(no subject)
Dec. 24th, 2008 04:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
urocyonArgh, Opera just crashed (again) and wiped out my nearly-finished post. I knew there was a reason I'd been pasting things out of Emacs. So, here is what will likely be a more concise version.
Now I'm feeling an extra push to get my pet care thing up and running again after the holidays: I really, really need to get my eyeteeth fixed. I have been putting this off for years, but with continued chipping, it's become more pressing lately. Especially since I've kept catching myself grinding them again the past few months, and periodically having to remove chips of enamel from my mouth. The left one is better than halfway gone now, with no point at all. Today they have both been feeling like somebody's been jabbing up into them with icepicks. I didn't make it out today, after all, having been in pretty serious overload between the teeth and being sick.
The complication here: I'm going to have to get more orthodontic work (i.e., undo the previous), or the repairs will just break off again. That would be both aggravating and expensive, even if I weren't so freaked out by dental work. It's not a phobia per se, since I've had most of the work done by the Butcher of Dublin (who apparently just finished as president of the Virginia Dental Association, urgh) and an iffy orthodontist. I was amazed when I got a filling from someone who actually made sure it was numb, made sure he was not drilling painfully deep, and didn't split the corners of my mouth open. However, I can't put off repairs much longer, or I'll end up losing my canines--and looking forward to it. :/
I am trying not to kick myself more over insisting on having the unnecessary orthodontic work done in the first place, especially since I was 14 and being hounded mercilessly over my teeth. (Along with the general White Trashiness which was apparently keeping them the way they were.) My main concern was a front tooth that grew back in winged, after I'd knocked out the baby tooth. I wasn't bothered by being fangy like William Gibson*, though the orthodontist I saw was.
I suspect a lot of this came from trying to justify keeping expensive braces on a kid for 2.5 years, over one winged incisor, but some was probably also from internalized racism on his part. Teeth which are flat across the front, with fangy canines (and sometimes an extra set of them for added fanginess, like Chubby and my stepbrother have/had, depending on what dental work has happened) have been common in the Ohio drainage for at least a few millenia, judging by excavations. Given the general pattern, the fangs were probably what the mean, bigoted kids who had recently moved into the area were feeling a need to poke fun at in the first place. (It's just as well I didn't know this at the time.) My Aunt Sally is at least as fangy as Kirsten Dunst in prosthetics, to the point that it actually used to make me nervous when she'd get angry and draw her lip back like a wolf.
Not to mention, teeth which are flat across the front work very well aesthetically in a flat face. The front plane of my face has been somewhat broken by having them rounded off. Especially given that my face shape was apparently also wholly unacceptable to the same people, I doubt this was completely coincidental. My mom pointed this out at the time, but I was still in too precarious a position to object to having my teeth/face rendered More Acceptable. (Yeah, in so many things, I am glad to be in a better position to get some perspective back.) It's a good thing that orthodontist wasn't licensed to do eye jobs on the side. :/
Surprise: when someone does not have a serious overbite, and you move their teeth inward to round them out--rotating the canines inward, as well--their bite will get pretty messed up. Their teeth are not going to fit together properly anymore, and TMJ problems and chipped/broken teeth are likely to result. (Heck, you can see this pretty clearly in the Eastwood photo in an endnote, and he's not even that fangy--just try rounding the teeth up by moving them inward, and see how mechanically sound it looks.) Yep, that's precisely what happened; some enamel had to give. They started chipping while I still had the braces on, so the orthodontist stuck me in an expensive bite plate and special bite plate retainers--which does, indeed, piss me off even worse, in retrospect. My mom wound up withholding the remaining balance when they showed obvious breakage, and he did not do anything but send a couple of pissy letters, certainly did not correct the problem. Now I've got hurty half-canines without much in the way of points (none at all on the left), and have actual reason to dislike the way they look.
At any rate, I will be glad to get these suckers fixed. They have been progressively uncomfortable and/or actively hurting for 18-19 years now, and I'm tired of it. I have seen a pretty good dentist down the street, and will seek out a decent orthodontist. That just leaves getting off my ass and setting up the in-home pet care business properly. I kept myself in pocket/gas money for years doing that before, and there's plenty of demand here; somewhat unfortunately, a student can get away with running a small business off the books a lot better than someone in her 30s trying to work on a bit larger scale. (I'm not going to offer sleep-in housesitting this time, though a lot of people preferred having someone to stay with the animals overnight. That should make a larger customer base feasible.) Getting things set up doesn't need to be so intimidating, EF weirdness or no, especially since it occurred to me to see if Ingvar's willing to help keep things on track. I'm not so well suited to finding a decent job here, and have thought for some time that I should probably just make my own. Now I've got several more pushes to do so.
Some of the factors which have complicated my inertia the past few years have changed, and I understand them better now, thank goodness. I feel like I can get out of the peculiar holding pattern now, and there are a lot worse ways than working with animals. :)
---------
* Very much like, in fact, considering he's a Gibson from a few miles down the river. As he gets older, he's reminding me more and more of my Granddaddy, though not so much as Clint Eastwood does. I am not entirely surprised to see that old Clint is not looking entirely lacking in fanginess there, either. Come to find out, his family were migrant workers in CA, presumably from the Southeast via Oklahoma or Arkansas.
Now I'm feeling an extra push to get my pet care thing up and running again after the holidays: I really, really need to get my eyeteeth fixed. I have been putting this off for years, but with continued chipping, it's become more pressing lately. Especially since I've kept catching myself grinding them again the past few months, and periodically having to remove chips of enamel from my mouth. The left one is better than halfway gone now, with no point at all. Today they have both been feeling like somebody's been jabbing up into them with icepicks. I didn't make it out today, after all, having been in pretty serious overload between the teeth and being sick.
The complication here: I'm going to have to get more orthodontic work (i.e., undo the previous), or the repairs will just break off again. That would be both aggravating and expensive, even if I weren't so freaked out by dental work. It's not a phobia per se, since I've had most of the work done by the Butcher of Dublin (who apparently just finished as president of the Virginia Dental Association, urgh) and an iffy orthodontist. I was amazed when I got a filling from someone who actually made sure it was numb, made sure he was not drilling painfully deep, and didn't split the corners of my mouth open. However, I can't put off repairs much longer, or I'll end up losing my canines--and looking forward to it. :/
I am trying not to kick myself more over insisting on having the unnecessary orthodontic work done in the first place, especially since I was 14 and being hounded mercilessly over my teeth. (Along with the general White Trashiness which was apparently keeping them the way they were.) My main concern was a front tooth that grew back in winged, after I'd knocked out the baby tooth. I wasn't bothered by being fangy like William Gibson*, though the orthodontist I saw was.
I suspect a lot of this came from trying to justify keeping expensive braces on a kid for 2.5 years, over one winged incisor, but some was probably also from internalized racism on his part. Teeth which are flat across the front, with fangy canines (and sometimes an extra set of them for added fanginess, like Chubby and my stepbrother have/had, depending on what dental work has happened) have been common in the Ohio drainage for at least a few millenia, judging by excavations. Given the general pattern, the fangs were probably what the mean, bigoted kids who had recently moved into the area were feeling a need to poke fun at in the first place. (It's just as well I didn't know this at the time.) My Aunt Sally is at least as fangy as Kirsten Dunst in prosthetics, to the point that it actually used to make me nervous when she'd get angry and draw her lip back like a wolf.
Not to mention, teeth which are flat across the front work very well aesthetically in a flat face. The front plane of my face has been somewhat broken by having them rounded off. Especially given that my face shape was apparently also wholly unacceptable to the same people, I doubt this was completely coincidental. My mom pointed this out at the time, but I was still in too precarious a position to object to having my teeth/face rendered More Acceptable. (Yeah, in so many things, I am glad to be in a better position to get some perspective back.) It's a good thing that orthodontist wasn't licensed to do eye jobs on the side. :/
Surprise: when someone does not have a serious overbite, and you move their teeth inward to round them out--rotating the canines inward, as well--their bite will get pretty messed up. Their teeth are not going to fit together properly anymore, and TMJ problems and chipped/broken teeth are likely to result. (Heck, you can see this pretty clearly in the Eastwood photo in an endnote, and he's not even that fangy--just try rounding the teeth up by moving them inward, and see how mechanically sound it looks.) Yep, that's precisely what happened; some enamel had to give. They started chipping while I still had the braces on, so the orthodontist stuck me in an expensive bite plate and special bite plate retainers--which does, indeed, piss me off even worse, in retrospect. My mom wound up withholding the remaining balance when they showed obvious breakage, and he did not do anything but send a couple of pissy letters, certainly did not correct the problem. Now I've got hurty half-canines without much in the way of points (none at all on the left), and have actual reason to dislike the way they look.
At any rate, I will be glad to get these suckers fixed. They have been progressively uncomfortable and/or actively hurting for 18-19 years now, and I'm tired of it. I have seen a pretty good dentist down the street, and will seek out a decent orthodontist. That just leaves getting off my ass and setting up the in-home pet care business properly. I kept myself in pocket/gas money for years doing that before, and there's plenty of demand here; somewhat unfortunately, a student can get away with running a small business off the books a lot better than someone in her 30s trying to work on a bit larger scale. (I'm not going to offer sleep-in housesitting this time, though a lot of people preferred having someone to stay with the animals overnight. That should make a larger customer base feasible.) Getting things set up doesn't need to be so intimidating, EF weirdness or no, especially since it occurred to me to see if Ingvar's willing to help keep things on track. I'm not so well suited to finding a decent job here, and have thought for some time that I should probably just make my own. Now I've got several more pushes to do so.
Some of the factors which have complicated my inertia the past few years have changed, and I understand them better now, thank goodness. I feel like I can get out of the peculiar holding pattern now, and there are a lot worse ways than working with animals. :)
---------
* Very much like, in fact, considering he's a Gibson from a few miles down the river. As he gets older, he's reminding me more and more of my Granddaddy, though not so much as Clint Eastwood does. I am not entirely surprised to see that old Clint is not looking entirely lacking in fanginess there, either. Come to find out, his family were migrant workers in CA, presumably from the Southeast via Oklahoma or Arkansas.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-12-24 11:05 pm (UTC)I really reccommend using a desktop client - I've got Phoenix for my Mac, and I can save posts and use macros and quickly do things like cuts and links - makes life *much* easier.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-31 09:58 pm (UTC)we spoke eons ago....im hardly ever on here anymore but on fb and myspace more if you are interested in adding me.
my name is deb to refresh your memory...my mom is from VA(southside) and we spoke eons ago about it!
i hope all is well with youa nd happy new year!
i wanted to breathe some life into this journal as that it is my first foray on the net 6 years ago!
hugs
deb