I hate my teeth. I love my parents and my health insurance. FML

I had an orthodontic appointment today. It was my first ever orthodontic appointment. Thus far, I don't like them. 

About a year ago I started having some pain under in my mouth about a year ago I think. Before long I had sprung a random tooth just on the inside my bottom teeth on the left side. It was as if I was growing a second row of bottom teeth, shark style. 

I got an x-ray at the dentist, who pulled a somewhat discouraging face upon seeing them. He showed the x-rays to a couple of oral surgeons who said it didn't need to be attended to straight away. 

Over the last few months I've started to notice my teeth moving around quite a bit. It has been a painful but I thought the best case scenario would be the surgical removal of the shark tooth and perhaps a plate for the moving teeth.

How wrong I was.

The random tooth came through all shark-like in my mouth because I never lost a couple of my baby tooth. Shark tooth is the adult tooth that has never had space to come through. Turns out the same thing has happened on the other side of my mouth, only it is stuck in an even weird spot in the gums underneath the baby tooth and my mother normal teeth.

My mouth
http://www.scaryforkids.com/shark-teeth/

So the long and the short of it is that I have to have six teeth removed; my top two wisdom teeth, the bottom baby teeth that never came out on their own AND the corresponding adult shark teeth. Yay. My bottom wisdom teeth will be left in and then they and my other teeth will be pulled across into the gap by braces. I will also be getting braces on my top teeth to correct the overcrowding creating by my wisdom teeth coming through.

I am 21 years old and I am about to get braces. 

This is what I will look like
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Braces-Nerd-GEEK-Dork-False-Teeth-/230818780046#ht_2382wt_906

I'm trying to focus on how lucky I am to have parents who love me, who provide me with exemplary health insurance and will take the financial hit to fix my rogue teeth.

That being said, I still want to cry a little bit.

Oh and I still don't know what I'm going to do next year, tertiary education wise, and I have to decide soon. This is making me panic. 

#firstworldproblems

Parasoc ball, not getting drugged & other stuff

Last weekend one someone I love very much had their drink tampered with when they were out at a nightclub. No one knows for sure whether drugs were added to the drink or whether the drink contained a triple or quadruple shot. Whatever it had in it left my loved one extremely unwell and somewhat traumatised. Whilst my loved one was well and truly a victim of a horrible act, was very lucky that the worst that came from the incident was a trip to an emergency department and few days of feeling very sick and paranoid. This person was lucky to be surrounded by friends who came to their aid and probably saved them from a far more damaging experience. 

The incident was a pertinent reminder of how careful everyone should be with their drinks. 

If you can't trace every second of a drink's life from the barman's hand to yours, don't drink it. You have to keep at least as good a track of your drink as the prosecution do of a piece of evidence for a criminal case. If your drink wouldn't be admissible in a criminal court, don't drink it. If an aesthetically pleasing boy or girl offers to buy you a drink either say or no or go with them to the bar, watch the drink as it is made and take it straight from the barman. 

Sadly, there are some very nasty people in the world. I don't think we should live out lives paranoid, but there are some instances where it pays to take precautions. Look out for your friends, keep track of your drinks and don't make yourself vulnerable to something really horrible happening by choosing to get yourself too intoxicated that you can't keep yourself safe or be of assistance to a friend in trouble. 

Consider my public service announcement over. 

In other news, I went to the Parasoc Ball on Thursday night. I really didn't want to go but my friends bullied me into buying a ticket and then my mum and my sister ensured that I did end up out the door on the night. I had a fantastic night with the good people of table 15. 

This was my first uni ball. I didn't bother with the Arts faculty ones because they are such huge events and barely anyone knows each other from uni anyway. The paramedic student ball was different because it was a much smaller event and I was on a table with friends I see  at least 3 days a week. 

We drank plenty (drinks and a 3 course meal were included in the $75 ticket) and danced like no one was watching and generally had a very good time. This was all the fun of a school formal, without the drama of having to take a date and the added fun of being of legal drinking age. There is also a bonus with a course like paramedics that you do get to know basically everyone in your year and there are barely any princessy, cliquey, drama queen types ruining the night by being bitchy. 

I already knew my uni friends were great, but they all looked so fantastic all dressed up and  were so much fun to dance and drink with. There were many terrible paramedic student jokes told and I don't think our poor (very cute) waiter will be forgetting us in a hurry... 

For reasons I'm not quite ready to go into here, getting myself to go to the Ball was a big deal. It was tough to get myself to go, but I'm so glad I did.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m5xob51Av41r3gb3zo1_250.gif
This much fun was had

I was hit and miss with my efforts to be on time this week. My overall attendance, whilst not perfect, was much improved. This week I am aiming for perfect attendance and punctuality. My eating habits were better, but again, not what they could have been and the same can be said for exercise.

It was one of the better weeks I've had in a while. The Ball was a highlight, but it was little things like my favourite group fitness instructor very apprehensively illegally using an original song rather than the stupid cover, that made it good. He did this because the cover version of the song provided to the instructors was so bad he couldn't hear the beat. He made us swear that we wouldn't tell.

I also managed to fall asleep on the train and miss my station after having a lovely lunch in the city with some friends I used to work with. Thankfully, I woke up only one station passed mine and the weather was nice enough for the walk to be enjoyable. 

I really love coaching gymnastics and I'm thinking about starting a separate blog about it.

I am starting to feel like my luck is starting to change, so I'm hopeful that this week will be another good one. I don't really believe in luck, I'm more of a "fortune favours the brave"  (and those who work hard) type, but I figure the positivity can't hurt. 

Facing another week

I have been committing some serious blog negligence over the past little while. 

The Olympics just about took over my life for the past few weeks and I think I slumped into some kind of post Olympics blues this week just past. 

I was late to just about everything I had to go to, I struggled badly to engage at uni and I skipped a lecture or two because I was either too lazy to get out of bed in time or too bored to stay. I think I exercised twice in the whole week and whilst I did not commit any serious crimes against nutrition, there is certainly room for improvement in that department too.

This week I will get back on track. My goals for this week are simple; go to all classes, be on time, get enough sleep, eat healthily and do my usual amount of exercise. 

This week I will find the time to write about the gymnastics at the Olympics, how returning to coaching has been the best thing that I've done in a long time and how to work out when a friendship is no longer worth the effort. 

Can't find the original source of this picture, if it is you please let me know and I will credit you!
Aliya Mustafina competing in London. She is one of my favourite gymnasts of the modern era, everything about her is magnificent except  for her form on her triple full.

I will also write a public service announcement encouraging young persons to keep themselves safe when they are out and about, as there was a nasty "close shave" incident in the household this weekend. 

I hope you are happy and well. If you, like me, are feeling a little bit off track at the moment don't make a grand promise that you'll behave like a new person come Monday morning. Set yourself a little goal, something so easy you think you could do it everyday for the rest of your life. If you start that small and stick with it, you'll actually set yourself up for long-term success. Then, once the first goal is as an ordinary a part of your daily life as brushing your teeth in the morning, add something new.

All I Want is Everything.

Today, I'm thinking about THIS  BLOG.

 Mainly because I've been sitting here trying to write a coherent piece of text for about an hour. I need a bit of a kick and someone to yell 'stop thinking too much!'. I feel like this guy.

 I haven't been here for what feels like a long time.
It feels like I've had absolutely nothing worth saying til now. I didn't think I'd have anything to write ever again. 

A few things changed this.

• A shopping trip with my father  
• A song 
• A friend 
• A sunny day and
• Another thing    

 The pants were the first thing. I went on a shopping trip with my wonderful father, time spent with just the two of us is rare and precious. We ended up looking for a pair of pants for me. He was rummaging through masses of pants with more enthusiasm than me, pulling out the last pair left in my size, in magenta. He held them up in victory. It was the first smile that came easily.

 Then came the song. I was working on an assignment for uni, I remembered my brother had bought some new music. I wanted to listen, not distract myself. I could stand to play it and really listen  to it. (Finally Begin - Cold War Kids if you're curious).

 Next came a friend. A casual dinner with three intriguingly attractive and witty girls who I hadn't seen in far too long, put me opposite one of my favourite people. It wasn't the exchange of news and current affairs or her snapping of photos for her project (http://ellamumby.tumblr.com/). It was her grinning at me in between snippets of conversation, and her pretty pictures on her tumblr page. I appreciated beautiful things again. 

                            Me + Steph W

 This day with blue sky and a visible sun helped. I realised that my favourite time of year is nearly here, when the magnolia tree outside flowers. I haven't really noticed that until today. The sun has some warmth today that hasn't been completely obliterated by wind from Antarctica.

  Another thing happened. Something I didn't think would ever happen to somebody like me. I'm not the type to publicly disclose (ha ha). But I will say one thing.
Love is a contradiction. 
It's true. Sometimes it hurts a lot. But it's the best pain I've ever had. 
I don't know why he puts up with my antics. I'm very happy that he does though. It's not what I thought it would be. Scary, strange and wonderful.

 If I'm honest, all I want is everything. I want my life to look and be beautiful. I've wanted my struggles to be justified, amount to some kind of creative brilliance. I want to help, not be helped. Be strong. Thank those who help me through. I want my happiness to be spectacular.  After being stuck in a medically induced darkness, and finally starting to find my way out, I know enough. I will be better. I will find myself again. I will love my life again. I will be everything.

KBG x

Many pictures lovingly stolen from http://snackenigma.tumblr.com/ and http://ellamumby.tumblr.com/

Some are mine.