HA! Figures.....

Ever thought you could ever get ahead just to have something happen that sets you back a few steps?  Obviously, if I was unable to laugh, I would be crying...  So with a sigh and the need to vent where I cannot get judgement placed upon me from DH that I am yet spending money for something I have zero control over.  Just stupid fate pressing me just a little deeper in to the dirt is how I see this....

I happen to have a sweet tooth... yes, I do.  I just have zero patience when it comes to hard candy.  While I cam perfectly capable of letting it dissolve in my mouth, I prefer to crunch it into tiny pieces.  Same goes for ice cubes.  Just that feeling of being able to break something solid into smaller pieces just by the strength of my jaw and teeth seems so appealing to me.. or is it possible that my impatient nature does that to me.

It was a Friday afternoon that I decided to accept a piece of candy from DD.  Something from her stash of Valentines Day candies she received at school....  Just a simple little "sucker" or "lollipop" (if you prefer one name over the other).  Life Savers cherry flavored (one of my favorites), on a stick of all things.  After thanking her for the candy offering, I unwrapped this innocent thing and popped it in my mouth.  Not being a huge fan of things like this on sticks, the overwhelming urge to chomp down and get that stick into the garbage came to the surface.  I was that owl in the Tootsie Pop commercial...  yep, 3 licks and then a huge crunch.  Noticing it sounded a little louder than usual, I did not put much thought into it other than it was not melted down as much as I usually go to before chewing it all up.  Little did I know.... you can fracture a tooth doing that, and obviously I must have.

Fast forward to the next day....  Keeping remotely busy at work, I realized that I forgot to pack a lunch for myself.  As hunger starts to creep up, I decided to go get a sandwich from Jimmy John's when I had a free moment.  "Freaky fast sandwiches" is what they state is their claim to fame and I cannot disagree.  By the time I filled my drink, my sandwich was ready.  Back at work, in the break room, I dig into actual food to sustain me for the rest of my day.  Having a tendency to be a fast eater (all from training through working in my environment since we really do not get an actual lunch break to rest), I get half way through this sandwich.  Jimmy John's uses crunchy, Italian style bread for their sandwiches.  I suddenly hear a "snap" and felt something hard in my mouth.  Wondering what in the heck that was, I spit out my mouthful of food to find a chunk of my tooth.  Feeling no pain, but a strong sense of concern, my tongue feverishly seeks out where this lost piece of tooth came from.  Finding it rather quickly, I race to the bathroom mirror to see the damage.  Completely repulsed and frustrated that this happened, I grab my cell phone and call my dentist.  Obviously, their office was closing and I got to talk to my dentist while making an appointment to get this fixed.

My dentist knows me and figured how this would have happened....  He knows my tendencies to crunch things that should be left to dissolve in your mouth and asked me if I ate any hard candy or was chewing on ice cubes in the past 24 hours or so.  I did and he knew it.  Feeling quite bad that I was a month late for my semi-annual cleaning, he gave me a little "ribbing" that I could have avoided this, but set me up for a 9am appointment to fix the damage.

Once I hung up with my dentist, a deep feeling of guilt washed over me.  Realizing that this visit to the dentist is going to cost more than a run of the mill cleaning, I called DH to try to soften the blow.  Knowing that trying  to actually soften the blow to DH never really works, I tried anyway.  Apparently, I woke him up from one of his many Saturday naps.  He sounds all reasonable and tells me that if I have to go... I have to go.  "We'll manage", he tells me.  HA!  Once I got home from work, finished making the side dish to what was in the crock pot, cooking all day, it was only a matter of time when the other shoe was gonna drop.  I guess he does see how bad I feel about spending money on myself and has been quite gentle with his "dropping of the other shoe", by mentioning he needed new headphones for his mp3 player, but will have to "make do" with his jacked up ones since I will be spending the mother-load on my tooth...  Thanks dear!!  The discomfort of constantly feeling where my tooth broke was not punishment enough... now I have yet another notch in the list of "Nancy spends too much money" to deal with, too.  Just when I was starting to feel that we were doing better financially...  Fate made sure that cannot happen... just yet.

I can only hope that since there is no pain where the tooth broke, I can avoid a root canal.  Just discomfort where that jagged edge scrapes the inside of my mouth.  After this is fixed, I will remember to keep my dentist appointments and tell DH to deal while we did not budget for my dentist appointments.  We budgeted for DD... not for me.... the invisible money waster...  Maybe my dentist was right....  Prevention is key and even though I hate spending money on myself during hard times, I just have to...  Now, if I can only remember to stop crunching things that should not be crunched in the first place....