Sunday, February 7, 2016

Ego, Hunger and Aggression


More frosted windows after the storm
What a way to ring in February. Highs and lows. We had our first snow storm since December. You folks in California experienced it as really night winds and lots of rain. It headed east from there, dumping dumploads of snow on you folks in Colorado and hit us a day or so later. It dumped about eight inches of snow is a short period of time, then it got cold.

Today, it's 40 degrees outside. I've got the window open just to smell the fresh air. Patty was astounded, and actually sat in the sill, as she had done all summer, and sniffed as the crisp air.

One hour's accumulation
My biggest high this week was hearing from the artistic director of the La Crosse Community theater, offering me an offstage/backstage position in the next production, "Boeing, Boeing." If you're not familiar with it, it was a big hit in 1965. It's about a guy in Paris who juggles a bevy of stewardesses/girlfriends with aid from his begrudging housekeeper.

I went to the table read on Tuesday. The show is being directed by the artistic director, who directs one show each year. In talking with him, I mentioned that I had been a member of the Los Angeles Theater Center in the 1980s, and he commented that he was working with the company that installed the LATC ticketing system, so there are some connections there.

I'm hoping things will start expanding for me once I'm known as experienced and reliable (almost as important as talent when it comes to community theater). Tech rehearsals start the first week of March, and the show runs weekends though the 20th.

The major trauma of the week was the extraction of my 5.5 remaining upper teeth on Thursday in preparation for a full denture. The only other time I had multiple extractions, I went through oral surgery, since my dentist wouldn't do extractions or root canals (I came to realize she just wanted to do kids' teeth, and I was taken as a patient because she was hard up for money). This meant a general anesthetic and no real memory of the experience.

This time around, though, the dentist was game to pull the teeth, and I have a great deal of confidence in her. It was also about $500 cheaper than going to oral surgery, so I agreed.

It was a most unpleasant experience, even with her excellent chairside manner. Four teeth came out easily, since they were deteriorating and ready for extraction. My two canines, however, had deep roots and no interest in going anywhere; most of the pulling and yanking, cracking and drilling was expended getting them out.

I went home with a prescription for Vicodin, which I filled immediately. Once home, I slapped a bag of frozen peas on my upper lip, which helped with the swelling. The Vicodin took care of the discomfort and pain, and knocked me on my ass, so sleeping was about all I did.

On Friday, my niece Emily stopped off after work and picked up stuff to eat that didn't need teeth. So I've been surviving on Malt o Meal, mashed potatoes and canned gravy, chocolate milk shakes, cottage cheese and applesauce. Tomorrow I'm going to expand to scrambled eggs and yogurt, but the food needs to be swallowable without any chewing whatsoever.

I never realized how much mastication influences food and eating. And I've never realized how many ads there on TV for foods. I really do miss chewing, and am painfully aware of not smiling and speaking too much in order to masque my dental demise. Now feeling like Toothless Joe, I'm more than willing to drop the thousands of dollars it will take to assure that I'm grinding and grinning with abandon into future decades.

With the subsidence of the swelling, I can actually speak quite comfortably. My next appointments are on Wednesday and Thursday, when we pick out tooth color, etc. The Wednesday after that, I'm scheduled to get my choppers, and the 25th is my final appointment for final fitting. By the time my first rehearasal comes around, I should be back chewing and smiling like the fool I've always been.

Please forgive any misspellings, bad grammar or sentence fragments, but I just don't have the energy to proof and edit this entry. I'll come back in a week and see how close I got to perfection.