June 17, 2002
wheeled
There wasn't all that much that could be considered memorable about my last full day in New York. A thunderstorm that night, one that frizzed out the flawed, Comfort Inn satellite system so that all I was left with in viewing options were the menu items for the in-house Pay-Per-View movies ("Sexy Babes!" "Fornicator, Part XI!" "Dee-Dee Does the Dirty!") or a polite, remotely apologetic message informing me that the satellite was temporarily not receiving any signal and that any time now, if I'd just wait, just a few more minutes, that's right, just sit there and look vacuous, any time now the signal would come back and I could continue to watch television and thank you SO much for staying at Comfort Inn!
I turned off the television and watched the thunderstorm instead.
THE GUY...
Those that've read for a while know that the Guy has serious issues about his teeth, and I'm still not sure if this is because he's British or just because he's a guy. The purchase of the electric toothbrush several months ago is, I still believe, the only reason that he brushes his teeth regularly.
(Side note: I'm now totally incapable of brushing my teeth with a regular old manual $3.99 Colgate Medium Bristle toothbrush. The electric toothbrush buzzes for two minutes, then stutters to inform you that you're done brushing your teeth. The manual toothbrush doesn't do that. I was standing in my hotel bathroom brushing my teeth, staring blankly at my mirror and waiting for the little stutter to tell me to stop, when I realized that I'd been brushing my teeth for the last five minutes and the chances of my manual toothbrush telling me to quit was pretty damn remote.)
Since we've been dating, I've harped on about his dental care because I'm vaguely worried that we'll end up dating for ten years and at the end of that decade of love and bliss his teeth will have fallen out. While I've never actually kissed anybody who needs (and does not wear) dentures, I'm fairly certain it's an experience I want to postpone as long as possible.
"Go see a dentist," I'd usually start.
"When you go see a gyno," he'd say.
And so things stood until I actually saw a gyno back in, oh, November of last year.
"Go see a dentist," I told him.
"When you go see a gyno," he said.
"Hah. I did see a gyno," I said triumphantly. "Now you go see a dentist."
"La la la la la la la la," the Guy sang. "I can't hear you, la la la la la..."
Never have I met such a coward.
"When was the last time you went to see a dentist?" I demanded.
"A while," the Guy said evasively. He optimistically attempted to divert my attention. "Look at what I can do!"
"A year ago?" I asked.
The Guy waved his toy-of-the-moment about. "It's been a while. Look at this! Look at this!"
"Two years?"
"A while. Check out this neat thing it can do!"
"Four years?"
"A while. Oh, and look at this...!"
"Six years?"
"A while. I got it really cheap, too. I can hook it up to the TiVo..."
"More than six years?"
...at which point the Guy would usually disappear into another room, talking loudly to himself in a childish attempt not to hear the Yuhri.
So it's no surprise when he became very quiet one night last week and finally confessed to a soul-killing toothache. And this is where I failed the Good Girlfriend Acid Test.
"I told you to go to the dentist."
It turned out later on that he had an impacted wisdom tooth, which means surgery come Thursday and antibiotics every day until then. A teeth cleaning on the day after the initial inspection; a follow-up cleaning later on; a consult today for the surgery; and surgery itself on Thursday.
Obviously, I must make up for the Good Girlfriend Acid Test failure, a process that will require a great deal of pampering of the patient. I've already hit Google for good ideas. Is ice cream contra-indicated for tooth extraction cases?
THE CAR...
I finally have one.
My very first car.
On Wednesday last, the Guy and his friend came up from San Jose to finish the paperwork, leaving me with joint ownership of a bright red, 1997 Honda CR-V. "Joint" in that my partner for the purchase was PeopleFirst Loans, an amiable company that has fronted me the check for the purchase and will now be making its own back in increments of approximately $300 a month for the rest of my life. This is outside of the $450+ I will be paying every six months for car insurance, on top of the registration fees I will be paying to make it legal to drive my car.
But.
I have a car.
I've named it Pi-man, pronounced "PEE-mahn," a Japanese word meaning "Bell Pepper." In fact, tomorrow I have a meeting with my insurance agent so that said agent can take pictures of the car.
"Meet Pi-man," I'll say.
"What?" the insurance agent will say.
(I have this conversation all planned out in my head, see.)
Remind me to tell you guys about my cousin, sometime tomorrow.