Hurts so good

In the most ridiculous version of The Saddest News Ever, our glass creations were not ready to be picked up today. My guess is that the cooling down oven needed to be fired back up for someone else's stuff, but we're on for tomorrow. That means instead of telling you about a fun appointment, I can tell you about a not fun appointment.

I have been going to the dentist so regularly that we discuss love lives and good sushi restaurants.

So far they've removed my wisdom teeth, done a deep cleaning, a regular cleaning, and a whole mess of cavities. Today was supposed to be a regular cleaning and whitening trays, but apparently the bone loss in all those years of being too broke to go to the dentist is working against me. Add to that the crashes in the middle of the night when I'm sucking down juice and straight sugar, then immediately falling back asleep, and we've already got a recipe for disaster. The dentist and I had a hefty conversation about the fact that I already need another deep cleaning, despite the good job he swears he can see I'm doing. He had some good advice on the dental aspects of crashing blood sugar, and then I went to the counter to receive my options.

I stood there hearing register sounds as the treatment plan got a lot longer, and was having an old familiar moment of despair when I suddenly realized that I have been making these kinds of aggressive payments towards my debt... I can swing this. The insurance won't cover another deep cleaning for two years, so this is the cash price. I want to go review my budget first, but I'm so happy to be at this point. I'm mad to be derailed from my debt plan, but it doesn't derail me much. These are no longer crippling numbers. I can absolutely do this.

The cosmetic stuff will have to wait, and even though my gums are sore and my teeth are sensitive from the fillings and I feel like I live at the dentist's office, I am still thrilled to be able to go. I got the best dental insurance offered, and that still won't cover everything I need, and I've got to buy a better electric toothbrush too, but look at me, paying for the dentist. Today was not a fun day, but it was a proud day. Now where's the Tylenol?

You should feel that heat, though.

Five years after Book Arts at UNR, Lena and I finally went to do another art class together.

I'll write more about it when I have the pieces to show you, but we each made two. We made paperweights, which is what I'm holding in the second picture before our Finnish instructor (He introduced himself, then said "Good luck pronouncing that.") removed it from the pole, which I will describe poorly tomorrow.

We also made flowers. Well, Lena made a flower. I told him I'd much rather make some sort of swirly mess. He was happy to indulge my clueless yet intrepid venture, and helped me layer it. He liked what I made, and said it's going to look rad. The colors look all different when it's hot, apparently, so I won't really see what they look like until tomorrow.

I AM SO EXCITED.

This was a ridiculous amount of interesting fun, and I left there exhausted. We want to go back for the next level, which is actual glass blowing. He gave us a demonstration of that, and all we could do was ogle.

At home, I had a brief moment of Sunday evening blues before I had to scold myself. My weekends are certainly not always this full, but I have no right to get whiny after this one. I found neat thrift store items, did yoga, played tennis, had a date, went shopping with a friend, went to a movie with other friends, went out to breakfast, did some reorganization, made two glass pieces and talked about art for about five hours.

That was a good time, and I cannot wait to see them tomorrow.