Project Beautification

I'm not only improving my body by working out.

I went to my dentist today for Invisalign aligners--those invisible plastic trays that are an alternative to braces.  I've got a fairly sizable gap between my two front teeth (see below), but not for long!  Supposedly, 5 months from now said gap will be gone and I'll have movie-star perfect teeth.

BEFORE

They even showed me a 3D rendering of my gap closing:

The pink blobs represent attachments used to hold the trays in place.  In real life they are tooth colored.  And they feel hella weird.  Eating dinner tonight was an undertaking.  I'm sure I'll get used to them eventually, but in the meantime they're quite distracting--like teeth sprouting out of my teeth.  The inside of my lips are chewed up.

Because they scrubbed off some of my tooth enamel to make a textured surface for the attachments to adhere better, they gave me a special fluoride toothpaste to use for a week.  It's made by Oral-B, but apparently this stuff is to be taken seriously.  The directions... excuse me, "usage instructions," read:

After brushing with dentifrice, apply a thin ribbon of the formulation to teeth for at least 1 minute using a toothbrush.  Expectorate and do not eat, drink or rinse for at least 30 minutes.

And, no, I did not dig out my thesaurus.  That's a direct quote.  I don't even know what dentifrice is. I'm guessing from context it's toothpaste.  At first I thought it meant toothbrush, but then toothbrush appears later in the directions so that doesn't make sense.  I could look it up, but... eh.  I'll just use toothpaste and hope for the best.

I also have a cute little lisp.  The brochure assures me this will most likely disappear after a few days.  Of course, tonight my baby asked for The Snow Ball as his bed time story.  It has lines like:

Swooping down a snow slide--go, bears, go! 

                            and

Look out for flying snowballs!  Splat-splat-splat! 

That was a fun read for both of us.

One last perk of Invisalign is, since I can't consume anything other than water while wearing them and taking them in and out is a hassle, I'm venturing I'll eat less.  I certainly won't be doing any mindless grazing.  What perfect timing.  Skinny jeans here I come!

k