Adventures in Gum Surgery

I awoke this morning at 4-something a.m. to see Audrey by my side of the bed bleating out something about "Sky the Blue Fairy" on her MP3 player. I guess I figured out what she needed, so she walked around to Steve's side of the bed and started bleating something at him. He told her to lay down, be quiet, and turn her MP3 player off. I think they went round about that for a few minutes - he complained about it later, but I went right back to sleep.

I awoke the next time at 6 a.m. to the lovely simultaneous alarms from Steve's alarm clock and wristwatch. Lovely. I couldn't even muster up the strength to tell him to hit the snooze button, but went back to sleep and dreamed frantic, disorganized, and stressful dreams about moving to an urban flat in Canyon, Texas, and trying to get everything unpacked. I know, and urban flat in Canyon, Texas? How weird is that dream?

Anyway, as I was dreaming the part about the walk-in closet with a window facing an office building next door, I hit a snag: uncooperative children in the dream bathtub, visitors at the dream door, and office workers (female) being able to see in my dream window in my dream closet. It was also snowing. Not pretty white snow, but slushy gray snow. I couldn't find the right clothes to wear and the office workers were seeing me half-dressed through the weird dream window and the dream guests were about to enter my dream closet and then Steve said, "April, we have to leave in an hour" and I jumped up out of bed very relieved to be out of that stressful dream and in reality.

But after a moment, the shine of reality tarnished.

It was 6:20 a.m., I had stayed up too late reading a book, Audrey had come in at 4 a.m., and I just wasn't ready to be awake. Too late, though.

So we all got up, ate breakfast, and piled in the car to deliver Steve to the periodontist in Santa Fe by 8:30. We got him there, picked up some prescriptions, delivered the drugs back to the periodontist's office (Steve would need them after a couple of hours apparently), and drove home.

We watched TV for a while, ate lunch, then went back to Santa Fe, this time with spending money in the kids' hands. When we were at Walgreens the first time, they both spotted things they couldn't live without, so we went back to Santa Fe a bit early so they could shop before we picked up Steve. We ended up with 2 foam swords, a wooden "lifelike" snake, and 4 My Little Pony knockoffs with assorted hair accouterments. Nothing for Julie. Poor baby.

I was pleasantly surprised that Steve met me at the door of the perio's office to tell me he'd be out in a minute after he finished the "financial stuff." I cycled the kids through the office's bathroom, gathered everyone back up and we were off.

I ended up calling Mom on the way back home to divert my attention from the dental horrors that were sitting beside me. I knew that if I started paying attention to Steve, asking questions, or just thinking tooth-and-gum thoughts, I would get woozy and pass out. Not an option when you're driving. So I chose the escape of my cell phone.

He seems to be doing fine. When he got home, we all played a round of "Mario Party 8" on the Wii, and then he took a nice hot bath. He still seems to be doing fine. He typed a couple of lines to me a minute ago and told me that he was a guinea pig. That's not something you want to hear.

Turns out they didn't just do this procedure to the front 8-10 teeth on top, but back to the molars. Apparently they usually leave the molars alone since this procedure not only allows the teeth to move backwards and forwards, but also up and down. They don't want to do that with molars since it can change jaw configuration. But they keep using the word challenging when describing his teeth and bite, so I guess they figured it was worth the risk.

So for now he's reading. When I asked him if he was going to go to work tomorrow, he was noncommittal. Maybe yes, maybe no. We'll see.

I'm going to scoot now and figure out what to do for dinner for everyone. Steve will be easy - Ensure chocolate drink. It's actually not even Ensure. It's the store brand. I'll do a Weight Watchers meal and try to figure out what the kids will eat. I might be able to bribe them with corn dogs. All 3 of them like 'em. Julie likes hers best frozen. A few days ago Steve was getting ready to nuke a couple for himself when Jules demanded one, so to avoid a tantrum that was gearing up to be a mini version of Audrey's infamous Paris pink hat tantrums, he gave her a frozen one. She refused to let anyone take it from her to warm it and just gummed it a bit before she got bored. My strategy now will be to cook the silly things before anyone sees them.

TTFN!