Archive: February 2010

This week, I had a dentist appointment to pick up my retainers now that my teeth have been straightened. Why, yes, I felt like a teenager! Thank you for asking. I suppose getting a retainer is one of those lost childhood activities I have now reclaimed in adulthood. Or something. Now I just need to forget it on a cafeteria tray, I guess.

Once seated in an exam room, one the assistants came in with two plaster teeth molds, each with its own pink, wiry retainer. She gave me the top retainer, showed me how to position it in my teeth, and let me try to insert it. I struggled to get the position right, so I hopped up to watch my progress in the mirror. I still couldn’t get it. Was this normal?

The assistant sat me down and tried to do it. “They usually just pop right in,” she said. “I’ve never seen this before.”

Comforting!

“Let’s try the bottom one for now,” she suggested, and she handed me the other retainer. I had my doubts about this one because I have two oversize bony growths that complicate everything concerning my bottom teeth. I cry almost every time I have to get x-rays taken. Taking the impression to make the retainer was another similarly distressing process.

Snap!

The bottom retainer adhered to my teeth and gums smoothly, and I was momentarily speechless. How was that so easy? What was wrong with the top retainer?

One of the three dentists at the practice stopped in to see what the problem was with my top teeth. He tried to insert it, but to no avail. Then, he picked up the plaster cast where the retainer had rested.

“This isn’t right,” he said. “These aren’t her canines. These are someone else’s teeth.”

Um, what?! There was my name, scrawled in Sharpie, at the bottom of a plaster cast of someone else’s teeth. Which meant that … someone else had my teeth! And who knows where they were!

The dentist tried to pass it off as the fault of “the lab,” but the assistant kept puzzling through it, saying, “But Dr. Joe, this is our handwriting …”

Ohmygah. The thought of plaster teeth floating around the dental universe, mislabeled and unclaimed, was too much me, and then I realized that they were setting up to take a new impression for my top teeth. “Please, don’t make me take another impression,” I begged. The last time, the gummy goo slid down my throat and almost choked me, and I almost knocked out the hygienist with my uncharacteristic thrashing.

The dentist waved me off. “Don’t worry! Here’s a topical anesthetic.” He dabbed a long Q-tip into my throat. “There. Now you won’t be as likely to gag.”

Well, I didn’t gag or thrash, but I only left with one retainer and an uncomfortably tingly sensation in the back of my throat. I’ll be back for my second retainer in 7-10 business days, so let us all say a little prayer that no one at “the lab” will mix up anybody’s teeth this time.

Before Christmas, we were having problems with Ted sleeping through the night. More accurately, Ted kept waking up and barking at all hours, so we were having problems sleeping through the night. With our crazy holiday travel schedule, we took the easy way out and let Ted sleep in our bed for the rest of the month, and JG made an appointment with the vet during his winter break.

At the appointment, JG described our sleep troubles and what we had tried to alleviate them, and the vet took notice when JG said that even if we let Ted roam around the house at night, he would just end up sleeping outside our bedroom door in the hallway. “Hm,” the vet said.

“Does Ted favor one of you?” Yes, he favors JG.

“Does he bark during the day?” No, hardly ever.

“Does he have accidents when you’re at work?” No.

“Hm.”

After confirming Ted’s health with bloodwork, the vet concluded along with us that Ted’s sleep stubbornness was purely behavioral. We would have to train it out of him, he said, and it was probably going to mean some degree of suffering for us. The vet recommended not letting Ted sleep in our bed any more, especially since he favors JG over me. Ted was likely jealous of me, he guessed, and it would be best to establish our bed as a no-dog zone so he wouldn’t fret when he wasn’t included. Also, the vet suggested putting Ted’s crate in our room and then slowly phasing it out into the separate room so that Ted wouldn’t associate the create with separation.

Okay. We had our marching orders.

We set up the crate in our room and put Ted in it, along with a new chew toy to buy his affection. To our great surprise, Ted didn’t let out a peep for the rest of the night. Hallelujah! As the week progressed, JG and I agreed that while the situation wasn’t ideal, we could manage with this set-up — at least we were sleeping, right?

At least, we were sleeping.

After six weeks of bedtime peace, Ted’s erratic sleep behavior returned with the start of the Olympics. I doubt that the two events are related, but the coincidence could not be any more painful because we are already sleep-deprived from trying to keep up with primetime coverage. In any case, Ted has begun to wake up at various times at night (11pm, 2am, 4am) with incessant whining and scratching at his crate. During the day, he barely makes a peep, which makes the sheer range of whining unbelievable. There’s the guttural, low-pitched growl-whine all the way up to the shrill soprano shriek, and the entire spectrum rakes at our ear drums and steals hours of sleep. We can’t pin down what’s causing it because every night has its unique variables. One night, I watched the Olympics in our bedroom, and Ted acted out. The next night, I didn’t, and he was quiet. Another night, JG was charging his razor, and Ted whined and whined, so was it the flashing light? Last night, he let us get a mere hour of sleep before starting off his tirade, and we let it go on for two hours before JG finally let him out to run around the house. Thankfully, Ted did not leave an accident to clean up. That time, anyway.

The short-term plan is to let Ted sleep in our bed for tonight and tomorrow night for the sake of getting rest. I hesitate to defy the vet on this point, but the loss of sleep has reached an intractable limit. During the day for the rest of the week, I’m putting Ted in his crate in an effort to reacquaint him with the darn thing and let him get his whining out of the way when we aren’t trying to sleep. I hate to regress like this because Ted is house-trained, but I see no other recourse right now. Over the weekend, we’ll try out Ted sleeping in his crate in a separate room. If we end up with sleepless nights, well, we can take naps. We’re not even considering how to handle next week.

I say we have a plan, but we are really stumped. JG is completely exhausted. I am at my wit’s end. Letting Ted sleep in our bed is not the real solution. This whole struggle jabs at my Cesar-Milan-induced sense of pack-leadership — why can’t we control the situation if we are in charge? How do we train Ted to behave correctly when sleep deprivation renders us unable to be calm? We just want to have a reliable night’s sleep without spikes of anxiety and anger aimed at our usually-docile dog when he has instantaneously morphed into screaming banshee.

About a month ago, the lovely L Sass e-mailed me to see if I’d be in town for the weekend of February 19. She was going to be in the area, so maybe we could meet up?

Yes! I am in town! I am available! I will drive wherever! Just tell me when you’re free! I e-mailed back, “Okay, I just SHRIEKED. Literally. (Not overused-incorrectly-literally!)” So, you know, I kept my cool.

We made plans to meet for an early lunch on Saturday, and I asked JG if he minded that I was doing this. Wasn’t it a little sketchy, just a bit?

“No,” he said, “I’m pretty sure she is not a huge, scary guy.”

And, people, L Sass is not any of those things. As I suspected from our past bloggy interactions, she is delightful. She navigated her way through the regional rail system and found me on the opposite platform despite circuitous under-construction pathways. I immediately gushed over her bright green winter coat; that girl knows her way into my heart! We walked down slushy streets to a local restaurant, where we both ordered mushroom dishes, and chatted for hours. We talked about jobs, plans for the future, blogging, and regional differences, and it was all very breezy and natural.

It’s funny, because I felt as though we were catching up, even though we had never actually spent time together in person. However, when you’re meeting somebody you already know, you don’t have to waste time on get-to-know-you small talk. I could ask questions about her business school experience, and what’s in store for the future, and she commiserated on my freelance quest and regretted not being able to meet Ted. Next time, we said. Yes, there will be a next time!

I finished The Professor and Other Writings, a collection of essays by Terry Castle, a week and a half ago, but I couldn’t bring myself to write a review because I hated it so much.

There, I said it.

I should note that I love to read essays and short stories. They’re modular and easy to slip in and out in case of distraction. If I don’t like one piece, I take comfort in the fact that it’ll be over soon. The description for The Professor said that Castle wrote “in the grand tradition of such feminist luminaries as Susan Sontag, Camille Paglia, and Joan Didion,” so I went ahead and requested it.

Well. Maybe my taste is too immature or uninformed, but Terry Castle is not my cup of tea. I found her writing to be dense, labored, and overly ornamental. She is effective in painting a scene, but only if you know the author, city, painting, book, or song she’s referring to. The overall effect was that I felt as though the book was calling me a dunce.

For example, there’s a moment in a piece called “Travels with My Mother”  that describes a certain room in a museum:

The space is bijou, only about fifteen feet across: white-walled, octagonal and windowless, with the same low light the Tate Britain has in its Blake room.

My train of thought upon reading this line: Um, I need to look up “bijou” … okay, it means something that is delicate, elegant, or highly prized. I need to reread this now. … It’s been too long since I’ve been to the Tate. What is it now, six years? I can’t even remember what the Blake room looked like. Whatever. Next sentence…

Instead of creating a specific scene or feeling for me, Castle’s obscure references flew over my head and left me feeling like an ignoramus. I ended up skipping what I didn’t know — which was a lot — in the hopes of reading something I liked — which didn’t happen.

Castle’s style also makes a lot of room for digression, and this tic did not sit well with me. I’d see the title of the piece and wait for something that aligned with it, only to wait a very long time before that happened. In the last essay, “The Professor” — if a 200-page piece can be called an essay — Castle spent 79 pages setting the scene before we ever met the eponymous professor. I found this style very frustrating, and I barely skimmed that last piece out of pure irritation.

So, maybe I’m just not smart enough to appreciate Terry Castle. Maybe I need to read more, see more art, listen to different music, or travel to more countries. Maybe you’re a lot more informed and cultured than I am, and you don’t mind pages and pages of tangential writing. If that’s the case, then go right ahead and try out this book. Take my copy, while you’re at it! Please. Seriously.

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I received this book as a free sample from HarperCollins. If you’d like a chance to win your own copy and you live in the United States or Canada (sorry, other countries!), please leave a comment. Comments will close at 8pm Eastern Time on Friday, February 26, and I will choose one winner randomly.

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Edited to add: The comments are now closed, and the winner has been selected. Congratulations to Brianna!