I thought vacations were supposed to be relaxing, or at the very least, relieve some stress by freeing up time so that we can get stuff done.

I’m on vacation this week and next, and I’d planned to pack it with wedding stuff and house preparation stuff. Yesterday was pretty productive; Mr. W, his son and I went to a tuxedo connection Mr. W had and bought 4 Ralph Lauren tuxes, complete with jacket, shirt, bowtie, vest, pants. Mr. W and his son looked very sharp in their fittings, very 007. The other 2 tuxes are going to Mr. W’s two brothers who will be groomsmen next to Son, who’ll be Best Man. All four are identical classic black tuxes that can be worn again for some formal event in the future. Mr. W and I are visiting his parents for Mother’s Day weekend coming up so we’ll drop off the tuxes to his brothers and double-check the fit, with plenty of time to adjust or tailor if the measurements the brothers sent us weren’t accurate. I remarked how the men are gonna be fancier than the bride with their designer digs. (I’m not a name-brand person at all; I go where the savings are.)

With Monday so productive, I figure I’d throw in a dental visit on my vacation, too. We drove by a dental office recommended by Mr. W’s best bud ex bro-in-law, and the office very efficiently booked me as a new patient for an appointment the next morning at 8a, telling me I can fill out new patient forms online, which I did last nite. This morning, I went in for my visit. Right after the office finished impressing me with their technology (digital full-mouth x-rays!), it all went downhill. The female Vietnamese doctor right away started upselling me on the services, telling me my insurance covers X, but X is horrible and Y is better, nevermind that it costs $735 out-of-pocket more PER TOOTH, times 3. Insurance covers standard teeth cleaning, but THIS deep cleaning is better and necessary, nevermind that it costs $60 out-of-pocket PER QUADRANT, times 4. And my teeth need MAJOR WORK, and in fact, I need SURGERY pronto to remove all 4 of my wisdom teeth, nevermind that I don’t have problems with them and have had them in since I was a teenager. She paused at one point and I don’t know what my face looked like, but she said, “It doesn’t look like you want to get your wisdom teeth removed.”
I said, “I really, really don’t. I’m not a fan of unnecessary surgery and if they’re not giving me problems and my right upper wisdom tooth will never descend, then I don’t see why I should get them removed.”
She backed off quickly and said, “Okay, okay, it’s up to you!” And then she added, “You can think about it and come back when they REALLY start hurting.” WTF?! Why would they start hurting?! They’ve been there for half of my life. My dad went to a bad dentist who insisted his wisdom teeth had to be pulled in his late 40s, so my dad trusted him and had it done. Not only was it painful, torturous, inconvenient and expensive, but the extraction left holes in my dad’s jaws that filled with fluid and gave him a major infection. Mr. W’s dad is having a similar problem with a newly pulled wisdom tooth.
So the cost of this dentist’s services, not including wisdom teeth extraction and all THOSE related costs, is over $3000 out-of-pocket, over and beyond my insurance. I told them a bunch of excuses about how I can’t afford that right now because of the upcoming wedding expenses and turned down their financing options saying I can’t afford for my credit score to drop with the acquisition of new credit because the banks are being so tight with their mortgage lending practices, and walked out of there with nothing but x-rays done.
Then I called an old childhood friend, bridesmaid Sandy’s older brother Andy, who’s now a dentist in Pasadena. (We’re actually attending his wedding in Corona Del Mar at the end of the month.) He told me to book an appointment with his receptionist so he can take a look for a second opinion, and his receptionist suggested I pick up copies of the x-rays I’d just taken with the first dental office. I was uncomfortable doing that, but she assured me dental offices do that all the time and to explain to them I want a second opinion for such expensive services. Apparently it’s not good for the patient to take a lot of x-rays in close succession so they’re reluctant to do it if there are perfectly good current ones in another office. And then talking to the receptionist more, turns out Andy’s practice doesn’t take my insurance. GREAT.

I then called my catering director to make an appointment to discuss and finalize our food and beverage for the wedding, but she was at a meeting and wasn’t available. And then I called my cousin Oliver, who’s a mechanic specializing in Hondas, to ask about ordering a replacement right mirror for Mr. W’s son’s Accord (my old car), since he backed into some trash cans with his mirror and cracked the mirror. Turned out that was $175 because the entire casing had to be replaced, and the thought of MORE money going out just made me exceedingly tired. It didn’t help that I took the time waiting for return calls from Andy to reconcile my checkbook against my bank statement and organized my receipts for my credit card, so now I feel REALLY poor.

My horoscope for today, which I saw right before I started blogging today:
You may feel as if you are running out of steam, whether or not you have reached your goal. Something important is about to shift, but this doesn’t mean you can’t finish your work. Trying to speed up your productivity won’t be effective because sloppiness won’t be rewarded. The truth is that you have more time than you realize. May 6, 2008
My daily horoscope shows up on my internet start page, along with a Word of the Day, which today is:
amalgam: an alloy of mercury with other metals; also, a mixture.
Amalgam is what started all the expenses at the dentist this morning. The silver fillings that apparently cause more problems over time, that you have to drill more aggressively to apply, that fell out of one of my teeth creating a hole in the middle of a molar, that the insurance covers but is not what’s recommended by this dentist for long-term teeth health.

My bartending instructor sent me an email yesterday explaining that he wasn’t at the bartending competition this weekend because his son-in-law had passed away on Friday. He invited me to the first day of his new class today, so I can pick up some margarita salt/sugar rimmers he wants to add to my collection as a thank-you for the editing work I’d done for him. I think I’ll go and stay for a little bit because being at a fake bar is somehow stress-relief for me, too. Playing with colored water. Fun stuff.