A Day for Needles

Needle #1 and 2
Much to my disappointment, my dentist discovered a cavity at my last check up. I decided to take care of it while still here in the US. I like my Polish dentist, Jadwiga Krol. She's good. Plus, I like that I know someone named Jadwiga.

Laying in the chair, I was a bit nervous. She first applied the topical anaesthetic before Needle #1 emerged. Tell me, why do dentists have to have these stainless steel syringes that look like they just came out of Dr. Frankensteins lab? Because really, this does nothing but send my blood pressure to the ceiling. A quick pinch - and it's really not so bad. Jadwiga's nice enough to give me a quick jolt of novacaine and let the numbness settle in before really giving me the full dose with Needle #2.

After several spine tingling minutes of that drill-from-hell sound that only a dental drill can produce, I had a nice neat hole in my tooth. This is one moment when it would pay to be deaf. I try to relax and let the sound not bother me, but I can't. I knew in high school I'd have to cross Dental School off the list of possible school options. I could never stand that sound.

She proceeded to attach some stainless steel screw-clamp thingy to my tooth and shoved a couple other things around my tooth that I could tell would really hurt if I wasn't numbed. I've never seen such a contraption bolted to my teeth. More Dr. Frankenstein lab stuff - hello dentists of the world - you could do yourselves a favor by laying off these gizmos. I'm thinking it must be because I got a white enamel filling rather than silver. I kept trying to catch a glimpse of all that was going on in Jadwiga's glasses (I love a dentist that wears glasses). But she had these cool jeweler-like magnifying lenses (you know the ones that they look through to tell you if there are any flaws in your diamond) that were attached to her glasses and kept getting in the way of my seeing what was going on. Probably for the best.

Needles #3, 4, 5 . . . . to infinity
And then I went to get my tatoo. The new tatoo artist in town has had an influx of customers from all the moms in Bay View. I think I was mom-customer number 5 (or something like that). Oddly enough - of all our friends in Bay View - the moms have tatoos and the dads don't (except for one dad who has a few). How weird is that? I told you we have the coolest friends.

I have had a design in mind for years - but I needed to bring something with me from Dubai. When packing 3 weeks ago, getting a tatoo wasn't on my list of things to do. So, I didn't have the design with me. Instead, I got an Ohm** (see right) tatooed on the back of my neck, near my hair-line. I'll have a photo made and post it here soon.

Tatoo-dude, Julio, was worried that it would be too small (it's less than 1"x1"). He said, "People are going to have to get real close to see what it is." I think we come at this tatoo thing from two totally different perspectives. He's got his arms and legs (and maybe his body) covered with tatoos. He's made a statement to the world using his body that you can see coming down the street. My statement is a bit more understated, more private - it's a statement for me not for the world. I don't care if someone mistakes my tatoo for a weird birth mark or has to squint and says, "What is that?"

After my trip to the dentist, I was a bit twitchy about the needle part. My memory of the last tatoo was faint and I couldn't remember how much it really was going to hurt. When Julio touched my neck (with his hands) to start the tatoo, I nearly jumped out of my skin. But as with most things, the anticipation is worse than the actual experience. I timed him - 4 minutes of tatooing was his estimate. He was right.

I'll take needles #3, 4, 5 to infinity a hundred times over needles #1 and 2. Not so much because of the needles, but tatoo needles are much less painful than dentist needles. It's the freakin' drill - I hate it. Lyra would tell me, "That's not a nice word. You shouldn't say 'hate'". I have tried explaining that inanimate ojects cannot have their feelings hurt. But she still wouldn't let me off. So, perhaps I should say something else like: "I loathe it or I despise it or I abhor it or I detest it" - there. I think those words aren't in her vocabulary, yet.

**Ohm, besides being the measure of electrical resistance between two points of a conductor, is the symbol for one of the chakras (energy centers) in Yoga - the Ajna chakra. The Ajna chakra is the "3rd eye". In Yoga, the chakra represents the unification of duality in the body; the meeting of consiousness and unconsiousness, sun and moon, creative and logical, hot and cold, left and right, etc. If I wanted to be technically correct, I should have had Ohm tatooed onto my forhead between my eyebrows. Call me a yoga-rebel.