Ouch

My poor mouth hurts.

I am in a lot of pain, but I know, from last years experience, that it will get better.

I had to get another crown put in.

I cracked, yet again, another tooth.

This is tooth number two.

My dentist told me that I am grinding my teeth in my sleep.

Great.

I’m not stressed, really.

Bwahahahaha.

Sigh.

So, two weeks ago I got a temporary crown.  What had been an appointment for a teeth cleaning became a three-hour session in the chair.

And cost a fat $1475.

Then today, two weeks later, I got my new crown in and dropped another freaking $465 to get a mouth guard because my dental insurance doesn’t cover mouth guards.

But I tell you what.

When my dentist says I need a mouth guard or I run the risk of cracking more teeth and having to get more crowns, I’ll fucking pay it out-of-pocket.

Happy birthday!

Merry Christmas!

Yay.

Dental work.

Oh well.

At least I had the money in my account to just pay it out with cash and not freak out.

I wanted to sort of freak out, but I don’t have to.

I still have some student loan money left over to get through the rest of the semester and I will be alright.

I always am.

There was a time that dental work of this nature would have blown me out of the water, but I have a touch more experience with padding my bank account with my student loans.

I told a friend today what my student loans were at, around $104,000 and he blanched.  He’s also from country that doesn’t charge its citizens to go to school, so he’s not really accustomed to what it means to be an American with a great big heap of student loan debt.

I don’t care though.

My education is worth it and hey, I took out a big chunk to help with my move into my new place and I have no regrets about it.

I am interning at a non-profit and plan on working for them for the ten-year period that the federal government asks one to do if you want your student loans forgiven.

I can do that.

So it’s ok if I have them.

And yeah, they’ve helped with more than just paying tuition at my super expensive school.

I’m worth it and I still get to live in San Francisco.

So, there’s that.

I’m not on any pain killers for the tooth though and it feels big and hot and ouchy in my mouth.  If I remember correctly from last January it passed within a few days, the big pain by the next day, hopefully that will happen for me as well.

I expect that there will be some tenderness and hot cold sensitivity for a while, but it does pass too.

I will say I am not in the mood to do any homework and since my landlord is having a party I’m not really in the space to turn my attention and focus to homework.  I’m playing some pretty loud French music right now and trying to not think about my tooth.

I also did some apartment hunting on Craigslist.

I’m happy with my new place and not happy at the same time.

I had to move all of my things out of storage in the basement today, which I was not planning on having to do.  When I moved in the landlord offered me space in the basement to store stuff as my unit as no storage space, just a tiny closet that doesn’t fit all of my clothes, I got a big dresser and a rolling garment rack to deal with that.

But I don’t have anywhere to put my camping/Burning Man gear, nor the boxes of notebooks and text books I’m not currently using.  Fortunately my boss offered me space in her storage unit.  So tomorrow I get to get up way earlier than I was planning for on my one day off during the week to take my stuff across town to the Bayview to put in storage.

Two weeks ago I had asked my land lord that the basement be unlocked, I wanted to grab my Christmas ornaments a something to wear to the Burning Man ARTumnal event I went to a few weeks back.

It was at that time I was told that I was going to have to find another place to put my stuff as the landlord’s wife is pregnant and they are going to be renovating a room into a nursery and needing to store stuff in the basement.

FUCK.

I was floored.

I was also fucking pissed.  Where the hell was I going to put my stuff?

And.

I hate to be a bitch.

But fuck my life, I moved in here partially because I was assured it was a really quiet space that I was going to be able to study and not be disturbed and all was going to be chill.

A new-born living over my head is not a quiet living environment.

Now.

Don’t get me wrong, I love kids, I adore babies, for fuck’s sake, I’m a nanny.

AND.

I’m a nanny, I deal with crying baby at work all the time, I don’t want to come home to crying baby.

Ugh.

I might be making too much of it but that coupled with a few other things, like the unit is not nearly as sound proof as I was lead to believe and that the landlord and his wife have had two knock down screaming fights with each other where things were smashed and doors slammed since I’ve moved in that makes me think I will be looking for a new place to live when my lease is up.

I’m not going to break the lease, unless something extraordinary gets dropped in my lap, but I do think I may not be making this quite the permanent place I had thought.

And really, not that permanent either, I wasn’t planning on being here longer than my PhD program.

I sort of figured that I wanted to get settled in and cozy and then not have to think about moving until I was finished with my program and by that time I would be making good money with my private practice and could afford a one bedroom instead of a studio, or even, maybe start looking at what it would take to land a house.

I really do have the  dream of owning my own home one day in San Francisco, crazy as that may seem, I have my hopes and I have seen stranger things happen.

So.

Yeah.

A tooth ache and a loud party upstairs are not conducive to doing homework, but I thought, I can blog!

And there you have it.

I’m back to the blogging and my, it does feel fine and I just realized my tooth hasn’t hurt that much while I was writing.

Win/win.

No Problems

Well that’s what a girl likes to fucking hear!

Thank God.

I was praying in my head and doing deep breathing the entire time I was at the dentist getting x-rays and the exam prior to the cleaning, keeping my fingers crossed that there were no more surprises, no cracked teeth, no need for another crown.

Clean bill of health.

Except.

Well.

Not quite.

Turns out it looks like I may be grinding my teeth, this is the first time that that’s been mentioned in the two years that I have been seeing this dentist.

Might be time for a mouth guard.

But.

Of course.

My insurance, what the fuck, doesn’t cover it.

I was like.

Whatever.

Dentist says it’s an indicator of stress when teeth are ground at night.

Great.

Really?

Stress.

Hahahaha.

Sigh.

I asked them to check under my other insurance, yes, technically I have two insurance plans, Universal Health Services, a PPO, through my school, and I also have Delta Dental.

The Delta Dental doesn’t cover it.

Frankly it doesn’t seem to cover much.

It didn’t cover my cracked tooth and subsequent crown, that was $1400 out-of-pocket.

The mouth guard, should my other insurance not cover it, and considering the lack of shit that they do cover (remember this is the insurance company that won’t cover the endoscopy), will cost $495 out-of-pocket.

The admin team at the dentist’s office said they’d check for me on Monday.

I figure I’ll be getting a mouth guard my next dentist visit in August and it will be out-of-pocket.

Whatever.

Stress.

Meh.

What stress?

Bwahahahahaha.

On the up side, no cavities, no cracked teeth, and a good cleaning and I was out the door.

I was happy to be onto the next thing that I needed to do, supervision, and I had time to get cross town and find parking.

Which was a shit show.

There was a fixed gear bicycle race in the neighborhood and all but one of the blocks around my internship were closed off.

I had to circle for a while.

I’m super grateful I had the extra time.

I would have been late.

As it stood I made it just at the stroke of 2 p.m.

I had a good check in, got to relay that I had the clean (ish, I suppose if there’s evidence of teeth grinding it wasn’t exactly) bill of health and that I had made it to yoga today for the first time in six weeks.

Sigh.

Six.

That’s a lot of time, but I have been suffering with the reflux for so long that I couldn’t go, I mean, I wanted to, I signed up a few times, but I could never make it to class.

Today was hard.

But not overwhelmingly so.

I didn’t have reflux, though my tummy still has some issues, I was able to do the class and I’m quite happy for the exercise.

I am sure I will be sore in the morning.

I signed up for an early yoga class tomorrow.

7:15 a.m.

I can’t believe I’m going to do it, but I am.

I’m going with my best friend and then we’re going to have breakfast.

After I wrapped with group supervision I did exactly what I had hoped to get done.

Car wash.

And.

A mani/pedi.

It was lovely.

I also got some grocery shopping done then met my person at my Saturday night commitment and got right with God.

It was a really nice day, full of stuff, but really good stuff.

I have a lot to do tomorrow, and the paper is looming, but I feel like the self-care that I did today was good and that I am on the right track with getting the paper done.

I am going to not be anxious about it.

I’m going to really fucking try.

I don’t want to be grinding my teeth tonight.

Damn it.

 

How The Hell

Did that happen?

I’m back in school tomorrow.

I just printed off my syllabus for a class.

I haven’t read a thing, not that there was a thing to read, not that I’m aware of, there probably is a thing or fifteen that I’m supposed to read, but the syllabus that was up for the class I printed off doesn’t technically have text books that I have to buy.

I’ll be using materials from previous classes.

It’s called Integrative Seminar and it’s like a master’s thesis class in which I will expound upon all the learning I have done in the past years of work.

I have learned a lot.

A lot.

“Carmen, sometimes that’s the hardest thing,” my therapist said recently, “you have done the emotional work and you are aware and you are educated and it can be really hard to see things that other people haven’t seen for themselves.”

Ayup.

I mean.

Then again, it’s always easier to see someone else’s problems, they’re not yours, so you’re not invested, it’s a different perspective.

My “problems” are mine and special.

I mean, hello, they’re mine, of course they’re special.

But.

The learning, it has been a lot and I have become very self-aware.

What works for me, what doesn’t, how my emotions are not something to be afraid of but signs to point me in the way I need to be going.

I don’t always care for emotions.

Oh.

That’s not true.

I like some of them a lot.

A LOT.

Happiness.

Love.

Although love has a wicked back-handed sting of pain to it at times that will throttle the breath right out of my body and make me feel like my heart is on fire.

But, um, yeah, love.

It’s so good, it’s so delicious, I want more and more and more.

I usually have to really cultivate it in myself though, how I take care of myself, how I am gentle with myself (not always so good at that, work in progress, you know), how I feed myself, or let myself rest or be kind, like say nice things about myself and acknowledge the work I do.

I mean.

The work.

A lot of that.

Other emotions I like.

Joy.

Excitement.

Affection.

Awe.

Love me some awe.

Hope is a good one too.

Elation.

I like to be elated.

Euphoria.

That one’s super fun.

Wonder.

Ecstasy.

Ooh, yeah, I like that.

I mean.

Those are fantastic emotions, I’m all over those.

But some others.

Meh.

Not so much.

Jealousy.

Anger.

Fear.

Worry.

Sadness.

Oh woe is me, I do not like the sads.

Melancholia, which is just sadness with a fancy name.

Frustration.

Envy.

Lust.

Well, heh, maybe I do like some lust.

It’s well.

Lusty.

Ahem.

Humiliation.

Pity.

Fear.

I do not like the fear thing not a bit, not at all.

Yet.

I have all of those emotions too.

The nice thing is knowing that I am allowed to hold more than one emotion at a time, in fact I can hold many and do at any given minute or moment of the day.

Sadness and love and fear and lust and anxiety today.

As well as happiness and contentment and sorrow and grief.

A great big mixing bowl of feelings.

Hey there, look at that, I’m in psychology, the “science” of soul suffering.

What is it about the soul and the suffering and the journey of it all?

I suspect it’s about love and whether or not I let myself have it, let it in, allow myself to be loved, to accept I’m lovable, enough, that I deserve all the best and most wonderful things and to act in those interests.

Not something I have always been able to do so well.

The neat thing, yes, I said neat, about all this learning to become a therapist is that I get to work on myself, so this Integrative Seminar class should be a good way for me to look back over the last few years and measure, really see, how much I have grown.

The other class.

Well.

The syllabus was not up so I am not worried about having to have read anything for the class.

I have gotten one of the books the professor e-mailed the class about and I’ll bring that with.

I’ve got class from 9a.m. to 4p.m. then I’ll be heading off to my internship at seeing a consultation for therapy and a doing a phone session with a client.

Then.

It’s officially Friday.

Dinner with my best friend and connection, conversation, life, goals, love, shoes and ships and sealing wax, cabbages and kings.

All the things.

It’s a full and busy weekend for me.

I also have to go into the dentist on Saturday and get my permanent crown put in.

I’ll be leaving school a little early on Saturday to get to my dentist appointment by 4p.m.

And I just realized.

Sigh.

That I won’t really have a day off until next Saturday, which isn’t necessarily true either, I’ll have group supervision that day, but it will feel like a day off.

It’s always a long run of days when I’m in a weekend of school.

But this is it.

The last semester to my Masters program.

The final push!

I will be meeting with my advisor tomorrow at lunch to talk about graduation and also to get my letter of recommendation for the PhD program in Transformative Psychology.

That is still definitely on the burner for me.

Whew.

Glad I’ve got my books and folders and notebooks and syllabi all set.

Lunch is packed too.

I just need to figure out what to wear.

First day of school fashion crisis.

I suspect, though, that as long as I show up, it will all be fine.

That’s half the battle, isn’t it?

Just showing up.

Super grateful to be walking into this last semester with a full and thankful heart for the process that has brought me here to where I am today.

I’ve come a long way.

Baby.

I really fucking have.

Unfortunately

That’s not covered by your insurance.

My dentist told me this morning.

Ugh.

I sat in the chair and thought to myself, maybe I misheard him, maybe I didn’t hear that right, I mean, he speaks mostly Chinese, which I find oddly comforting, I don’t need to know what he is talking about to his assistant, but I’m pretty sure I had heard what I had heard.

Fingers crossed, please, tell me I didn’t hear what I heard.

Sigh.

But.

I had.

“Crack,” he’d said to the assistant in between poking and prodding and checking my teeth.

I was just in for a routine cleaning this morning.

I had all intents on going to the 10:30 a.m. yoga at the studio on my block and then meandering into my group supervision at 2p.m.

The supervision happened.

Yoga, well, yoga did not.

Nope.

Instead I was under the drill all morning.

My dentist took a picture of my tooth and showed me the crack.

I was surprised by how big it was and also that I hadn’t had any pain to indicate that there was a crack in my tooth.

Which was a really good thing.

No pain meant that it was probably fairly recent.

It had to have happened within the last three months, it wasn’t there the last time I went to the dentist, and it probably had occurred more recently than that.

Certainly nothing came to mind.

Nothing that I remember eating and doing any damage to my teeth.

“It’s not grinding your teeth while you sleep,” he said, answering a question I was just about to pose, “there’s not indication from any of your other teeth that you grind them while you sleep.”

Well, that’s good news.

“You eat anything crunchy?” He asked.

“Nuts?” I said, I do like raw almonds with my apple as a snack.

“Nuts, no good, nuts bad for teeth, you no more eat nuts unless you want to pay me big bucks and keep me in my mortgage,” he chuckled.

“Um no, I do not want to come back for another cracked tooth, I’ll lay off the nuts,” I replied.

Irony.

I kept thinking about my night-time snack, a couple of end of season super ripe and delicious persimmons and some raw walnuts.

Sigh.

No snack tonight.

I’ll still have my tea though.

I was really surprised by the photo and super glad that my dentist had caught it and he explained that I was lucky if there was no pain it meant the damage was manageable and that I would not have to have a root canal.

Fuck yes.

But.

I would have to get a crown.

And thus ensued the “your insurance doesn’t cover this,” discussion I had with my dentist.

Like I said, not really the conversation anyone wants to have on a Saturday morning, but I also knew when he started telling me about the differences between what my insurance would cover, it wasn’t going to cover the full amount, it would have still be $825 out-of-pocket, versus the better quality crown that the dentist was recommending, at $1200, I just sucked it up, made the decision to take good care of myself and signed the paperwork for the better product.

I was asked if I could start the work today and of course I said yes, bye, bye yoga class, and I went out and plugged the meter for parking another two hours and went back into the office, used the bathroom, prayed a bunch, came out signed off the paperwork and got ready to get injected with Novocaine.

He gave me a local, but I still felt the prick of the needle.

Ugh.

I hate needles.

I hate shots, hate, hate, hate.

The second injection was horrible, the local anesthesia hadn’t quite numbed me out in the second location, that one just plain good and hurt.

I sucked it up though, what was I going to do?

And then the dentist went to fucking town.

My god.

I will just say that smell of my tooth being ground down was overwhelming.

Not a pleasant smell, the drill, not a pleasant sound.

The taste of blood in mouth, horrifying.

I just breathed and prayed and breathed and prayed.

I had my mouth wedged open with some sort of device, that also sucks, frankly, it hurt my jaw keeping it open so long and my face felt tender for hours.

As of right now, I am happy to report, that the pain is really ok.

It’s there, sensitive now and again, a dull throb, but it’s doable.

And I have been able to eat.

They did a bunch of molds to get the fit right and then they did the temporary crown.

The permanent one takes two weeks to be ready.

I have to be cautious with the temporary one, nothing crunchy, and no gum.

I can handle that.

And two weeks from today I’ll go in and my dentist will give me the permanent crown.

I am assuming it will mean more Novocaine, but I’ve got two weeks until it happens.

I’m a baby around dental stuff, but at least I showed up and I did do the work and I paid for it all in full at the end of the session, I could have put it off until the permanent crown gets put in, but I figured I had the money in my account, just pay the damn thing.

And for that I am grateful.

I had the money.

I didn’t always have the money.

A little while ago a dental bill for $1285 would have floored me.  It was not pleasant, I will say that, and I did go through a spurt of brief financial anxiety, but I’m ok, I really am.

And so grateful I chose well and chose to take care of myself and my mouth.

There was a homeless man on the sidewalk sleeping when I came out to climb into my new car and go home and make myself a fancy espresso drink with expensive organic coffee beans.

I have it really fucking good.

I have no money problems.

Fuck.

I don’t have problems.

I just have opportunities to learn.

And.

To be stupid grateful at how good my life is.

It really is.

I CHOOSE HAPPY

I CHOOSE HAPPY AND LIGHT!

I hollered out loud scootering down Lincoln Avenue like a maniac.

I have no idea if any one heard me, but I am laughing out loud thinking about it.

I had previous to that moment been a little in my head.

I was feeling small and sad.

I texted a lot of people right as the day was ending.

I had an unexpected thing happen and it threw me for a loop and I found myself in a quandary trying to decide how to proceed.

Breathe.

There’s a start.

Um.

Do the next thing in front of you.

I have two small boys in a bath tub, attend to that, wash the hair, condition it–it was not suppose to be a bath night with hair washing but how the 3 year old got cheese dip in his hair, well, it’s a long story, suffice to say, hair washing happened.

Heh.

God I love these little boys.

Even when they drive me bats.

It took me a good fifteen minutes to get the little guy into the bath, he’s definitely going through a bit of a rebellious phase, and he did not want a bath.

AT ALL.

And of course once I managed to get him in the bath he did not want to get out.

So often that child could be me.

But, but, but, I’m all focused on this thing here and I want this thing here and it’s not good for me, but so what, let me get all engaged with what I think is right and you’re wrong and fuck me.

I’m an emotional three year old.

However.

I do have some tools and mama opened up the tool box and took them out.

I prayed.

I texted my people.

I got some fantastic suggestions.

I couldn’t really use the phone, mom and dad were down stairs and I was not inclined to have the conversation be overheard.

I never am.

I’m either on camera or the monitor and I would rather just keep it discrete.

I can text at work and that feels ok, as long as I am paying attention to what is going on with my little guys.

That being said.

I practiced some restraint and I am grateful for it.

So grateful.

I am also grateful to know that I have choices and though, yes, for a little while I did feel small, sad, and though my heart hurt, it didn’t hurt for long.

I had a bit of conversation in my head about how to respond.

No response is a response, Martines.

No.

No, is a complete answer.

And this nice little tidbit, I don’t owe anyone a reason or a response.

I can choose to not engage.

I can choose happy.

I can choose light.

I can choose joy.

I can choose to get up early on a Monday and go to yoga and work so hard that my arms are literally shaking, I mean, I am holding the pose, but I can see the muscles in my arm twitching and vibrating from the strain of holding the pose.

That was a first for me.

My arms had quite a bit more of a work out than I was expecting.

But it did lead to an enormous release of energy and I was able to turn my heart up to the ceiling in a certain pose and suddenly.

Light and happy.

I saw a crown.

I saw a bunch of daisies.

I felt a wash of joy.

I felt dipped in happy.

It was a pretty swell feeling leaving the studio this morning, climbing into a super hot shower after, putting on my favorite Big Mac vintage overalls and zooming out the door and off to work.

Just a little early so I could throw some gas in my scooter and also get to the post office before I went into work to send off my mom’s Mother’s Day package.

It felt good to do that.

Get my mom’s gift into the post.

I’ll be in school all weekend, though I am sure I will find a minute to reach out and call, I wanted to make sure that I had the package in the mail before the week got a head of me.

I showed up.

I got present for work.

The family wasn’t there.

The boys in school.

The parents out.

It was really sweet and nice to have the house to myself for the first hour of work.

I kicked through most of what I needed to do before the mom came back, cleared with me the day and what to do for dinner, talked about menu planning for the week, and also got my doctor’s appointment approved for next Friday.

I had a nice little Monday afternoon reunion with the boys when they got home from school and did a lot of reading with them before heading out the door to gather a few things from the market, the cleaners, and Lucca Ravioli.

I also found a bird’s nest.

It was so beautiful and small.

It was in the middle of the sidewalk, soft grasses and small twigs, tiny little white pin feathers all interwoven.

I took some photos, gave it to the oldest boy and enjoyed the small gift of beauty that I was given.

So many small gifts of beauty.

Perspective being one of them.

“Of course you feel sad,” he said via text.

“Have your feelings.”

Oh yeah.

That’s right.

I get to have feelings and they will be fleeting.

I can be sad.

I can feel small.

And.

Then I can let go of those feelings and reach for others.

Which is why I was hollering “I choose happy, I choose light!” at the top of my lungs on Lincoln Avenue as I was riding my scooter home.

I choose to not engage in a story or make a drama.

I choose to be happy.

I choose to be an artist and joyful and silly.

And.

“Are you really 43?” He asked me as we leaned up against The Addams Family pinball game at Free Gold Watch.

“You do not act 43.”

“I really am,” I said.

Forty fucking three.

And astounded with happy, joyous,

(lightness)

And.

Free.

All the fucking time.