Why Nobody Likes to Shop With Me

Typical thoughts while browsing Walmart:

Okay we need toothpaste. The cheapest kind is a buck. Clean teeth are clean teeth, but I have a great coupon for Aqua-Fresh Advanced. Let's see, there's Aqua- Fresh Plus, Aqua-Fresh Premium and Aqua-Fresh Use Me Because You Have Worse Breath Than the Dog. Nowhere do I see Aqua-Fresh Advanced. Ohhhhh, it should be right there where that empty hole is. Frickin' figures. Probably a million people had the same damn coupon.

Pantene is next. What the heck! It's four bucks a bottle! It was never four bucks a bottle. Oh I see. They did a rollback on the crap I won't buy and marked the Pantene up to balance it out. Bastards.

Toilet paper time. I have a coupon for the Scott Extra Soft. Here's Scott. I'm looking, looking, looking but there is no extra soft. I guess I'll just buy the generic toilet paper. Let's hope it doesn't leave lintballs. I also need flush wipes. I can only find the name brand ones in this section. I'll have to backtrack to the pharmacy section. Crap.

Ack, the store is getting crowded. It was empty when I got here. Hey you, yeah all you people blocking the aisle! Can you not see me trying to get past? Do you not care? Oh I'm sorry you're too busy trying to figure out which brand of hemmorhoid ointment to rub on your face to actually look up and pay attention. May your rear-end fall off next time you sit on the toilet. And I hope your toilet paper leaves lint balls all over you.

Ooh, look. Curves has a new cereal. How many calories are in it? Oh crap! There's almost 200 calories in a cup! I'll be getting more of those curves in the wrong places if I eat this.

We need strawberry jelly. Now if this lady who is looking at the jelly will hurry up and choose. Come on lady. It's jelly not an algebra problem. HURRY UP! Oh screw it. I'll go in the next aisle while you pick your ass.

Oh look a search and rescue party in the next aisle. How do I know? Because they're fanning out, that's how! Between the cart and the two women on each side of it, there is no passing. I guess I'll go see if Miss Slow is done looking at jelly.

Yay, she's gone. I'll get some Smuckers. It was cheap last time. What's this? They marked that up too! I'm so damn sick of this. I'll buy the generic and hope it doesn't suck.

I need hand soap. The eighty-eight cent kind is sold out. Here's the new aloe vera yogurt soap and I have a thirty-cent coupon. Thirty-cents is really not much off of two bucks. But it's something.

Laundry detergent time. I really like Tide but it's twice the price of Purex. Clean clothes are clean clothes.

Finally done and time to check out. Oh goodie. Everybody else got done shopping at the same time I did. And I'm behind the lady who has eight kajillion items AND she's writing a check veeeeery slowly. Unreal.

Thank goodness I am finally done. Now it's time to go to the grocery store where everything is filled with corn syrup!

The Following Post Brought to You by...

PAXIL! I love Paxil. I've been on it almost two weeks now and what a difference. Sometimes you don't realize how bad you were feeling until you start feeling good. Maybe my posts will be a little less woe is me now. They were getting tiresome.

The dentist of doom installed the permanent crown on Wednesday. I will spare the painful details since so many of you don't care for the dentist. Let's just say it hurt a lot and I will be switching dentists. I don't think he'll mind much either since I accidentally bit his finger as I was yelping in pain. Some relationships are not meant to be. Really, it's not him, it's me. Yeah right!

Moving on, my class is going well. I thought it was a plain children's nutrition class. Actually it is children's nutrition, health and safety. It's not bad and it's an easy way to get started back to school. I wasn't going to start out with chemistry, that's for sure.

And now the story of the day.

I pick Azure up at the library after school. Many of the parents do that, so the library gets quite crowded and noisy around two.

The library has a separate "quiet" room. It's made out of glass so you can see inside and the people inside can see out.

We walked past the quiet room and Sammie knocked on the door before I caught him. There was one elderly gentleman in there and he was flashing Sammie the look of doom.

I gave him my best apologetic smile and he glared at me.

Ooooookay.

I told Sammie to leave the man alone because the knocking made him angry. Sammie then walked up to peek in the room.

I told him no peeking and pulled him away. I also told him if he knocked again that man would probably come out and swat his butt. (hoping this would deter him) Then I grabbed some books, taking Sammie with me. On the way back by the room he ran up and knocked again. Sammie has always been one to press his luck.

We started walking to the check out counter. The man was slowly emerging from the room while giving us his glare of death.

Sammie got scared and hid behind me.

If looks could kill, we'd have dropped dead on the spot. The "gentleman" walked up to one of the librarians, I'm sure to complain about us.

While I was checking out, I told one of the other librarians what had transpired. She knew exactly which man I met. She told me in a wry voice that yes he liked his quiet.

I told her that I had told Sammie the man might swat him. She said he just might have. It seems they are quite familiar with that particular library patron.

Here's my beef, well beside the fact he was a total asshole. He comes to the library during the time of day it is most filled with kids and gets mad about noise. Come on now! That's like going to the grocery store at five and being shocked at the lines. Seems to me he only wanted something to bitch about.

Normally I try really hard to make sure my kids don't disturb other people. But in this particular case, it was a pleasure.

I laughed about it for a good half hour. Next time I see that man in the quiet room I will have to resist the urge to press my bare ass up against the glass.

That would be quite satisfying.

Heavy Is the Tooth That Wears the Crown

First I must tell you of my old dentist. Her initials were AR and she was awesome.

AR had the gift of gab. I loved to talk to her. It's always a bonus to have a personable dentist.

But most importantly, she was gentle. Before she gave the novocaine shot she swabbed the inside of my mouth with a topical pain reliever. The actual shot felt like a little pinch.

AR left her practice and sold it to some friends. They inherited me and her other patients, the ones who chose to stay. I am beginning to question the fact that I stayed.

The new dentist I see is a man. The verdict is still out on his personality. It took three visits to warm up to him. He has no gift of gab. It could be that he is reserved or it could be that his accent is so heavy that he tired of hearing his patients say, "Huh?"

Of course what can you say but huh when your mouth is wide open?

I don't like going to the dentist in the first place. An accurate statement of my feelings for the dentist is that they are right up there with the gynecologist, or should I say right down there?

Either way I'm wide open with somebody digging around. With the gynecologist's end, it's embarrassing. With the dentist's end it's painful.

Maybe this is why the one stop dental/ob/gyn office never caught on.

Sadly I have to have a crown. A crown is what you end up with when a cavity gets too big to fill. If the crown doesn't take, you end up with a root canal. But let's not sail down that way yet.

This Tuesday was my visit for the temporary crown. First the dental assistant gave me something to bite on. She didn't even warn me the consistency was that of modeling clay. She just told me that I needed to bite on it for a "few minutes." Then she put it in my mouth.

And I waited and waited and waited. I still had the remnants of the cold Azure gave me so I had some lovely, thick post-nasal drip sliding down my throat. Then I had the slobber my mouth was generating because something was in it. It's hard to swallow when your mouth is half open so I was also fighting my ever-ready gag reflex.

The dentist came up to look at this thing in my mouth. He told me to keep clamping down. So then I was clamping down while he lifted up my lips and peered. I seriously wanted to go, "Neeeeeeigh," but I didn't think he would find it funny.

After the modeling clay contraption was removed from my mouth he decided to numb me. First he put on the topical. Then he gave me the shots. The first shot wasn't too bad but the second shot - holey moley!

He pushed the needle in.
He pulled the needle out.
He crammed the needle in.
And he swirled it all about.
He did the hokey pokey while he twirled that thing around.
And I couldn't even shout.

It felt like that too.

After we decreed it numbed, he started drilling. Only I could feel it.

He said some people were like that, there were some extra nerves (oh lucky me) and he numbed in a different spot.

Then he drilled. I started gagging due to all the stuff sitting in my throat. He told me to try to breathe through my nose. Breathing through my nose wasn't the point. It was all the crap sitting on top of my gag reflex.

I swear the drilling took forever.

I can't remember the next step. I think it involved a plate in the lower part of my mouth. It was too big. One would think as much as I stick my foot in my mouth it would be stretched out enough that it would be hard to find a plate BIG enough for my mouth.

In fact I'm surprised they didn't have to call Mick Jagger's dentist.

Then the dental assistant crammed another plate in the top of my mouth. Only there was a sore spot in the top of my mouth I had been unaware of until then. I jumped a foot. She pulled it out to put glue or rubber cement or some such shit on it. Then she wrestled it right back in with all the finesse of someone cramming a size eight shoe on a size ten foot.

I remember more plates, one of them the denist had to hold in my mouth for about five minutes. You don't know weird until you've had to sit with a person's fingers in your mouth for five minutes.

There was lots of biting down involved. Too bad none of it was on the dentist's fingers.

Finally the temporary crown was on and I was done. I may have finally hit that dreamed of eight minute mile getting out of there.

After the novocaine wore off my jaw hurt. I used one of my precious eight-hundred milligram motrins at bedtime. That left me with two.

I noticed I was drooling out of the left side of my mouth when I slept. I still am.

I can't chew on my left side. It's sensitive to hot and cold. Sometimes the left side of my jaw aches. Sometimes my jaw quits hurting long enough for me to feel the pain that's radiating up to both ears.

I have a doctor's appointment Tuesday for something unrelated. I'll be sure to ask for more eight-hundred milligram motrin while I'm there.

If the permanent crown is like this, I'm going to a different dentist to do the hokey pokey.

Wanted: One gentle dentist. Your needle must inflict no pain and your dental assistant must promptly suction the drool off my tonsils. Please call 555-1234. Hurry!