You can floss in the shower, in front of the bathroom mirror; you can floss while watching TV. You can floss whenever you want to. But do, do floss. It has come to my attention that flossing is an often overlooked hygienic habit of unswerving importance. Flossing on a regular basis not only cleans your teeth, help prevents plaque build up, it also prevents gum disease (which new studies are showing may be a risk factor for heart disease!(1) ) Ask you dentist, she will tell you.
I didn’t always believe in flossing. I was a toothbrush and toothpaste addict and I gave the minty brushy combination my full allegiance. Dental hygiene has always been of the utmost importance to me: I bushed my teeth after every meal if it was possible and no matter how tired I was I never forgot to brush my teeth before bed. My friends made fun of me for how compulsively I brushed. Yet every time I went to the dentist, the news was cavities, fillings, drillings, and with this, the bills. I brushed my teeth with more conviction and more often then a lot of my friends, yet some of them had never even had one cavity. I was jealous of their strong-teeth DNA and resigned myself to fate of cavities.
I don’t know how flossing escaped my attention. I think it was in part because I just didn’t believe it reasonable request—how is this silly piece of string really going to change my dental destiny? You really want me to drag it between each tooth? Every night?
Don’t get me wrong. I did floss, especially after eating chicken, corn or stringy mangoes. I flossed when I remembered to, when I saw that silly little white box in my bathroom drawer. It just didn’t happen every night.
But a while back something changed. I went to the dentist and I still had cavities. I had to pay for some of them out of my own pocket because insurance didn’t cover them all. The dentist also told me I was brushing too hard, that it could cause my gums to recede, a terrible sounding thing. My complete allegiance to the toothbrush broke at that moment. Brushing, the wrong way, could be harmful! My trustworthy the friend, the toothbrush, had let me down again. You really need to floss, my dentist told me, every night. This time I heard her. I also happened to be preparing to head out of the country, and I’d be living out of suitcase for 2 months. I packed floss, and there in my toiletry bag it was impossible to avoid. I began to floss every night.
After two months of traveling and flossing, it became a part of my routine. If I get in bed now and suddenly remember that I haven’t yet flossed, I begin to imagine I can feel my teeth rotting in my mouth and I am compelled to get out of bed and floss.
Perhaps you are part of the 15% of Americans who do floss on a regular basis(2). But if you do not yet floss every night and are feeling a bit daunted by that piece of string, here are some tips for how to incorporate it into your everyday life:
1) Tape some floss to your remote control or bathroom mirror to remind you to floss.
2) If you remember to floss, but still feel reluctant to start in on all your 32 teeth, tell yourself you only have to floss one tooth. This will seem like such a small, quick task you won’t be able to say no. After awhile of flossing just one tooth, you will start to want to floss more teeth; that string is already in your hand after all. (3)
3) Still feeling reluctant? Reward yourself. If you floss, allow yourself to watch an extra 15 minutes of TV or stay an extra 5 minutes in a warm shower.
Flossing. A small, unglamorous thing is that important: it cleans your teeth, helps prevent plaque build up and bad breath. It’s worth an essay. It’s worth five extra minutes in the bathroom at night. I recently went back to the dentist. She said I had beautiful teeth. Just getting a compliment from a dentist convinced me even more that flossing is worth the trouble.
sources:
1.UPI.com - “Dental floss may lower heart disease risk” December 17, 2008
2.BusinessNetworks, “Food/Accessories” - http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3235/is_16_21/ai_n29128325/pg_1)
3.One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way by Robert Maurer
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Monday, February 09, 2009
7 numbers
1. I left the house on my bicycle at 8.45 am. I arrived to the library to study the front matter of dictionaries by 9:20. I medium coffee for 1.90. Highway robbery.
2. I am listening to the Beatles on Pandora via the Coldplay station. (8)
3. I just wrote an essay on flossing. it has 756 words in it, including the endnotes.
4. i am going to chicago for the first time in my life for 4 days!
5. When i got out of class at 7pm. I was going to rush to the bus stop 5 blocks away to catch the 7:10 home. But when i exited the building, the air felt dark, free, and warm. (50 degrees F!). Such breath overcame me. I decided to bike home. In the dark. I hadn't bike all the way home is such complete darkness before. Even though I had bought bike lights. I was still afraid of these back roads and the crazy indiana Ford F250s drivers. But I sucked in the air (is this spring?) and said a quick prayer and rode all the way.
6. It is good to face fears. I have faced fears on bicycles 3 or 4 times. Bicycling makes me feel a bit more alive.
7. 3 hours. I have been home for 3 hours and I have not: graded anything, written any new poetry, or applied to anything for the summer. What is my life all about?
2. I am listening to the Beatles on Pandora via the Coldplay station. (8)
3. I just wrote an essay on flossing. it has 756 words in it, including the endnotes.
4. i am going to chicago for the first time in my life for 4 days!
5. When i got out of class at 7pm. I was going to rush to the bus stop 5 blocks away to catch the 7:10 home. But when i exited the building, the air felt dark, free, and warm. (50 degrees F!). Such breath overcame me. I decided to bike home. In the dark. I hadn't bike all the way home is such complete darkness before. Even though I had bought bike lights. I was still afraid of these back roads and the crazy indiana Ford F250s drivers. But I sucked in the air (is this spring?) and said a quick prayer and rode all the way.
6. It is good to face fears. I have faced fears on bicycles 3 or 4 times. Bicycling makes me feel a bit more alive.
7. 3 hours. I have been home for 3 hours and I have not: graded anything, written any new poetry, or applied to anything for the summer. What is my life all about?
Monday, February 02, 2009
Assignment: Describe a person or group of people
Surfers and their Secrets
My mom was out surfing in Malibu when the phone calls started coming in. Panicked. From everywhere. My brother, Mike. My father, Garey. Where is Mom? Where is Mom? At 46 she had just started surfing. She had always been beach bum, body surfer, wave runner, diver-into-the-ocean at any time of day, but recently her relationship with the ocean had gotten more involved. Come Saturday and Sunday, 6 am, rain or shine, she would snuggle her long board into her car, throw on her wetsuit and disappear for hours. Mike and my sister arrived from their apartments while my mom was still at the beach. The three of us crumbled on the couch under the news: Piper, Rose and Sean—my oldest brother, his wife and son—had been killed in a car accident. My mom came home, dripping with sea water and smiles: evidence that she had had a good surf session. We let her put her board down, the last bit of normality before she started screaming. A mistake, a mistake, it must be a mistake. Not my son. Not my grandson. Not Rose.
After that my mom started surfing ferociously.
Southern California is stereotyped for surfers: the laid back guys with shaggy hair who say ‘dude’ and ‘gnarly’ all the time, but truth be told, not that many people in L.A. surf. The handful of the millions who live in the city who do wake before dawn, and have coerced their work schedule to permit daily surf sessions, have a secret—a big, obvious, blue secret and more often then not they are willing to share. My mom was a Kindergarten teacher before my brother died, before surfing took over her life. She now teaches sick or disabled students one-on-one inside their homes. The schedule is much more flexible so every morning now she packs up her car with her surfboard, wetsuit, bucket, towel, plastic bottle full of hot water (used as a post-surf shower), and a 100 other little surfer tools and heads to 26th street in Manhattan Beach. She can not afford to live there, so she commutes, as do most of the others who make up the 26th Street surf crew.
When you arrive, all the other worries of the day are put to the back of your mind. You congregate in the corner of the parking lot with the other surfers scanning the ocean for the swell. How are the waves? Are they ankle-slappers? Closed out? Is the wind off-shore? Who’s already out there? The surfers banter, retelling surf stories, sipping coffee and laughing. My mom can seldom chat too long before the ocean calls her. Then the ritual of putting on the wetsuit as quickly and gracefully as possible, and waxing up the board begins. Even on the days when there are no waves, even after it rains and the signs advise us not to swim, my mother cannot be stopped.
I am not hardcore like my mother, but I know enough to consider myself a fair-weather surfer. Like my mom, I always have had a deep love of the ocean. Little could keep me from jumping in if I arrived at the beach, even if it was January, even if I didn’t have a swimsuit. I had signed up for surf classes during college because I wanted to connect with mom through this love that had taken over her life, or more likely this love that had saved her life and pulled her steadily out of the pit of depression and grief.
I learned surfing is hard; it demands focus and dedication. The unglamourous part, paddling, is the hardest. You must develop strong back and core muscles. You must learn how to turn your board around quickly; you must learn to read the waves, how they are breaking, and when to start paddling. You must learn how to avoid crashing into other surfers, how to respect the line up. When you catch your first wave, you must learn how to pop up: to move in one fluid motion from laying flat on your stomach to standing on two feet, without ever going to your knees. You must learn balance. You must learn to how to fall safely, to search for your board so it doesn’t spring back and hit you. When big waves come you must learn to turtle roll, that is, roll the board upside down and hang on while the wave crashes over. Instruction is helpful but, practice, the trial and error padding into waves, standing and falling, is the only way to learn these fundamentals and the nature of the ocean.
Every surfer I know will tell you, that if you ever get into an argument with the ocean, the ocean will win. It is powerful. Surfers ride the edge of its great vastness simply longing for just one more wave. Maybe that is why surfers get the reputation of being laid back and chill—because they are daily made aware of something bigger than themselves, something more powerful. This ocean that has the ability to sweep away houses, to snap surfboards, to drowned swimmers, also allows us to paddle out and ride its surfaces, glide down the face of the waves. Surfers find their home in this thrill and the ecstasy is perhaps heightened by the risk and the understanding of their smallness and mortality. The great ocean gives immense, breathless, unconquerable joy to those willing to face fear, to challenge themselves, to try to walk on water.
On December 29, 2008—the seventh anniversary of my brother’s death—my mom and I went to the only place that made sense. The beach. Her surfer friends took us in their arms, hugged us, and accompanied us to the water even though there were hardly any waves. They knew this day was a special day for my mom and wanted to be there with us. As we approached such a burst of life took over the sea. Pelicans, dolphins, sea gulls, sand pipers, dove and bobbed in the high tide, so close to shore. There must have been a school of tasty fish. The ocean was frenzied, alive. Pelicans rode the lift off of the waves. Dolphins caught waves and slapped the surface with their tails. I could not contain myself, and though I didn’t have a wetsuit on I dove into freezing water. The ocean was alive and so was I. One of my mom’s friends lent me his board. My mom and I laughed and caught waves in awe of the majestic sea life that had come to visit as if to say Piper, Sean and Rose were thinking of us.
The story of this day is often re-told now during the early morning parking lot chat sessions, before everyone dons their wetsuits, and runs with their surfboard to the ocean.
My mom was out surfing in Malibu when the phone calls started coming in. Panicked. From everywhere. My brother, Mike. My father, Garey. Where is Mom? Where is Mom? At 46 she had just started surfing. She had always been beach bum, body surfer, wave runner, diver-into-the-ocean at any time of day, but recently her relationship with the ocean had gotten more involved. Come Saturday and Sunday, 6 am, rain or shine, she would snuggle her long board into her car, throw on her wetsuit and disappear for hours. Mike and my sister arrived from their apartments while my mom was still at the beach. The three of us crumbled on the couch under the news: Piper, Rose and Sean—my oldest brother, his wife and son—had been killed in a car accident. My mom came home, dripping with sea water and smiles: evidence that she had had a good surf session. We let her put her board down, the last bit of normality before she started screaming. A mistake, a mistake, it must be a mistake. Not my son. Not my grandson. Not Rose.
After that my mom started surfing ferociously.
Southern California is stereotyped for surfers: the laid back guys with shaggy hair who say ‘dude’ and ‘gnarly’ all the time, but truth be told, not that many people in L.A. surf. The handful of the millions who live in the city who do wake before dawn, and have coerced their work schedule to permit daily surf sessions, have a secret—a big, obvious, blue secret and more often then not they are willing to share. My mom was a Kindergarten teacher before my brother died, before surfing took over her life. She now teaches sick or disabled students one-on-one inside their homes. The schedule is much more flexible so every morning now she packs up her car with her surfboard, wetsuit, bucket, towel, plastic bottle full of hot water (used as a post-surf shower), and a 100 other little surfer tools and heads to 26th street in Manhattan Beach. She can not afford to live there, so she commutes, as do most of the others who make up the 26th Street surf crew.
When you arrive, all the other worries of the day are put to the back of your mind. You congregate in the corner of the parking lot with the other surfers scanning the ocean for the swell. How are the waves? Are they ankle-slappers? Closed out? Is the wind off-shore? Who’s already out there? The surfers banter, retelling surf stories, sipping coffee and laughing. My mom can seldom chat too long before the ocean calls her. Then the ritual of putting on the wetsuit as quickly and gracefully as possible, and waxing up the board begins. Even on the days when there are no waves, even after it rains and the signs advise us not to swim, my mother cannot be stopped.
I am not hardcore like my mother, but I know enough to consider myself a fair-weather surfer. Like my mom, I always have had a deep love of the ocean. Little could keep me from jumping in if I arrived at the beach, even if it was January, even if I didn’t have a swimsuit. I had signed up for surf classes during college because I wanted to connect with mom through this love that had taken over her life, or more likely this love that had saved her life and pulled her steadily out of the pit of depression and grief.
I learned surfing is hard; it demands focus and dedication. The unglamourous part, paddling, is the hardest. You must develop strong back and core muscles. You must learn how to turn your board around quickly; you must learn to read the waves, how they are breaking, and when to start paddling. You must learn how to avoid crashing into other surfers, how to respect the line up. When you catch your first wave, you must learn how to pop up: to move in one fluid motion from laying flat on your stomach to standing on two feet, without ever going to your knees. You must learn balance. You must learn to how to fall safely, to search for your board so it doesn’t spring back and hit you. When big waves come you must learn to turtle roll, that is, roll the board upside down and hang on while the wave crashes over. Instruction is helpful but, practice, the trial and error padding into waves, standing and falling, is the only way to learn these fundamentals and the nature of the ocean.
Every surfer I know will tell you, that if you ever get into an argument with the ocean, the ocean will win. It is powerful. Surfers ride the edge of its great vastness simply longing for just one more wave. Maybe that is why surfers get the reputation of being laid back and chill—because they are daily made aware of something bigger than themselves, something more powerful. This ocean that has the ability to sweep away houses, to snap surfboards, to drowned swimmers, also allows us to paddle out and ride its surfaces, glide down the face of the waves. Surfers find their home in this thrill and the ecstasy is perhaps heightened by the risk and the understanding of their smallness and mortality. The great ocean gives immense, breathless, unconquerable joy to those willing to face fear, to challenge themselves, to try to walk on water.
On December 29, 2008—the seventh anniversary of my brother’s death—my mom and I went to the only place that made sense. The beach. Her surfer friends took us in their arms, hugged us, and accompanied us to the water even though there were hardly any waves. They knew this day was a special day for my mom and wanted to be there with us. As we approached such a burst of life took over the sea. Pelicans, dolphins, sea gulls, sand pipers, dove and bobbed in the high tide, so close to shore. There must have been a school of tasty fish. The ocean was frenzied, alive. Pelicans rode the lift off of the waves. Dolphins caught waves and slapped the surface with their tails. I could not contain myself, and though I didn’t have a wetsuit on I dove into freezing water. The ocean was alive and so was I. One of my mom’s friends lent me his board. My mom and I laughed and caught waves in awe of the majestic sea life that had come to visit as if to say Piper, Sean and Rose were thinking of us.
The story of this day is often re-told now during the early morning parking lot chat sessions, before everyone dons their wetsuits, and runs with their surfboard to the ocean.
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