Monthly Archives: July 2015

Featured Fool

Featured Fool: Theresa Jones, DMD, PA

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Dr.  Theresa Jones (from  http://www.drtheresajones.com/dr–theresa-jones–d-m-d-/)

I never thought I’d be celebrating a dentist. I have a long, sordid history with dentists. From the hygienists I met who felt like they had to excavate in order to do a cleaning,  to the doctor who pinched my cheek to make shots more tolerable (and giving me whiplash in the process) I’ve never had good experiences with dentists.

In fact, the last dentist I had had left me so traumatized that I swore I’d never go to another dentist again, that all of my teeth could rot from my head before I’d step foot in another dental office again.  I’d had a crown that had come off, and I went in at their first available appointment to have it put back on again.

Apparently it had not been sealed, and I spent about three hours in the chair having bits o’ teeth being picked out of my jaw.

Bits o’ teeth.

I also have a complicated relationship with novacaine, something that, while evident before, became excruciatingly so as I had bits o’ teeth dug from my gums.

Novacaine and I go way back. We have history.

Novacaine is like Lucy with a football.  You’re numb. You’re numb. Sure you’re numb. Oh, wait, not really.

Once, it wore off during a root canal a good five minutes before he killed the nerve. I’m pretty sure he had to use that curvy pokey thing to extract me from the ceiling.

Another time, I simply could not get numb. He gave me two shots at a time, spaced out about 15 or so minutes between sets, until I had been given the maximum number. Four? Six? I can’t remember. I couldn’t get numb.  I didn’t even get a pre-numb tingle.

“Nancy,” he said, “we’re going to have to try this another time.”

So he sent me home, where I promptly fell asleep only to awake a couple of hours with an entirely numb face.

So yeah, I had a complicated relationship with novacaine and a very uncomplicated one with dentists. I hated them. After the bits-o’-teeth debacle, I swore I’d never go again.

But then I had an emergency, and someone at work told me about  Dr. Jones.

Continue reading Featured Fool: Theresa Jones, DMD, PA →

Journey, personal

Bringing the Calm and Sharing the Peace

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Today is a day of frustration. My body won’t do what I need it to do; my head won’t do what I need it to do.

It’s a day of frustration and unknowing and a good dose of fear.

My attention won’t do what I need it to do.  It’s like buckshot; I send it out with all the focus I can muster only to have it spread out, landing on shiny and unshiny alike.

I’m frustrated due to limitation, but that will pass. I’m frustrated due to seeing otherwise intelligent people lose all reason when it comes to pride.

Pride of what?

I’m frustrated with politicians and pundits acting like three year old children, unable to discuss straight-forwardly what they are for, instead, countering and insulting their opponents. I’m frustrated with people who mistake opponents for enemies and sound bites for reasoned argument.

I’m frustrated with the celebrated repetition of falsehood: you know, the bearing false witness thing. I’m frustrated with the fact that we have lost our ability to consider the source.

Not all sources are equal.

I’m frustrated that parroting what so-and-so said or such-and-such did has become an art form, and when the parrots are confronted with contradictory data, they view facts as an assault on their character.

I’m frustrated with people who have appropriated the term “family values”: where once it meant honesty, integrity, good citizenship, and compassion, it has been reduced to “one man + one woman.”

I’m frustrated with the blame-game, this activity of (insert word here)-shaming, with finger-pointing and the utter, utter lack of accountability.

I’m frustrated with people who won’t do what I need them to do–return a phone call, fill a prescription.

I’m frustrated with myself–and it’s so much easier to find frustration with other things. I can’t seem to get a single word down about a cat I miss more than I thought I would. A cat whose timing was so precise, our evolution so cosmically timed, that her going off into the woods, ostensibly to die, coincided perfectly with my first RA flare up.

I’m frustrated.

Two strange things happened this week, both involving a single word “peace.”

Continue reading Bringing the Calm and Sharing the Peace →

acceptance, Mindfulness, personal

Professor Tiger Lilly

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This is Tiger Lilly.

She came into my life when she appeared on a coworker’s carport; she was so tiny that  she fit, not just in my hands, but within the length of just the finger part of my hands. Not even as big as my palm.

I always feel the push-pull when I see a tiny animal: I really, really want to take it in; I really, really can’t take any more animals. At this point, I had three geriatric cats and my super-duper dog.

This was well before Jitterbug flew the coop.

I had three cats; I didn’t want to take another one in.

But she had a bobbed tail.

A couple of years before this, one of the supervisors at work had a pair of white bob-tails.  I’m pretty sure I “squeed” (which I try, at all costs, to avoid) when I learned this. “I want one,” I told her.  “I’m keeping them,” she told me.

So that was that.

But then I learned that she gave them to a kid with cancer.

I couldn’t be mad at her for giving them to a kid with cancer!  But I was. Just a little bit. I’m not proud of it.

I made a rule: I would not get another cat unless it was a bob-tail.

There’s something about them.  I like things that defy expectations and stereotypes. Things a little bit different.

So when a coworker came to me and said, “I heard you’ll take in cats,” I said, “No, no, no.”  I was firm. I was steadfast. I was absolute.

But then I saw it: this tiny, skinny thing covered in shit. I didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl. It was tiny and helpless and dirty, and I’d like to think I was well on my way to remaining a bastion of resolve. There was another lady who loved cats; I could find it a home with her.

But then I put it on my chest, shit and all, and it started purring immediately. I ran my fingers from its tiny head down its bony spine to discover it had a tiny stump of a tail.

And whatever backbone I had, whatever decisions I had made logically were out so far out the window, they had already flown to South America for the winter. My decisions were probably drinking fruity drinks with umbrellas in them.

Whatever resolve I had mustered disintegrated like teeth on methotrexate.

And so it came home with me, and it so teen-niney, I had to check out a YouTube to see how to determine the sex.

There’s a joke here about the NSA or the cops checking my computer history, but I’m not quite capable of reaching it.

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politics

Happy Independence Day

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Independence

 

I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.  (1) 

The word “traditional” is sticking in my craw lately, like a piece of stringy meat digging under the gum line, escaping traditional means of extrication, and requiring a DDS-licensed exorcist who comes armed with tiny, shiny traditional hooks, a traditional reclining chair and a traditional blinding light. Nevertheless, this pledge is our traditional pledge of allegiance, and often recited in honor of our traditional Fourth of July.

We’ve shortened “Independence Day” to “the Fourth,” as if it were just another day on the calendar, albeit one that creates a long weekend of fireworks, cooking out, and camaraderie, and we seem to have forgotten that this, “the Fourth,” is the day that the United States adopted the Declaration of Independence, standing apart from Great Britain and declaring itself no longer British property.

The thirteen colonies were young and brash, and so full of hope, and they created a nation that stood up and stood apart and stood firm.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.  (2)

Because of these self-evident truths, we formed our own government in order to have a government we could consent to.

A government instituted with the consent of the governed.

For better or worse, whatever our political affiliation may be, We The People have consented to our government.

Continue reading Happy Independence Day →