I’ve been overcommitted this week and am on the downhill slide to a truly reclusive weekend. Unfortunately, it’s St. Patrick’s day, and by midday, my beau will be home with two of his friends to put food coloring in beer before heading downtown to the pub to rub shoulders with tipsy suburbanites doing shots and bellowing Irish ditties. This is not my jam but I’m happy to watch him in full extrovert mode; the only Irish thing I will be doing today is executing the ‘Irish goodbye’ after a few minutes of obligatory socializing and going back upstairs to my computer and classical radio.

Last weekend we met up with friends of ours at Harbor House in Detroit for dinner and then headed over to the Fillmore to see Sarah Silverman. She rocked and best of all, her set was over by like 9pm so even with a quick drink afterwards at Cafe d’Mongo, our fave hole in the wall, we were home relatively early. Which was good because we’ve had something going on every day this week – soccer tryouts for the kiddo as well as a soccer parent meeting, a band concert for her, and various household tasks. I had a haircut, my Outback serviced in advance of our road trip to Virginia in a couple of weeks, and – biggest of all – had my tooth pulled to get ready for my orthodontics.

Re. the tooth pulling, my memory of such things from being a teenage dirtbag in braces did not adequately prepare me for the actual procedure. I don’t remember feeling particularly crummy afterwards but it WAS (ahem) 36 years ago so perhaps things have blurred around the edges. Also, my grandpa was my dentist, and I worked at his office starting from the age of 14 through summers in college. I had an intimate familiarity with the procedure, and when I was a bit older, I even assisted with extractions. I’m not sure the employment bureau or whichever office is in charge of such things would approve of a 16-year old handing massive forceps over and watching extractions and root canals and carting away the bloody detritus, but it gave me a healthy indifference to any sort of dental procedure and generally no fear where such things were concerned.

Now, decades later, even though my current non-grandpa dentist is gentle and fantastic, it was a really unpleasant experience, aggressive, bloody, and terrifying. I thought I had a high pain tolerance but I came home drenched in cold sweat. The first few hours weren’t bad but once the anesthetic wore off – and ever since – I’ve been a bit of a wreck. I slept for several hours the day of the extraction and the day after. I’m terrified of the mythical and horrible dry socket and today – 48 hours after the procedure – the swelling is at its worst and the stitches are pulling. The pain is just barely kept in check with a Motrin / Tylenol cocktail every 4 hours. (I also remember getting more high-powered pain meds as a teenager – at LEAST Tylenol 3.) I’m only eating soft foods like eggs, yogurt, cottage cheese, and soup, taking Vitamin C and trying to rinse with warm salt water, all the recommended things, but I’m still in a lot of discomfort and finding it hard to focus on anything other than that. I feel like an elderly person chewing delicately on one side of my mouth and I’m astonished at the thought of people in the ‘old days’ who went in to their dentists and asked for ALL their teeth to just be pulled so they could get dentures. (I think this may have even been something one of my ancestral relatives did!) They must have just been constantly drunk back then.

At any rate, I’m hoping that by tomorrow things will be feeling less miserable and I can get back to some light exercise and more regular eating.

Hoping all of you are enjoying your Friday and looking forward to either a fantastic weekend of socializing or a quiet weekend of peace and rest (or a mix of both). Pray for my poor aching tooth socket if you would. xo