Teeth and Brains.

I went to the dentist on Monday and had five, count 'em, five fillings. It was estimated to be around $1000 for this, but ended up only costing $800. Despite being in the chair with my mouth wide open for just under two hours, it felt really good.

My teeth have haunted me my entire adult life. When I was a kid, I was often complimented on my teeth. Nice and straight, no need for braces. Unfortunately, due to genetics(thanks, Mom!), they are not the strongest teeth around, and my penchant for showering them with Slurpees and Oh Henry bars didn't help. My Dad had some good dental insurance for the family, but he's convinced that dentists are all thieves, so check-ups were generally relegated to once every year or two, or only when something was causing pain.

This attitude followed me to adulthood, and was also coupled with a complete lack of money or insurance. I had, and still have, a rather scrupulous dental routine. I can't sleep unless I have flossed. No, seriously. This is good, because the damage could have been worse. Over the years I went to the dentist for the odd cleaning and the occasional emergency root canal or filling. It wasn't only useless crap that went on that credit card.

It's funny. Everyone has had that common anxiety dream about their teeth crumbling and falling out, but most people have it because they are anxious about something else. I would dream it because I was anxious about my teeth falling out. Such a literalist......

According to my dentist, I have one filling to get, one broken filling to fix, and I need a couple of crowns to replace the temporary fillings my last dentist gave me to fill a couple of root-canaled molars. The crowns can wait though, because the decade-old temporary fillings are holding up well, probably due to the fact that I take good day-to-day care of my teeth.

And that's it.

There's an end in sight. I'm actually catching up on what my teeth need.
Holy shit.
THEN I can just maintain them with proper dentist-attention. Just like normal people!
That feels really good.

Know what else is good? Bacon-wrapped Meatloaf. It doesn't LOOK too good, though......


















Mmmmmmm.......BRAINS!!!! It only looks like I got the recipe from "Pleasures in ZOMBIE!! Cookery".