Teeth are the only bones that show.

I got my braces off this afternoon and the moment I opened wide in the mirror I saw that guy on the left staring back at me (minus a flaxen miss on my arm).  My teeth look and feel super-colossal to me right now.  Don’t worry, I’m chalking it up to a first world problem.

Soon I’ll be used to seeing all that white when my lips part, but for now I feel like I’m forcing those around me to survey ghastly, exposed bone.  If I made you laugh and you lifted up your shirt to show me your naked rib I might black out or wail, “PUT THAT AWAY!”  Thankfully, no one has had that reaction.

It felt amazing to strut into their office knowing I’d soon prance out a woman who can finally brush and floss in under half an hour.  The removal was a snap, literally, but the impressions that followed were not.  That was more like a crackle and a pop.  Ouch. 

I guess you could say I have a bit of a freakishly runty mouth, and the impression tray is seriously just the heel end of a men’s shoe size 18 insole.  I’m convinced.  Oh, with a giant wad of wet, grape flavored plaster smeared on top of it.  Mmm, open sesame! 

The first technician’s technique was questionable.  She put me in a headlock, shoved it into my mouth, and held my head against her boob until the plaster hardened.  It didn’t take the first or second time, and by the third I was losing focus.  That focus being:  DO NOT LAUGH, APRIL!  I’m sorry, but by the third time she had me in that breast-y sleeper hold I could not hold it in any longer.  I spit plaster and gave myself a pretty sensational, violet beard.

She called for backup and it just so happened to be my favorite orthodontic technician of all time, Deb.  We bonded before my surgery over a love of pizza and fear of skin grafts.  She even sent me a post card once to make sure I was recovering well.  I read it to myself in her pack a day Selma/Patty Bouvier voice and cried the day I received it.

It took Deb two tries, but we finally nailed it.  I was out the door with a “CONGRATS!” balloon trailing behind me and a smiley face bag loaded with candy from the FORBIDDEN FOOD list they gave me two years ago.

I brought an apple with my lunch in hopes that I’d have the guts to bite into it, but I chickened out and sliced it up instead.  Snore. 

It reminded me of the time I had a cast removed from my healed, formerly broken wrist.  I refused to use that arm for days because I harbored irrational fears about it breaking again.  My mom forced me to open and close the sliding side door of our family mini-van with it while I grimaced and whined.

If she were here now I imagine she’d make me open my own car door with my teeth.

Mama, if that’s movin’ up then I’m movin’ out.

I’ve been avoiding this topic for quite some time.  For the most part, I didn’t want to be dooced before I put in my notice.  I also didn’t want to tell anyone about the morning I wept in my boss’ office while giving said notice. 

Hello, awkward.  Please, grab yourself some real estate in my life (lots of it).  The only thing worse than crying at work is crying while eating.  Bonus points are awarded if you’re crying while eating a dessert. 

I kept waiting and waiting for the right moment, one where I was feeling less decrepit.  It was just one more thing I had to part with.  Blergh.    

I can’t say I’ll miss the white noise generators because I’m convinced that if I removed the grates I’d expose alien nests brimming with cocooned corpses, but I will miss some of the actual humans in the building.  Especially my old buddy, J, on our Janitorial staff. 

I crave his brief, yet conclusive film reviews on our daily walks toward his bus stop and my stupid gym.

Re:  Jumper (2008)     

“HE JUST JUMPS EVERYWHERE!”

He was on the money.  That’s all he did!  I watched it and he just jumped everywhere.

It should also come as no surprise that a week after I get my braces off I’ll be moving back in with one of my moms for a while.  You’re a woman!  No, you’re not.  But you’re very close!  I’ll be living in her closet, working, and saving to move again to my final destination, Austin, Texas.

I joked with someone recently that I’m relocating because I landed a sweet Assistant Manager position at the Taco Cabana.  I’m pretty sure they took me seriously.  What I really want to do in Austin sounds just as ridiculous to some of my family members. 

Special effects make-up!  *crickets*

I guess some of them expect me to drone out now that I’m almost 27, unwed, and not planning on enrolling in any more college courses that don’t involve coloring. 

I’m girded and ready to field their questions.  There will be many since no one ever left Texas.

Now I’m no clairvoyant, but I believe these will be the first three:

1.  Are you a lesbian?

2.  Why aren’t you pregnant?

3.  Do you want fries with that?

Browntown girl.

I adore the couple I’m house sitting for as well as their positively dreamy Boxer, Daisy, and the homemade gumbo they left for me (labeled GUMBO YUMBO!) in the fridge. 

However, I’m afraid their mattress is a real sleep swindler.  It felt like there were file cabinets under the sheets.  I hope it’s actually just boxes upon boxes of collectible Boglins in their original packaging. 

I’m entirely stubborn about these things though which is why I’m to blame for the corpse face I’m gracing Uptown Charlotte with this morning.  I could have relocated to the guest bedroom, or even the couch.  Instead, it became an endurance challenge that I lost every hour when I woke up. 

“I can do thiiiiiiiiiiissssssss.”  Daisy would look up at me with these colossal, snuff colored ”give up, you idiot” eyes.  In my half asleep stupor our exchange was much more elaborate. 

She would ask me if I’d ever read Goldilocks and the Three Bears and before I could answer she’d explain how the story couldn’t have ended with:

 ”She lay down in the first bed and it was too hard, but she slept there anyway until her butt fell asleep.  She thought the rest of her body would follow suit, but that never happened.  Then the three bears came home and caught her with her bare ass in the cold porridge where a feeble attempt to bring it back to life was underway.  The bears called the cops and had her arrested for indecent exposure therefore banishing her from the forest for all eternity.  The end.”  

As it turns out this place is just the same with one eye open.  People are still shitting on the sidewalk outside our office building.  Let’s face it, one needn’t two eyes to identify that aromatic endowment.