"Unless You Bite Your Fork"

Back in NYC, I had this fantastic, if not bizarre, dentist. She had crazy curly hair, a bit of a lisp, and a thick Eastern European accent. Like many dentists, she was always trying to get me to do expensive procedures on my teeth, which I often brushed off since even with the 80-20% insurance pay, I still couldn't afford most of them. At first I was turned off by her, finding her too pushy, but I grew to really like her in the end.

Since I only just got braces at 19 years old, I'm pretty fond of and grateful for my smile. Pre-19 was not a pretty sight. But unfortunately, my teeth are made of butter. I have fillings in nearly every single one, and every time I go to the dentist, SOMETHING is wrong. Not to mention they've never been all that white, even when I was a child. "Some people just have naturally yellow teeth," dentists have told me. Wonderful. This means that most of the whitening stuff out there doesn't do shit, since I'm not REMOVING any wine/coffee/cigarette stains. That's just their lovely natural hue.

So, back in NYC, after fixing one of my front teeth AGAIN (did you know you can get a filling BETWEEN your teeth?!?!), she suggested getting porcelain veneers, which were thousands per tooth. Yeah, right. Finally, with a bit of old-world haggling going back and forth, we compromised. I would get crowns done on my four front teeth, and would pay just $75 per tooth, no matter what she really charged, or really, no matter what she was charging the insurance company. In addition, they would be a bit of a lighter color as well, though not Britney Spears-white. It wasn't supposed to actually clash with the rest of my teeth, but brighten them somewhat. I agreed to do this over a period of time, and ended up totally happy with the result. She even kind of reshaped my two front teeth, which were rather worn down. She gave me those Jessica Simpson bunny teeth, though not that exaggerated, which are apparently a dentist's trick to make you look younger.

Gazing at them in her hand mirror, I asked, "How long will these last for?" Expecting some "Ten or twenty years" answer, I almost fell out of the dental chair when she said, "Oh, assuming you take good care of them, about 2-4 years. That is, if you don't bite your fork or anything." Thinking about paying for and going through all this again in just a couple years was a bit scary, since I knew I wouldn't be in NYC forever, and who knew when I'd have ANY kind of dental insurance again (I haven't since then).

Though I am not, in fact, a fork-biter, I have been conscientious about my teeth since then, and have had the occasional vision of just ONE of these things falling off, revealing the less attractive real tooth behind, like the mask falling off the Phantom of the Opera. It's been a few years now, and I've been hoping to get as much wear out of these choppers as possible.

Well, time is ticking away, or maybe it's time for me to fit back in, in Missouri, the place where I didn't originally fit in for "having all" my teeth. It all started yesterday when I went to hang up a pair of Beau's slacks. I have this weird habit where I usually stick the top of the plastic hanger in my mouth while with my two hands, I button up the first couple buttons on a shirt. I know, hygienic. Well, this time it was a metal hanger, and a heavy one that holds multiple pairs of slacks. I put it in my mouth, using my two hands to put the pants on the hanger, and then took it out of my mouth and hung it up. As I was removing it, I felt a slight grit in my mouth. I spit some in my hand and looked at it. Disgusted that there may have been some dirt on the hanger, I rubbed it off and went on with my cleaning.

Hours later, I was sitting in my car in the Safeway parking lot, talking to my mother on the phone. At one point, I drew down the mirror on the visor, checking out my face (oh my GOD I need to pluck my massive eyebrows!) and smiled at my reflection, absentmindedly checking my teeth.

Wait a minute.

There, right on my front tooth, was a chip. A ragged, sharp, chip. If I wasn't talking to my mother, I probably would have cried. The irony? JUST the other day, Beau and I were talking about our lack of health coverage, and I said, "You know, I'd almost rather break a leg or get some awful illness than have a dental issue. You can get reasonable health care sometimes, but FORGET finding affordable dental care!" And I'm sure my chipped front tooth is considered cosmetic anyway. Great! How the hell do I get this fixed?

I thought of all the chipped, missing, and snarly teeth I'd seen in Smalltown, Missouri.

Oh god, now I'm a hick!

Crybaby

Last week were some pretty big events at the university. Our office had to staff one of them, a small one with mostly deans, faculty, and some administrators attending. A really nice guy in my office, we'll call him "Guy," was stationed at one point with me. We were basically acting as ushers at the entrance to a theater, and most of the people had already filed in. We were standing there chatting, when a small boy of about eight or nine years old started to climb the many steps up to where we were. I recognized him as some staff member's kid. She always seemed to bring him along on the free events hosted by the university. As he approached, we noticed in one of his hands teetered a rather full glass of orange juice, and in the other, he carried a cookie about the size of his head.

As he reached me, I smiled and said, "Oh, I'm sorry, you can't take that into the theater, they don't let anyone take food in. But go ahead and finish it here or downstairs if you like, then go on in." The boy stopped in mid-step and stared at us for a full 30 seconds or more. Guy and I kinda looked at each other, then shrugged it off. We continued to chat a little bit, but here and there I stole a glance at the boy, who was now looking off into the distance in an almost catatonic state. It was slightly unnerving, but I tried not to pay attention, because I figured he was embarrassed and I didn't want to make him feel more uncomfortable.

A couple minutes later, I looked over at the boy again, this time head tilted down as if in prayer over his orange juice, which along with the cookie, was still held aloft in mid-air. Suddenly, his shoulders began quivering. Then, as if from a dramatic movie scene, you could actually see teardrops begin plopping into his cup, splashing into the orange juice. Stunned, I turned and looked at Guy, who looked just as stunned.

"What's wrong?" I asked. Sniffling and snuffling loudly, the boy cried out, "You won't let me take this in!" Again, I looked at Guy, wide-eyed and perplexed. Wtf? The boy continued sobbing uncontrollably. We tried to offer words of consolation, but it was a bit ridiculous.

Being a teacher for three years, you get used to not only seeing kids cry, but actually MAKING them cry. The first time you do it can be a bit tough. You feel like the devil. But you get over it. Fast. Kids cry. Sometimes YOU make them cry, and usually, it's not anything insensitive or cruel that you did. The first time I made a kid cry, was on the very last day of classes when I caught EIGHT students had copied their homework after one (the class genius). I gave them all a zero on their homework. The class genius wept for 20 minutes. The other kids were nonplussed.

But this little boy was actually kinda pissing me off. So he couldn't bring his juice and big fat cookie into the theater. Big fucking deal. It's not like we snatched them out of his hands and threw them in the trash. If this was the biggest hardship he had to deal with in his life, then his mother REALLY had to get him out more. And if it was some kind of ploy to get us to acquiesce and let him enter the theater, then he was even more of a little brat than I thought. After a few more words of re-encouragement to go eat his cookie and have his juice or to instead rejoin his mother (he didn't), we gave up, and just ignored him. He then sat down on the stairs, folded his arms over his knees, bent his head over into his arms, and just sobbed. I eyed the orange juice, now perched on the step next him, with some apprehension.

Jesus.

Eventually, we went into the theater and left him there. I was wondering where his mother was the whole time, whom I imagined was inside waiting for him to return. Maybe I'm a cold bastard, but Guy works every weekend with kids in his church, and he had pretty much the same reaction. He just uses much nicer words. Beau has no such restrictions.

Later, when I told this story to Beau, he scowled and said, "If that was our son, and you'd raised him that way, I'd smack him so hard, YOU'D feel it."

Snorting, I said, "I wouldn't even raise a girl that way."

Then we continued on with a scathing review of other people's parenting, which is easy when you don't have kids, of course.

Shut Your Pie Hole!

I've never been accused of being a rumor-starter. Well, until last night. I should have known better.

Like with that disastrous job at the writers' non-profit, and during all the interesting changes at my non-profit job in NYC, I kinda prided myself on having developed the ability to put various tiny clues together to figure out things before others (i.e. like when someone is about to quit/be fired, etc.). This has never really failed me, though sometimes I haven't gotten all the details right, and it's typically something I keep to myself until it all comes out publicly.

Typically.

At Shop-n-Smile there are only two supervisors I really like to work with: Joe, an older, seemingly-gruff man who is actually pretty funny and nice, and Candy, who's about 10 years older than me, and also a lot of fun to work with. They take their jobs seriously and are both very competent, but are thankfully lacking that 'Shop-n-Smile disciple' gene that seems to be embedded within the other managers, and makes me want to projectile vomit.

Besides the dozen or so employees who have recently jumped ship, and made me impulsively want to quit each time it happens, now it seems Candy might be leaving also. This makes me very sad, since I find it so difficult to just tolerate working at Shop-n-Smile as it is, and having to close each night with one of the Mr. Intense Supervisors will just make it all the more teeth-gritting.

Then last weekend, one of the Mr. Intensity's called a "huddle" of all the employees. He was chatting and being his usual children's-show-upbeat self (which can turn into wrath is you say the wrong thing, a la Angie), and he blithely made a comment about Joe that went something like this: "Oh, well it won't matter anymore what Joe thinks after August 27." Mr. Intensity just kept right on talking, but a red flag went shooting up through the top of my head and began waving furiously. Was Joe leaving on the 27th?! I looked furtively around, but no one else seemed to catch it, or care.

I knew this was entirely possible, since in actuality, Joe is a career banker, but after moving to Missoula, was unable to get a good banking job (gee, startling), and ended up working for Shop-n-Smile. I knew if he could find a really good banking job, he'd probably nab it, and who could blame him?

Later that same day, Joe was handing me his wife's business card. She, too, is a banker. Joe is always trying to get Beau and I to move our banking services to that of his wife's bank. As I was looking at her card, Mr. Intensity was walking by. He suddenly yelled back, "Hey Joe! What are you trying to do? Poach J. away and take her to your place?" Again, red flag a'flyin! I thought to myself, "This confirms it, he's leaving to go work at a bank!"

A few days later, I was closing with Candy and she was telling me about her potential job offer at another place, which sounded great. I asked her, "Is it true that Joe is leaving too?" She paused and turned to me, mouth agape. "Is he leaving?!"

Uh oh.

Candy continued, "Really? I thought I heard something going around, but I wasn't sure. There have been signs." (This just seemed like further confirmation to me). "I'll have to call Bev and find out for sure," she said.

That was the last I'd heard of anything, until last night. I came into the store for my shift, and there was Joe, arms akimbo. "I want to talk to you," he said, curling his finger and gesturing me toward the office.

Uh oh.

Once inside his office, which has one of those giant "I can see you - you can't see me" windows, Joe unloaded. "What did you do? Rumor spreader! The whole store is talking about how I'm quitting! What did you say to people?"

After a few rapid blinks, I regained my ability to speak. "What? No! I only talked to Candy. What happened? Are you quitting?"

After informing me, that no, in fact he was NOT quitting, nor had any intention of quitting, he then began a story about how this "rumor" of his quitting had made it around the whole store, until it had finally reached the store manager who had called Joe into his office to have a serious talk, ask if he was really leaving, etc. Joe, unaware of any of this, and pretty fucking shocked, could only tell the manager the truth, he was staying put.

Joe then gave one of his gruff smiles. "It actually did help me out though."

"Oooh, did you get a raise?" I asked, full of hope. Wow, then he'd actually OWE me one for that!

"No, not that, but it helped things out a lot."

"Well, there you go! I did you a favor!" I triumphed.

Joe gave me the stink eye and said, "Nice job."

Of course at that point I apologized profusely. Idiot. You'd think I'd learn. About a month ago I had said, in passing, to Candy, "Damn, I'm gonna quit. I hate my schedule!" It was true, since my boss is continually fucking up my schedule and adding shifts after it's "finalized," which irks me to no end. But I say I'm going to quit all the time. Ask Beau - it's like the first thing out of my mouth when I come home cranky and tired each night.

Candy, taking this VERY seriously, brought it up in the managers' meeting, got my intense boss in a bunch of trouble, and then later, I had to suffer the pain-in-the-assness of having THREE different managers come up to me, including the store manager, asking me to stay and proclaiming how valued I was. Sheesh. I love Candy, but COME ON!

Okay, lesson learned. This time.

Umbrella

I'm actually a really big fan of Rihanna's "Umbrella" song, and was blown away when I saw her rock hard performance at the MTV Music awards. Then I just heard that Mandy Moore was covering "Umbrella," which sounded a bit weird, but I thought it came off really beautifully. In case you have the time...

Fancy Meeting You Here

As Beau was dropping me off at the university today after lunch (damn, those wings were good!), he pointed over to the sidewalk and said, "Look at that." Turning, I saw a lovely mule deer doe, just standing there, not looking frightened, but not looking all that alert or aware either. I got pretty close to her before taking this shot with my camera phone. Finally she languidly turned around, and clickety-clacketed down the sidewalk toward the Forestry building, which I thought was totally appropriate.

I walked back over to Beau. "Did you get close enough for a good shot?" he asked. "Yes!" I said, "though when I got real close she turned and left."

"Yeah, I was afraid you'd spook her and she'd jump into the street and get hit by a car and get killed."

I love my husband.

Angie Tempest - Delilah Crazy

I was lucky for awhile in that the infamous Angie (well, if you're a Shop-n-Smile worker) has been mostly working days, so has been absent from life. I am now unlucky in two other ways though: a) she is now the head of my department and frankly, is doing a crappy job of it; and b) I've seen more of her lately since a buttload of people have quit and she's been working some nights.

So many people have quit, that nearly every night I work (except for those glorious nights with Angie), I am the senior person there. Keep in mind I started this job in March, less than six months ago. Closing each night with a bunch-a-newbies is painful. They're slow, needy, and naturally, somewhat psycho. One girl, "Delilah," comes off as Severus Snape's younger, annoying sister, with oily tendrils of jet black hair hanging to her chin and a way of holding herself that makes you feel she is uncomfortable in her own skin. In all honesty, I thought she was a tranny, which fascinated me since Montana's not a trans-gender-friendly place. Now, I think not. Anyway, overall, she's a nice girl, but, of course, really peculiar. She introduced us to her fiance, a young man who instantly strikes you as an expert Magic and D&D player, and who has developed a tendency of orbiting her while she works. Never quite talking to her, but always...there.

The other night I was talking to some customers, explaining the futon deal to them (believe it or not, it's complicated), when she walked up, planted herself inches from me, and stood there for a few moments. Because I was right in the middle of my explanation, I kind of just acknowledged her with a smile and kept talking, until I was suddenly interrupted mid-sentence by her loudly chirping out, "Hi!"

I stopped mid-sentence and turned to her. I thought she must need something. "Hi," I said, "Did you have a question?"

"No," she said, "I just saw that you were here and well, I know that there's questions about furniture and stuff, and just in case you had a question..."

I paused again. I didn't even really get this. Basically I am the furniture person. "Um, no, I'm good, thanks," I said, and continued on with the customers. She kind of hovered there for another minute, and then finally strolled off.

And last night I was treated to Evil Angie's presence. Since Harry Potter 5 came out, it struck me that she is almost EXACTLY like the Dolores Umbridge character. Sickly sweet, high-pitched voice, but an underlying current of cruelty flowing. About 7pm, the manager was gathering me, Angie, and another (somewhat new) employee, Barry together. It seems there was a mess-up on the schedule and he was going to figure out who would do what. I was already somewhat annoyed since I'd been placed in Health & Beauty, an area I was unfamiliar with, but it wasn't the end of the world. As he was striding toward us, he got called to the cash registers on the loudspeaker. Walking away, he called out over his shoulder, "You guys figure it out and let me know!"

Angie immediately took charge. "Okay, let's see. where did you start and which way are you working?" she asked me.

"I'm not, really. I started in the middle and I'm jumping around." This was because I didn't want to start in school supplies (a disaster area right now due to back to school crap), nor the other end, grocery, which is a mess even on the best of days. I had decided to tackle the center first and jump around as I put back returns. This was to keep myself from being overwhelmed and stabbing myself in the neck due to both the mess and the utter boredom that my life would take on for the next four hours.

Angie did NOT like that answer. She let out a melodramatic sigh and said, "Well!" Then she turned to Barry and started talking to him. He tried to explain his "plan." It started getting ridiculous, since she was truly trying to map out a strategy, and we were somewhat resistant. Not out of any malice, but simply because, really, the "strategy" is: do your work, and if you finish, come help someone else. Shit, there's only THREE of us. It's not rocket science. We didn't need a game plan. She threw up her hands and shrieked, "Fine! Do whatever you want!" as I paused and waited for all glass in the store to shatter. Then, she stomped off in a huff that would make any silent movie actress proud.

As we watched her exit stage left, Barry shook his head and muttered, "God, I hate her. She makes me want to punch a baby."

If I had been drinking milk at that moment, it would have come out my nose. Not only was I shocked simply by the statement, violent as it was, but also that it came out of Barry's mouth. Barry's just one of the sweetest people I've ever met. About 20 years old, he's one of those people who are ALWAYS in a good mood with a big smile on their face, and it's all for real! "Hey J!" he always calls out to me as if we've been pals forever. He's good to customers and he works hard. He even stayed to close one night after finding out his grandmother was dying. "Go home! Forget fucking Shop-n-Smile!" I said. He wanted to be the good guy, I guess. I've never heard him say a bad word about anyone, ever. Even when he complains about customers he does it with a smile on his face.

Well, I guess that's just the effect our lovely Angie has on her co-workers. How to win friends and influence people!

Surreal Day

So, I'm sitting here at my desk, getting a massive vibrating massage. Seems they're doing heavy construction on the steam pipes here at the university, or some such, and I feel like I'm going to jiggle right off my chair onto the floor. At first it felt kinda neat *wink* but now it's a bit annoying...or literally, jarring. Every time it stops for a few seconds, I feel like shaking my head like a dog who's just come out of a pool.

Add to that, my lovely and powerful female boss is singing Patsy Cline's "Crazy," in a somewhat-operatic voice. AWESOME. She's not bad, and it helps to make the day deliciously surreal.