Radix malorum

One of my teeth is dying, and its death-throes are putting me through hell. It began on Sunday (or so): a low aching in the jawbone that came and went in half-hour waves. It wasn't anything significant then, a minor annoyance, like the occasional nerve-twinges I suffer from (doesn't everyone?) but which go away after a few days. In this case, it did not go away. It has become a walloping pulsing crimson ball of agony. Until this morning, vicodin was keeping me human; I have since either developed an immunity, or the pain is seated at too deep a level for anything short of morphine to affect it. My dentist - she of the exquisite bones and strangely detached bedside manner - saw me on an emergency appointment yesterday. The verdict: root canal, pronto. She scheduled me for next Friday; I called this morning and apparently sounded close enough to an act of homicide to justify bumping me up to tomorrow. At 10:15 in the morning, she will drill into my tooth and scrape away all the dying roots and pulp that make my tooth a living thing, leaving behind little more than a skull. It will look like all the other teeth around it, with one exception: it will be empty, it will be dead.

I've had a root canal before - trust me, my dramatics are anything but amateur. The last one, administered in Glendale, California by a star graduate of the Josef Goebbels school of schadenfreude, left me literally screaming at the wheel of my car to offset the pain. Ten minutes later I was picking painkillers up off the carpet in a scene worthy of Neely O'Hara.

You'd think, with that as a template, I would be terrified about tomorrrow: I'm not. I'm quite excited. The thought of that needle slicing into my gum and delivering sweet numb oblivion is positively dreamy. Any fear is also mitigated somewhat by my sheer seething fury at the cost that this brief jaunt in the dentist's chair will incur to me. Thanks to my employer's sterling health benefits - yes, the ones that are supposed to justify and offset the sub-standard salaries we command - I will be paying for 50% of this debacle: $475, boys and girls. And that's not counting the crown that will eventually have to be applied. I could embark now on a rant about the futility of a middle-class existence, the endless cycle of reversals, the hateful, gall-churning toil of staying afloat, I could curse and wail with stirring rage - but I won't. My ibuprofen levels are dangerously high, and I suspect I would just return sober in a day or two and delete it all.

Shaken and stirred

Suddenly I care deeply about the franchise...

Signs of life

OK. This hasn't been my longest absence. I checked. Once, in August, I didn't post for thirteen days. Although, I suspect that won't stay the record forever. I get busy (imagine whining, overly-defensive tone, please)...writing even a paragraph sometimes seems like more than I can manage. Then there's the issue of content-judgement: Do I really have anything interesting to say? I think back to recent events, and nothing seems particularly blog-worthy, but you be the judge. What follows is an unordered list of items as they occur to me:

• Had psychiatric assessment at Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, shit you not. Long story: really just looking for a therapist, but the system dictates that one has to be assessed in this way in order to access free services. Seemed a little extreme to me, but WTF? As I suspected, I did not make the cut: not addicted (not dangerously, anyway) and not clinically unstable (not such that merits medication, that is). Actually, that ended up being the substance of his assessment: to prescribe or not to prescribe. Sort of creepy.
• Went to the boss' house for dinner last night. Sort of nervous for variety of reasons, but relieved at the last minute to discover T & I were not to be the only guests. I'd gotten it into my head that she was inviting us in order to gently sack me. Absurd, I know, but the inclusion of other guests calmed this fear. T had a workshop, a roll-on-the-floor all-day theatre-games thing, and intended to get home and shower and change before dinner. He did not. He rolled up on his bike in sweats and t-shirt five minutes before dinner. I am trying to choose my crises: I chose this one. But I was wrong. My boss didn't give a shit, and I should have known she wouldn't. Mostly laid-back New Yorker who spent 14 years in Rwanda, so not so big on ceremony. Anyway, it all went fine. Conversation mostly lively, helped up to a point by the flow of wine, and then steadily hindered by same substance. Don't expect the ax anytime soon.
• Attended a potluck for the Daddies and Pappas 2B and the Dykes Planning Tykes. Sort of intimidating being in a roomful of fertile lesbians who know nothing of the reproductive challenges of a male couple. The egg is really so much mightier than the sperm. But it was fun too. Met my first Persian lesbian. I think she wanted to take out a restraining order on me by the end of the evening. I glommed on and wouldn't let go. Didn't realize how much I crave the community of cultural/sexual allies. I like lesbians.
• Ali and Ali, shoesellers, who occupy the store beneath our apartment, are starting to get on my tits. Every weekend I have to go downstairs and ask them to turn down their music. To be fair, I don't think they are even blasting it, but I can hear it and it's right under my drafting table. T's work area is way in the back, so he doesn't hear it as much, and in general he is less of a freak about noise-intrusion than I am. When I ask them, they are always very agreeable about it, but for pity's sake, do we have to go through it every week?? I suspect my misanthropic tendencies are not helping my self-esteem issues much...
• ...so implies my therapist, who's actually my counsellor, not being a qualified therapist at all, but a social worker who is trained to give counselling, or some such nice distinction. He's really quite sweet, and I am finding the work fairly helpful. The only problem is it's a short-term program which I am almost halfway through, and it costs money though not a lot, hence item one above.
  
• Hey, it's 11:11 on 11/11/06!!
• Now it's 11:12...
• Just think when it's 2011! 11:11, 11/11/11!!
• Saw Borat...very funny, but confusing in its mixture of real life and staged life. Well, probably confusing only to me who needs to see the seams in order to appreciate something. There are definitely some moments that are staged and cast with actors who are in on the joke; there are also other moments that are not. I suspect some of the most disturbing are of the latter type. More than once I did not want to laugh, but scream.
• Want to see Death of a President this weekend, as I think its run is wrapping up to make way for new Nicole Kidman flick, Snur, I mean Fur. Heard it's amazing, DOAP not Fur. Fur will not get one of my red Canadian pennies. Nicole Kidman must be stopped and I intend to do my part.
• We're off to Montreal again in two weeks time...Thanksgiving in fact. Don't imagine we'll have too traditional a Thanksgiving experience there, perhaps a poutine fashioned into a turkey leg. Makes me think of Mark's stomach-chrurning tofurkey some years back...
• Should I keep going?
• Prime Suspect this weekend!! DI Jane Tennyson's last installment! I could soil myself with excitement. Sunday night, PBS, although the faithful probably already know that; the rest of you heathens, don't start on series seven, get yourself to a video store and watch series 1 through 6 first.
• OK, that's enough. Apologies for the tedium, but I did warn you.