Weird day

I'm having a weird day and it must be blogged.

This morning I had to take Clarissa to the zoo for a preschool field trip. Normally I love the zoo! The zoo is my happy place! But this morning it was 34 degrees outside and windy and I soooo did not want to go to the zoo. But I knew Clarissa would love it, cold or not, so I knew we needed to go.

Here's the problem with me and the zoo, and to tell this story I have to admit a weird secret. The zoo is downtown and I'm scared to drive downtown. I rarely admit this because its ridiculous (you have no idea how many things I don't admit because they're ridiculous), but I'm scared to drive downtown, or on the freeway or anywhere that I'm not super familiar with. Like, so scared that I don't do it unless I absolutely have to and then it's like this big mental thing that I have to build myself up to do.

Which is weird, because that is not an anxiety that I've always had. When I was 19 I moved across the country to New Jersey to be a live in nanny for a year and my favorite thing in the world to do on my days off was to just get in the car and drive. I've gotten lost all over the state of New Jersey. One time I almost didn't get off the freeway in time and almost accidentally drove into New York City. One day I drove to Philladelphia and then turned around and drove home, just to say I did, lol.

But somewhere along the line I developed a driving anxiety. I grew up in a fairly small town where driving was easy, traffic was fairly light and there weren't really any freeways to contend with on a regular basis unless you were traveling out of town for some reason.

Now we live in Boise, which is way bigger than the town I grew up in (although I realize it's still small by big city standards), but we live way out in the suburbs. We live so far out in the suburbs that we barely live in Boise. We rarely go downtown because there's not really a need to. I can drive fine around my house and everything I need is right here.

But the zoo is downtown, which means that I had to really put my brave face on to drive down there. And I know that everyone who reads this and lives in Boise is cracking up, because its really not THAT bad, but I hate it! You have to get on the interstate and deal with the traffic and all the streets downtown are narrow and most of them are one way, which confuses me, and I hate driving to the zoo!

But I did it, we didn't die and we had a fine time at the zoo, even though it was freezing and none of the animals were out so it was kind of like taking a walk through a very cold park. I've had better days at the zoo.

Then it came time to drive home. You can't drive home the way you came because all the streets are one way. That's why I hate driving downtown! So I thought I knew where to turn but because I almost never drive downtown I turned at the wrong spot and then couldn't figure out how to get back and I don't know which streets are one way and you can't tell until you get right up to the intersection so I had to make fast decisions and the streets are narrow and the traffic is crazy and that is why I don't drive downtown!

So I called Shawn in a panic. This is why I love Shawn. I can call him at work in a random hysterical anxiety ridden meltdown and he's super calm, like he gives directions to hysterical people over the phone for a living or something. He should work for 911. Hysterics don't bother him at all.

So I was at an intersection that is like three streets converging at weird angles and they're all one way and impossible to figure out and I was thinking of just giving up and buying a house downtown since clearly I was never going to make it back out to the suburbs again, but Shawn talked me down. He got me home and no one died. Yay me.

So I got home just in time to go back out and meet with my dentist about the disasterous dentist appointment I had last week. Ugh. Driving anxiety and doctor anxiety all in one day.

So here's what happened at the dentist last week. I was supposed to get a crown and a filling. The filling ended up being worse than they though and now needs a crown. The crown ended up being worse than they thought and they couldn't even finish it. So today I had to meet with the dentist so he could show me photos of the whole disaster and make a plan. The tooth he tried to crown has a crack in it all the way down to the bone so the dentist can't crown it. So now I have to go have dental surgery at a periodontist to have some gums moved and bone shaved or something and after that heals for a few weeks I have to go back to the dentist so that the dentist can get down there and do the crown and he'll also crown the other tooth at the same time. Uuuuuugh. That sounds awful, doesn't it?  There are stitches involved. I'm such a baby about things like that. I would very much like not to have dental surgery.

I was just about to say that my teeth can bite me and then that gave me the giggles. So at least there's that.

Then as I was leaving the dentists office I broke a nail getting into the car. Seriously?

So I kind of had a bad day. Driving downtown and impending dental surgery are two things I try to avoid when at all possible. Blah. My whole day can bite me. I'm going to go read a book now.