers start throwing nuts into it, why on earth would they do that to such an awesome dish? Sure when you take your first bite of Banana Nut Bread your like "Yeah that's the stuff, this is going to be awesome, why don't I eat this more often anyway?" Then you taste the nuts and it's ruined. Let me give you a perfect analogy:

DaVinci: Man I hope you guys like this, it's a work in prgress but I think it's going to turn out pretty good. I call it, The Mona Lisa.
Art Person 1: Oh my goodness!
Art Person 2:This is incredible Leo,
Art Person 3:I can't believe this, look at me I'm crying that's so beautiful.
DaVinci: Thank you so much, it will be ready for display once I throw some dicks in her mouth.

If you couldn't tell, The Mona Lisa is banana bread, DaVinci is every baker in the world, and the dicks in her mouth are the nuts (hmm no pun intended).

This terrible 7-11 snack food experience got me thinking. When have I ever seen Banana bread without nuts in it? The only times I can think of was when they were homemade by my maternal relatives. Why is there this rule that all bakers have to ruin their banana bread with nuts. Maybe it's because one baker back in the day wanted to get rid of his leftover nuts and just threw them in and it took off because people are idiots. Since I have faith in humanity I'm going to chop this up to a time travel prank some kid is pulling when he thought it would be funny to pencil in "and a cup of nuts lol" at the bottom of the first banana bread recipe. This also got me thinking, how many foods out there would be delectable if it wasn't just for that one ingredient ruining it. I figured out you can go through this post and replace the words with banana bread with the word tuna salad and the word nuts with the word celery and it would still make sense. Also works: jello and fruit, and sandwiches and pickles. (People are going to fight me about that last one but I don't care, pickles belong next to the sandwich and not in it. Also the phallic nature of a pickle would make the "DaVinci/dicks in the mouth" analogy a lot more applicable)