Hooray for Modern Medicine!

I know it gets a bad rap now and again (and sometimes for very good reason), but in this case I'm coming out in support of it.

I've been on Lexapro for six weeks now and I can honestly say that I feel like I got "me" back.

Back when I was in college (and probably could have used them), the people who were known to be on antidepressants were whispered about. Thinking back now, I should have applauded them for dealing with their issues instead of drinking and drugging them away like I and so many of my friends did.

In the last month and a half, I have learned a lot about myself. That sounds so corny. That's alright. I'm a little bit corny sometimes.

It amazes me more every day that I can deal so much better with everyday life bullshit. Stuff that would have sent me into a rage a while back is now easily put into perspective and dealt with accordingly.

Without going into too much mushy detail, I will say that I am lucky to have the husband that I do. I didn't think so for a long time. I was wrong. And I feel very lucky to have him as a partner raising our kids. It's a tough job without support of some kind, and I happen to have hit the jackpot.

Mina is such a passionate kid (read: LOUD and very sensitive) and starting kindergarten this year has set off her inner diva in a big bad way. It's entertaining yet completely exhausting at the same time.

Audrey is in the midst of her "Terrible Threes". Whoever coined the phrase "Terrible Twos" needs a reality check. Three is soooo much more frustrating than two. Two is paradise compared with the intesity of three.

They fight a lot, and where before the screeching would send me into a rage, I can now calm myself and see it for what it is: a phase.

I could cry when I think about how detached I started to get from my beautiful girls. I felt like the worst mother in the world some days.

The bickering still grates on my nerves(does anyone like hearing that?), but at least now I don't dream of running away from home after they go to bed.

A very wise woman on a parenting message board I frequent had such a great response to a woman who felt bad about relying on antidepressants to make her happy.(Kate, if you're reading I hope you don't mind me sharing this).

To paraphrase...It's not the pills making you happy. The pills are just a catalyst to allow you to experience the happiness that is already there, but your brain won't allow you feel it.

I know this doesn't apply to everyone, but it resonated so strongly with me. I spent years feeling this anger at everyone around me, but unable to explain the reason for it. I got stuck in it and couldn't turn it around until I had a little help from the medicine.

So now I feel like I've gotten a new start. There are often times during the day that I feel this sense of complete peace and calm. The best part is that now instead of worrying that something bad will come along and ruin it, I actually let go and enjoy it.

Seven things you don't know about me (a few a which you might wish you didn't)

I hate having my face touched--by anyone. It creeps me out to no end. A back-o-the neck grab while I'm making out is fine and dandy. Just don't touch my face. I don't even like it when my children touch my face (mostly because I know where their hands have been).

I love makeup. I love what it can do (and have learned over the years what it can't do). I have a "set" way I like to wear my makeup, but I change it up depending on my outfit and/or my mood. I'm sure no one notices, but I do and mine is the only opinion that matters in this arena.

I can't go underwater without plugging my nose. I have an unwavering aversion to even trying it. My mother told me that when I was an infant I could swim like a fish. I have no idea where or when I lost that ability.

I love being alone. I don't get a whole lot of time by myself, but when I do I cherish it. An afternoon alone without an agenda is the best gift anyone could give me.

I try to avoid crying in front of people at all costs. I don't know why. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I've shed tears (during my adult life) in front of anyone else. I'm not a robot. I do cry. I just don't like company when I do.

The first time I had sex was so awful and disappointing that I didn't do it again for another three years. Then I made up for lost time.

When I was pregnant with my first child, I read somewhere that some women poop while pushing the baby out. I told Jim about it and we laughed and laughed. He said that if I pooped, he was going to start dancing around the room singing, "YOU POOPED! YOU POOPED!". We laughed some more.

I did end up pooping on the delivery table. He did not sing.

Regret meme

Katie tagged me with this one: You’ve just learned that tomorrow you will die at sunrise. Tell me the five things you regret and the five things you don’t.

The Don't Regrets:

1. I don't regret starting a blog. Though I was hesitant at first (who the fuck am I that anyone else wants to read about my take on stuff?), I'm glad I hopped on the bandwagon. It wasn't until I re-found Grant Miller digging around on the internets that I seriously considered it (read: you can blame him for this amalgam of whoosit).

I've since (both virtually and actually) met some new friends through it, and not one restraining order has since been filed. In two days, it will have been one full year since I started Better Living Through Bacon. And it's been delicious.

2. I don't regret having children. In my younger years, I honestly didn't think I would. I didn't think I had it in me to take on the responsibility and set aside my own selfish tendencies.

It's not perfect, and sometimes (all the time) I question my capabilities. Having children has tested my sanity in ways I never thought possible. If they weren't so damn cute, I'd have sold them to the gypsies years ago.

With the difficult however comes the amazing. The adoration that oozes from them all over my husband and I is payment enough for every sleepless night, every splatter of poop, and every puddle of puke (of course, they aren't teenagers yet).

Knowing that I have two mini-humans counting on me to keep my shit together gives me reason enough to try and be a better person.

3. I don't regret quitting my job as a hairstylist almost three years ago. I miss doing hair sometimes, but I don't miss hauling my kids around to get to work for a paycheck that was barely covering expenses incurred from working. How sad that it sometimes cost me money to go to work?

4. I don't regret being slutty in college. I would never buy a pair of shoes without trying them on first no matter how gorgeous or cheap they were. Some people learn by seeing or being shown. I learned by trying every pair of shoes in the shoe store.

Sure, I got my heart broken more times than I'd like to admit and maybe I should have listened to that inner voice a little more often. In the long run however, I can't say that I regret any of it (OK, maybe a couple of them).

5. I don't regret going on crazy pills. This is a recent development here in the land of salty meat, and not something I ever planned on talking about here, but there you have it.

I spent way too long ignoring the unignorable. I had myself convinced that everyone felt the way I did. They just didn't talk about it. I was wrong.

My only regret is that I didn't deal with it sooner.

The Do Regrets:

1. I regret never living alone. I went from living at home to the dorms to having roommates to getting married. I never got to enjoy the kind of freedom one has knowing a space is all one's own. I missed my opportunity to do it when I could, and until my kids move out and my husband decides to get a trophy wife, I'm SOL.

2. I regret not finishing college. I could always go back, but time and money don't grow on trees. It's always in the back of my mind though. Someday.

3. I regret not cutting poisonous people out of my life sooner. Whether it was a bitchy friend who never had anything positive to say or a loser boyfriend who couldn't tell the truth to save his life, I regret not having the balls to tell them where to go. I always seemed to fall into that trap of not wanting to hurt anyone's feelings even when the situation made me miserable. I know better now.

4. I regret not standing up for myself when I should have. I spent way too much time in my young adulthood not asking for what I wanted and/or needed. As hard and tough as I thought I was back then, that girl in her twenties would cower in front of the woman I have turned out to be.

5. I regret not owning my actions earlier in life. I also spent the better part of my 20's spending too much time blaming others for my own mistakes. With age has come the realization that I am responsible for my own choices and the fallout--and that that's not a bad thing. This to me is what led me to come to grips with my Atheism (after a whole life of being raised in a religious household).

I hope to look back on this post after a long while and not have anything to add to the bottom part of the list, but without regret what would spur us on to try new things and learn from our inevitable mistakes?

Un-regretfully yours,

The Bacon Lady

Adventures in Womanhood

I was going to write about my trip to the ER on Sunday night.

I was going to tell you all about how my uterus decided to hate me and bring forth a tsunami of wrongness.

I was going to tell you about my amazingly kick ass friend, Rachel, who drove me to the ER and sat with me watching Snapped, waiting several hours for the nurses and doctor to come in and check me out.

I was even going to tell you about the twelve year old-looking "man" who walked in and scared me half to death by making me think he was my doctor (he was the insurance guy--WHEW!).

But I won't. No one wants to read about that.

Instead, I'll share the video below (stolen from Project Rungay). If you watch Project Runway, you'll appreciate it. If not...well, it's fantastic anyway.

It's Tattoos, Ya'll!

Last night Audrey got out of the tub and proceeded to return her entire dinner into a towel I heroically swooped under her mouth just in the nick of time. I kept trying to scoot her closer to the toilet as wave after wave of chicken/broccoli/french fry goop came pouring out of her gullet, but she kept backing up.

It was kind of funny.

"BLORT!"

"Come this way honey..."

"BLORT!"

"No, not towards the door...this way. OK, in the towel then."

A couple hours after I got them in bed, Mina was up and ready for her barf-o-rama.

This morning, Mina was fine. Audrey seemed fine, but after eating and then un-eating breakfast was in for a day of couch surfing and little else.

She even puked up the juice she drank, and won't go near the Pedialyte (I can't blame her. It looks like urine on the morning after a loooong night of drinking).

The only good thing about your kid being sick is the primo snuggle time.

The poor thing can't keep any food down so she is not in her usual tornado mode. Normally she isn't very snuggly, but today we got to spend some sweet moments stretched out on the couch, catching up on Blue and Franklin, just cuddled up warm and cozy.

I'm letting her sleep on the couch not so much as a "special treat" but to make sure I catch any further throwing up incidents. We just got the floors done and my mother in law got us this rockin new rug that I would like to try and keep puke(and dog poop) free for as long as possible. I don't ask for much.

If you've read this far without feeling queasy you probably have kids of your own who's puke you've caught, shit you've wiped and snot you've sopped up. If you don't have kids, then my apologies and I hope you weren't eating.

I really thought it was something they ate, but Audrey feels like she has a fever now so I think she's legitimately sick. My supergreatkickass friend Rachel was planning on have my girls over for a slumber party on Saturday, but I think Audrey is going to have to sit this one out. We'll see.

My husbitch and I had big plans to go down to St. Louis for the Old School Tattoo Expo. I told him that if Audrey got sick again, he could stay home and I was still going. I was kind of half-joking, but he gave me the "Fine. Whatever" look.

I think I might still go. Is that too Britney of me?

I Stand Corrected

It has become glaringly apparent that I am a terrible judge of character.

A few tidbits of information have come to my attention that I can't ignore. I am heartbroken that I was indeed wrong about the person I trusted my stupid, sometimes annoying, but enormously loved dogs with.

Damn it.

In other news...

I saw an office in the medical park next to my bank titled "Successful Aging Center".

Um, isn't not being dead considered successful aging? What the hell do they do over there--give you a plaque on your birthday?

"Hooray, you've managed not to die! Here is a prize for your effort. Carry on."

Don't rich old people (the only people I can imagine with a use for such a place) have anything better to do? If they're that intent on handing over their cash, I'd be happy to help them out.

Italy by way of Pooptown and Shitsburg

I spent the better (or rather worse) part of an hour on the phone to Delta airlines this afternoon.

My online itinerary stated I was still "waitlisted" a few days after I spoke with a skymiles representative, so I needed to find out what was up with that.

Also, when I told my brother how pleased I was to get a nonstop flight in business class, he got pissy. It seems he wasn't planning on giving up that many of his frequent flier miles and ordered me to downgrade to coach. Apparently he needs some left in his account for when he has to fly 22 hours straight for work, and needs that upgrade in order to be somewhat presentable to the client he is meeting with. Bastard!

So I had to change my whole plan. I'm leaving a week later than originally planned and now I have two stops. One is in Detroit and the other in Newark. It's like some sort of cosmic joke. No offense to anyone reading who might live there, but these are not two locations I have ever dreamed of visiting, even if only in the airport.

But hey, at least I still get to go.

I'm not looking forward to sitting in a cramped seat for hours upon hours, but what I'm really not looking forward to is not getting to smoke for pretty much a whole day. Unless one of the airports I have to stop in has one of those crazy smokeboxes (ever see them in the St. Louis airport? It's like a zoo exhibit.), I'm SOL in the nicotine fix department.

And don't tell me to quit before I go. Don't remind me how gross it is and bad for me. It's the last vice I have, and I'm not ready to let it go quite yet.

When I finally land in Milan, I should resemble a crazed and very tired junkie on a binge.

I should really get a picture of that hotness.

Can't I just take a pill?

I dragged my ass to the gym today. I've been slacking off because of the move, vacation and just general summer mayhem, so it was time.

I decided to take it easy and not take the class I would have normally taken on a Wednesday. It involves a lot of cardio, and I wasn't really in the mood to have a heart attack today.

I was making my way around the weight machine curcuit when one of the gym's personal trainer guys walks right up to me and starts saying something. I couldn't hear him at first because I had Ira Glass blaring in my ears, and frankly I was a little confused.

I don't talk to anyone around me at the gym unless we are in a class together. I feel weird even making eye contact with anyone while I am on the weight machines, and here's this guy I don't even know striking up a conversation with me.

"Would you like me to show you a better way to work out your chest?"

"Excuse me?" A thousand snarky and/or pervy retorts immediately flooded my brain.

I think the gym is trying to drum up business for their personal trainers so they are sending them out on what essentially boils down to "cold calls".

I can just hear their morning meetings:

"Well guys and gals, no one wants to pay the ridiculous personal trainer fees we have so why don't you get out there and try to get some of our memebers hooked by giving out a few freebies. Try the "mom types" first. They're desperate for attention."

I figured it wouldn't kill me to see what this personal training thing was all about even if I'll never have the extra funds to actually hire one.

He was nice and seemed to know what he was talking about. He was sort of cute in a clean cut way, but...he was wearing cologne. Why cover up the very thing you are trying to be while at the gym?

Sweaty can be sexy, though for the record, there are different kinds of sweaty. Sweaty from exercise, mowing the lawn, sex or fixing shit is hot. Sweaty from the anticipation of getting to the next level of a video is not.

So this cologne-wearing pretty boy is showing me some free weight stuff and some stability ball exercises I can do and offers me a free session. Free is good.

Then he asks for my name and phone number, "I'll call you tonight if I have any kind of scheduling conflict."

Part of me hopes that he does have some sort of conflict. It feels really strange to have someone standing there, watching me do exercises and now I have to do it for a whole hour.

What have I gotten myself into?

The Haps

Well, we're almost through the first full week at the new house and all's well.

I had my surgery yesterday and am feeling way better than expected. A little twinge here and there, but nothing a little Tylenol with codeine can't handle. It was actually nice to have a little forced down time.

My realtor sent us a thank you gift, and it arrived on Thursday. I don't know how to use it but when I figure it out, I figure she's saved me about 4million dollars (plus tip) a year at Starbucks. Rockin'.

Now that we're moved in and the surgery's all done, it's time to start gearing up for the rest of the crazy summer.

This weekend I'll be in Arizona for my cousin's wedding. Most of my Dad's side of the family will be there, and they will be meeting my girls for the first time. Seeing as most of them have lived in New York or thereabouts for their whole lives, I won't be the least bit surprised if my long gone east coast accent rears its head by the end of the weekend.

After that it will be an endless parade of kiddy birthday parties, a Fourth of July party here, then maybe a weekend trip to St. Louis. Somewhere in there I'm planning a garage sale to get rid of all the useless shit I discovered hidden in the back of several cabinets at the old house.

I feel like this summer is going to fly by and it's barely started.

The only thing not going by quickly is the dogs' adjustment to a new place. Boy dog has shit in the house on a number of occasions. He is very lucky I love his dopey self, or I might have put someone else's address and phone number on the new ID tags.

Move in day approacheth and other weird shit

We close on our new house today!

I called the movers yesterday to set up a time to get the big stuff over there Monday, the 18th. I bought my new washer and dryer on Saturday--decided to go with the LG front loaders--on sale plus 0% financing did the trick. I bought our dining room table (well, really "eat in kitchen" table) and chairs on Sunday. Those were half off at Target--hooray!

All the utilities have been called, the cable/broadband guy is coming on Friday as are the storage unit people. I have a busy weekend of unloading ahead of me. In a way I don't even want to stupid units back (save for some photos and books). It's pretty interesting how much stuff we have done without since January. I plan on having a garage sale before the end of the summer.

And then there is all the painting I am facing. I actually enjoy painting. I didn't when we first bought our current house, and it showed. For some reason, in the last 6 1/2 years my painting skills improved and the fresh coat we through on there over the New Year's Eve holiday looks 100% better than the first.

I have to get the living room and all three bedrooms painted before the movers bring all of our shit over there. The kitchen, bathroom and basement can wait for another day.

We're also having the front of the house landscaped. There is a grading issue right up next to the house, and needs to be taken care of. Luckily we have a friend who happens to be a landscaper and will do it for a lot less than having to hire a bunch of strangers.

Oh, and I have to have some minor surgery on the 22nd.

I won't go into minute detail about what is up, but let's just say there are some unwelcome guests hanging out in my uterus and they are aren't things that will eventually be asking me to fill their sippy cups 87,000 times a day.

It's not the most convenient time for this to go down, but what can ya' do? The best part of all of this is I get to channel Jerri Blank every time I tell someone about it, "I have to go get my uterus scraped." Classic.

Don't worry. I'll be sure to blog all about it. Aren't you excited?

"Hooked on Ejaculation"

BIG LOVE to Katie Schwartz for sending me this little gem. Remember Ladies, if he won't buy you some $2.99 shrimp from Long John Silver, he ain't no real man.

Long, but more than worth it.

Don't be a slave to the penis power

One time I hated my neighbors

Last week at the grocery store, I ran into our old neighbors. Unfortunately, it wasn't with the car.

When we bought our current house, these people had only lived in it for 4 months. Through their realtor we found out that the husband (Chuck) had had some heart problems and his doctor told him, "No stairs, no mowing the lawn, and no fast food." So they had to move to avoid two out of the three.

We took full advantage of this information by only paying two thousand dollars more than they paid for it. I know they took a bath on the transaction. I felt a little guilty for practically ripping off an sick old dude and his wife, but all's fair in love and real estate.

About six months after we moved into our house, we got new neighbors next door. I was outside, playing with the dogs when I saw an older couple waving at me from across the fence.

"Remember us?!" a witchy haired crone hollered, a sack of greasy fast food in her claw.

"Uh...."

"It's us! Chuck and Cindy! We sold you your house!"

I was instantly bewildered. The house next door, except for less square footage and one less bathroom, is an exact replica of our house. The not-so-secret information their former real estate agent played in my head. Why would they buy a two story house with a big yard? Why, when they had almost the same thing less than a year ago? Why?

I was wasting time wondering about these issues when there would be a whole host of others to contemplate in the years to come.

For instance, why would they rip out a perfectly good fence, tear up the grass next to the driveway, then fill it in with gravel?

Answer: So they could pull their truck up that extra 10 feet to the back door. I think they were afraid the Wendys, McDonalds, or Hardees they ate almost every day would get cold if they had to carry it too far. Also, I don't think they wanted to get any inadvertent exercise.

Answer #2: So their beautiful golden-white Labrador wouldn't have the joy of romping in a big back yard, but would instead be locked up in an 8x8 pen. Wouldn't want the dog to get any inadvertent exercise either.

I didn't get why they even had a dog. I never saw him play with it. Cindy was afraid of it, so he never never got to come in the house. I know not all dogs are spoiled rotten like ours are, but they never brought him inside. They had a perfectly good garage that they didn't even use. They could have put the dog in there when the weather was bad (ie; the ice storm that poor dog endured one winter). Sure, he had a makeshift plywood doghouse inside his pen (giving him even less room to exercise), but it killed me to see him laying on top of it everyday lonely and bored.

So bored in fact, that he barked incessantly. At first, Chuck would yell out the kitchen window to tell his dog to shut up. Over time, that apparently took too much effort as he eventually hooked up an intercom system, pointing the speaker out the upstairs bedroom window to yell at the dog.

Oh, and the dog wasn't neutered either. When I asked Chuck one day if he was planning on showing the dog or breeding him, Chuck looked confused. I pointed out that his dog wasn't "fixed" and I wondered if he was a show dog or was he planning on starting a puppy mill. He got pretty defensive. I started anonymously calling Animal Control about the barking.

I tried to be somewhat friendly with them, but when he casually referred to the renters across the street as "Ni***r Whores", I washed my hands of them. The bumper sticker on his truck of Calvin pissing on the word "France" pretty much sealed the deal of my immense hostility toward them.

I was so damn happy when they finally sold their house and moved. They said they were moving to Las Vegas, and all I could picture was that sweet dog dying of heat stroke in their backyard.

But they didn't move to Vegas. They moved across town. And now I'll probably run into them all the time. Last week "broke the seal" so to speak.

I was nice to them. No sense in being a bitch just for the hell of it. I save that for my husband.

They were pretty excited to see me and the girls.

"Chuuuu-uuuck! Come see your kids!"

Excuse me? "Your" kids?! I know she was trying to friendly and her statement was sort of a "Oh we think you guys are great/your kids are great/we care about you" kind of thing, but it made my blood boil. I didn't like her familiar tone.

"I don't like you!" I wanted to scream across the grocery store, "I think you're a couple of racist, lazy animal abusing fucks! I hate you I hate you I hate you!"

But I didn't. I mentioned that we were in the process of selling the house, and Cindy nodded, "I know! I saw the sign!" (if it's not apparent by now, Cindy yells everything).

Then, without thinking I asked the million dollar question, "Wanna' buy it?"

We shared an uncomfortable chuckle, after which Chuck rolled away in the handicap grocery cart contraption, basket filled with pizza rolls, sausage and whole milk.

I feel like ass

Something unholy has taken up residence in the inner workings of my chest.

My 2 1/2 year old had bronchitis last week, so I'm pretty sure this is some version of that. I'd really love to lay down and go into a coma for a few hours...or days.

I am starting to lose my voice as well which is kind of a blessing in disguise. I tend to yell too much, as in "YOU GIRLS REALLY NEED TO STOP YELLING AT EACH OTHER!". Parental double standards run rampant 'round these parts.

Oh, and it's raining buckets right now. We spent part of the morning sitting on the front porch, coloring and, in the case of the little one, ringing the doorbell 50,000 times, working the dogs into a crazed frenzy. It was quite entertaining.

I'd hate to leave this post as boring and depressing as it currently is, so here's a little something to lighten the mood.

Maybe he'll fight Godzilla with it

Battle of the tumors

Not to be outdone by Democratic Presidential hopeful John Edwards, Tony Snow has announced that his cancer has returned.

Next up, Bob Hargis will hold a press conference to discuss his cat's feline leukemia.


Paul Simon is rolling in his grave.

Suddenly I feel like a genius

On my way home from the video store today I saw a woman pumping gas.

She was wearing a pot leaf t-shirt.

And smoking.

And she was pregnant.

One time, I almost killed a dentist.

One morning about three years ago, I woke up with a toothache.

Being one of the millions of Americans without dental coverage, I tried to ignore it and eat ibuprofen to mask my discomfort.

A few days later, I was dizzy with pain and decided enough was enough. I called around to try and find a dentist to fix me.

It was a scary venture for me. I'm embarrassed to say that before this, I hadn't been to the dentist for close to twelve years. On my list of favorite things to do, having someone dig around in my mouth doesn't break the Top 50.

There are a lot of dentists in this town, but only one who could get me in that day. A little research would have clued me in to the fact that I was making a BIG mistake by settling for this guy. But I was desperate and in an ever-growing amount of pain. I was afraid something was really wrong and I didn't want to end up toothless. Not a good look.

I arrived at my appointment, filled out the required paperwork and waited in the closet-sized reception area. The staff was cordial and professional, complete with Stepford Wife smiles and demeanor. They called me back and took me to my chair.

The minute the dentist sat next to me, I didn't like him. The tan, the foo-foo highlighted coif, and his creepy girl hands gave me a shiver. I chalked it up to my general disdain for dentists and moved on.

His evaluation was that, since I grind my teeth in my sleep, I needed his patented end all-be all cure. This device, he told me, would most certainly help my toothache and stop me from grinding my teeth--GUARANTEED (or my money back). Oh, and it was going to cost me a very large amount of money. So much in fact that I'm not even going to say what it was.

I should have laughed in his Ken Doll face. I should have told him to shove his patented device up his asshole device. I should have, but I didn't. I was hurting, people. I was desperate. I was stupid.

This "cure" was an exercise in humiliation. It was supposed to fit over my top two front teeth to keep me from grinding my teeth at night--but I was supposed to wear it all day, every day.

I know I can be a little vain, but this thing went beyond vanity. It was straight up ridiculous. Not only did it impede my speech, but it looked like a prop from a beaver costume.

He wanted me to come back in two weeks to "re-evaluate". After paying the exorbitant bill, I headed out to car and promptly put my new, very expensive plastic toy in my purse where it would stay until I threw it away a few weeks later. I felt like a sucker. I let this guy talk bullshit to me and sell me his snake oil. I could have gotten one of those crazy plate things at a fucking Walgreens to stop me from grinding my teeth (if that was even the problem to begin with).

When I later went to another dentist (who I love) and told him this story, he told me what this other dentist did was WAY over the top--that I was "over treated". It seems that Dr. Fuckface has a reputation for pushing his fancy device on a lot of patients. It's a status thing I guess. The more he sells, the better he looks. Maybe he's trying to be famous for making people look like assholes while bilking them out of tons of money. I think he'd be better off as a televangelist. He already looks like one.

In the two weeks between my initial appointment and the follow up, I learned a lot more about this guy and none of it was good.

*He once ran for state representative--as a Republican.
*He is a convicted wife-beater.
*I don't know the whole story on this one, but he had his prescription writing privileges revoked a few years back.

On the day of the next appointment, I was ready to rumble. I tend to get weepy when I am angry, but I was determined to keep my cool and give this asshole the 'what for'.

When he asked me how things were going, I told him that I wasn't happy with my treatment, and I didn't think the device was the right decision. The fact is, my tooth got better the day after I saw him (without wearing the bucktooth dohickey). I had a stressful week that week. Sure, I grind my teeth when I'm having a bad week. I didn't need a dentist. I needed a glass of wine and a good night's sleep.

Nothing bothers me more in life than feeling like I've been taken advantage of, and that's how I felt. I concluded by telling him that I wanted my money back per the guarantee clearly printed on the info sheet. I knew it was probably a stretch that he would actually honor the request. I couldn't really say it didn't work because I didn't use it, but he certainly couldn't say it did either.

He was livid!

You would have thought I asked him to put his dick in a vice. He angrily explained that his success rate with the device is 87%. I reminded him that 87 does not equal 100. It was at this point that I saw the spittle in the corners of his mouth start to foam up, and it was ON.

I knew I couldn't back down if I wanted any chance of walking out of there with my dignity intact (and at least part of my money refunded), but this guy was fuming. It was as if no one had ever told him 'no' before.

He practically ripped the paper bib off of me, and refused to make eye contact with me. He started pacing back and forth and his breathing got all weird. For a half second, I considered the fact that he could very well raise his hand to me. With all the adrenaline I had going, I so could have taken him down. I eyed the tool tray in case I needed to fight dirty.

At this point, I didn't care about the money anymore. Getting this Republican, wife-beating asshole this worked up was worth every penny. I wish I had it on video to enjoy again and again. This was quality entertainment.

He then had the presence of mind to show me the door, but it wasn't over yet.

"So, I'm not getting my money back then?"

I then told him that since he wasn't going to give me my money back, he had to give me my records and x-rays. This about put him over the top. He stood at the door, seething and ordered one of the techs to fetch my paperwork. He was breathing erratically and finally looked me in the eye, trying to stare me down or intimidate me. All that did was make me giggle. His face was red, he was sweating, and he had that pouty-lip thing going on that my two year old does when I tell her she can't eat the gum she found stuck to the playground equipment.

Because I was so proud of myself for keeping my cool and also for the added bonus of ruining this asshole's day (and possibly his whole week), I decided the occasion warranted a little cherry on top. In the most patronizing tone I could muster I said,

"Wow. Must you be such an infant about all this? Can't we be grown ups?"

I truly believe that if no one else had been in that waiting room, he would have literally kicked me out the door.

Then I definitely would have gotten my money back--plus punitive damages.

Haves vs. Have Nots

The state of health care in our nation is a real tragedy. Nowhere is this more apparent than women's health.

My inlaws live in Peoria, once rumored to be the "Teen Pregnancy Capitol of the Nation". My husband grew up there, and assures me that it isn't just a rumor.

I drove there this past weekend and noticed a prime example of the proverbial shaft lower income citizens get in the way of ob/gyn services. There are several women's health care centers up and down Knoxville. From what I can gather, the end my inlaws live on is quite nice. Nearer to the interstate, the demographic changes as does the apparent quality of doctor's offices.

8245 Knoxville
Wexler and Feinstein OB/Gyn and Day Spa
"Blue Cross/Blue Shield covers our manicures!"

6497 Knoxville
Loving Womb Midwifery and Doula Service
"You can do it. We can help."

4300 Knoxville
Planned Parenthood
"We haven't been picketed since 1993!"

2654 Knoxville
Women's Health Care Center
"Enter through Rear"

833 Knoxville
Uncle Todd's Pawn Shop and Discount Abortionarium
"You make 'em, we scrape 'em."


I think I need to write my state representative.