Rip, Yank, Pull

Today I took the next big step in becoming a human Jack-o-Lantern. Yes, that’s right, it was the day to extract the tooth that’s been causing so much trouble lately, and another one that really wasn’t hurting anyone, but was kinda just there getting in the way.

I was panicking all day today leading up to the extraction. As I said yesterday, I’m as afraid of dentists as some people are of clowns. It doesn’t help they have to work in such a small space and it feels like they are trying to stuff a bowling ball in something the size of an orange. All that yanking around, pulling at your cheek and lips. ARGH!!!

It was so bad today that I could barely eat my lunch. Granted, the lunch I had was terrible so it didn’t really take much. I had one of those “healthy” frozen meals with chicken and pasta. The pasta was all clumped together and tasted like shoelaces.

In spite of my anxiety throughout most of the day, my sugar actually wasn’t too bad. In fact, it was better than it had been the past couple of days when it seemed to want to go psycho and try to kill me. Again.

All in all the extraction went pretty well. The first tooth came out effortlessly, while the second was being a bit stubborn. In the end, the dentist accidentally cracked the crown that was next to the tooth, and from what I can tell, may have nicked the adjacent tooth as well. Thankfully I’ll be getting rid of that crown anyway when they get my new bridge setup, but still it was annoying. Although not as annoying as hearing “I had to stitch a bit of gum flap around the bottom where it was cracked”. Just imagine me shuddering right there…

Halloween Time!

With my teeth nice and freshly removed, it was time to take my children trick or treating. Yes it does sound weird to be taking kids out after having teeth yanked from my skull, but I’m a glutton for punishment, so…

I really didn’t have a costume ready for this year. I wanted to do the inflatable dinosaur, but I never ended up getting the costume. It’s probably a good thing, seeing as how there were at least six or seven other people in the neighborhood with the same idea.

In the end I wound up putting on my Red Wings jersey. What I didn’t think of until much later was that having on the jersey actually made sense. Hockey players tend to lose a lot of teeth and here I was, missing two of my own. It was the perfect costume! It would have been better if people could actually see the missing teeth, but whatever.

Of course the hardest thing about trick or treating this year was not the freezing cold, the dull throbbing in my jaw, or huge swarm of people in my neighborhood. The hardest part was the temptation of all the candy laying around. Everywhere I looked there was candy, candy, MORE candy! It was simultaneously tempting me and mocking me, it’s sugary goodness ever present in field of vision.

At one point, after getting home, I took out the kid’s candy to inspect it. In the past, it was my time to “sample” their candy to make sure it was safe and while I knew I could do that this year as well, I’ve had a pretty good “no sweats” streak going here for nearly two whole months. Anyway, shifting through the candy I noticed that one little piece was sitting there, staring at me… Ever. So. Creepy.

Today’s Numbers