Steps to Follow In Case of Piercing Stupidity.

1)  Discover you are a special little snowflake that is allergic to surgical steel.  Seriously, you guys... no one is supposed to be allergic to this stuff.  Well, very few people anyhow.  Color me Lucky.

2)  Have friend help change out said steel jewelery for a lovely Bio-Plast piece. But wait!  Grrrr.... arghh!  It is a bit too long. 

3)  Wear long piece until it drives you crazy with the hooking on your teeth and getting caught on facecloths and clothing and stuff.

4)  On the advice of other experienced people, decide to simply cut down the plastic post to a shorter length.

5)  Not on anyone's advice, attempt this lovely end run maneuver just 90 minutes before you are scheduled to arrive at a year end staff dinner.

6)  Here ensues a drama of hilarious proportions involving a struggle between longish gel nails and an ittybitty post pin and a stud of now shortish proportions.  This involves a lot of dropping, resterilizing, muttering, assistance from the Princess and, ultimately, surrender.  The stupid thing just isn't going to work.

7) Call friend in panic.

8) Drive across town at late shopping hour to find one remaining store in order to purchase new jewlery.

9) Do this while holding the smallish stud in place against my lip with my tongue.  I looked amazing, I can assure you.  There was tongue strain and stress.  And maybe just a little drooling.

10) Purchase cheap-o jewelery at popular accessory store and run over to friends house.  Gel nails are not trusted to handle post pins any longer at this short hour... just 30 mins until dinner.

11)  Tongue can rest!  Stud in place.

12)  Stud hurts like a mutha.  It is cheap.  The inner edge is sharp and jagged plastic.

13) *insert impromptu holiday travel here* 4 hours later realize that this is no longer an issue of pain tolerance or toughing it out... this thing has shredded your inner lip and must be removed.

14) Scour small hometown on Christmas Eve for just ONE LITTLE PLACE that might have something that will work for you.

15) EUREKA!!  Bliss.  All is well with the world.

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I will just say that I'm thankful the inside of the mouth is one of the fastest healing parts of the body, cause it was brutal for a day or two.  And, on the plus side, I have now changed this jewelry out myself and didn't get squicky about it.  The past two times, my dear friend has assisted because, well... because I was afraid I couldn't do it on my own.  (yeah, yeah... keep your snickers to yourselves, peanut gallery)  But now, I know I'm good to go.

I also now have extra jewelry of the right length and size in case something ever happens to the ones I'm wearing.  And I'm pretty solid on the fact that I won't be trying to change something just minutes before an event. 

Lesson learned.