Barnmaven

The little boy who could

 

Some years ago, in one move or another, I lost my original Golden Book story of The Little Red Caboose.  That was one of my favorite stories as a kid, probably because in at least one of the illustrations there were horses.  Fortunately, those books never go out of print and I was able to get a copy of it for my own children.  For a time it was also one of Race Car Man's favorite bedtime stories, mostly because it has trains.  WE LOVE TRAINS.

The Little Red Caboose wasn't ever going to be a big black engine, no.  Not even a coal car or an oil car or a box car or a flat car.  But as it turned out, The Little Red Caboose had tremendous value just being a caboose.  He saved the train, you know.

My son's "official" diagnosis arrived in the mail on Friday.  Yes, he has an autism disorder.  The scales are both meaningful and not, as things go, because the spectrum is quite wide.  He is not severely disabled, he scores in the high end of the 'mild to moderate' range.  He will not struggle with the ability to speak or read or to do the things many neurotypical people are able to do.  Other things will just be a lot harder for him to learn, things like having relationships, getting along with others at school and eventually at work.  Learning how to modulate his emotions and behaviors.  Taking proper care of himself in terms of hygeine and dress.  Being medication-compliant so that his anxiety disorder doesn't overwhelm his ability to function.

None of those are terrible things, or really even bad things.  They are just things about him.

There are other things about him that are really important.  Things he can do.

He can, by himself, assemble a Hot Wheels racetrack and put every single one of the 57 different stickers in the right place.

He can, by himself, dissasemble any mechanical or electronic piece of equipment.  Sometimes he can even put it back together, although it might not function the way it did before it was turned into a pile of disparate pieces.

He can find the proper screwdriver to open the battery compartment of anything that uses batteries, determine what kind of battery it needs, and replace said battery or hound mama until she loses her everloving MIND to go buy the correct type of battery if we don't happen to have it in the house.

He can play a mean game of checkers, and I suspect it will not be long before he will be playing an equally mean game of chess.

He can do math.  A lot of math.  Quite well.

He can ride a scooter and dig in the dirt and line up his Hot Wheels cars in a perfectly straight line.  He can take a Lego kit and build something entirely new and possibly even better than the picture on the box and the instructions indicate.  He can sing.  He memorizes songs and he sings them all the time, and he has the sweetest voice.  

He gives great hugs.

Unlike many 7 year old boys, my son does not want to be president.  He will probably never BE the president.  But I am pretty sure he will help engineer the president's state-of-the-art rocket ship for when he travels to address the citizens who colonize Mars.

Its my job to make sure he has all the tools he needs to pursue his dreams.

Harder than it looks on film

I love how in the movies a character, usually portrayed by someone who looks a whole lot better than I do in blue jeans, will experience a transformative moment, immediately understand the whole point and the lesson in one fell swoop, and then BOOM!  Off she goes to live happily ever after.  More likely than not this is how she will cope with every new learning experience forever. 

OK, sometimes we'll see a character who takes the entire damn movie to learn the lesson, but what I never ever see is the character who learns it, forgets it, learns it some more, backslides, remembers, and continues to do this same tango forever ad nauseum.

Why is that?  Am I just doing it wrong?  Or are the people on the screen portraying something so patently un-doable that lamenting my inability to do the same is a pointless exercise?

Yesterday I wrote a completely tongue-in-cheek sarcasm-ridden paean to my ex.  No, it didn't go live.  Nor should it ever see the light of day.  But god DAMN it felt good to write it. 

It felt commensurately HORRIBLE to read it and understand how far I have failed to progress in my self-stated quest toward elightenment and compassion.

I continue to presume that I understand the reasons why people do things that affect me.  Good or bad, I assume intent.  Maybe sometimes I'm right, but how would I KNOW that?   Its not like I ask for confirmation or anything.  "Do you refuse to actually speak with me on the phone because you prefer parenting via text messages?"  And see, I'm still kicking around in the shallow puddles of hostility.

It still hurts, though.  I want to be better at this coparenting while divorced gig, and the truth is, the whole thing pretty much sucks ass right now.  My ex lately communicates solely via texts on the cell phone.   He still has yet to acknowledge the existence of SG.  On the rare occasion when he's had to be within the same vicinity as my husband, his main tactic is to simply avoid looking directly at him.  Is this because he hopes it will make him ACTUALLY disappear?  I have no idea.  And I assume intent. We speak on the phone and he speaks in monsyllabic monotone, and the writing on the wall screams "I DON'T WANT TO SPEAK TO YOU."

How do you parent your kids with someone who you've never been able to truly discuss problems with? 

I don't have the answers.  And I'm not really pleased with the way I'm reacting to things.  I don't feel I've grown very much as a person.  That bothers me.  I recognize so many times that I've ignored the high road, done and said things I take no pride in, wanted to continue to spread the pain around rather than let the healing begin.  I still seem to take an unreasonable amount of time wanting another person to be other than they are, which is a bloody useless effort.

If I had any balls at all, I'd calmly set some boundaries and leave him to respect them or not respect them.  If I gave some decent thought to what everyone's going through, I'd acknowledge that there might be a lot of reasons he's doing the things he does that have nothing to do with the motives I've so handily ascribed to him.  Maybe he's in pain.  Maybe his job is stressful.  Maybe he's having relationship problems.  Maybe the autism diagnosis is hard for him to wrap his head around.  Maybe a lot of things -- maybe none of them.  But the point I keep forgetting is that it isn't at all about WHAT HE IS THINKING.  It is a thousand percent about how I'm reacting. 

Maybe this is how the process of personal growth really goes.  Maybe I'm supposed to figure these things out one painful step at a time and everytime I think I have a grasp on something I'm supposed to then get complacent and lose sight of things. 

Maybe.  Or maybe I AM just doing it all wrong.

 

 

 

Most DEFINITELY in my backyard!

Its about damn time.

Washington State is poised to pass a bill establishing marriage equality.  Senator Mary Margaret Haugen announced her support of the bill this afternoon, providing the last vote needed for a majority in the state Senate.

I'm trying to find the right words to express my joy and delight without being too far on either side of emotional/rational.  I am thrilled for my friends and family and for every couple in my home state who will now be able to enjoy the same freedoms and protections in their relationship as straight folk.   Its for damn sure they'll show a lot more respect for the institution than a few right-wing conservative politicians we could name.

I'm proud that my state is laying grounds for true liberty and equality for ALL of its citizens by structuring this bill to protect the rights of all people to marry without restricting the freedom of religious organizations to determine who they will or won't perform weddings for (even if think that's pretty bigoted and completely antithetical to the way God asks us to love one another, not to mention DUMB).

There are going to be many churches who will be delighted to open their doors and their blessings to gay couples who want to finally have that church wedding they've always dreamed of. 

Its so exciting!  Wedding registries!  Invitations!  Printed napkins!  Balloons!  Gowns!  Tuxedos!  CAKE!!!

I just hope someone remembers to invite me.  Man, I love wedding cake. 

 

The snow fell and I right along with it

Finally, it came.  Boy, howdy, did it come.  We got a good six inches between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.  School was delayed, meetings were cancelled, we pretty much didn't leave the house except for putting the kids on the bus and getting them back off. 

The kids had a blast playing in the snow.  All Wednesday it was the perfect snowball snow - fluffy, just wet enough to stick together to form a ball.  Race Car man quickly got over his aversion to socks when he discovered how cold his feet got in his snow boots without them. 

We found out Wednesday night that school was cancelled for Thursday and the kids were beside themselves with the excitement of playing outside all day long.

We woke yesterday to a light freezing rain that continued all day long.  It left a two-inch layer of ice crystals on top of our snow and coated every tree, fence, mailbox and vehicle in a sheet of ice. 

I did leave the house, though.  Had to.  We we were out of dog food and milk, two things that in this household are required to keep the earth revolving around the sun.  And then, I had the followup appointment for Race Car Man's evaluation.  He had to retake one test series, and then we met with the psychologist.

I answered a lot of questions.  My son answered some questions.  The doctor was kind, measured, and very patient.  As he interviewed me, he completed an evaluation.  We clarified some questions.    He will compile his report and send it to us, probably in a week.  But of course, as a parent, you want to know the answers to your questions, even if you think you know what they are. And so I asked him.  And he very kindly and gently shared the results of the evalution form he had just completed with me.

I've had to learn some new phrases about myself over the last couple of months - some easier, some harder.  I've had to learn how to say "I am a wife" after a few years of wanting to be anything but. 

I had to learn how to say "My brother is dead" and saying it still causes a surge of anxiety and pain that feels like its going to break my sternum in half.

And as of yesterday, I have one more to add.

"My son has autism."

 

 

 

 

Waiting on the snow to fall

If the weather.com forecast says "no significant accumulations expected," but the National Weather Station advisory reads "accumulations of 4 to 8 inches likely," which one am I supposed to believe?

I had a coworker once whose fiance' was attending college for a degree in meteorology.  He wanted to become a TV weather announcer.  My only thought was, "really?  You have to go to college to learn how to lie to people?" 

For days the news has been prepping us for snow.  Lots of other places around the state got snow, anywhere from a dusting to a few inches.  Not us.  We got lots of clouds that looked like they might drop snow on us, and the temperature plummeted at a satisfying rate all afternoon on Sunday, but when push came to shove, the snow did not fall.  It was very disappointing, let me tell you.  This entire WINTER has been disappointing.    

Its not that I want to spend months shoveling my car, shoveling my walk, picking snow lumps out of the feet of horses and dealing with children who want their hats, gloves and boots put on so they can go out in the snow for five minutes and then come in because its "too cold."  Its not that I want to make my daily commute on a block of snow and ice. 

Its rather that I believe every winter should have at least one or two decent snowfalls, for the same reason I believe that every summer needs at least two or three consecutive days of weather over 100F.  You can't appreciate summer without snow, and you can't appreciate winter without a heat wave. 

Growing up in the Seattle area meant that we would have winters where there was no snow at all, but every couple of years we would get at least one good snowstorm and two to six inches of accumulation.  About every decade or so we would get a huge dump of snow that left the schools closed and gave us enough material to build some really excellent snow forts.  I remember my first really big snowfall.  I must have been four years old.  The snow fell and fell and fell, and when I went outside I could barely walk because it was up to the top part of my short little legs.  My brother made a snow tunnel.  I thought it was the coolest thing ever.

Another year we got a really great snowstorm that dropped five or six inches of snow over the course of a couple of hours.  It didn't start falling until late in the day, though, and it was close to bedtime.  My brother and I stared out the window at the huge flakes illuminated by the streetlights and begged our mother to let us play outside.  Dad was on shift at the fire station that night, and even though we had school the next day, Mom let us put on our snow clothes and go throw snowballs and make snow angels even though it was quite late.  Seattleites do not tend to drive when there is any accumulation of snow on the ground, so our street was completely deserted.  We made snow angels and stood under the streetlamp, catching snowflakes on our tongues. 

New Jersey winters were a little sporadic as well.  There was always some snow, but every third year brought a memorable storm.  It was a revelation to me that life didn't have to come to a complete standstill becuse of snow.  My first snowstorm came on a night my ex and I had plans.  I watched the flakes coming down and figured we were going to be staying in.  By the time we would have needed to leave for our reservation there were at least three inches on the ground and the streets had a good inch of compact snow.  When my ex asked me why I wasn't ready to go, I was totally confused.  Out we went, and there were just about as many cars on the road as there would have been on a clear evening.  Amazing!

 The first year we bought our house on Serpentine Drive, we had a huge storm.  The snow in the driveway was up past the wheel wells on our cars.  Our street didn't get cleared for a couple of days, so we kept the heat turned up and wished we had snowshoes.  That was before my daughter was conceived.  The winter she turned two, another big storm brought us several feet of snow.  It drifted up shoulder-high agains the slider door in the back yard, and we had to dig a path out so the dog could go to the bathroom.  It was piled so high that our dog could stand on the snow and put his paws and head easily over the top of our six-foot fence.  The township "officially" closed all the roads and were weren't supposed to drive, but my work wanted at least a couple of bodies to staff the phones, so I snuck out the back roads in my Jeep.  When I finally made it to the office, there was a huge snow berm all the way around the strip mall parking lot.  I couldn't see any way to easily get in, so I got a running start and just plowed straight through it.  Didn't get stuck, either. 

The first winter after I came to Tri-Cities we had a doozy of a year.  Lots of snow and cold that year, including a week of single-digit temperatures that froze the frost-free pump in my barn and left me lugging five-gallon buckets of hot water from my bathtub to the barn to fill the stock tank.  

I've been waiting for the snow to start falling here since Sunday afternoon and I am started to get a little unhappy with the weather gods and the meteorologists;  the former for failing to give us even one school delay or closure for snow this year, and the latter for making sweet white promises they cannot keep.

 

Animal Planet, Barnmaven-style

 

Waiting on Spring

The recurring theme of my depression must be getting old for you, it certainly is for me.  Holy smokes, but its bad right now.  I was driving to work on Tuesday and as I went through the part of town where my folks live - they're snowbirding it in Yuma right now - I thought to myself how much I was looking forward to them being home, and pictured us spending time together, sharing meals.  And the sudden recognition of the jagged hole in the tableau of my family was like being punched in the stomach.

The situational depression and the seasonal depression are an overwhelming combination.

I've never tried so hard to conceptualize what happens after death as I have this last month or so.  In my heart I know my brother is in a better place.  Sometimes I can feel him as if he's just this close.  I get a strange sensation in the top of my head and it feels like if I just reached out my hand I could actually touch him.  And I realized that he's OK, its just that I am not because I have to go through the rest of however long this life of mine is going to be without him. 

There was always the four of us.  Many branches, many relatives and friends, but at the core of it, us four.  For good or for bad, we know each other better than anyone else.  All those years together,  loving, fighting, growing.  Sharing meals.  Sharing triumphs,  losses, experience.   Four corners.  Four posts holding the roof on the house that is our little family.   With one of the posts missing, the ceiling tilts madly, dizzyingly and feels as though it might just fall in.

That's when I have to try really hard to just stop thinking about things.

There are antidotes to this.

They DO help.

Trying to capture some video of Gizmo wrestling with the big dogs and laughing hysterically because I simply CAN'T post the bit where he's taking advantage of Roscoe being distracted by T-Bone and frantically humping him as fast as he can.  Gizzie simply doesn't grasp the fact that if either of those boys had a mean bone in their body he'd be the hors d'oeuvre they choke down before dinner.

Having Juliet adamantly pl0p down on the keyboard of my laptop because she has decided its time to stop working and start petting. 

Watching my husband rock I'm So Excited on Just Dance 3 for the Wii and laughing until the tears come.  Its so sweet and touching and completely hilarious all at the same time. 

Being cuddled at night by a dachsund, a Chihuahua AND a cat, all under the covers and all pressed so tightly to various parts of my anatomy that I can't move.

Joking with my dad on the phone.  Hearing my mom's voice.

Drive-time conversations with my children.  The hugs that seem to never end and yet don't last quite long enough.  The "I love you too's" that always come, even when they get a little exasperated with me telling I love them every five minutes.

When the moments come when I feel overwhelmed by the I don't understand WHY's and the sensation of falling and the choking sobs, these are the things that pull me back up and into the daylight. 

So I'll watch the dogs play and I'll pet the purring cat and I'll hug my kids and dance with my husband and talk to my mom and dad.  Spring is coming.  I'll get through this.

Seeing beyond the label

Tomorrow the race car man has a very long evaluation to do. 

When his teacher wrote us to say that he was not showing any behavioral advances in school and that she felt something was missing from his diagnostic picture and definitely his medication toolbox, I stopped procrastinating and got on the phone with the insurance company.

The child psychiatrist who also manages Amazon Girl’s medication spent a half day with us, and we walked away from that appointment with a prescription for an anti-anxiety medication.  In just days we saw major improvements both in his ability to be more compliant at school and in the frequency and severity of his sensory meltdowns.   

This second evaluation will give me a much clearer picture of where we will need to approach behavioral therapy from.

I tell my kids frequently that I’m the luckiest mom in the world, and I believe that with all my heart.  There are times that their behaviors are irritating, when its easy to lose sight of the essential truth, that they are each unique and perfect in their own way.   While I like to think they embody the best traits of both their father and I, its probably more accurate to say that in two separate instances, our mutual DNA combined to bring something entirely new and special to life. 

Its easy when you have lots of doctors and diagnoses to get lost in the land of labels.  We need to have names and labels for our disorders, for our behaviors, yes.  But my child is much more than his labels.  His labels do not define for you at all the nature of who he is and what gifts he possesses within him.  My daughter’s labels do not come close to describing her enormous love for others, her creativity, her joy. 

Too many people look just at the labels.  Or they look at the behaviors the labels describe, and they make judgements without expanding their knowledge of the actual person wearing the label.    There was a strong reaction in the special needs community recently to some  negative reviews of the film Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, a story about a nine-year old boy whose father perishes in the 9/11 collapse of the World Trade Center.  Although the book on which the film is based and the film itself never specifically say so, the character displays many behavioral traits that indicate a spectrum disorder – odd speech patterns and tone, difficulty with social interactions, extreme sensory reactions. 

The review that received the most negative response was from David Germain, movie writer for the Associated Press.  His review appeared December 19 at SFGate.com, the online home of the San Francisco Chronicle.  You can read the full article here, but the salient points are the following direct quotes:

”Newcomer Thomas Horn…is a mixed bag, holding his own among the adult actors, but, through no fault of his own, forced to behave with excessive shrillness much of the time.

That’s because his character, Oskar Schell, may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome, a mild form of autism (his medical tests, we’re told, were inconclusive).  You make allowances in life for people you encounter with autism, but spending two hours with a fictional character possessing autistic qualities can be grating.”

And those are the kind of people I dread my kids encountering.  The people who can handle special needs for a few minutes, but lack the compassion or the inclination to “see through” behaviors to the kid inside.  The kind of people who can’t spare five minutes to try and comprehend that a person is more than the rhythm of speech they employ or the pitch and tone of their voice.  

How much of a self-absorbed narcissist do you have to be to find the struggle of a child who has just lost his parent irritating because he doesn’t happen to sound right when he’s speaking?  How little humanity do you have to have left in you to NOT find this kind of story compelling?

Does it take some patience to look past my children’s behaviors?  Often, yes.  But you know what?  It takes patience to be a human being.  Whether you are dealing with people who are differently abled, who have mental health or neurological disorders, who are ill with a terminal or debilitating disease, you ought to be able to have a little patience.  You have to have a little patience to drive through a toll booth or wait in a line at the grocery store.  You need a little patience to cope with an aging parent who isn’t at his best now, but who is still a person you love deeply.  You need patience to try and go anywhere with an absent-minded spouse who can’t find her keys, her coffee cup, her cell phone.  You need patience to make it through a work day with people who are crabby or uncooperative, who didn’t do the things that you asked them to or who made a mistake that cost you time and money.

So even if we end up with another label tomorrow, it won’t change who my son is.  It won’t change the love and respect I have for him.  It won’t change anything but the ways in which we try to help him succeed.  Lets have a little patience for my boy.  Let’s look past his labels to his bright mind and unquenchable spirit.  Lets do that for every child, neurotypical or not, able-bodied or not.  Do it for me.  Do it for you.  For all of us, lest we lose our humanity.

Where happy lives

I've been on a Buck Brannaman kick lately.  I've watched the documentary at least three times, and blew through his biographical book The Faraway Horses in about two days.   My trail riding partner Michelle and I are making plans to go watch him give a four-day clinic this June.  We've signed up for the incredibly long waiting list to ride, knowing that we likely won't get to do that, but also knowing that just watching him work with other people and their horses and listening to him teach will benefit us a lot in our own horse journey.

Buck's observation that whatever issues a person has in other areas of their lives will be reflected in their relationships with horses.  There are some incredibly concrete examples of this in the movie, and I'm sure many more on the 300+ hours of tape that hit the cutting room floor.  I see it in my own life. 

The mare I bought on a whim was sensitive.  More than sensitive - she would bolt at the touch of a feather.  If it was evidence of my own troubles that I added a horse to my barn that was drama personified, it was at the same time evidence of the working of God (or the spirit or the universe or whatever name you might give to Him) bringing me the challenges I needed in equine form to help me become a more balanced, calm and compassionate human being.

My standard approach simply did not work with her.  I had to learn a whole new sense of feel.  If all it takes to get your horse to respond is a half pound of pressure on the lead rope, why would you start with fifteen pounds?  And so I had to learn how to start with the smallest amount of energy and increase it only to the point where my horse responded to it.  I had - and continue - to learn how to recognize exactly when that response came in order to reward with a release more immediately.  To help my horse be able to make the connection between those two events.

And I took that mare as far as I could, and then my gelding entered my life, and while not the flight risk that little mare was, he is still a sensitive soul.  The only way to help him - and me - grow was to continue along that path.

And as I have worked on my issues through my horses, I have seen the results carry through to my home and work life.  I am not the same person I was two years ago.  I am a better parent, a better partner, a better employee, a better boss.  I'm not in such a hurry anymore.  I don't feel this frantic sense of urgency, I don't feel the need for everything to be resolved or understood NOW NOW NOW.  I am more in tune with others and how they react to me and to the way life unfolds around them.

Still, there are challenges.

The loss of my brother and the annual winter doldrums have brought a sluggishness into my days, a lack of desire to get out of bed in the morning, a heaviness of heart that makes doing the things I love seem less inviting.  And so I am learning that in order to keep the happiness in my life growing, I must apply some discipline.  In the same way that we make the wrong thing hard and the right thing easy so that our horse can learn in the safest way possible what it is we want from him, I need to create pathways for me to continue to do the things in my life that create joy and not those that simply lay waste to the potential of my life's moments.

I know that the terms "discipline" and "joy" might seem mutually exclusive, but I'm absolutely certain that there is a relationship between them. 

If I want to maintain a level of fitness that keeps me healthy, that provides the endorphins I need, that gives me the energy and mobility I need to be an active parent and to enjoy my horse, I need to be disciplined. 

If I want to make sure that my relationship with my horse continues to grow and develop, I can't just get on him once every couple of weeks and expect that's going to benefit either one of us.  I have to have the discipline to get out there a few times a week, even if its just to do groundwork or give him a good grooming.  He needs to have my attention, he needs to feel useful in order to be truly happy.  The time I spend with him is incredibly beneficial to me, it is one of the foundation stones of my own happiness.

Spending time with my husband and my children makes me happy.  But sometimes, especially when I'm feeling pulled under as I am lately, it seems easier to give my attention to a book or a social media stream or an email I want to answer.  Finding the joy in my relationships means applying discipline to the amount of time I spend online or disappearing into a novel.

Sometimes it is as simple as saying, Stop doing this and start doing that instead.  Sometimes I need to be even more authoritative with myself and schedule time for my joy.  Put it on the calendar, make a date with my husband, make plans with my kids or with a friend. 

And most important of all, I must take the time to savor those moments with the people I love, doing the things I love.  Death reminds me that life can be brutally short, that there might not be another time to express my feelings to someone, to hold their hand, to wrap my arms around them and hold them tightly.  Death reminds me of the pricelessness of moments spent doing meaningful things, even things as simple as stroking the small dog on my lap --  and of the futility of time wasted over pointless drama or feelings like anger and bitterness, jealously and resentment.

There is no time but now, but not everything needs to be accomplished right now.  Happiness waits to be found in being mindful of the way that I spend my time. 

This post was written in response to the question How do you plan to create happiness in 2012? from BlogHer's Life Well Lived section.  

On the calendar

I am going to the dentist on Friday.

I have not been to the dentist in over two years.

I hate the dentist. I hate needles.  I hate drills.  I hate the way my gums feel after the hygenist has brutalized them with her instruments of torture.  Okay, maybe that's not really fair-- not all hygenists do that to me.  But I have had a couple in my lifetime who really made it hurt, and one in particular who appeared to take so much joy in making my mouth hurt that I had to go home and take a painkiller to ease the throbbing in my gums.

Even worse than this, though, is my well-documented phobia about needles.  SG has to have a few tests done because, well, lets just say laughing so hard during the scene in The Big Lebowski where Walter tosses Donny's ashes from the coffee can and the wind picks them up and blows them all over The Dude's beard and sunglasses that you actually pass out momentarily from the laughing is a sign that something's not working quite right.  And so he has to have this test where they take blood from a vein and also blood from an artery, and I'm literally trying not to pass out as I TYPE THESE WORDS.  He was describing it to me in great length until he noticed the faint sheen of sweat on my upper lip and mercifully stopped talking.

So.

I. Hate. The. Dentist.

When I was young it was obvious from an early point that my mouth was overcrowded and I would need to have braces eventually.  The first time I had to have a tooth pulled to make room for other teeth I must have been 7 or 8, I don't remember precisely.  I DO remember the more pertinent details, such as the valium or whatever the dentist's office made my mother wake me up at half-after-dark-thirty to give me so that I would be knocked out and compliant.  And the fact that when you're me, sometimes you live in opposite-land so that things do the backwards to you of what they're supposed to, and so no, I was not knocked out.  I was ramped up like a rabid squirrel on meth.  I remember the dental assistant yelling at me, "You're supposed to be ASLEEP!"  Like, hello, that's MY fault somehow.  Get better drugs, bitch. 

Then there was the time that I had to have a cavity filled, and I was so anxious that the adrenaline in my bloodstream appears to have been chewing its way through the Novacaine like a honey badger.  They upped the saturation level on the gas to compensate, and suddenly not only did my damn mouth hurt, but the tiles in the ceiling turned sideways and then started to swirl around like they had melted and were being stirred by an invisible spoon.  Yeah, that was delightful.

Then there was the suffering through of the braces for two plus years, not the kind that go on the front of your teeth, no, but the BANDS and the tightening of the wires and the headgear that made my mouth hurt so bad I couldn't sleep and the retainer that I eventually just "forgot" to wear so that my teeth moved back a little bit.  And to think that when I was in the third grade I thought having braces would be SO COOL because you know, all the bigger kids were doing it.

Then there was the gentle dentist in the U-District who had a soft touch, but who also wasn't thorough and who gave me a filling when the tooth was actually cracked and needed a crown and a root canal, and so as soon as I was back at work and the numbness wore off I was in such extreme agony I wanted to cut my own head off.

Finally, though, I found this red-headed Lithuanian dentist downtown, and he turned out to be the most kind, gentle, thorough dentist I had ever found.  I saw him exclusively for the next 9 or 10 years.  I went to my appointments every six months.  I flossed.  I was a dental hygenists DREAM patient. 

And then I moved.  To New Jersey.  YOU try finding a dentist in New Jersey.   In 10 years I went to approximately five different dentists and I hated every single one of them. 

And then I moved again.

And I found another dentist who was OK, but not...just not THE dentist.  You know?  And because I hate the dentist anyway, my motivation to go see one has sagged below the waterline.

I brush, with a very expensive toothbrush that is supposed to destroy plaque, clean between teeth and make your gums as tight and strong as the buttocks of a professional soccer player.  I floss, most of the time, anyway.  But I still have the same bad enamel I was born with and I still grit my teeth when brushing my hair or clipping my nails or having a generally stressful day.  I grit my teeth so bad I don't have a single molar that isn't crowned because of me cracking it with my stress.

And now I have a tooth that's sensitive.  It already has a filling in it, and I've been looking and looking to see where there is evidence of a cavity and I cannot find it, so I can only guess that maybe the existing filling is getting old and needs replacing.  And I cannot, with the cold weather, stand having a tooth this sensitive, and I KNOW I need to get my teeth cleaned and x-rayed, and so I am going to the dentist on Friday.  I'm just scared (irrationally) that somehow I'll come home without any teeth.

My nightmare is that the dentist will look at my mouth and solemnly inform me "I'm so sorry, but they all need work.  This is going to take a while," as he holds up the biggest, longest needle I've ever seen in one hand and a pair of pliers in the other.

Ugh.