I’ll bet you’re wondering what this one will be about. Hmmmm? I promise it isn’t about Fifty Shades of Grey, which I still haven’t read. Though I have it on good authority that a gal I know announced in polite company that her husband said she didn’t need to read it because she had already done everything in the book. Yes, well, thanks for sharing. And ew.

But I digress, as I tend to do.

No, this is about just how sexy my husband and I are every night when we go to bed. Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, WTF how can she write about such a topic when she just dissed some chick for giving TMI (that’s “too much information” for the over forty-five set — learn text speak people) about her own bedroom frolics. But really, you have no idea what I am going to write. So read on.

I’m going to let you in on our little bedtime rituals. And they are so awesome that once you’ve read this you are going to run, not walk, to the appropriate places (well maybe tomorrow if you are reading this at night and such places are closed now) so that you too can have a little bit of wonderful every night. Really spice things up.

Good Lord you aren’t reading this with your kid looking over your shoulder, are you? Well if so it’s time for junior to go to bed. The last thing I want to be is inappropriate for crying out loud.

So every night after I change into my pyjamas and wash my face — oh and in case you were wondering I use Dr. Hauschka products which totally saved my skin and got me through chemo and don’t contain evil carcinogens wish they were paying me to write this crap — and brush my teeth and floss (as Julia Roberts said in Pretty Woman, you shouldn’t  neglect your gums and I always take dental hygiene advice from hookers cuz I figure they oughtta know…), I put it in.

My mouthguard, that is.

Yup. A dentist politely informed me while I was in college that I grind my teeth. “You’d better start wearing one of these,” he said, “or you’ll grind your teeth down to [insert appropriate hand gesture indicating something teeny] by the time you’re [insert age that sounded really old at the time but now is probably in the next ten years]. “Uh, okay,” I said. And after blowing that advice off for a few years I finally succumbed and had a mouthguard made. And have worn it every night since.

Now, it isn’t as big and thick and awful as the kind I used to wear to play field hockey but it isn’t exactly small either. It is this clear (well it used to be clear when it was new at least) plastic-y thing that fits over your top teeth and prevents you from grinding in the night. Works well and relieves a lot of pressure — after all, TMJ (no this is not text speak, but rather a medical term; it means temporomandibular joint syndrome) is what landed me in that dentist’s office in the first place.

So picture this. Here I come, into the bedroom, fresh and clean and wearing a big plastic mouthguard that makes my upper lip stick out to kingdom come and gives me a thlight thpeech impediment. Are you turned on yet?

But wait, there’th more.

A few years ago I noticed that almost without fail every time my husband falls asleep he immediately starts to clench his jaw and grind his teeth. It happens anywhere, in bed, in a chair, on a sofa at Pottery Barn, on planes, you name it. So I inform him in my superior preachy way that he grinds his teeth and needs to visit the dentist to get his very own mouthguard or else he’ll have a heap of dental problems in his future.

Why suffer alone, after all?

Naturally he didn’t listen to me. He just keeps on grinding and chomping away in his sleep until he cracked his teeth and then the dentist said “oh, say, you grind your teeth and need a mouthguard.” And he comes home and reports this to me like it is the first he’s heard of it.

Well, needless to say I wasn’t too sympathetic. Anyhow now he has a big ole plastic mouthguard too which deforms his upper lip and causes him to talk funny. The only difference is that I quickly got used to mine and just slap it in my mouth every night and am thankful for it whereas he bitches and complains that it is awful on a regular basis. But it must be less awful than cracked molars because he’s still wearing it.

We are quite a sexy pair, no? But wait, now for a limited time, there’s even more…

Since we moved to London, and in doing so sold our cars, we walk a great deal more than we used to. For many reasons this has been terrific, because we get a lot more exercise walking around and don’t have to deal with parking, etc. However, Bill suffers from plantars fasciatis, which he describes as a sharp pain that feels like a marble on the bone in the middle of his heel every time he takes a step. He’s tried exercises and resting (and bitching about) it to no avail.

So finally he saw a podiatrist who recommended that Bill purchase special foot braces that are supposed to hold your feet at right angles in the night and thus relieve the pressure on the fasciae. The doctor provided him with a link to the appropriate item on a website. After looking it up Bill sent me an email with the link and the simple subject line “you have got to be kidding me.”

Yup. So now after we have cozied into bed with our glorious mouthguards, Bill straps on his not-so-small foot braces to hold his size thirteens (US not UK) in place.

We are only forty (me) and thirty-eight (insert not-very-funny-or-creative jokes about how I robbed the cradle) and here we are with all this gear already.

I honestly don’t know what is next. Perhaps one of us will develop sleep apnea, requiring the sufferer to wear an oxygen mask attached to a large tank which will be discretely (not) stored next to the bed. Or perhaps someone will get carpal tunnel and have to sport wrist braces.

I’ll tell you one thing; if we have to put on much more crap every night we won’t be able to travel anywhere without a full-sized trunk to haul around our weird gizmos.

One upside, I figure, is that if we ever want to try out some shit from Fifty Shades, the gizmos might come in handy. 🙂