day one

[fox]

So today was the first day I took the new change-my-life bite guard for a spin. I'm to wear it at all times except when I'm eating; I wasn't specifically told to take it out to drink, which is good, because I'm drinking water all day and that would get tiresome (and be much less helpful). It has so far been extravagantly slobbery when I take it out - it fits very snugly over my bottom teeth, so I can't just lift it out, which I don't know if that contributes to the slobberiness of it, but yeah, wow, it turns out that this thing that hangs out right where my tongue normally goes but cannot be dislodged by my tongue on its own is in fact a big ol' drool reservoir. So that's fun. It kind of hurts where it fits over the presumably-cracked tooth in the back, a sort of low-grade constant dull pain. Everywhere else it's a strange pressure and not much more, apart from on the bottom front teeth earlier this evening it was feeling kind of achy. It isn't now.

I still feel like I'm talking very slightly funny. Like my consonants are a little odd - especially the fricatives (all of them except /h/), and sometimes I miss (come up a little short) when I reach for an /m/. But ellen_fremedon and cinco both said they couldn't even tell what I was talking about; and the former is a trained linguist, and the latter actually asked me if I even had the thing with me when I was talking to her. So I guess my self-consciousness about my new There's Something In My Mouth consonants is just misplaced. ... I wonder what I'm going to do about rehearsal on Monday night.