Three years ago when I first moved down to Denver, I went looking for a dentist as I hadn’t been in some time.  I looked up the providers my dental insurance covered and picked a female dentist that practiced close to my home.  I went to this dentist who told me I needed 3 new crowns, and 7 fillings.  She said it would take around 6 hours to do all that work and said she could offer me sedation for the long time it would take.  I was upset when I came home from that appointment, but I was also something else: skeptical. 

One of the crowns this dentist said I needed was a replacement for a crown I’d had put in two years prior,  so I looked it up (which I do with EVERYTHING).  Dr. Google said crowns usually last at least 10 years, and can last a lifetime.  This got me thinking: how do I know anything she told me is actually the case?  She could make up whatever she wanted about my teeth and just assume I would trust it since she was the trained dentist and I wasn’t.  With me of course, this is dead, dead wrong–I require proof for everything.  So I made an appointment with my old, trusted dentist in Fort Collins and drove up there to have him take a look at my teeth.  Guess what he said?  I didn’t need any work.  None. At. All.

This turn of events deeply shocked and depressed me.  What was more concerning however, was the fact that this dishonest dentist had her wall lined with pictures of the Medicaid kids she treated: how many of those kids got dental work they didn’t need so she could make a buck?  I reported her to the American Dental Association, but I’m sure they didn’t do anything about it.  I haven’t been back to a dentist since.

Recently a new dentist opened in my neighborhood.  Their office is a 5 minute walk from my home.  Multiple neighbors have gone and all have spoken highly of this dentist, so I decided to make an appointment.  When I was on the phone with the receptionist, I gave her my name and we were working out the details of the appointment when she said “Oh, hold on a second, he wants to speak to you”.  The dentist then got on the line. “Hi, I’m Dr. “X” and I recognized your name from [my neighborhood’s] internet board, I just wanted to introduce myself”.  I thought this was really nice and thoughtful, but I also realized something else: this person knows I know everyone in my neighborhood.  They also therefore know if they try to pull any crap like the last dentist I visited that I will tell everyone in my neighborhood and they will lose significant business.  I currently don’t have dental insurance so will be paying cash, but the social capital in my neighborhood is covering something much more important to me: piece of mind.

The other night at dinner my husband and I had an extended conversation about the most life changing inventions (or discoveries) of the past 100 years.  This is a partial list

1. Electricity

2. Automobiles

3. Airplanes

4. The Internet (Thanks Al!)

5. Antibiotics

6. Immunizations

7. Nitrogen fertilizer

8. Birth Control Pills (my suggestion of course)

9. Deodorant (still hasn’t caught on in Europe in some spots)

10. Refrigeration

11. Television

12. The A Bomb

What we thought was most striking about this list is that every one of them save one (nitrogen fertilizer which came from Germany) was invented in the United States. This prompted a discussion as to why in which we determined that  capitalist systems provide incentives for innovation (of course, so does war, which we are also good at).  

I have an odd sense of humor.  There are two people in the world that share it completely.  One is my brother (apparently sense of humor is genetic), and one is my husband. How do I know we have an odd sense of humor?  Because when we go to movies there will invariably be certain parts when we are the only people in the theater laughing.  We all share a very, very dark sense of humor.  A good example of this would be the remake of “War of the Worlds” with Tom Cruise. 

Tom and his kids in the movie have just escaped a horrific Martian attack and they have found a small town on the edge of a river (or lake, can’t tell) where a bunch of people have gathered.  They are bedraggled and spent.  Then they hear the sound of normalcy….a train whistle.  Ah, at last something is normal right?  The gates come down and the train rushes past.  It’s on fire.  The three of use broke out in loud laughter to the horrified stares of other movie patrons.  Here’s my top 15 list of funny movies/shows

1. Tie. The Simpsons.  Selma’s Choice.  The episode where the name for this website came from. And Raising Arizona “Ed’s father set us up in a home in suburban Tempe”–it’s in the middle of nowhere (I’m from Arizona).

2. MXC.  Most Extreme Elimination Challenge.  Pure Brilliance.

3. Futurama.  Space Pilot 3000. The brick.

4. Robot Chicken. The Star Wars Special.  

5. South Park. The save the rainforest episode.

6. Evil Dead 2. When Ash sits on the chair and it breaks underneath him

7. Heavy Metal. “She had beautiful eyes”.

8. A Fish Called Wanda.  Kevin Klein. “Dissapointed!”.

9. Blazing Saddles. “Let’s play chess”.

10. Young Frankenstein. “Get me the hell outta here!”.

11. Ace Ventura. “Your gun is digging into my hip….oh god….”

12. Monty Python. “Would you shut that bloody dancing up!” and “It’s just a harmless little bunny rabbit“.

13. Chasing Amy. “Black RAGE!!!”.

14. Airplane. “You ever seen a grown man naked?”.

15.

A neighbor of mine travels frequently for work.  He goes to many exotic places, and everywhere he goes, he tries to buy a vase and bring it home for their collection.  A few months ago he went to Taiwan.  He bought a large, bulky vase there, and had to carry it through several different airports during his 10 plus hour plane trip back.  When he got home, he was getting ready to place it on their shelf and turned it over.  It said “Made in Taiwan”, which prompted him to think “I carried this thing on all my planes and through the airport and I could have probably bought the fucker in Pottery Barn”. 

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My husband and I were eating dinner, celebrating our 10 year wedding anniversary in a very, very nice restaurant in Las Vegas when the following conversation took place.

Me: “What are you thinking about?”

Husband: “There were two women sitting at that table over there and one of them was drinking a Corona, they got up to leave and I was wondering if they were lesbians”.

Me: “I was thinking about string theory“.

Both: Laughing much too loud for the super fancy place we were in

Dear Lawn,

What the hell do you want from me?  I aerate, fertilize, weed, mow, trim, use $60 of water on you a month and you still look like crap.  You only exist because of my HOA and if I find a way around that, you are dead I’m telling you.  I sweat and worry and you give me a lackluster performance which is embarrassing. I have a master’s in ecology–specifically grass ecology, don’t you know that? And I’m a gardener to boot, you are damaging my street cred in the ‘hood.   You take more work than all my perennials combined and you are only about 1,000 square feet.   I specifically chose a house in a new urbanist neighborhood with small lawns because I don’t need the stress of trying to maintain a species that needs three times the amount of precipitation we get here in the semi-arid grassland of the Front Range.  So you know what?  I give up.  You can look bad if you want, I’ll spend the time I save not working on you on my pretty flowers such as indian blanket that know how to treat a person who loves them. Screw you, lawn.

My husband has always expressed his fondness for plays.  I’ve never liked them, especially when singing is involved.  I’ve only ever liked one play “Kiss of the Spider Woman”–and that one only because it has a scene where two men kiss, causing my husband’s 85 year old grandmother to loudly proclaim “Oh My..” in a dead silent theater.  We all still laugh about it. 

One play my husband’s mentioned over the years he enjoyed was “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum”, so when I heard they were coming to Denver, I got two tickets for his Father’s Day gift.  I had no idea what it was about, other than the vauge notion that it was a comedy set in ancient Rome.

So we get to the theater, and having bought tickets online without looking at the map of the place, we are brought to our seats.  They ask us to go to the front…and to keep going.  We had two seats literally right next to the stage–you could touch it.  My husband called them “crotch seats” which was vulgar but apt, as I would soon find out.  Right before the show started my husband leaned over and said “I should warn you, it’s a little sexist”.  To give you an idea of what he’s referring to, here is a list of the characters:

A lecherous old man

A lecherous young man

A lecherous middle aged man

A vapid virgin sex slave who can’t tell the difference between 3 and 5

A fat ball busting wife

5 other prostitutes dressed as 1. a belly dancer 2. a large cat 3. Twin 60s sex bombs from a bond film, 4. An Amazon

A Pimp

After the scene where the prostitutes come out high kicking I understood what he meant by his name for our seats…..and I asked him what his definition of “little” is.

My neighbor related this hilarious story last night:

Her husband had to get a physical and he was looking over the doctor’s orders.  He noticed “digital rectal exam” on the list and was impressed, and commented something to the effect of:

“Look honey, they now do these digitally, it must be a scan or something, Thank God for technology!”  His wife–who is in healthcare–gave him a look, put her index finger in a hook, and wiggling it said,

“It’s ‘digital’ not ‘digital’”

When they were both relating this story his defense was “Well, I’m a technologically savvy guy right, I was thinking digital, you know 1001001!”.

The next neighborhood over heard us all laughing

My best friend is getting married to a wonderful guy, which is great and we’re all really excited.  This however, means I will be the “matron of honor”.  I loathe with a passion the word “matron”.  Words have power because their connotations say something about their underlying cultural assumptions.  My title of my position in the wedding changes based upon if I’m married or not.  “Maid of honor” if I’m not married, and “Matron of honor” if I am.  Now, the title of “Best Man” doesn’t change based on the participant’s marital status, why does mine?  Why does it matter if I’m married or not?  I was discussing this with my husband and he asked, “What do they call you if you’re divorced?” which is a good question so I looked it up.  Apparently if you’ve ever been married you are still a “matron”.  My guess as to the etiology behind this arrangement is the historic cultural (and religious) obsession with women’s virginity.  I guess everyone needs to know if I’ve gotten some in my life (putting aside the idea of course, that you don’t need to be married to do the deed, presumably had I done so I would have been stoned to death).  My new suggestion for this position: “Best Woman”. 

There are so many “traditions” in a wedding ceremony that have misogynistic roots in the cult of virginity (hello, white dress!, the “giving away” i.e. “this is property I pass to another man”).  At my wedding both my parents walked with me down the aisle, and you can bet I made sure the words “honor and obey” weren’t included.

My 5 year old: “Mommy, I like plants”

Me: “Of course you do honey, it’s in your genes” (my grandfather, my mother, me-all gardeners and I have a master’s in plant ecology)

My 5 year old: “I’m not wearing jeans, I’m wearing pants!”

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My Sister-in-law was explaining why she didn’t sleep well the night before…

“Mom and stepfather were up at 4 a.m. and at 5 a.m. they were yelling at each other”

My mother-in-law: “Yeah, we were discussing politics and religion–the yelling subjects”.

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My neighbor–a stay at home mom–relating her psycho blow-up at her husband:

“I’m sick of hearing about all the great damn lunches and stuff at work you get to do!! All I have to think about is where to place the office furniture and how not to get pooped on!”

My best friend of 23 years looks like a model–5′ 9″, 130lbs, red hair, beautiful.  I do not.  This however, has honestly, never, never bothered me, especially when we would go out to bars and one guy after another would come up to her and say something [invariably] stupid.  The woman can eat.  I mean eat. She just has a fast metabolism or something, because she’s always been very slim regardless.   Sitting at lunch with my husband’s family–who knows my best friend well because when we were 16 she dated, and went to prom with, my husband (a story for another time), I was telling them I watched my best friend consume:

1. 1 Arby’s giant roast beef sandwich

2. 1 Arby’s regular roast beef sandwich

3. 1 LARGE order of curly fries

in about 10 minutes.  My sister-in-law then deadpanned:

“Yeah, we call women like that bitches”.