Dentaluv, Redux

Confession: despite all my hipster posturing, I would give a non-essential organ to own real estate in Georgetown. Meandering through its charming, cobblestone streets can be absolutely transporting. And so it goes that this morning, as I was winding its streets in my Civic hybrid (thanks Zipcar!), I almost forgot that I was on my way to my least favorite place on earth: the dentist. Despite recent events, I have apparently not learned my lesson about routine oral healthcare because for the last several months I've been ignoring those pesky reminder cards. But finally, the $2000 lesson prevailed over my B-movie nightmares and I scheduled my routine check-up.

I arrived a few minutes late (i.e. right on time for me) and noticed a new face behind the receptionist desk. I gave her my last name and took a seat. She spent the next few minutes rifling through charts until one of the hygienists who knows me grabbed it off of a stack and handed it to her. Her response? "Oh, you didn't tell me you were Julia." I decided to let that one go, but the buzz from my drive along R Street officially began to wore off.

After depositing me in an exam chair (which I noticed had a new massage feature!), the hygienist asked me a few routine questions and left. A few minutes later my dentist popped in to gush, "Hey stranger! Where've you been? We've missed you!" and to inform me that he was running about twenty minutes behind schedule. Although I wanted to ask why one of the hygienists couldn't just floss me and be done with it, I smiled and picked up the paper and said no problem. True to his word, he returned twenty minutes later and got down to the business of cleaning my teeth. With his hand and a few instruments in my mouth he asked me to tell him what I'd been up to this spring (why dentists think this is an opportune time to chat is beyond me). I suppose he was also providing commentary on my oral health, but to be honest I was camped out in the Happy Place in my mind just wishing time would pass quicker and not really listening all that much.

When it was said and done, I stood up and he gave me a not-so-subtle once over. Conspiratorially, he whispered, "Have you lost weight? You look great." I tried not to squirm awkwardly and mumbled something innocuous in response. The thing is, I have lost weight. I've dropped a size or two, and sure, it's fun to wear clothes that haven't seen the light of day since I was in college, but it's nothing dramatic or anything and the fact that my dentist noticed kind of freaked me out. Not to throw out a total overshare here, but my freaking bikini waxer hasn't even noticed, and she sees me once a month! I realize this is the guy who noticed the dye job that managed to sneak by my co-workers, but I'm starting to think he has me tailed in between visits.

And so I found myself again overcome with a desperation to flee (never good when there's an AMEX involved), and I was so preoccupied with escaping that it took me a minute to process it when the receptionist confirmed my follow-up appointment for an Invisalign consultation. Huh? I asked her to explain. Apparently the doc voiced some concerns about the "crowding" of my bottom teeth and has recommended Invisalign for treatment. Which means? You guessed it. About five more appointments and another two grand. I cannot escape this man.

DC is for Haters

Anyone who took an eighth grade geography class knows that the Washington, DC metropolitan area is comprised of the District of Columbia and a handful of Virginia and Maryland suburbs. What you don’t know until you live here is that there’s a hierarchy of geographic superiority among these jurisdictions. Marylanders fall at the bottom of the barrel. A guy I know who grew up in Northern Virginia (henceforth, NoVA) has a t-shirt that reads, Friends Don’t Let Friends Live in Maryland, and it just about sums up Virginians’ opinion of Maryland. However, Virginians have their own place in the ranks: a Washingtonian I know has a t-shirt that reads, Virginia is for Commuters, a play on the unofficial (or is it the official?) Virginia state motto.

The ironic thing about Washingtonian smugness is that very few of us were actually born here or stay for any real length of time, so our sense of superiority isn’t rooted in anything real. This really pisses off all the natives I know. Nonetheless, our sense of self-righteousness prevails. Whenever I have to leave the District (or, journey to the interior, as I am prone to say) I like to joke about packing flares and trail mix. A couple of weeks ago, a cute NoVA guy came into DC to take me out on a date, and I jokingly asked him if they served peanuts on his plane ride. Because NoVA guys are so easily provoked, he reveled in the chance to tell me what my neighborhood looked like five, ten years ago and essentially relegated me to some kind of urban sheep who followed the pack to the latest Starbucks opening. By the time he was done, he’d come up with a t-shirt of his own: DC is for Haters. Oh snap! (But can I get it on Busted Tees??)

And really? He’s right. There is something about the suburbs that I find absolutely disorienting. I have a pretty great sense of direction, but if you dropped me off in the center of Rosslyn, I’d be hard pressed to find my way back. Ditto Bethesda. That said, this weekend I found myself spending a lot of time outside the safe confines of DC, and lo and behold it didn’t totally suck! My roommate, being the bestest roommate ever that he is, tossed me his Jeep keys before he headed out of town, so I took advantage of the rare access to wheels. Each time I set out from home I got lost, and at one point the Jeep may or may not have caught on fire, but I got to feel the wind in my hair and have some killer frozen custard in a quaint NoVA neighborhood.

Then this evening, the weirdest thing happened. As I crossed over the Wilson Bridge on my way back into the District, I didn’t feel smug at all. Instead, I felt a swelling sense of curiosity about this city that increasingly feels like home to me. Since I moved here three years ago, I’ve spent most of my time within a half-mile radius of my apartment (did I mention it’s ridiculously, amazingly located?), but I’m finding myself itching a bit lately. Hmmm…perhaps it’s time for a little pioneering. Starbucks, anyone?

An Update on My Life, in List Form

Note: for the record, the reason I never update this blog is that my friend Katherine is way funnier than me and routinely publishes my antics on the World Wide Web via her own (way funnier) blog.

• About five days after my last post, I swung back into the dramatic, yet impossible romance. About a month ago, I swung back out. In the interim, we went to Iceland! It was intense and otherworldly, and you should see the pictures. Really.
  

• I continue to date men who wore born in the 80's, and this is a pattern that disturbs me. Text-flirting appears to be the primary Gen Y Courtship Strategy, and I really prefer a wittily composed email. What can I say? Good grammar makes me swoon. Excessive use of "LOL" does not. Even if you are a really cute architect.

• Despite cutting back to once-a-week running and ditching the gym altogether, my ass has been shrinking. While I thought this would make me less popular with black men, it turns out they like curly hair too.
  

• My mom joined Facebook.
  

• The week-long season we call "spring" came and went, and the Season of Profuse Sweating has begun. This year I broke down and bought clinical strength deodorant, which I'm sure is giving me breast cancer, not to mention ruining my white shirts with disturbing, fluorescent stains. But my pits? They're bone dry. I can't wait until they make an all-over body version.

• I finally got a therapist, and it's the Best. Money. I've. Ever. Spent. I can't believe I didn't get one years ago! There is something so appealing to my Inner Narcissist about having a weekly appointment where all I do is talk about Me, Myself and I.

• I narrowly avoided getting swine flu, though it meant canceling a much-needed trip to Mexico.
  

• Even though all signs have been directing me toward homeownership, I officially decided to continue my life as a renter for the foreseeable future. It was a tough decision, but ultimately I had to admit to myself that it is not a responsibility I want to take on as a single woman. Yes, yes, my Inner Feminist is pissed about it, but who did she think was going to provide the flat screen TV and fix things when they broke? Me? I think not.

• This summer I have more baby showers than weddings. This terrifies me.
  

• For the first time since moving to DC, I intend to take part in the summer tradition of spending weekends at Rehoboth Beach. Rehoboth is like the Hamptons only less glamorous and more gay (there's a reason they call it "Rehomo"). Still, I'd much rather fight the gays for a slice of sand than queue up and throw elbows with them outside the ghetto public pool in Foggy Bottom in order to get a lounge chair.
  

Summer? Is going to be fun.

My Shameless Plug for Sonicare

I have a friend who's a pro at dating. Sometimes she'll say things like, "OK, I just need to line up a guy for Thursday night and then I'll be set for the week." It will be Tuesday. And she'll find someone. This same friend is also a Match.com subscriber. She claims it's an easy go-to when you're in a slump. Just jump online, get a few dates and *poof* no more slump. So earlier this year, when I was in between guys, she convinced me to try it. Mostly, I thought it was pretty lame. My inbox would fill up with ridiculous, and often grammatically botched, missives from random dudes with aliases like "sexynfun" or "dclawyer4u". And what's with the winks? Seriously? My curiosity waned after about a week and I went back to dating the old fashioned way.

Around this same time I decided that, after two years in DC, it was time to find a dentist. My intense fear of dental trauma, combined with my proven inability to check practical things like "make dentist appointment" off my to-do list, had led to prolonged neglect of my pearly whites. So when my co-worker returned to the office from a dentist appointment one day, I asked for a referral. They were able to squeeze me in the following week.

Keep in mind that reasonable health care of any kind in DC can only be found in one place: Georgetown. Well, for this car-free girl, Georgetown is quite possibly the least accessible place to travel to (the elite residents there have successfully kept icky public transportation away from their cobble-stoned paradise). So I rented a ZipCar for a cool $9.25/hour and off I went.

My dentist turned out to be a young, attractive guy, and when we met he gave me a quizzical glance that I couldn't quite interpret. But just as quickly he got to the business of poking around in my mouth, and that was that. And while I survived with little trauma (aided in large part by the Bose headphones and DVD of Planet Earth), my new dentist had bad news to report: I had six cavities and needed a porcelain crown. Crap. But it got worse. After explaining that I had about $2000 worth of dental care in my future, he whispered, "So how long have you been on Match?"

Cue dental trauma.

My horrified expression sent him backpedaling, but before it got extremely awkward, I was saved by a hygienist who summoned him to another patient. After scheduling the four required follow up appointments, I raced home and logged on to Match. And there he was: Dentaluv. Right there in my inbox. Having lost interest so early on in my month-long membership, I hadn't been checking my messages. He had "winked" at me several days prior.

I spent the subsequent six weeks making almost weekly trips to Dentaluv's Georgetown office for what I now refer to as The Great Dental Intervention of 2008. Slapping down my AMEX to the tune of $425 or $613 became old hat. So did the $30/visit I was paying to freaking drive there. In total I endured 15 shots of Novocaine, endless minutes of drilling (which the Bose headphones do not entirely block out, btw) and the unsettling reality that the man attacking my plaque problem had also hit on me online. To make matters worse, the women in the office were excessively nice to me, fueling my suspicion that I was part of the watercooler gossip. I thought perhaps I was being paranoid, but then in between appointments I dyed my hair. And although it took my co-workers a week to notice, the receptionist noticed immediately. They fawned over me constantly.

On the last of my many visits, after slapping down the AMEX for the final time, I glanced behind the receptionist to a product shelf containing boxes of fancy, electronic toothbrushes. So I asked her, "What's the deal with those?" And she responded animatedly, "They are really expensive, but they truly are like preventative medicine. My boyfriend used to get tons of cavities, but since he got his Sonicare he hasn't had any. He hardly even needs to see the dentist anymore!"

Sold.

In summary:
Dental Intervention of 2008: $1890.83
Transportation to Dental Intervention of 2008: $124.16
Phillips Sonicare Elite e9500: $149.99
Insurance Against Future Incidents of Dentaluv Awkwardness: Priceless

You Know What They Say...

What's fun about being in Washington is that everyone knows everyone, and the Kevin Bacon game can actually make a small town Midwestern girl like me feel important. So this past Sunday--the first official Day of Brunch since Obama's election--a couple of girlfriends and I gathered for Eggs Benedict and whatnot. After the usual catching up (i.e. work, dating, etc.), our conversation turned to the Obama transition. Let's just say that the ensuing discussion quickly answered the question I'd been asking myself since November 5: What will we talk about now??

Both of the friends I was brunching with are alums of the fellowship program I was in after grad school and are now currently working for pretty powerful national associations. So it follows that they both know a number of people on the short list for cabinet positions (I, on the other hand, sacrificed that cred when I defected to the for-profit sector). But we're all urban policy nerds, so we conspired in hushed tones about The Short List. We were each feeling a little starstruck and excited about the potential for people we, eh hem, know to be in such important leadership positions. Competence in Washington! Imagine!

Forty-five minutes of uber-wonky-Cabinet-Member-selection-chatter later and one of my friends said of the Rahm Emmanuel pick, "Well you know what they say...once a Chief of Staff, always a Chief of Staff." There was a momentary pause while we reflected, nodded in agreement...and then burst into laughter. You know what they say?? Really??? Pretty sure "they" never say that. Well, no one outside the beltway, that is. And yet, my love affair with this city grew a little bit deeper...

Hollywood for Nerds

People say DC is like Hollywood for nerds, and it’s true. News flies fast when someone sees Bill Clinton at a restaurant or Barack Obama at the gym, and it’s always fun to guess who’s behind the tinted windows of the ubiquitous motorcades. Only in DC can you excitedly gush to your friends about seeing an obscure wonk-type no one else would even care about.

So it should come as no surprise that the pool of eligible men here is heavily skewed toward Debate Team rather than Football Team. Not that I mind. I maintain that a band nerd from my high school is one of the best kissers I’ve ever kissed. He played the trumpet. Firm lips. Still, even so, it has taken me a month to admit I’m dating a guy who proudly wears a braided belt. He’s brilliant, witty, and handsome, but there’s also no doubt in my mind that somewhere in a basement in Texas there’s home video footage of him wielding a light saber a la George Michael on Arrested Development. And yes, I said Texas. Groan. He even wears cowboy boots.

My friend Kate, a self-proclaimed, card-carrying Geek, says I’m probably in over my head with this one. And she may be right. I mean it’s one thing to tell me about the Tolkien themes embedded in Zeppelin IV (swoon!), but it’s quite another to own a “movie accurate” Indiana Jones costume (yes, seriously). I almost had myself convinced that this kid was from a galaxy too far, far away when this happened:

Two nights ago, I got a 1:00 a.m. phone call from the back of an ambulance, where my guy found himself after being jumped on his way home from my apartment. By the time I got him back here, I barely recognized his face it was so broken and bruised. But when I referred to him “getting his ass kicked,” he was quick to correct me with a full account of what went down. Apparently, my uber-nerdy crush judo-kicked the shit out of his attacker (all the True Geeks know martial arts) and even used the heel of his cowboy boot to kick the scumbag in the back of the head. While pinned on his back. With a knife to his throat. Yeah. I just looked at him, lying on my couch in his rumpled LSU t-shirt and hideous Lone Star belt buckle, ice packs on his face and Guinness in his hand, and thought:

Hot.

I am dating a Billy Bad Ass Dork.