Infected wisdom tooth!

Do accept my apologies for having buggered off again, and not coming back to post when I said I would. However, I do have a rather good excuse this time.

The last thing my Glaswegian dentist said to me before I left for the US five years ago was “Don’t let those bloody Americans whip out your wisdom teeth”. Apparently, Americans are all about “preventative” medicine. Everybody here gets their wisdom teeth taken out as a teenager whether they need to or not. It’s baffling to me because we don’t tend to have this done in the UK, and yet I only know one person who ever had trouble with her wisdom teeth, and had to get them pulled.

They do the same thing to tonsils over here, too! Midwestern Man had his tonsils removed just “in case” they got infected. We’re a wee bit more hardcore in Scotland, I think. My mother had so many episodes of tonsilitis as a child that her tonsils actually rotted away! Clearly, she should have had them removed but, ach, her father was a shepherd and, well, you just didn’t get taken to hospital back in the 50’s and 60’s farming community unless you were at death’s door. My poor mother, though. She said the pain was excruciating.

It just goes to show what a big fucking scam the whole American medical industry is. Imagine encouraging the whole fucking population to undergo an operation (and general anaesthetic!) “just in case” something gets infected down the line.

But, anyway, back to wisdom teeth…

Given that I’m obviously not a particularly wise person, my wisdom teeth didn’t start to come in until my late twenties, and even then only one poked its wee head through the gum. Just last year (at the grand old age of thirty) a second one started to appear. Of course, my American dentist kept on telling me to get them removed, but I didn’t see any point unless they were giving me trouble. The bottom one did worry me a wee bit (as it was more than half-way in, and was hard to clean) and I wouldn’t have minded getting it whipped out, but all medical/dental procedures over here are so expensive so I thought “Ach, to hell with that”.

On Wednesday, though, my luck ran out, as the wee fucker got infected. The gum surrounding it had been inflamed and tender before, but this time around the whole left side of my cheek was swollen, giving me the look of a chipmunk:

I know that my Scottish friend went through several infections like this before she finally relented to her dentist’s pleas to get her wisdom teeth removed, but there is no way in hell that I will put up with looking like a chipmunk again. Ooh, no no no. My vanity forbids it.

And so it is that I am scheduled to get my wisdom teeth removed on Wednesday morning at 8:45 a.m. The whole procedure will cost $1100, which is horribly depressing given that I am broke enough as it is. Indeed, so broke am I that I am sitting here wearing an ancient pair of jeans with no fucking zip on it (it fell off) because I cannae afford to buy a new pair. To avoid exposing my pubes to the unsuspecting word, I hold up my jeans with a safety pin (the same one that held together my nappy when I came from the hospital as a wee baby. No kidding! This thing is like an heirloom…you’ve no idea the many items of clothing it has held together).

The only consolation is that, for some reason, I only have three wisdom teeth instead of the usual four (thanks DNA!) so I will save a wee bit of money there.

Surprisingly, I am not really in much pain at all with this infection. I am, however, feeling incredibly run down and tired. It’s only 7:00 p.m. and yet I could quite happily go to bed and sleep. I don’t know whether this is because of the infection or the antibiotics I was given. Perhaps a bit of both. This entire year I haven’t felt like myself at all, to be honest. I wonder whether this is why my tooth is now infected – perhaps the infection took hold this time around because my immune system was weaker than normal. I’ve just been so stressed about money and worried about life. Sigh.

Is Arekino actually “Belle de Jour”?

Is it just me or do you also find it suspicious that Arekino (see the comments on my last blog post) returned to the blogosphere exactly one day before Belle de Jour finally outed herself? Could they be the same person? You never know. Anyway, whatever your story is, welcome back, Arekino.

Ooh, I have been naughty, haven’t I? I’ve stayed away for such a long time. I don’t know what happened really. I just got out of the habit of blogging. Also, I have been really sick with allergies, and too tired to do anything but the very bare minimum.

I don’t exactly have very much to write about either. The higlight of this month so far was finally saving up the $1600 I needed to file my immigration paperwork so I can adjust my status from a student visa to become a permanent resident in the US. I have no idea why it should cost so fucking much to send off four forms, but it does. It’s outrageous. If all goes to plan, I should receive my work permit by the end of December/early January. The next stage will be the interview for the green card in which Midwestern Man and I have to prove that we didn’t just get married for immigration purposes. Shouldn’t be too difficult to prove that, as it is a real marriage. Mind you, we definitely wouldn’t have got married so quickly if my visa hadn’t been about to run out.

There are times when I think we made a huge mistake getting married only a year (almost to the day) after going on our first date. No matter which way you look at it, we weren’t ready for it. Almost as soon as I’d fedexed my immigration paperwork off, we startred having huge fights. I don’t know if that was just a coincidence or if things suddenly seemed more serious now that we were making our marriage “official” (at least in the eyes of the USCIS – United States Citizen and Immigration Services). Things have calmed down a lot since then because I actually emailed Midwestern Man’s mother telling her how unhappy we were. Perhaps it sounds weird that I did that, but I just wanted somebody else to know about what we were going through. I think it helped us a lot not to have to struggle all by ourselves. We’re going to get counselling, too. We both have such horrible tempers and are incredibly stubborn, so we often end up in a stalemate with neither one of us wanting to back down.

I think things will work themselves out. We’re both going back to Midwestern Man’s parents’ place for Christmas in (surprise!) a Midwestern City. I can’t say I’m exactly thrilled about going there again (it’s hardly a top holiday destination) but his family are quite adorable, and it’s lovely to see what a healthy family dynamic looks like. There’s just so much love to go around, and a total lack of judgement. My own family was exactly the opposite. We will also be buying Midwestern Man’s stepdad’s mother’s car, and we’ll be driving it all the way back down south! I’ve never been on a road trip in the US before (although I did go from Coast to Coast all by myself by Amtrak when I was eighteen), and the romance of it really excites me. I’m pretty obsessed with road trip movies and if I could somehow get by being on a permanent road trip, I would! The idea of constantly moving and never staying in one place appeals to me a lot.

The good news is that I will be able to post every day from the road with my iPhone, so hopefully there will be some more interesting posts coming up soon! Hurrah!

Hmmm, what else is new? Oh, I’ve been applying to alternative teacher certification programs again – I reapplied to the one I was in before (although the idea of actually being accepted and having to deal with that Southern Belle Bitch fills me with dread) and a different one, which might suit me better because it’s run by a non-profit organisation and is actually geared towards putting teachers in high-need schools. I’m also planning on applying to New York City Teaching Fellows and Teach for America. I don’t know how I feel about these programs, however, as I’d have to relocate if I got accepted, and I’m not sure I can handle moving to a brand new place right at the moment and having to deal with being a first-year teacher in a challenging school. Both Midwestern Man and I are totally broke so, even though we’re both tired of this city and want a change, it might make more sense for us to stay here, and build up some savings before taking off for somewhere new.

Well, I’ll let you know what happens as regards my teaching career.

Shall I meet you all back here tomorow night then, eh? Just a suggestion…trying to keep myself accountable.

Her smile

I wish I had taken a better picture of the girl in the chequed shirt. If I had, you’d see what an absolutely stunning smile she has. She’s not really my type, but there’s just a certain depth and sweetness to her you don’t normally see in people in bars. The only word I can think of to describe her is “natural”…pretty pathetic really. I’ve always hated that word… when are guys ever described as “natural”?

After looking at her, I surveyed the bar, and most people looked so shallow and crass. I wonder what people think when they see me across a crowded bar? I wonder if I seem interesting…maybe I come off as a total dullard.

To quote my most famous countryman…”Oh wad some power the giftie gie us tae see oorselves as ithers see us” (or, um, something like that).

Composed on my iPhone, so please excuse any typos!

No, I haven’t given up …

… I just got bored of the sound of my own voice. Plus, I’ve been pretty sick with allergies, so much so that I wake up every night not being able to breathe.

Not that this stops me. I’m out drinking in one of my favourite bars.

I guess I’ll come back tomorrow.

Composed on my iPhone, so please excuse any typos!