I have a mutant tooth!  An extra one, just hiding up there in the gums between my canine and an incisor.  Like a ninja.

“Promise me that’s going to stay right there,” I begged when Dr. G showed me the x-ray images. I was laughing, but I meant it very sincerely.

“Oh, it will, ” the dentist said, turning back to the x-rays. “I can’t see any reason it wouldn’t. It’s stayed right there this long.”

“I don’t want it just deciding to grow out all snaggle toothy – like, the day before the wedding.”

He chuckled and promised – it’s probably been there my whole life and never moved. Why no one saw it until now is the mystery. He reached for my chart and made some mmm hmmming noises and as he went over my medical history, began to read some of my fill-in-the-blank answers.

“Oh, you’re gonna love this,” he said, motioning to his dental assistant. “That’s funny stuff.”

She read my chart and her nose crinkled up. “You know, I totally agree.”

Under miscellaneous medical information, the new patient questionnaire asked, “What medications are you taking now?” I’d dutifully jotted down the name of birth control prescription I take and then next to it, under “Correlating diagnosis/reason?”

Parenthood is scary.

What wasn’t that scary was my diagnosis: Healthy teeth, healthy gums and really, minus the discovery of my middle age mutant ninja tooth, absolutely nothing of note. Perfection! Nary a cavity or nothin’! I can’t lie -  loved hearing all those number ones rattled off during my gum examination. One! One! I felt like a friggin’ champ.

“You make people who follow all the rules look pretty bad.”

I smiled.

“But.”  The hygienist put on her mother face. “You should really floss.”

She then delivered a rather stern and terrifying lecture about flossing and bacteria and heart disease and cancer. I listened and promised her I’d try harder. And I will. Once a day, she said, and I can do that. Or, I can try very earnestly to do that and not beat myself up too bad when I fail, because, look, I may have big ole feet, wide hips and skin tone the color of skim milk, but genetics took a little pity and gave me some rockin’ chompers and I’m not going to question the wisdom behind that.

Tomorrow afternoon, I have an appointment with the dentist.

I have not been flossing.

If you’re new here, I should probably let you in on a little secret:  I’m the kind of girl who will take a bad report at the dentist… poorly. At this point, though – pair years of no dentist visits with those seriously lackadaisical flossing habits – it’s highly unlikely I’m going to receive any of that glowing praise my inner Type A craves. And it’s giving me a stomach knot.

I need affirmation.

Historically(and I’m knocking on all sorts of wood laminate surfaces as I type this), I have had really, really nice teeth. Not Davy Jones’ movie star *ping!* teeth, but stain free, cavity free, hard as rock teeth. They’re pretty straight and pretty white and they never, ever hurt (except when they do, and it’s not my fault). I recognize that doesn’t mean squat when it comes to all the things that can go wrong with a person’s teeth especially when they’ve neglected approximately nine regular cleanings.

I have a feeling I’m in for a rude, rude awakening.

I’d blame my hiatus on the lack of dental insurance, but then you’ll say, “But it’s your teeth! Aren’t they worth the money? You only get one set! Unless you are a shark!” and you’ll be right. The truth of the matter is, I just hate it. Even the sounds in a dentist’s office make my mouth sweat and my stomach flip – forget what happens when he pulls out that shiny pick and starts scraping and poking. And the smell. Dear god.  All this before they give you a bad grade for hating to floss! It’s really more than I can bear.

It’s going to take all my powers of grown up responsibility just to get me to that office tomorrow.  And then what’s going to stop me from crying and/or ralphing? Nada.

Just now, while I was filling out the New Patient Form, I got to the question about allergies and sensitivities. I hesitated, my pen hovering over the page for a minute before I wrote, in my nicest penmanship,

Allergies:

• None

Sensitivities:

• Latex
• Sodium Laurel Sulfate
• Criticism

They can’t say I didn’t warn ‘em.

In Features this weekend:

• My friend Laura helps me pick a Super Bowl team to cheer for – and some quick facts so I don’t look like a poser
• Join in on our Emma book report with your own Highbury Facebook Status

And if you’re musically inclined, I could use a little help updating my iPod. I have an iTunes gift card to use and no idea what I should be listening to. Other than Glee soundtracks, I haven’t bought music in so long it’s embarrassing. What’s good? What’s… crucial to my development as a fully functioning member of society/non dork? Top five? Top ten? Whatever, I seek digital music enlightenment.

Happy Super Bowl, everybody. Don’t double dip.

Yesterday, I got a message on Facebook from Clare, a reader from Australia, about the recent flooding in Queensland and the devastation caused by Tropical Cyclone Yasi. The storm left 170,000 homes without power which may take weeks to restore. It’s a disaster not unlike our own Hurricane Ike.

I’m not always as aware as I should be about what’s going on outside of my own small, selfish bubble and that’s something I’m trying to change. After reading about the hardships of our friends in Queensland, I have decided to donate January’s charity set-aside to aid in the recovery. I figure it’s a cause that covers children, animals and health and even if it’s no fancy celeb million dollar telethon, it’s something.

For information on how you can help, including ways to make international donations, please visit Queensland’s disaster relief site.

One hour and ten minutes. That’s how long my twelve mile commute took this morning.  The first fifteen of that was spent driving 20 miles per hour down the icy service road, looking for a gas station with power. Rolling power outages. New least favorite thing.  It’s not much of stretch to say that yesterday’s snow day – home with the Boy, my laptop, a down comforter, homemade chicken soup and brownies and some uh, afternoon delight – kicked some very serious ass by comparison.

This hot chocolate from a powder mix while sitting at my desk in a wool hat and scarf nonsense is total crap. I’ve seen the glory of a  snow day and now I want more.

Totally Off Topic Tangent in the First
Know what’s really fun, you guys? Yesterday I did a quick run through of traffic/site views for the first month of the All! New! Totally re-launched fishblog! and just like a snow day with afternoon nookie, you all kicked some very serious ass. Page views were double what iVillage had said they’d been before I left. Double. One day, when that kick-assness translates into zillions of dollars of ad revenue, I’m going to buy you all a car and even pay all the taxes on it, because that’s how much I like you.

Totally Off Topic Tangent in the Second
Quick survey: how many blog posts do you prefer to see on the first page of a blog? I’ve currently got five up there – but I’m starting to think that’s an awful lot of scrolling.  Maybe that’s okay?

Alright, stay warm, friends. Enjoy your snow days, if you’ve got ‘em. And if not, remember, turn in the direction of the skid.

On Friday afternoon, when I got the email from a local community center looking for volunteer math tutors, I thought, “What kismet! The Dork Lord and I are perfect for this gig!”

The Boy is well suited because over the last year and a half, he’s been back in school doing math. And I’m qualified because I’ve been right there helping him. You know, by standing over his shoulder going, “Uh, yeah, I think it’s SOH CAH TOA.”

Those kids are so lucky, they don’t even know. Experts. We even have a graphing calculator! Nice, right?

Actually, for all my tongue-in-cheek and despite my 16 year absence from the math classroom, I’m pretty good at the basics. I figure, they’re 7th and 8th graders so at most, we’ll have to tackle some proofs (long and windy, but logical) or some algebra (I confess, I love algebra in a sick, sick way). Totally doable. Pythagoras is my boo.

The year before I started this blog, I volunteered for a similar project in Boston. It wasn’t math specific, but once a week I’d carpool out to some town that started with an N and help two 8th grade girls with their homework. My goodness, they were precious. And frightening. The things they knew! And we’re not talking curriculum here. At 22, fresh out of BYU, I was considerably more naive about the big bad world.

Angela was tall, brash, holy-cow-smart, Puerto Rican and anything but naive. Every night for months after our second or third week of tutoring, Angie would call me to talk about anything but homework.  “Mami,” she’d say, “you will not belieeeeeve what happened.” She was usually right. It was all pretty unbelievable to a recovering Mormon kid who had done precisely nothing  that was not strictly prescribed by The Rules.

If I was good at the school stuff, though, I excelled at the extra-curriculars. My whole life I’ve been a sister. It’s not something that requires a refresher course. So many times, my end of the phone would be one long sigh of relief – and pride, I’ll admit – when Angie would relent, “Well, fiiiine, mami, I won’t do it.” Smoking, boys, whatever. I hoped I was doing something good and lasting.

And then she was gone. Just like that. It was weeks before word got back to me that her father, out of prison and angry, had murdered her mother on their doorstep in plain view of her children and the next day, Angie was sent to live with her grandmother in Puerto Rico. Another thing I could never quite believe.

I had essentially forgotten about Angie until Friday – about what happened to her -  even though I keep her school photo (signed with hearts) in a box somewhere in my closet. I run across it every few years when I move. I’m harboring these hopes of tracking her down on Facebook one day, but regrettably, of all the things I knew about Angie, her last name was not one of them.

Thanks to Craig, who I don’t know but know feel very compelled to buy lots and lots of beer for, and with the assist by Brooke*, the Herculean task is achieved. The comments from the last 8 years are restored! Some of them – the, “I hate you and now I’m never reading your blog again!” kind, – I could do without, but hey, you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you  have…

How’s that for an earworm? Eighties theme songs for the win!

Thanks again, fellas. You’re my heroes.

* If you are looking for part-time work and you haven’t been to Hour.ly, please hop on over. This thing is brilliant. Hooking my little sister up with a writing gig in Austin as we speak.

After my coworker Jimmy intimated that our friendship was on the line (though, I guess it’s not exactly intimating if the words, “you’ll be dead to me” are used), I went home last night and after pacing in and out of the bathroom six or seven times, finally bit the bullet and yanked that fan cover right off.

I know. What was I thinking? I don’t even own any Kevlar body armor.

Thankfully, the Thing was nowhere to be found. Which is not only disappointing – because how am I to document for posterity just what trying to scritch, scratch its way into my domicile -  but also terrifying. Now I know with a certainty that it is not dead (just firmly coiffed) and living in my walls. Deep, deep in the walls where the exterminator currently paying a visit to chez moi will not find it. Further disappointment: Jimmy wasn’t at work today and therefore, I receive zero bravery points. I see how this works.

This is, as the kids say, no bueno. This is also, as anyone reasonable would say, the perfect time to go away for the weekend.

If only.

First, the good stuff – your favorites, thus far. For the most part, I really liked going back and reading these. Girl, You’ll be a Woman is a warm night in New York, walking up Second Avenue again, holding my skirt tight to my knees against the wind gusts. Some of them, though, are still painful. Gritty. Neverland, for instance, because of how uncomfortably close I stuck to the truth and how after reading it, I can’t stop hearing the sound of someone’s laugh or get the smell of that house out of my nostrils.

If you have any favorites from 2007 or 2008, this list doesn’t have anything from that time period. Which, on actually, now that I think about it, may mean I didn’t write anything during those years that’s worth re-reading.  I moved to Dallas, drank martinis and worked jobs I didn’t care for, so the likelihood is high. We’ll just call those The Years of Boring.

• getting over, under, around & through
• azure & coincidence
• neverland
• girl, you’ll be a woman
• early mourning
• mightily
• a fistful of worms
• he said things

Ok. Now for the gross. Remember this? I don’t do bugs in my house, so after that discovery, the Dork Lord immediately called the apartment management company and an exterminator came to visit. A few days later, all was right with the world again. No more bugs. That was a number of weeks ago. This morning, I was taking a sleepy pee in the downstairs bathroom and this odd scratching sound caught my ear. Scritch, scratch. Scritch, scritch, scratch. Wasn’t the cat – he was drinking water out of the sink.

“Aw, man,” I thought. “Please don’t let us have mice in the damn walls!”  I mean, there’s only so much I can take.

And then I looked up.

That is the cover to the uh, courtesy fan. It measures something like eight inches across. And that thing try to get out? It has a body length greater than a third of those eight inches. He was too. big. to get out of those slats. I have goosebumps all over just thinking about it. Watching him methodically trying to escape, I did everything I could not to throw a massive fit (I think you can hear me appealing to some deity or other) and  immediately start packing up our belongings because that right there is just too much for me to handle.  Instead, I nuked that mother effer with some hairspray and sent an email to my beloved, who was sleeping soundly in our upstairs bedroom.

You know how you know I love you? I didn’t wake you up while this was happening.

I feel like I need another shower. At someone else’s house.

The archives are back! Thanks to my friend Brooke, the nearly two thousand  archived entries have been uploaded and are ready to rock and roll.

We did not import the comments. I know. I went back and forth on this, but the file that iVillage sent over was unformed – meaning, it sure was all my posts and comments, but only very literally (I’ve been told it’s kinda like gettin’ the middle finger, only XML style). Importing the comments – because of sheer number and amount of data (there were thirty seven thousand, four hundred and something comments) – would have proven to be a Herculean task and I wasn’t about to put a friend through that frustration. I can’t afford to keep him on payroll, you see.  Anyway, let’s look at is as a clean slate. A fresh start! You know, that silver lining stuff.

I have lots of formatting to fix. I should be done in roughly a year. Yeah, no, I’m not kidding. Should be fun!

I need to recreate the “Favorites.” Did you have a favorite post? Tell me what it was and I’ll try to get that list up in the sidebar again. If you can’t find what you’re looking for (I’ll try to add the search box tonight I added a search box which should be pretty useful), give me a few key words and I’ll track it down!

Ready? Break!

Who’s got two thumbs and is actually getting a tax refund this year? THIS GIRL RIGHT HERE.

What a relief! I mean, okay, it’s a very tiny tax return, but I’m still going to run around in circles in my apartment indulging in a little excessive celebration. Remember that year I (whoops!) owed more than three thousand dollars? Yeah. Note to self: when the unemployment folks ask if you want federal withholding YOU SAY YES. Even last year, I did an extra freelance gig or two and had to pay Uncle Sam a few hundred bucks penance – you know, for all that swimming I do with Scrooge McDuck in my silo of gold coins.

Making work pay, my tushie.

One thing that could make me nervous, but won’t (because I followed all the directions, dammit!), is that it’s also the first year in many that I’ve prepared my own taxes. But one, shit was simple this year (no unemployment or part-year residence hooey) and two, I couldn’t really justify the expense of having my nice Tax Man do it for me just because it saves me some brain pain. Some of the home office deductions were a little confusing, but you know, I figure, people stupider than me do this all the time and if the IRS screams, Audit! I’ll hand them my very official tax spreadsheet, the even more official manila envelope of receipts, a Coca Cola and we’ll hug it out.

But for right now, I’m gonna stick with the fist pumps and awkward strutting.

I figured now that the blog’s all independent again, a rousing Q&A session – one where I don’t have to mind my swears -  might be right up the collective fun alley.

A quick reminder of The Official Guidelines:

• be polite – ask unto others as you’d have asked unto you
• don’t ask about that one guy in that one city
• be patient – some of the questions take more thought than others

That’s it! Ready? Go!

This weekend, my mother bribed me to go shopping with her.

Because we’re in the squirreling-things-away-for-winter phase of our lives (ahem, the uncomfortable grown up phase) I purposefully avoid the mall, even for window shopping; I don’t want to want anything. Wanting will lead to justifying, justifying to buying and buying to serious bouts of remorse when it’s wedding time and oh, ha ha, we don’t have enough in savings to cover food. Or flowers. Or the wedding license. Because when the wanting/justifying/buying process starts, I have real problems controlling its momentum.

See also: why I have credit card debt.*

Even when it comes to needing things, I tow the “make do or do without” line.  Mom knows this – maybe not how frail my resolve actually is, but that I’m making a very sincere attempt at denying my inner consumer. And so when she needed some help picking out new clothes, she offered to buy me a little something, too.  Sweet, right?  Yeah, except that my mother bribed me to go shopping and I STILL had a really difficult time wanting something. Mom kept prodding, “Do you want this? How about that?” and I kept dodging. “Eh, that’s okay. I don’t really need it.”

God, I’m such a good little pioneer.  If it doesn’t fit in my hand cart, it gets left behind.

It wasn’t until the end of our spree, when Mom was getting outfitted with some shiny metallic ballet flats, that her “Would you like some, too?” finally sparked something in my cold, dead shopping heart. “Yes. Yes I would.”  Bright silver ballet flats! Guilt free! With no purpose other than to be pretty and make me happy! And boy, do they. Neither the weather nor my outfit really make them appropriate  footwear for today, but has that stopped me from wearing them? No, siree.

Have I even noticed that they rub just the tiniest bit on the backs of my heels? Well, maybe. But I’m getting to be a real pro at suppressing. Just like the pioneers!

* By the way, with regard to credit card debt: If all goes according to my spreadsheet, I should pretty much be done with all that this time next year.  Done! Eee! I can hardly imagine what that will feel like. I’m having a party. You’re all invited.

I’d hoped to have even more fresh content up at This Fish Features today, but I’m still not quite feeling like myself. But still, new article! New category! So, hop on over to get the first taste of Fancy Pants – beauty tips from real women with real budgets, and quick fixes to dry, itchy winter skin.

P.S. Thank you all for being so incredibly kind. Your own stories of losing your furry friends have helped more than you know.

One of the things I’m digging about being out on my own again is access to web nerdery like site statistics. Mostly, it’s the map that gets me all wiggly. Like this morning I got up, looked at my traffic report and oooh, hello Norway! And Singapore! And Australia! I mean, there are countries highlighted on my map o’ visitors that I’m likely never to actually see, but I’m there! Albeit, in a way less well-traveled out-of-body kind of way, but there! See also: easily amused.

About those archives: a couple of you have inquired as to why the drop-down box on the right (see? over there by the ads? hee!) only has the last two months of entries in it. Like I said yesterday, we’re not quite there. This  is probably way more of an explanation than you want/need, but here goes:  iVillage exported my posts and comments from Drupal to a very large XML file  – which, to my total frustration, WordPress does not seem to have a plug-in to import. My friend, Brooke (boy genius behind hour.ly), is going to try to write me a script to do it.  I type that with crossed fingers.

Speaking of – if you live in New York anywhere in the US, it turns out, and need part time work – Hour.ly is a nifty, newfangled site that acts as a matchmaker for employers with part-time gigs and folks who need ‘em.  There’s your public service announcement for the day!

Oh, bummer, you guys. I think I’ve given myself a migraine.  Yeah, yeah,I know that my triggers are stress and alcohol (the combination of the two, while not a given, is often the culprit) but I guess what I need to work on is figuring out when I’m under actual, for really real stress.  The  relaunching the blog has been a lot of fun, but I guess I didn’t realize how much stress it came with because I had a glass of celebratory blog launch wine and lo, the unmistakable pain behind my left eye is telling me that I’ve pushed it too far. I’m typing this with my left eye closed now and it’s surprisingly difficult. Unsettling. On the plus side, it gives me new appreciation for Rooster Cogburn (if you don’t know who he is, that’s your homework assignment), were he, you know, to ever have to type anything.

Okay, I go. To medicate and  sleep it off. And not puke.  Hopefully not puke. In the meantime, please help yourself to the Features. And thank you all again for such a wonderfully successful launch! You’re the bees knees.

Are you clapping? I’m clapping! And not just because now I get to take a very long nap.

What’s New
Before we get into how and why all this happened, let’s talk about what’s new. This Fish Features is new!  More service-y topics from friends and friendly strangers, from book reports (and a new book club! We’re reading Pretty Little Liars next month. Get some!) to financial junk to recipes and more.  The Ad Policy and Doing Good Policy are also new. In summary, I promise not to compromise the blog’s design or content for ads and I promise to contribute a portion of the profits from ads and donations to charity.  The design is new, too. Duh, right? And that’s where we get into The People I Need to Thank.

The People I need to Thank
Maura from The Paper Guppy, who so generously donated her services to design and print custom wedding invitations, is also the woman behind the new banner up there. I absolutely adore it. I said something about as specific as, “I wanna keep the fish on the bike, but, you know, more grown-up. Ish.”  Et, voila.  She got it exactly. Did I mention I adore it? Because I do. I also want to thank my awesome friends who’ve contributed to This Fish Features. You’re the best.

How and Why All This Happened
Okay, it goes a little something like this: after almost six years of working with iVillage, the blog was put through yet another redesign I had no say in, adding yet more aggressive advertising that made it hard, if not impossible, for you to read and comment. You shouldn’t have to close an ad just to read the site. You deserve better than that.  I mean, what’s the point if not conversation? The new “design” also completely stripped the blog of the brand I’d been building for years.  I deserve better than that.  This isn’t a news source. It’s a personal blog. And when you remove the person… Well, I suppose it could have worked out differently, but it because pretty apparent that after all this time, anyone who understood who I was and what I was doing for iVillage was long, long gone.  That was most obvious when the email came asking me to properly capitalize my headlines (and could they please be punchier?) and to conform with iVillage style.  I wasn’t supposed to conform with iVillage. I thought that was the point. It shouldn’t have surprised me that no one actually cared when I quit. In fact, my resignation went largely ignored; when I called to confirm receipt of my email, I got “kaythanksbye” and the line went silent. If I had any doubts about my decision, they quickly dissipated.

I want to say it was a difficult decision – knowing how desperately we needed the income to pay for the upcoming Fish & Dork Lord Nuptials – but it was easy. Yeah, I called my mom for some practical advice – hoping she’d talk me out of it – but she reminded me of the time I quit a job on principle, without another one to fall back on.  I remember being the girl who did what felt right, and who trusted in the Universe to take care of her.  I liked her. And I don’t want to be the kind of person who does things out of desperation – someone who doesn’t have choices.  So, I chose. I quit 24 hours later.

You deserve better. I deserve better.

A Few Important Items

• Comments are moderated. They don’t get published ’til I publish ‘em. Comments from nasty trolls probably won’t get published at all. Because I don’t have to!
• The site’s not perfect. We’ll be working on it a little at a time. Including uploading and formatting the old entries.
• Once there are ads on the site, I’m not allowed to encourage you to click on them. So, you know.
• Thank you, as always, for sticking with me. I appreciate that more than you know. And I look forward to the conversation.

This will be my last entry until January 4th.  I accidentally went for the decaf this morning, though, so there’s no promises on it being a coherent entry. You have been warned.

Last night I came home from work and in an unusual burst of post-work enthusiasm, decided to unload the dishwasher. And…there were cockroaches in the dishwasher, okay? I mean, that’s how the story goes. I unlocked and opened it, there were cockroaches inside – multiple cockroaches -  and then I totally fuh-reaked out. When the Boy came in from walking the dog and I was still fuh-reaking out, he very calmly relocked the den of disgusting and muttered something about bugs getting in through the plumbing.

Is that true? Bugs get in through plumbing?

I’m perfectly happy to blame our neighbor across the hall – the one who leaves boxes of used baby diapers in front of her door, the one who, when asked pleasantly to please not leave boxes of used baby diapers in front of her door, went on a very crazy rant about how she went to TWO FUNERALS THAT MONTH and therefore could not be expected to not leave garbage on the doormat – but the Dork Lord is blaming plumbing and unseasonably warm weather. I think he’s just trying to avoid any confrontations with the Dirty Lady’s imposing looking male visitor. But c’mon. He’s not that big.

This morning when I went out to my car, I made a quick stop by the dumpster where I happened upon a nest of kittens. First, I died from cute. Then, I thought, No! It’s cold out! Where is your mother? They’d all scattered by then, scrambling up and over the wooden fence – all but one fuzzy little bugger, with whom I had a rather lengthy conversation about whether or not he/she was warm enough and well fed. I did most of the talking. Anyway, now it’s well past noon and I have spent the entire time in between worrying about them. The current temperature outside is… seventy-two degrees, but still, if the Dork Lord comes home today and surprise! Five new babies! it will not be my fault. I am powerless against fuzzy things.

Except one fuzzy thing. The Boy has grown a beard. For the record, I LIKE BEARDS. My dad has always been a bearded dude, and I happen to think they can be quite manly and attractive. I think the Dork Lord’s beard is nice looking. But is it soft? HELLS NO. It’s long enough now that it should be soft, but the underside of my nose is Rudolph red – even a kiss hello is a test of my love and devotion because that facial hair is seriously rough stuff.

“You have to get rid of the beard.”

“Okay. How about in a couple weeks?” he says, starting the bargaining process. “Like, I can keep it until the New Year.”

“How’s a dry spell until 2011 sound?”

“Oh, come on!”

“No, you come on. Look at my nose,” I say, rubbing at the flaky skin. “LOOK AT IT!”

This is where I point out that my nose is my one true beauty and that if he ruins it, I’ll never be able to score a second husband when I’m ready to replace him. This gets me nowhere. I’d threaten to stop shaving my legs, but I do that periodically anyway and it in no way deters him from sexy time.

Okay, maybe I am powerless again all fuzzy things. Because clearly, I’m losing the Battle of the Beard. Though… if furry legs won’t stop him, perhaps a basket of furry feral kittens will.