TOOTHPICKS BRING ME DOWN

Hi, so I have a short attention span today. So I am starting this blog with a LOLcats-generated picture I did a few weeks ago. That site is too much fun.

I have work I need to be doing, yet I can't stay on a task long enough to get much of anything finished. I haven't even been playing on the internet much, either...which is normally my big distraction. Nope, it's just that today I am flitting about like a chubby hummingbird. Without the humming.

I love eating fresh strawberries, but I hate the seeds. I have this jacked-up molar that has the tooth equivalent of a pock-mark (not a cavity) in its worth-down enamel (from years of teeth-grinding), and 100% of the time when I eat strawberries, a seed will get wedged in that spot. And then I feel it every time I close my mouth and the top teeth hit it. I'll be obsessed with trying to push it out with my tongue, even while people are talking to me. I think I move my mouth around a lot when people are talking to me, which probably looks really strange. I keep my mouth shut, at least. So all they would see would be the muscles working around under my cheeks. When I think no one is looking, I hook a finger in there and try to pop the seed out with my fingernail. Yuck. Then I'm stuck with a spitty finger. And lately, the seed doesn't pop out quickly, like it used to. I guess the spot is getting deeper the longer it's there. It now requires a mirror and usually an implement of some sort-- if I'm home I'll just brush my teeth. In public, I use a toothpick. I've been stashing toothpicks in my desk for a couple of months now, taking them from restaurants on my lunch hour. It's helped a lot, and cut back on "spitty fingers." It occurs to me that maybe I should have been using the toothpicks all along. Well, whatever.

I still feel weird using a toothpick, though. When I stick one in my mouth, I immediately picture how I look and that to everyone else, I look like a simpleton, some kind of country hick with no class. You never see high-class ladies picking their teeth with a toothpick. There's really no delicate way to do it. I've tried to be lady-like in my picking, lightly grasping the end of the toothpick and keeping my wrist up as I discreetly work things around in there. Instead of looking classy, I think I just look even more like a spazz and probably draw more attention to the act of toothpicking than I would have had I just shoved the thing in, picked what needed to be picked, and tossed the pick away, bam bam bam, done.

But I feel like with the toothpick in my mouth, I should be wearing overalls and leaning over the open hood of some old Chevy pickup, a beer in one hand as I squint at the engine. "Yep, looks like the carb-er-rater's shot," I'd say around the toothpick dangling on my lower lip. Then I'd lean back and belch. I'd probably have an old hound dog that would lie on the porch next to the old couch we'd use as a sittin' spot, and upon hearing my unladylike belch, the dog's ears would twitch for a second and then he'd go back to sleep. That lazy ol' hound.

It might seem like I am imagining myself as a gentleman in the above scenario, but I am not. Because I have seen "ladies" like that, plenty of times. Out here in Arizona they're always leathery, too. Dried out and greasy. Way too much time out in the sun, and not enough time spent on hygiene. Sad, really.

Because I don't want to wind up like one of those dried-up broads, I think I need to cut back on my toothpick usage. What if it's just a slippery slope? First it's the toothpick, then it's the crappy old clothes, next I'll forget how to speak properly, and at that point I might as well just give up on life and go with it.

I'm wondering if Dried-Up Toothpick Broad would be a decent Halloween costume idea. A similar idea would be Dried Applehead Witch. Remember those? You take a peeled apple, carve a crude face into it, and let it dry out so you can make a doll out of it? No? Anyone?

We had a kitchen witch when I was little. A good-luck charm, apparently with German roots. She was a little witch on a broom with a shriveled-up face. I can't find a picture of what ours was like, but it was kind of like this:

So maybe this would be a fun costume to try to put together. But where in the world do I get an apple as big as my head? Maybe at one of them fancy bioengineered farms they got now. I seen a watermelon that was as big as a calf. No foolin.

Where's my toothpick? (SPIT)