Well, well. How many entries have I started with that phrase? I don't think I want to know. Here we are, pleasant Thursday morning. Car was parked in at the Clare, so I walked home, and I really must say it was a gorgeous morning. Was. Now it's just another grey mid-morning (did I just say mid-morning? 'cause it's 9:08. Since when did 9:08 become mid-morning and not early as hell?) in October. And since when is it almost November? I am going to see the Pixies exactly two weeks from tonight. Remember the old days, back when we got tickets and we had to wait nine months for the show - ample time to create a whole new living being, which, thankfully, we did not do - back when this whole business of seeing the Pixies seemed like a future mythological possibility - as in, "One Day Maybe (if God's not looking) I'll Go to Heaven" - and not, as it is, an actual event? And here it is upon us already. November. Month of visiting Dennis and Jennifer in Green Bay, month of Greg's show at Onopa, month of Thanksgiving at the Clare (two birds, folks! step right up!), and - best of all - MONTH WHICH IS STARTING WITH MY GOING TO THE FUCKING DENTIST.
Some of you may recall my mentioning earlier - or perhaps it got lost in my head - that I wanted Dick Cheney to take me to the dentist. This rant was caused by my hearing Dick Cheney defend the current state of our health care system, live, on national television, during the Vice Presidential debates (for other times Dick Cheney has bold-faced lied on live, national television, please recall each and every of the several times we were told, "There is a link between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein"). My mother, upon hearing of my threat to personally write to Dick Cheney requesting him to take my Johnny Rotten-ass mouth to the dentist, decided to intervene. Maybe she did it out of love, and maybe she did it because she didn't want Dick Cheney jumping down her throat. What matters here is I AM GOING TO THE DENTIST. For the first time in seven years. The last time these smoky pearly greys saw a cleaning was in 1997. I was nineteen years old, and my bald head had just moved back from Champaign, IL, after having my heart ripped in half by a man who, it turned out, only loved me for my bald head and braces. I in turn justified my existence and declared my independence by moving back to ROCKFORD and having my braces taken off. It was at this time, at the ripe age of nineteen, that I inherited the ever so lovely partial denture which has been my salvation for the last seven years. The braces were taken off, my teeth were cleaned, and as a lovely consolation prize I was given (courtesy of, again, my mother) this shiny plate of steel and fake bone I now refer to as My Teeth. Without My Teeth, I look something like a bunny, a sight none of you will ever, ever see as long as I live. Once I'm dead, you can all stick me in the casket Without My Teeth and have a good laugh. Dead people don't smile. Unless you had my lips sewn up. Which would be really funny. But for now, the Teeth stay. And what are left of my Natural Teeth will be cleaned as of this coming Monday. And what a glorious day that shall be, not only because my Teeth, All of Them will be cleaned, but also because the day will have finally come when I, my mother's daughter, am forced to bring MY THREE-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER to a dentist's office situated oh-so-inconveniently directly above a CHUCK E. CHEESE, so that I, too, will have to live through the pain of being called a horrible mother because, after dropping hella cash at the dentist's office (okay, so it's my mom's money, Maddie doesn't have to know that), I do not have sufficient funds to squander on Skee Ball.
And in case there's anyone still lagging behind, I've got news for you people: remember "someday"? The "someday" your parents always warned you about? It happened, like, YEARS ago. You're already living it, and have been. You were just too stupid to know.