Ok. I get it. I'm falling apart.

I turned 40 last month to a bare minimum of fuss, other than squabbles with my teenaged son. No one was cruel (or stupid) enough to dare any "over the hell" crap, but the message has been conveyed nonetheless. Clearly, my frickin' warranty expired. Since my birthday it has been determined that 85% of my dental work must be COMPLETELY REDONE. Holy cash outlay, Batman. Up to and including an implant with attending bone graft.

(see, once upon a time, an obnoxious little permanent tooth decided to come in... in the roof of my mouth. The clever orthodontist decided to have three teeth pulled to make room to try and move said rebellious chomper forward. Er... it didn't work. To sum up, for years that "set back 1/4 inch from the rest" tooth made it look like I was missing a tooth right next to the front one unless you were close enough to see it. My FIL made a bridge for me before we got married so I wouldn't look like a toothless crack whore for my wedding. It was a WONDERFUL thing. I could really smile for the first time in years without keeping my mouth clamped tight. )

Anyway. The bridge has decided to be as obnoxious as the original tooth and its got to go. Plus, all my fillings on the left side need to be replaced. Plus, a past root canal was screwed up (note: none of the problems were FIL's work. Let me just spell that out.) and they never crowned it.

Ka-ching ka-ching. For example, I get to hand over $3,000 on Valentines Day for the sheer joy of having a hole drilled into my jawbone and having a titanium screw stuck in there.

Next on my list... there's a danged good chance I have gallstones and will need surgery to remove the offending organ. We won't go into detail on that one, but the word of the day is definitely "OW!!!!" Even better, there's a possibility that my body is now not absorbing nutrients properly from my food. Great. Guess that might explain the leg cramps that started two days after the possible gallstone attack.

NEXT, I found a SUMMONS taped to the door yesterday, wherein my son has supposedly been accused of throwing rocks at moving cars (wtf???). I am trying to get a copy of the citation... first, my son's name and address on this thing are wrong... second, another kid allegedly gave the cop my SON'S name when they were cited for all this. I do not know what happened yet, but any way you look at it, its going to cost me.

My son has been acting like an idiot since school started and palling around with kids who skip school and get into stupid shit. And there's my son, acting stupid right along with them. He says he's trying to stop acting stupid, and that's great but I can't seem to get it through his head that if you keep associating with kids that do this shit, everyone will assume for right or wrong that you're doing everything right along with them.

Oh, and my clever doctor says "you really need to stop being stressed, its making all this worse." Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Gotcha. Let me make a note of THAT.

Ok, I get it. I'm not a cute young hottie anymore. Cute young hotties don't deal with this shit.