One Broken Crown Later...

Okay, the Quake worked out about as expected. But dinner at Borrone didn't: I was just about done with my sandwich when I felt something go wrong in my mouth. Yes, the temporary crown on my front tooth had snapped clean off, leaving only the natural half-tooth remaining.

One of the people there had a wireless phone, so she dialed directory assistance for me and managed to connect to my dentist's office, but due to the vagaries of directory assistance and the computer answering system at the dentist's - not the mention the ambient noise and my complete unfamiliarity with wireless phones - I was unable to actually connect and leave a message on their system. So I bailed on the movie and came home to call them directly.

Worse: Although they have a system for dental emergencies (which I decided this is; while the nerve isn't exposed, the tooth is rather sensitive), it doesn't seem to be working. When I press the right number to leave my number for the on-call dentist to call me back, it tells me that that number doesn't exist, and doesn't return me to the main menu or anything.

So what do I do? Find another dentist? How much is that going to cost? I decided that I will live with it for one night - and hope that nothing bad happens - and phone them in the morning. According to their system, they are open from 8 am to 2 pm on Saturdays, so hopefully something can be worked out.

But needless to say I am peeved that their system isn't working, and plan to tell them so.

Being, well, me, I keep wondering what I did wrong here. The dentist's assistant (no, I have no idea what her actual title is; she's the one who put the actual crown in my mouth, though) told to me avoid "hard" and "soft, like caramel" foods until I get the permanent crowns. So sausage sandwiches count as "soft" by this measure? What the heck am I supposed to eat if I can't use my incisors in a sandwich? If I'm only suppose to eat soup, they should have told me so!

I actually suspect that what happened is this: I wear a mouth brace to bed to fend off TMJ, since I grind my teeth while I sleep. It works beautifully, but I think that the temporary crowns were not perfectly aligned to work with the brace; both of them felt to me like they protruded a little bit. And I suspect that wearing the brace put a lot of extra pressure on the front crown and weakened it enough so that it was just waiting to snap off. I'd told both the dentist and a hygenist about my brace when I had my checkup, but hadn't thought to mention it when I got the crowns. So next time I will bring it with me so that things can be measured out, if necessary and possible.

This really sucks, though. I'm actually drinking liquids through a straw since it's annoying enough to drink them normally over the sawed-down tooth. Aargh!

I hope the permanent crown is more sturdy than this, or I'm going to be really pissed.

While driving back from Borrone I thought about just how stressed out I feel in my life lately.

I've been feeling keenly like I need to put on a good face for my new boss at work, and have been trying to be especially thorough (a strange thought for someone who's in QA and is therefore supposed to be thorough anyway!) and volunteering for interesting-sounding and important tasks as they arise. But I'm starting to feel overworked, like I haven't been able to devote enough attention to any one task without feeling like I'm slacking on something else. It's not a matter of putting in time, but rather feeling like I'm juggling the various things I need to do. Organization, planning and focus.

Feeling stressed at work always affects the rest of my life, too.

The whole apartment thing has obviously long since gotten to the point that it's a vicious cycle: I want to move, staying in my current place makes me unhappy, but I'm miserable actually trying to look for a new place, and I have enough other things to do that I can easily distract myself from doing so, so it just becomes a big cycle of stress.

And on top of that I have a fairly busy life outside of work, which involves planning and coordination, which are stressful in themselves. And there always seems to be something missing from a full enjoyment of my life, which makes me wonder if I haven't made some terribly bad choices somewhere along the way. I sometimes wonder if most of what I'm doing with my life is just trying to distract myself from the fact (?) that I'm not very happy with it.

Add to this the ambient stress of living in the Bay Area, where everyone drives everywhere, the traffic is heavy, the drivers are by-and-large bad, and the housing is expensive and prospects of actually owning a home - much less one I'd really like - seems daunting.

I don't feel like I have a lot of time or energy to just be contemplative and content with the things that I do have. I've always got somewhere else to be, or something important to do, or something happening that I have to cope with. It seems like once I was able to just go out for a walk or bike ride and think and enjoy where I am at the moment, and it seems like I never do that anymore, nor feel like I have time or a proper venue in which to do it.

I wonder how much longer until I just explode from all of this?