Can you believe that we are 3 days from JULY?!

Where has the year gone?  I don't feel like I have gotten even CLOSE to what all needs doing done.

Yet here we are, last Friday in June. 

It's been a very stressful couple of weeks for me.  I finally crept into a dentist office.  It's been over 20 years since I last saw a dentist.  My teeth are not hurting, I haven't broken any, however, I do have a cavity or two (or 4) and I decided that I wanted to get them dealt with BEFORE they became the kind of cavities that need crowns or root canals or a shotgun.  (Oh my goodness people, there is an ad on my local craigslist that literally says "I want to trade my ipad mini for a shotgun."  !!  NO!  NO!)

I know that dentists are not most people's favorite thing in the world, and I'm definitely no exception.  That generic dislike of dentists is not why I haven't gone in so long.

It would pain my mother to hear this, because my former dentist was someone at her church.  But he was a right royal bastard.  I had no actual choice in going to him, I was a minor on my mother's insurance.  I had no car or license, so I had to go where she said. 

And I don't actually think this guy truly meant to be a bastard.  I think he may have thought that he was being funny.  But he would block me into the chair, to the point where I (not a claustrophobic person) felt absolutely trapped.  The only thing worse would have been actual, physical restraints, and that wouldn't have been nearly as much worse as it should have been.  He would point the lights right at my eyes so that I could not see, and then wave them back and forth.  He would pull out huge needles and wave them at me sing-songing "Look what I have got for YOOOOUUUUU."  I'm less needle-phobic than I used to be, but I don't like them now, and I hated them then.  He ignored me when I told him that I wasn't numb yet before jabbing me with said needle 8 times.  Then he ignored me when (because of stress) I ran through the Novacaine in half the expected time.  It wasn't until I was screaming and trying to climb out of the chair backwards before he went "Oh, can you feel that?"

So needless to say, I'm not just a "dislike of dentists" person, I'm absolutely terrified of them.  To the point where just EMAILING the dentist office made me cry from stress and fear, and just writing the above paragraph has me biting my lips to try not to cry from remembered fear and pain.  And failing, by the way.

So I got suggestions for a dentist from a friend.  It ended up being a recommendation from a friend of a friend, but it was still a personal recommendation.  I emailed and made an appointment to go meet the dentist and the staff.

I didn't go into details, but I did tell them that a former dentist had NOT made my life easy and dentists scare me to nearly to death.  (Heck, I preferred being a body guard where in theory I did actually face the possibility of death.  :)

This dentist was a bit pompous, and arrogant.  But kindly, and he means well.  And it shows.  He was willing to take time out of his schedule to meet with me and try to reassure me.  All of his exam rooms have a door to the OUTSIDE.  And his staff is very nice.

So I made an appointment for just a cleaning.  And at the cleaning, the dentist told me that if everyone cared for their teeth as well as I did, dentists would be out of business.  The hygienist told me that she sees people who come in every three months who don't have teeth in as good shape as mine.  The dentist said patients who skip 2 years are almost never in as good shape as I am, tooth-wise.

I do have cavities, but I knew that before I went in.  However, they are still really just surface cavities, and he is confident that they can be cleaned out and filled.  And there are 4 total that should be done eventually, and only 2 teeth should be done before too long. 

And then he and I were able to chat a bit about birds of prey.  He is a master falconer and we were able to talk birds for a while.  He is also a martial arts teacher and gave me a pamphlet for his classes, which he runs at low cost because he would prefer to help people than make tons of money off the classes.

So yes, he is pompous and arrogant, but he is kindly and a nice person.  And while I am still terrified of him as a dentist, he is working on trying to work me around that.

And while I work on saving enough money for whatever the fillings will cost, I am going to go back to studying my French (I finally bought Rosetta Stone on a fantastical sale) and I am going to do some careful breakdown of the antique Juliet cap because the actual REAL stringing of the ORIGINAL is starting this weekend.  I'm going to run late for my self-imposed deadline, but not by more than a few days, a week at most.

Here is a picture of the Original before I do anything to it:

Here is the first mockup, to test for drape of one of the possible stringing options:

And lastly, here is the full mockup:

The full mockup tells me just how tiny this thing was originally.  (No, the original DOESN'T have rainbows around the edge, deal.  They were the only beads of the right size that I was willing to spare for this.  :)

However, I do have some lovely opalized glass that I will intersperse on the edge of the original so that I can make the edge bigger to better fit my sister's (big, giant, ENORMOUS) head...  :)