A fashion icon.....if I lived in Thailand?

This last week I finally received the nail in the coffin...I got my bottom braces on. I have gotten used to them...again. And actually, overall, they aren't quite as bad as I thought they would be (like most things in life).

The downsides to braces:
1) brushing my teeth. What little joy that used to exist in that mundane activity has been completely eradicated and replaced with loathing and procrastination.
2) kissing. Its like trying to kiss through a chain link fence.
3) when your lips starts to bleed because your toddler accidentally kicked you in the face.
4) having to check your mouth after every meal because there could be a whole pizza crust in there.
5) we could have gone to Europe for a month with what these braces cost!

The upside to braces:
1) I look 10 years younger!
2) I finally have something in common with the high school kids in my ward
3) I can color coordinate my braces with my outfits...provided I wear the same color every day for a month
4) I have come to enjoy eating my apples pre- sliced...its like being in kindergarten again.
5) being totally trendy! (see below)

Apparently, braces are a hot black market item in Thailand. A couple of years ago, some magazines there started showing their models wearing colorful braces, and a fashion craze ensued. So much so that girls would pay a lot of money to have braces hot glued to their teeth, even when their teeth were perfectly straight.

So I like to think of myself as an Asian model....type.

I figure that this is the best time for me to have a mouth full of metal. We are relatively unimportant people now and we don't often get invited to embassy balls to meet the King and Queen (which will probably happen in the future). But someday when I attend the inauguration of the 48th president of the United States (and his name shall be Hal), I will probably want this to all be behind me.