Brace Face

One of my impromptu goals this year is to fix my teeth issues. So last month I had my wisdom teeth removed (I only had 3 - lucky me). That left only the crookedness of my leftover teeth. I've never hard braces, but I've always wanted straight teeth, particularly on the bottom of my mouth. The crowding on my lower teeth feels uncomfortable most of the time.
A few years ago I went to the dentist because I had been grinding my teeth at night. I knew it because when I woke up, my jaw would hurt, and sometimes I would wake myself up with the motion in my mouth. Waking up grinding your teeth is not fun. Teeth grinding is offically known as bruxism. So sometimes I say to myself that I brux my teeth. That is not offical. That is inside my head. I say it like Brucks. He he. Anyway.

The dentist told me that I could be fitted for a mouth guard that I could wear at night. I trusted her, but the price she quoted me was not feasible at the time. I think it was between $500-$600. I was inbetween my undergraduate college and my first Real job, taking a few graduate courses in a small town. I decided to go with her next best choice, a mouth guard from Walmart (joy).

Doctor'S Nightguard Advanced Comfort, 1 Box

I got the one above for about $20. You heat it up in a pot of water on the stove and then squish it into your mouth to form it to the shape of your teeth. Heating up plastic in water = not my favorite thing, but being able to sleep without grinding my teeth was worth it. I slept fine, and eventually I forgot about using the mouth guard and I lost it. I tried to figure out why I might be grinding my teeth anyway (you know, solve the real problem and not the dummy problem). My dentist told me that it could be one of two things, or a combination of the two: stress and the way the top of my jaw sits on my lower jaw. She said that braces (with the use of rubber bands) could reposition my jaw a bit so that I was less likely to grind my teeth based on how my teeth sit in my mouth. Made sense, but if I couldn't afford a professional mouth guard, I sure as heck wasn't going to go for braces. So I worked on stress instead.

I determined that most of my stress was from uncertainty in my life, particularly in regard to my work. I decided that if I could let go of being afraid of failure, I wouldn't be stressed. That really worked well, and now that I have a Real job, it's still working. I go through periods where I am afraid of being fired, really for no good reason. I'm just afraid because I know that even if I work as hard as I possibly can, someone can still fire me. There's just no Job Guarantee. So I decided to be OK with that. Sure, I could be fired tomorrow. (Well, technically I probably couldn't be because I'm on vacation. But they could fire me on Monday!) BUT, it's OK. Because I can't control everything, and being fired would not be the end of the world. Some of the best advice I've ever heard is the idea that everything is what you consider it to be. If you have something ahead of you that seems awful, it's going to be just that. The magical part of this is that just because something SEEMS awful, doesn't mean that is one of its inherent characteristics. You ASSIGNED it that description! So rewrite the adjectives. Suddenly an inconvenience is an ADVENTURE. (I'm pulling this from G.K. Chesterton. He wrote an incredible book that I love called Orthodoxy, and it's great whether or not you're religious, so don't be influenced too much by the name one way or another.)

I wholeheartedly believe that working on problems from a mental standpoint FIRST is going to help you out the most in the long run. After that part is done, you can choose to move on to getting professional help. That's where my new orthodontist comes in! All of this is to say that I have BRACES! And I am very excited.

Braces are definitely going to help me with the pressure in my bottom teeth, because I can't think my way out of that discomfort. Braces really don't hurt all that much, and it's way less painful than having wisdom teeth removed. I'll keep you up to date on how it goes. I'm going to have them for two years! 

Wisdom Teeth & Mirrors

Well, a mirror is something I definitely don't want to look at right now. Considering as how I have a chipmunk cheek. Yes, only one cheek has swelled up. I'm half chipmunk. This is day four after my wisdom teeth removal, and I feel OK. There's not much to say except that it sucks, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. And there wasn't any blood on my clothes (for some reason I thought there would be...gross, I know.) Also the doctor did not have me count down from 10 like you see in movies while I was being put under. He was just talking about how his friend was a miner in Alaska, and then he started laughing, which made me laugh. That's kind of creepy now that I think about it.

Anyway, last week I worked on a mirror. Ant's mom gave me an old mirror that I found in her storage room. When we saw it, we both thought "Beauty and the Beast!"

Large amounts of GOLD GOLD GOLD aren't really my thing though, but I knew just what to do. 

SPRAY PAINT! I used Valspar's Indigo Satin Spray Paint. They had some colors in the glossy sheen, but I didn't want it to be too shiny. Satin worked well. I've used Valspar spray paint before in Deep Sea Diving for the Licorice Chair, which is another shade of blue. It's more Bluey Blue though, while Indigo has an extremely, extremely faint hint of purple. But you wouldn't know it. 

Here's the mirror after one coat. I used many light coats to get the job done, as usual. 

Here's a close-up. My coats aren't very even, but that's OK. It evens out on its own in the end. 

And after coat two. 

It took a little extra work to get all of the nooks and crannies. 

And about five coats later...ta da!

I decided to hang the mirror in the living room right next to the front door. 

My Perfectly Imperfect Home book says that there should be a mirror near the door for guests to look at their appearance when they arrive and before they leave. 

The color of the mirror matches the blue in the lampshade next to it. I love it. 

Spray paint wins again! But like I said, I'm not going to be using it anytime soon.

Source

Goodbye, Wisdom Teeth

Tomorrow (Friday) I'm having my wisdom teeth pulled out. First of all, ouch, second of all, goodbye crunchy foods. I have stockpiled the following items in my kitchen that meet wisdom tooth extraction dietary requirements (liquid enough such that no chewing is required, no small pieces of food that can be stuck in the tooth holes):

Cinnamon applesauce
Mashed potatoes
Miso soup
Tomato soup
Vegetable broth
Chocolate coconut milk ice cream
Hummus
Guacamole

Essentially what you're trying to avoid is moving blood clots that fill the holes where the wisdom teeth previously sat. So you're to avoid sucking (water bottles, straws) and spitting.

As it turns out, I only have 3 wisdom teeth. So I think that the procedure will probably not hurt as badly as if I had all 4. I hope.

One of my goals for this year (that I've only recently decided on) is to take care of some teeth related issues. My wisdom teeth have caused me discomfort on and off since I was about 21 years old, so it's time for them to come out. Thanks to dental insurance through my work I am finally getting it done.

I will report back tomorrow on how the procedure goes.