Fun at the Dentist? Yes.

I'm not saying it was a trip to Disneyland or anything, but my hygienist is seriously awesome and has a great sense of humor. So even though she's torturing me, she's kind of cool to hang out with, and I told her so today.

When she came out to get me, she said, "Oh good, you came back." This is because she spent two hours torturing my gums on the right side yesterday and I was plenty sore after the novocaine wore off, but I woke up this morning feeling pretty good.

"I didn't even make a voodoo doll of you," I told her, by way of assurance. She was relieved.

For round two, it was more of the same, this time in the lower left quadrant. Except she 'grazed a nerve' as she called it, when giving me the shot which did not please me. Yesterday I gave her a hard time when she was giving me the prep speech and she said, "And then you'll feel a pinch."

"Huh. Feel a pinch, that's what they always say."

She admitted it was a crock. "Should I just say it's going to hurt like hell?" she asked. I told her that would probably be better. She agreed that she likes to prepare for the worst too.

The big needle in the gums is the worst part and after that it's all about trying to keep my jaw open and not swallow too much of my spit. I keep my Ipod with somewhat noise-canceling headphones turned up way loud and then the scraping noise becomes more like part of the music. A few times she was even on-beat. She got a little jealous yesterday when I started laughing.

"What's funny?" she asked.

"I have a lot of 80's music. I'm rockin' the Copacabana right now."

She loved that, and said I should bring speakers next time.

Today I told her that, based on her instructions not to have any crunchy foods for a week or so, I told Jess that meant I should only eat ice cream. And that Jess wasn't buying what I was selling.

"Should I call her?" Shea asked.

"Oh that would be so great!" I said. We started laughing hysterically. I'm pretty sure you don't hear many people laughing in the dental chair. Towards the end of the cleaning, she called over to the dentist, who was just hanging out at the front counter.

"Hey Aaron, can you do us a favor?"

She told him to call our land line and leave a very straight-laced message with instructions to eat ice cream specifically. We couldn't hear the whole thing, but it sounded like he played it completely dead pan.

At home later, Jess came downstairs and said, "Is your little mouth doing OK? We need to get you some ice cream." Aaron was so convincing apparently that she wasn't *quite* sure it was a joke. But, she said, "No dentist called and tells patients to eat ice cream. It sounded fishy."

Priceless.

It's a good thing I like Shea so much because she didn't have time to do the upper left quadrant and I have to go back on Monday at (OUCH!!!!) 7:00AM.