The Grind

For the past year I’ve been grinding my teeth at night.  Starr tells me this often, and on top of the drool, the snoring, and the hitting (yes, I hit in my sleep), I don’t know how she still can call me up and ask me to spend the night.  Just the other night, she grabbed my face and pushed it to the side (I think…I was asleep) because my grinding was out of control when I was laying on my back.  In my fog, I think I yelled something about being really stressed.  I was….Work had me all worked up this week, but also, Starr’s bed is really high up and it sort of bothers me.  I guess I like a low bed.  Also, she’s got all these pillows that take up space so my feet hang off the end.  Not to mention that I sleep against the wall and that sort of reminds me of my bed growing up and I fear falling into that crack.  Oh, and to avoid offending anyone while I sleep I try to inch over to the edge as much as possible so as to give no excuse as to the amount of room I’m taking up.  But I still eventually roll around, snore, hit, and drool.

But I’m loosing track.  I decided to take care of one of my nighttime ailments last week and while at the dentist I finally caved and got fitted for a mouthguard to keep me from grinding my teeth at night.  The headaches have become somewhat unbearable.  So I took a 45minute train out to Queens today, then took the Q46 bus another 45 minutes out to 247th street to my dentist to pick up this thing and I must say, I’m sad.

My aunt told me about a contraption she used in Israel that fits in the front of your teeth, holds them from clenching, and she said in two weeks she didn’t need it anymore.  I believe her too because everything in Israel is better as per every Israeli I’ve ever met (though my Aunt’s from Springfield.)  So I took pictures (see above) and I showed them to my dentist cause a small thing like that and I’ll be cured in two weeks?!  What’s the catch?

But my dentist didn’t care about my pictures when I showed him and said he used something different.  And when I picked it up tonight, it felt like Forrest Gump’s dentist had said, Put this in your mouth and you won’t never grind them teeth again!  You don’t need that fancy foreign stuff!  Of course I don’t go on to win the Nathan’s Hot Dog eating contest.  Instead of my dreams of a two week, miniscule infraction into my sleeping mouth, my dentist outfitted me with a retainer.  A what? A retainer.  Like in junior high.  

But surely this will straighten my teeth while I sleep for added benefit, right?  No.  It’s just made to keep you from connecting your teeth together at night and to make sure you’re as ugly as possible when you’re doing it.

But I’m sick of waking up with a sore jaw when I’m not even gay.  And I hate the headaches I wake up with when they’re not just a side effect to planning a heist of the Federal Reserve.  And I feel bad for Starr who puts up with alot.  So tonight I’ll give it a try and see what happens.  

Meanwhile, I told someone at work about this and she said she was having the same problem and that when she told her dentist, he said, nonchalantly, that everyone in NY grinds their teeth.  Weird, huh.  Before this, I thought the only other place I’d heard of it was in a Daffy Duck cartoon. 

Babysitting….2j8kt8y

Right now I’m babysitting my nephew.  He’s watching Max & Ruby.  It’s a boring show about `68-=[ Sorry.  He just typed that…proving my point that the show is boring enough for him to be distracted by me typing and thus feel the need to push the buttons on the computer.  That said, the show is about a rabbit sister and her little brother Max.  For some reason, Ruby is always babysitting her little brother.  I think their parents are dead and the grandmother watches them, but only sometimes.  Anyway, Max is always the victim of Ruby and her one friend’s experiments in make-up, and cooking, and things like that, usually in an attempt to get a girl-scout badge (but I don’t think they call it ‘girl scouts’).  The show does feature a nice 1920’s-esque musical beat, with clarinets and brass humming nice music for the kids (I think this is good musical exposure for them), also, they live in a 3CQ FKVJYUqR4STHHBHG SORry

They live in a nice Victorian house, complete with wallpaper and a coathanger (with a hat on it (one day I’d like to live in that house)).  Other than that, the show is boring. Before he started watching this we played this great game where I showed him old cartoon theme songs from when I was a kid.  It was challenging coming up with more and more, but, man, those songs are great.  We watched He-Man, Mighty Max, Thundercats, Fraggle Rock, Muppet Babies, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Tailspin (great show), and Tiny Toons.  He loved it, but in the end was requesting a little less scary, so I finished him off with The Get-Along Gang.  That to me was the scariest one.   Meanwhile, I had a headache all day today due to a long bout of teethgrinding the night before.  It was utterly painful stuff and I think it was stress induced, because work has been off the charts exhausting lately.  Not to mention that my boss has been unhappy with me lately.  I know this because he’s yelled at me and told me he’s unhappy with me.

 

[please disregard the spacing.  i don’t know how this happened…please blame wordpress]