Tooth and Nail

It has been a red letter* week in dentistry for me. After years of neglecting my pearly whites, I've finally been taking care of business. Unfortunately, that came back to bite me (see what I did there!?), a bit this week....

A few weeks back, I went in to address a broken tooth. They thought it would only need a crown but upon further investigation, this girl was due for root canal number two - hooray! So, they dived into part one (pulps and cleaning) and set up an appointment for part two, which was supposed to be this Wednesday (aka today).

Cue Saturday, when I realize that the Seder shenanigans of the night before has caused part of the temp filling to go missing. How did I realize? Oh, well, the liberal doses of pain suddenly radiating out from my jaw, of course. I sucked it up though, as I had evening plans (yay Alton Brown!), and carried on into Sunday with my gameface on. Years of orthodontia work and I'm no pansy when it comes to a little tooth ache.

Monday morning, I was basically dying. It hurt worse than that time I found out I was (likely) allergic to tea tree oil.** So, I showed up at my dentist two days early and fun fact: infection! That's what makes your glands puff, your head go foggy, and your skull feel like it's trying to escape the bod to which it is attached. To get it out they had to do some lovely "irrigation" of the canals. BONUS fun fact: the numbing stuff doesn't work so well on infection. So guess who got to fulllllly enjoy that irrigating experience?

Monday/Tuesday were filled with antibiotics and a lack of regard for "take no more than xx in a 24 hour period" labels. All post-work obligations were ignored as I drooled and slept my way around the apartment. Pills to be "taken with food" were taken with orange juice, just like my grandma uses to do. (If you're looking to lose weight, I recommend severe tooth pain.)

Then came Wednesday, in which I crammed 8 hours worth of meetings into 4 and then fled to the dentist once more. I discovered why the one hygienist is always angry: she never gets a lunch break due to me and all my noon-time appointments.*** After discussing this, I gave her the thumbs up to have cookies while working on my root canal - she declined. An hour later and my roots were all rooted. I just chilled at that point until they brought me my shiny new tooth.

That's my new tooth! It's his BIRTHDAY!

After doling out buckets of cash, a fresh prescription for more drugs in hand, I left the dentist after several hours of modern torture. No one to blame but myself and my neglect. My ivories deserved to be treated better. (I'll be sure to treat my new robot teeth with more respect.)

As I walked to my car, I nearly stepped on a little butterfly on the asphalt. He was just chilling there, which seemed odd, given the fact that he'd almost been smashed. Then I realized the poor fella was injured, with a bit of a jacked up wing. Knowing this could be the last moments of his little fluttery life, I offered him a hand. He climbed on up and I took him over to the grass. We were both a bit battered, and I figured everyone deserves a little peace on a stressful day.****

En route home, I noticed a post office, which was perfect since I had letters that needed sending. Stopped in, with my puffy, numbed up face and attempted to smile at the postman who ended up helping me. He was a spitfire. When I apologized for making him break a twenty to pay for two stamps, he smirked and said, "What was that? Keep the change?" I quoted a classic (Smashmouth) song and said back, "We could all use a little change. Unfortunately, I'm not yet at the point where I can say keep the change on a twenty. Hopefully someday." The postman recounted one of those definitely-found-on-the-internet tales of a waitress who got a thousand dollar tip for some Australian tourists or something. I said how they must have received some damn amazing service for a grand, or maybe they thought the waitress just needed it more than they did. We both shrugged and as he waved me off he responded, "Well, you never see a U-haul behind a hearse. Can't take it with ya, I guess! Have a nice day!"

So, even though these past few days haven't exactly been a high point in my month, there's been some decent takeaways... Take care of yourself and others, because eventually we're all down. The best we can do is help out where we can. Whether it's shiny teeth or that thousand dollar tip, it's all just stuff. So don't fret, because you can't take it with ya! (Nailed it, Mr. Postman!)

Fly free, little friend! 

* I actually looked up "red letter day" to make sure this wasn't another one of those phrases I had just always made up. There are an odd number of things I say that are just plain made up that I swear are idioms or actual legit strings of words but are definitely not (and that I've been saying, without being questioned, my whole life). 
** Definitely owe y'all that story. Life lessons learned about home remedies: important stuff.
*** There are other patients in the world, but I'm selfish when it comes to feeling bad about inconveniencing someone. Hanger is the worst kind of anger, and I have been hijacking this poor woman's meal time for days. 
**** OH man, I'm loving these asterisks today! But seriously, the irrational part of my brain was like "I should bring him in my car and take him home. I can nurture him with my orange juice and he can do his PT recovery work on my window sill and one day he'll fly away and it will be MAGICAL." The rational part of my brain said, "This little guy is on death's door. His lifespan is probably a month tops anyways so he's like a 90 year old man who got hit by a car - he's just probably not coming back from this. It's okay to give him a grassy knoll on which to spend the winter of his life." Just FYI, that's how my brain works. That all happened in about 0.5 seconds.

Poo-tee-weet?

So, I accidentally electrocuted a bird last summer. 

But not on purpose, I assure you.

Last summer I came home from work, and walking up my steps to my front door I saw something hanging down from my over-door light. A slight believer in bad omens, I shrieked and jumped back. There was definitely something dangling there, and I was almost certain it was a bat. But a bat hanging around in broad daylight?? Probably had rabies, or was actually a vampire or something. CLEARLY couldn't be trusted, whatever it was.

After shaking my keys at it (and then frantically moving to protect my face) and yelling and trying to get it to move, it was still there. So I took out my trusty camera (yes, no smart phone here) and took a photo of it. Then made the mad dash inside (yelling profanities all the way) and sent the pic out to the Internets to tell me what it was. Several suggestions arose. Probably a bat. Maybe a vampire. Couldn't be trusted, whatever it was. A vampire bat in broad daylight like that. AKA No one knew.

Returned downstairs to the peephole and tried to see. That was no good, the light was directly above and the peephole has the peripheral vision of my grandma. So I creaked open the door and dared to pop my head out and check. And there it was… it was a frickin' bird. A stone-cold, dead hanging bird.

The bird and its bird family had moved in several weeks prior and built itself a big old nest up inside my over-door light. It had been a welcomed change from when the birds would nest and mate on top of my in-window A/C unit in my bedroom. They got far too rowdy far too early for my liking when they were there. The over-door was much less noisy. Of course, I was always scared to leave that light on, lest I fry up their eggs, so I often had to key my way in in the dark if it was late. And they also liked to leave twigs and bird shit all over my stoop. But overall I had no qualms.

The nest. Before the incident.

Until the little bastard decided to die above my threshold. That was just plain rude. And I couldn't just LEAVE it dangling there. It would start to get weird and decayed, and no one would ever want to come visit me. So I knew it needed to go.

Called pest control. Explained that I had a dead, probably rabid, bird hanging and needed it removed. “Is it on private property?… then we can’t help you.” Fine.

Called the DNR. Explained the festering, probably diseased bird that was going to plague all the other animals and asked if they could come remove it. But apparently I didn't live in the right county to merit them coming.

Several other calls to every other wildlife agency I could find online and excuse after excuse until finally, exasperated, I blurted out to one of them, “WHO am I supposed to call then? I JUST WANT SOMEONE TO COME HELP ME WITH MY DEAD BIRD!” Their suggestion: call the police. Flustered, I told the lady there was no way I was going to call the POLICE about a dead frickin' bird. That was ridiculous.

Several hours later, I called the police.

They couldn't help me either but the nice officer I had on the line gave me what he surely thought were very detailed instructions on how to get rid of the bird myself. Pretty standard: knock it down, pick it up with rubber gloves and double bag that badboy before you throw it away. Now, I’m from “up north,” so nothing about this was too alarming to me. It was more that I had expected that, now that I live IN a CITY, there was someone who took care of this sort of thing. Someone other than me.

So I donned my rubber gloves and sunglasses, grabbed a broom and two garbage bags, and headed outside. After a deep breath, I raised up the broom and nudged at the bird to make it drop down. Nothing. It didn't fall. I poked at it a little harder, kind of swept at it like you would a cobweb in a corner. Nada. Didn't move. Just swayed a bit. The bird was stuck. The foot from which it was dangling was somehow twisted up in the janky wiring system around the light which had been its demise. It wasn't going to budge. It quickly became clear that this was about to be a showdown between me and my dead bird. The winner kept the house.

Panic stricken, I more or less just started wailing and swinging at it like some sort of pinata. It was mortifying. And I’m terribly sorry to say that it took SEVERAL minutes of this madness (note: I live on a main thoroughfare, so I can’t imagine what the passersby were thinking as they witnessed this) before my poor dead bird came loose. With an AWFUL thud/crunch, it hit the ground right at my feet. Babbling nonsense and completely hysterical at this point, I quickly double bagged him and tossed him in the trash. It was horrid. Scarring at best.

Shortly thereafter, I had my landlady clear out the nest and told her we needed to block off that light so it wasn't such an appealing nest basket. I didn't explain my ordeal, and she seemed to think it’d be fine. Needless to say, this spring another family of birds moved in. I pleaded with them. Asked why they didn't understand that they had just moved into a death trap. Didn't they remember their fallen comrade from last summer?? Were they really willing to risk orphaning their baby birds by surrounding a hot bulb with flammable twigs?

Why did you come back, birds? WHY? Save yourselves and go!
(And "Is that really what my hair looks like from the back?")

But they’re just birds. They didn't get my point and just built their nest anyway. They dive bomb me as I get my mail and they shit on my stoop. And some day, another one of those birds is going to meet its maker, and this time they can’t say I didn't warn them...