Week #1

For more than one reason, this will be my blogging premier. Probably my most poignant anti-blogging sentiment, is my belief that very few people have earned the privilege of others actually caring what they think. I feel self-rituous even as I type. I don't have any illusions that I have joined this elite group, rather I am starting this blog as part of my PM 562 class: Intervention Approaches for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention. Secondly, I am just old enough not to be able to think creatively via a keyboard. I still put pen to paper if I must stimulate any hint of ingenuity... writing it first, and then typing into a blog, seems to defeat the purpose. Which brings me to the third reason: my purpose. Now I have one. I plan to start flossing, regularly. This blog will chronicle my efforts and ultimately, my success, or less optimistically, my lack there of.

My goal was inspired by the mandatory class requirement and by my day one class partner, Julia. I met Julia only through the good fortune of sitting next to her. She is a dental hygienist with gorgeous teeth. My teeth are really quite satisfactory, even in their dismally unflossed state. I have no complaints. Actually, they do spark some dentist's excitement because I am missing the root to #7?, the tooth next to my right top front tooth. The story goes: (still struggling with the fact that someone has to indulge this mental masturbation) when I was thirteen I had an impacted canine? secondary to a cyst that absorbed the adjacent root. The maxillofacial surgeons did some surgery which did interrupt my horse camp for a day that brought the impacted offender into line. The dentist informed me that the other tooth would fall out, likely within a year, and eventually need to be replaced by some apparatus that involves drilling into my bone... which doesn't really bother me. I pride myself on my ability to endure pain (we shall see, come May:) But, I am a minimalist, of the mentality that if it isn't broken, please don't fix it.... and never fixed it. I think my tooth is hanging (literally, it is quite loose, so I don't chew anything on my right side) in there nicely. It is not discolored and doesn't cause me any pain. But it does provide for some gratifying exclamations from the dentist each and every time they see it on X-ray. Regardless, I should floss around it and around all of my other teeth that my mother and father sacrificed hard-to-come-by money to have straightened. Nature provided me with a very large gap between my two front bucked teeth, which I am grateful my mother convinced my father might cause me insecurity as I grew older... It probably would have, and the humility of having braces in the sixth grade was actually brief and fleeting. There was this one contraption that set in the roof of my mouth that my mom had to crank each night with a key (attached to a piece of floss so that when she dropped it down my throat she could fish it back out.) My sister had a whole other torture... she had to wear a "bionator" (sounds even less imposing than it looked)... yet I digress. Is that the point?

My goal: By the end of this 16 week class to be flossing nightly. In the vain of full transparency, I really only floss once very couple of weeks...

My plan: Less ironed out. I will start with this blog to help me to identify my impediments (judging from last night, laziness has an awful lot to do with it). Each week, I will let all of you waiting with bated breath know how many nights I flossed... I have some other self-improvement goals that might come to fruition from this flossing pursuit, but I have to keep some mystery.

And so I begin...