I've been lied to, my whole life. I always heard that the way to take out a red wine stain is by using white wine. Wrong! It didn't work at all, even when applied within a minute of the red wine hitting my t-shirt. So I went digging through the arsenal of the less-caustic cleaning supplies within a foot or two of the sink. Hydrogen peroxide, no effect. Baking soda, useless. Peroxide on top of the baking soda, why did I bother? Dish soap, just laughed at me. I rinsed and scrubbed with a nail, and rubbed the shirt against itself, with no change. I had one last thing to try, before it was back to the Polo store at the outlet mall, hoping for another sale. I grabbed the big gallon of white vinegar. The stain was gone like it never was. Whew. Maybe the people who created the white-wine-beats-red-wine myth misspoke. Maybe it was white wine vinegar. Either way, I am happy to be your teacher.
I had to have dental work done this morning. I don't know how I managed to get a giant cavity, right at the gum line, so quickly. There was no hint of it at my last checkup in the spring. I guess I was storing just a pinch of sugar between the cheek and gum, and not knowing about it. No hard candies, no gum. It's a mystery to me. My first dentist was an old country doctor (also known as my grandpa), and I don't know whether it was his delivery with that giant, steel-handled needle, or him encouraging my innate toughness, but by the time I was in junior high, I was absolutely done with novocaine. The pierce of the needle is worse than a drill bumping into a nerve in the middle of the tooth, and the effects of the drug are unbearable to me. I've refused anaesthetic for decades. I'm mad at my own mouth that I couldn't get out of this one. There's no way I could handle the damage to the gums, that I knew was coming and was worse than I budgeted for. My dentist, who is usually really cool and listens well to me, somehow got it in his head that my desire to refuse novocaine all this time meant that I have a resistance to it, and I don't bother because it doesn't work. Au contraire! I told him I needed to be able to speak clearly today, so he said he'd just numb the immediate site, not the whole mouth. He shot up the jaw, then left me a few minutes while it took effect. Then he did it again, with the justification that he thought I needed a lot of it to work. I can't believe he thought this would leave me capable of speech for the day. He said it would just be the one side of my jaw. He either lied, or he had no idea how much novocaine he was giving me. I came home and tried to have some mint tea, thinking it would be soothing. It was a challenge to drink, since I couldn't tell whether I had a good seal between the cup and my sagging, lifeless lip. I felt awful the rest of the morning, and by noon, I thought maybe a nap would help me metabolize the drug. Two hours later, and I still could barely speak. I managed to make my phone call I had scheduled for the afternoon, but I never felt coherent enough to go discuss that jury duty summons I received yesterday. Now here, more than 13 hours later, and it still doesn't feel like I actually own that part of my face. What isn't throbbing feels like I borrowed it from a corpse. If this dentist gets another crack at my mouth, I'm going to have to be more convincing. I'm not lying, the needle is worse than the drill, hands down.
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