The "Incident"

When I was younger and wilder I smoked many cigars (I also had many leather-bound books). So what if many of those "cigars" were "Black & Milds"? Those things were like candy for your lungs. Delicious and tantalizingly sweet. I loved them.

As I grew older I stepped into the world of real cigars and started smoking stogies with my girlfriends every now and then. Not as delicious as Black and Milds, but they made me feel like a woman. No more candy cigars for this girl. No siree. I moved on to bigger and better things.

I haven't smoked one in a while, but my boyfriend and I have been discussing smoking cigars together for the last few weeks and we finally decided to do this on Friday before I left town for the weekend. I was having an excellent day that Friday. I don't work on Fridays, so they have become my Sabbath. I read, I relax, I drink coffee, I do yoga, etc. It is delightful.

This Friday was just like any other. I did all of my favorite things and then I went over to Nick's house to hang out for a bit before heading up to the mountains. He pulls out his humidor (how very manly of him), picks out two cigars a friend had given him from Mexico, and we go out to the back porch to smoke.

Everything is going very smoothly at this point. He clips the ends and I light mine. Which, by the way, I'm very proud of myself for being able to do. The last time I tried to light something it was a pipe and I failed miserably. I couldn't keep it lit for the life of me. This memory, and the fear of my cigar going out, ultimately led me down the road of destruction. Well that, and the fact that I consume everything very quickly. Hot drinks, food, alcoholic drinks (bad move), and apparently cigars.

Those of you who have ever smoked something quickly know where this is headed. That's right. It all started with a little light-headedness. I tried to fight this by sitting down on the window ledge and taking deep breaths. But it all went sour because I didn't stop smoking my cigar at this point. Oh no, that would have been the smart thing to do. Instead, I continued smoking my cigar and continued getting light headed. I handed my cigar to Nick. I went downstairs. I got a cup of cold water. I went back upstairs. Bad move. The motion of going up and down the stairs was a little more than my stomach wanted to handle and I started feeling nauseous. Great.

At this point I'm done. I have nothing left to prove to myself or this cigar and I call it quits. I leave Nick to the rest of his cigar and go downstairs to lay on the couch for a bit. Laying on the couch is nice. Comforting. Cozy. And the fetal position is always a welcomed relief to any and all stomach ailments. Fifteen minutes later I'm starting to feel a bit better. Fifteen minutes later is also when my ride to the mountains shows up. I get in her car and we hit the road.

If I thought the stair were bad, the open road was way worse! Never ever mix nausea with a car ride. It is the worst! Jess is driving and I am sitting in the passenger seat clutching my pillow, eyes tightly shut, taking deep breaths and drinking water. Nick suggested I try to eat something since I hadn't eaten in several hours so I break out an apple and convince myself I'm going to be fine.

Well that was a lie. I was not fine. And at 4:30pm on a busy Denver road I felt all of my hopes and dreams rise to the surface. Oh wait. Those were not hopes and dreams rising. Those were the contents of my stomach. "Jess, I think you're going to need to pull over" I say. "Are you serious?!" she says as she drives along in the left-hand lane of a busy highway with no shoulder and no exits anywhere near. What happened next was neither classy nor ladylike, although Jess maintains I was very quiet. I'll spare you the details, but suffice it to say I found myself with my head out the window watching tiny pieces of my apple fly behind me. Oh, and fly into my hair. Yum.

Jess is finally able to pull off the highway exclaiming "I don't know where to go! We're in Mexico!" until we find a gas station where I can wash out my hair and get a Sprite. Which, by the way, is really not all that helpful in settling stomachs. Why do all mothers give their children Sprite when they're sick? The nostalgia was the only comfort it provided.

I walk back to the car in as dignified a manner as I can muster, check out the side of the car, see that I was at least lady-like in my placement of the apple as the car is in tip-top shape, and we hit the road again.

I was able to hold it together the rest of the way up although the nausea lasted for at least another hour. And by the time I got to the top was feeling pretty good.

Lesson learned. I have sworn off cigars and any other type of tobacco product for a long time. My stomach has become quite the sissy in my old age and I don't feel like putting it through the ringer again if I don't have to.

But apparently someone thought I should overcome my sensitivity by brute force and signed me up for an online cigar website. Clever. If anyone is interested follow this link. Maybe you can get me a set for Christmas. Maybe I'll be over my fear by then....

Little Shop of Horrors

Before you read this, if you haven't seen Little Shop of Horrors I need you to watch this video on YouTube. You will understand my plight so much better once you do.

Last September I went to the dentist for the first time in 3 years. I know, I know...stop chastising me you jerks! This is a time for confessions, not for judgment. Anyway, I bought a Groupon for a cleaning and a whitening treatment. Working in a coffee shop for three years took a toll on the old (not-so) pearly whites.

Let me explain. It's not that I've been afraid to go. Going to the dentist has not been a scary experience for me since I was a child and they made me do fluoride treatments. I simply haven't felt the need to go lately because my teeth have been perfectly healthy for years. I think I've maybe had 2 minor cavities my entire life.

Well, I guess I should have gone in a little sooner because I had a MAJOR cavity that required a root canal. Yikes! A root canal?! That was a shocker. So much of a shocker, in fact, that I may or may not have cried in the office. Ok I did. And it wasn't a single tear slowly rolling down my cheek either. It was waterworks. I couldn't stop them. And everyone knows the harder you try to stop the tears, the harder they fall.

The good news is that apparently my tears made me endearing to my dentist and the rest of the office because now every time I come in they treat me like I'm their best friend. I actually like going to the dentist office for the most part. Well, maybe not after this last time. I'm a little shell-shocked to be honest.

You see, I had a little misfortune with the crown they put on after my root canal. Also, can we just take a moment to ask ourselves why these things are called crowns? It's not like they are some sort of badge of honor or something. In fact, I think they are rather a reminder of how disappointed your mouth is that you allowed it to become terribly neglected. They're like a Scarlet Letter, not a Tiara. Anyway. Back to my story. The crown they put on didn't fit quite right and after a few months of annoyance and pain, I finally asked them to redo it. Which was hard. I felt a little guilty about asking them to redo something when we had become friends.

So I went back in two days ago to have then take the old crown off and replace it. Which was HORRIFYING!!!!! First, they numbed me up. I need to tell you that I am not a wuss. I typically handle pain pretty well. When I chopped my finger off last week I described the pain as a 3 on a scale of 1-10. But the numbing stuff they gave me in my palate was an 8. At least. I gasped, teared up (I'm sensing a theme here), curled my toes, clenched my fingers and wished I could punch my dentist right in the face even though I like him. After he numbed me he started drilling off my crown. And then he used a tool to try to pry the thing cemented to my gums out of my mouth. But it didn't work as well as he thought. He used so much force that I imagine if whatever tool he used slipped off my tooth, it would have poked a huge hole right in my cheek. I was terrified! I happen to like that cheek. I did not need a hole poked in it.

I shot out a text message trying to describe my horror and elicit a sympathetic response. All I received in response was a comment telling me that if I had really enjoyed my eyebrow piercing, I would probably enjoy a cheek piercing. Thanks.

I did, however enjoy a conversation with a friend later that day as we swapped horror stories. She apparently had to go to the "women's doctor". She told me that she was so nervous waiting for the exam that she had to peel herself off the paper lining on the exam table and dab the sweat under her arms with the paper robe. I thought this was amusing. It made my trip to the dentist at least look a little better.

The good news? My new crown seems to be working out fine. And I don't have to go back to the dentist for another couple months. At which point I hope to be able to walk through the door without visibly shaking. It did not in any way ruin my birthday and I was able to relive the dentist scene in Little Shop of Horrors. So win, win.....win.