Thursday 13

Thirteen Funny things I have experienced so far today:

1. Self delusion. A friend read my tarot earlier this week. She shuffled, honest. I got 10, Queen and King of pentacles - money and luck all the way. So I broke a habit and bought not one but three lucky dips for last night's lottery, which I then forgot.
   
2. Horror. This morning I watched the nice lady at the newsagents run my ticket through the machine, then smile in a conciliatory fashion as she screwed it up and threw it at a bin. The funny part was I was actually daft enough to wind myself up to a state slightly beyond mere hope - I now find I'm too old/fragile for anticipation that verges on belief.
3. Vanity. This was after I went to all the local chemists looking for a replacement tube of body wash in my favourite perfume, Elizabeth Arden's Red Door. I'd only got the stuff as a gift in the first place, but it makes me feel so feminine and I'd eked it out for as long as possible, whilst saving the £20 or thereabouts needed for the full size replacement. The last shop had one left! I made my most expensive 'just for me' purchase since well before Christmas and came home on a high.
4. Futility. I got it home and put on my reading glasses. The lady in the shop had authoritatively told me that the little bottle I'd been using (which I'd carried to the shop) was white, not red, to denote it came from a boxed set, that the two items were otherwise identical. Like hell. My stuff is white lotion and blissfully creamy and moisturising. The stuff I bought today is clear gel, not moisturising, and worse, pearlised. I've called them, and I'm taking it back tomorrow. Sulk. Even when I treat myself it doesn't work. I think life might be trying to tell me not to bother.
   
5. Annoyance. This was after I took husband's books back to the library, and got tabbed for over £4 in overdues. He hadn't told me it was going to be that much; nice guy.
6. Bravery. This was after I went to the dentist, purely to renew contact with the hospital consultant. To explain I have thalidomide (tessellated?) tooth roots - two roots of three go up, one out forward, interlocking all the way. Nice, strong 3cm long tooth roots, the sort that make dentists go beyond the drills set out for use and start hunting in drawers / borrowing from friendly horse vets. We are talking a drill through the cheek bone to shift this little darling, so perhaps you understand why I left it until after needing huge doses of antibiotics before I mustered the courage.
7. Humiliation. I determined to look like a woman who cared about her appearance, as I find this tends to improve their chair-side manner, squirted my perfume on last thing before I left, and realised when I got there that I still stunk like a poofs paradise, worse in a small, hot, dentists office. I was drying my own lips and nose out and had to stifle the desire to keep wafting my hand round and apologising as if my breasts had just done some sort of unbearable, floral fart.
   
8. Ditto. This wasn't the only humiliation, I waxed a few stray eyebrow hairs before I had my bath this morning and the combination of wax followed by steam was that I was still wearing the look of someone with a bright pink monobrow when I left the door.
9. Yup, and again. On top of that, perhaps for the heat today, the after-bath blotches just didn't go down - we are talking blotchy red nose and a welted neck, here, people.
10. Chauvenism/ageism/some sort of bloody ism anyway. On top of that the dentist (a replacement; young, with the haughty good looks of an Eastern Adonis/Arabian Prince who expects rose petals to be strewn before him) had all the bedside manner of Basil Fawlty. I need the tooth next to the bad tooth pulled and was told as much in a very off hand, matter of fact way. 'Otherwise it will cause all sorts of problems', says he, jiggling it about like fury just to make sure it fulfils his prophecy. I asked him what sort of problems and he got all vague. I asked him about bridges and implants and prices and he looked totally blank, except to tell me that with nothing behind these top, back teeth, bridgework was not an option. He just seemed way too enthusiastic to extract my poor tooth and viewed the whole procedure the way I would view cutting a toenail, I mean, the guy seemed to have had a total empathy bypass with apparent disinterest augmentation. I fled.
11. A bad taste.... So I ran through the library and chemist shop on auto pilot and instead of walking home on this lovely sunny day, I caught a taxi, to get indoors and have a jolly good self pitying snivel. By the time I wiped the tears away I realised that the sense of a blocked nose and stabbing pains around the eye and temple were all on one side; not due to stifling disgustingly un-amazonian tears, but actually due to that little turd in a white coat fiddling with my tooth. I sucked it. Thanks to the good wiggling, it tasted rather foul. Now I can't stop sucking it. And it still tastes foul.
12. Murphy's Law. So I am sitting here in pain and working out the dates. I know I will go doolally and jelly legged for at least a day if this gets done, and Husband is away for the whole week next week, so its now, or its when he comes back and just pray to heaven that Mr Wiggly-git-dentist hasn't set me up for another whole-head infection. I mean, its nice when you can see out of both eyes, you know? I found my nerve. I rang them back up and apologised for bottling out. How much will an extraction cost on the NHS, and can they squeeze me in this side of the weekend? Answer: They can only fit me in at 3pm (exactly when the kids come out of school, damn) and anyway its going to cost £42. Forty two bloody quid just to ram a pair of pliers into my mouth and pull, then send me home with a wad of cotton wool. It's all irrelevant anyway - I don't have that kind of money spare, especially not as I just spent half that on the wrong stupid-bloody-vain bath smellies. Pah.
    
13. Total discombobulation. Losing that tooth as well as the 'for the consultant tooth' as well as the fact that I lost the wisdom tooth that side years ago, will mean all 3 molars gone bye-bye and a huge gap at the back. I'll just have to remember not to smile too widely any more. I mean, I'm only 45 and that silly little sod of a junior dentist has just cheerfully told me that its goodbye to any chance of looking younger as the kids get older, and hello to the onset of lemon-sucking pucker-mouth. Someone pass me the sodding walking frame and the Tena Lady, why don't you. I rang husband. I don't know if he could tell that I'd been crying, or not. I told him the situation and wailed that I wouldn't be sexy any more. He agreed that the whole situation sounded rather unattractive, so I tried another tack and became more direct. "So, H, are you going to find me remotely attractive with a huge gap in my mouth?" I asked. "Yeah!" he answered brightly. "Sure!", and as he said it I could sense a flush of femininity begin to resurface in me. Its a good job we were talking on the phone. I was just observing a growing desire to kiss him, when he added, "Anyway, theres some things you can do LOADS better if you've got no teeth!"

I tell you, the guy is dead meat.


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