So I was reading this post from Quioxtic Life and it inspired me to look in my hand bag, and guess what that lead to? me doing a bit of a life assessment and deciding I might just be a little bit vain! You see the contents of my hand bag is mostly made up of teeth / braces based things.  For those of you who haven't seen me in person, I have braces.  Yeap early 30's with braces...  So here is the story about how the braces came about. One sunny day (little miss still just a little miss) off to the Dentist for a check-up and clean.  Hmmm dentist says teeth are good (no fillings thank you very much) but the shape of your jaw at the back is not so great and it is causing a bit of decay on your back teeth (in reality your not cleaning your teeth very well).  Those wisdom teeth need to come out so that your other teeth don't suffer.  Ok no dramas, I'm a brave woman (with a whole heap of drugs and knock out juice thank you very much). So off I head to the maxiofacial surgeon (and yes she does also do face lifts and botox!!) anyway some x-rays later and the surgeon says wisdom teeth easy job, but that eye tooth has to come out...  Umm beg your pardon.  That adult eye tooth that is laying across the top of your jaw.  Now I still had a baby tooth in my mouth.  You see the adult tooth decided it didn't want to see the light of day and do its job but instead spend all of eternity just sitting in my gum or so I thought.  Seems the little / big bastard decided to move and is now pushing against my front teeth causing all sorts of damage to the nerves.  Surgeon says if that tooth doesn't come out you will be looking at crowns down the track because it is slowly stopping the blood flow to the front teeth.  Riiiiighht. Okkkkkkay. Alright ok take the damn thing out while your in there.  Well if I take that out your baby tooth is going to fall out and your going to have a great big hole in your smile.  So why don't you talk to the dentist about a strategy for fixing that.... Okay.... Get home and have a good look in the mirror and realise that that big whole is going to be really noticeable.  Right so the dentist's strategy goes something like this. 6 teeth to come out (wisdom teeth, rogue eye tooth and baby tooth).  Then you can have a titanium inplant put in with a fake tooth attached.  Right ok. Ummm is this going to send me broke?  Nah the teeth extraction will be on private health but the inplant will be $$$$ and so with the fake tooth.  Ok lets do it then.  Right well to do it you had better go and see an orthodontist about getting your teeth aligned so that the gap is the right size.  Okkkkkkayyyyy  (meanwhile the teeth are still in my mouth, we have had no action except a whole heap of appointments where everyone is telling me my smile needs fixing!) Right the orthodontist says no dramas we can put some braces on and move your teeth to make the gap big enough, plus while we are at it I will fix your overbite (my what, I have a what?) and I will straighten your teeth so that they are in the centre of your smile (ok so now my smile is wonky). So a lot of $$$$ later I have braces and all the accessories that go with it.  Electric tooth brush, springs (boy that was a fun time, imagine only being able to open your mouth a small amount and not move your jaw left and right), elastics (make talking so much fun, drooling all the time, and bedroom antics even more so), wax for the bits that stick out and into your mouth (tastes crap by the way so take it out before eating), little christmas tree cleaning things to get all the food out of the braces.  You know braces give a whole new meaning to the "is there something stuck in my tooth". I am half way along the path to the beautiful smile.  All the teeth are out and the braces have been on for a year and a bit.  Another appointment for the dentist to be scheduled for new moulds to start making the fake tooth and so the surgeon knows where to stick the implant.  And yes I will be getting my teeth whitened after all of this. what was the topic again, oh right... So the contents of my handbag is made up of emergency elastics, yummy wax,  tree thingo for cleaning, toothbrush and tooth paste and compact mirror in case of emergency. And my decision, yeap I'm vain I could have just had the teeth taken out and had a gap and used the money to go on a big overseas holiday with the family!