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Am I glad I did it? Yes.

It was worth it to have my bite and teeth fixed correctly for the second time. I wore an expander and braces as a teen-ager, but my teeth decided to move around.

Here's what I've learned:

1) When you tell other adults you got braces and need surgery, they'll show you their crooked teeth despite having worn braces as a teen. Seriously, there needs to be a permanent post-braces process, so we only have to live through it once.

2) Even though SARPE surgery is out patient, if you can stay the night in the hospital- do it. I was well taken care of. Ice for my ice packs was brought to me every 2 hours. My vitals were taken every 2 hours to make sure I was recovering well. Through my IV, I was given antibiotics, anti-swelling and pain medication. Having the adjustable bed was helpful because I could sit up which was more comfortable.

3)Buy your post surgery food in advance. I purchased protein powder, applesauce, pudding, ice cream, soup, and tons of fruits & vegetables that I juiced. My favorite go-to drink was the chocolate carnation instant breakfast.

4) Sit up as much as possible to help with the swelling

5) Make sure you have someone to help you out because you're going to be tired and healing.

6) Get the best chapstick you can because your lips are going to get super dry and chapped.

7) Stay hydrated-nothing will make you feel worse then getting dehydrated

8) Make you sure you have an experienced, reputable surgeon. I had hardly any bruising and wasn't really in to much pain.

9) Be prepared to be gap toothed. As you crank the expander, a gap will develop and you'll look like Madonna.

If you are going to have SARPE surgery, I wish you good luck and speedy healing.

There's nothing like a pair of braces to make you feel like a teen-ager again. I don't have a bad perm and now wear contacts, but I still feel like I'm fourteen all over again. What's been interesting is that people stare. They stared at 14 and they stare at 47.

I have clear braces on top and metal ones on the bottom. My rubber bands on the bottom are turquoise because it's my daughter's favorite color. They didn't have fancy colors when I wore them the first time.

If the braces weren't bad enough, I have an expander in. Once I have my SARPE surgery tomorrow, it will help expand my narrow upper jaw. Right now, it only serves to make me talk weird  and is a haven for food getting stuck.

Thanks to YouTube, I've been able to get the 411 on the SARPE surgery. I got some tips like using frozen peas for the swelling since they'll mold to your face.

I also recently watched the movie, Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead, on Netflix and loved it. I bought a juicer and have been enjoying some delicious juice. It will come in handy for my liquid diet post surgery.

A stack of books is on my nightstand waiting to be read. I hope I feel up to it because I relish the time I'll have to just heal and read.

Sophmore Year

As a teen, what new thing made/makes you bubble up inside with just-so-coolness? Here’s my answer. Fact or Fiction?

I’m the poster child for, well, everything that sucks about being sixteen. The zits. The braces. Never going to the popular parties. Studying and working all the time. Caring about what I might do in college, which makes IT that much worse. But what makes IT just that much more excruciating? Twisted even? This evil yearbook photographer.

I picked up my yearbook this morning I couldn’t wait to get my friends signatures. Summer always feels so long when I’m away from them. I’ll get to waitress more, which is awesome. Almost saved enough for my own car. Junior year will be the year I’ll stop taking the freaking bus. I mean, seriously. Sixteen and riding the bus. I didn’t have a lot of control over IT, all that sucked about being sixteen. But I could buy myself a car. And that made IT, everything, even looking in the mirror, OK. I’d have my own car. I’d be less sucky. Soon.

I walk up to my locker and fly through my combo so I can open my door and use it to shield me as I flip through the pages real quick before my next class. I find the not-too-many pages where I’ll see my picture. AFS, National Honor Society and the fall play, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man In The Moon Marigolds. Yeah. I know what you’re thinking. It gets even suckier. This just-so-coolness bubbled up inside of me because I’d sort of forgotten I had been in the play. It was way back in the fall. It was the first time I’d ever kissed a Senior. It was the first time I’d ever kissed a leading man, a guy so amazing I couldn’t believe he’d want to kiss someone as silver-toothed as me. The first semi-cool thing I’d ever done.

So I’m flipping through the pages and my heart stops. Two huge photos of just-me, on stage, took up two half-pages of the play pictures. Me, smiling my full-on yes-these-are-my-braces-and-would-you-like-to-get-a-better-look smile, my eyes dreamy like I’d taken a belt of booze at the wrap party.

I want to hide. Want to slam my locker shut and run down the second floor hallway outside the institutional prison they call high school. Leave. Forever. But, I have to take the bus. Summer can’t come fast enough.

“Sign my book?” The First Senior I’d Ever Kissed, The Only Senior I’d Ever Kissed, the leading man from The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man In The Moon Marigolds pries my locker door out of my hand.

Me? Our little romance hadn’t gone anywhere after the play and now he wants to be the first to sign my yearbook? Didn’t he see my sixteen-year-old suckiness fully documented in black-and-white on pages 102 and 103, for all future sixteen-year-olds to see forever?

“Ah, sure.” I grab my binder for Calculus and we exchange yearbooks. We write-walk to 4th period. I hadn’t gotten my cute saying for the year figured out yet. You know, the thing you write in yearbooks of guys-you-made-out-with-in-the-fall-and-then-sort-of-forgot-you-existed-after, and for all those other books