Why we Still Need the Republican Party

Now that the election hooplah is over and done with for now, we can all reflect on what unites us, instead of what divides us.  Even if, as the case may be, the thing that divides us, is the thing that unites us.

During the revealingly divisive campaign, the two primary parties that both unite and divide America became unintelligibly similar, at least in our dislike toward leadership and more specifically what our republic’s leadership is able to accomplish.

It’s almost as if our federal figures of modern day democracy have been denounced to a largely symbolic role.

We can’t be surprised this was coming;

until very recently most civilians were at best apathetic about voting, at worse cynical to it’s effectiveness. Turn out for non-presidential elections is on average; dismal.

While local level politics rarely match the communal enthusiasm, or the ‘pomp and circumstance’ of the federal campaigns;

these state and city office appointments actually have much more affect on the daily lives of each one of us, and were designed with the intent of us to affect it right back.

We the People.

So why the mixed reaction to representative democracy?

For the most part when democracy works smoothly, you don’t notice it.

If you’ve grown up in America it’s common to take for granted.

But for countless others, there are true modern day stories about stonings for adultery, cutting hands off for theft, being held captive indefinitely at labor camps for minor offenses, being rounded up into military service by late night patrols if you break curfew, being told what your career will be or how many children you are allowed to have, having your food and gas rationed, or having your family threatened because you represent something unpopular, watching a rebel hijack a ballot box at gunpoint and return it later in the voting day, even being flagged if you ask questions about the identity of your officials …

The idea of being allowed to be represented, or to represent yourself freely (and more importantly safely), is a central tenement of democracy.

So as ideologically insidious as some aspects of politics can certainly be, there still need to be multiple perspectives considered, and  the protection of this right thus means the protection of this melting pot of perspectives.

This is the primary characteristic of American democracy that all Americans can be proud of, it is our  universal entitlement and unalienable  divine right.

The whole idea of being represented means taking a stand, adopting a stance. It means choosing one thing and forgoing many others. I found myself lamenting during this election that there were ONLY 2 real choices.

The blessing of having a choice, comes with responsibility.

You must make an informed decision about some important issues; not just letting an elite, nerdy few decide for you. I like the division in the sense that it means that people are thinking critically about issues usually left undisturbed.

As surprising and oftentimes disappointing viewpoints are tossed out, I am still grateful that these hidden hypothesis are brought to the light for discourse and examination…Our differences, our passions, or stubbornness are all spilling over and out.

I may not like much of what my opposing party advocates, but it is still really important to know what the opposition is proposing. I may look at something from a new perspective of possibility, or I may absolutely hate the other ideas and become impassioned to support my own beliefs.
We need to be drawing and focusing enthusiasm on the worthy efforts such as voter id awareness, encouraging others to vote and discuss, that we personally did (well not personally, but facebook, which you know, mostly counts) and saw affecting ourselves and our communities, and for taking a stand not just on candidates, but on policies.

Doing that means being aware of the choices out there (pat yourself of the back if you know who Jill Stein and Gary Johnson are) and what those choices will mean for not just you, and people like you, but for everyone.

We the people are taking matters into our own hands, in terms of this last election.

A welcome relief to the tradition of political apathy usually present; because

If there is no representative majority and competitive minority,

democracy as we know it

will have been perverted and exploited to the point of extinction.

Support personal choice and public representation. Support democracy.

Mobile

I am a member of the technology straddling generation.

There is a slow-mo photo montage in my mind of the times when people were skeptical about facebook as either a fad or a marketing gimmick (oh wait, that’s still happening), When twitter and tweeting sounded like a code name for dirty text messages, where changing your myspace skin/cover was as necessary as changing your outfit.

I can remember when there was no internet, or at least not like it exists today.
The irony is as a blogger, I’m too young to be old-fashioned, but it’s hard to adjust!

I chuckle at the outlandishness of not being able to talk and surf the web at the same time because

1. Cell phones were still luxuries

2. Only dial up existed; (young folks that’s when you had to unplug your phone and plug in the internet)

and I probably Still have some startup cd-rom disks for Compuserve, Aol and Juno.

When I blog, I blog from my home office. I have a laptop, a plug-in wireless connection, even a gazillion-megabybe Portable hard drive that could probably hold every letter I type from now to the apocalypse.
Yet after my morning errands are settled I rush back to the comforts of my desktop.

I need to be more responsive, reactive, more realtime. I should be churning out meetings and messages like a stock ticker!

Even while blogging about the possibilities of progress, I find myself sticking to old routines; Canon is happy to be capitalizing off of my antiquated habit of printing large documents to read mere feet away from my computer screen.

I get frustrated at those systems that could be drastically improved by a technological update like medical records, school materials and even national elections, yet often fail to see myself locked into that reality.

I dream of:

• real-time polling on local legislation through an online social network,
• flash-mobilization for demonstrative causes
• and collaborative workspaces where people utilize office-space like their neighborhood gym.

Therefore I should be able to ‘set up shop’ wherever there is an outlet,

yet my mind is locked into the linear path of yesteryear.

Although I still (fondly) remember card catalogs, encyclopedia salespersons, and how revolutionary Napster was in all our lives, it’s time for me to usher in the new era.

I aspire to one day blog from beside the beach, on a rooftop deck or the even simply the playground…

But for now I will keep edging myself to dust off the netbook and try typing from the kitchen table instead for a change.

 

 

The Land of Frozen Milk and Sugar…

I’m not a big ice cream eater. I don’t know why. It’s good and all, but I almost never crave it. I have a cousin whose holidays wouldn’t be complete without eggnog and a friend whose ultimate treat is a specialty milkshake bar.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been known to enjoy the occasional caramel sundae and love to sip a root beer float from the counter in the diner, twisting and twirling in my stool….
Guess I’m just more Philadelphian than most, cause my frozen treat of choice is water ice!
But when a bargain on a brand new ice cream maker came up I grabbed it and stashed it away as a unique Christmas gift.
Even though the gadget was in the back of my closet, I wouldn’t stay in the back of my mind…

After a while I sifted around the styrofoam packaging and snatched out the instruction booklet.
Hmmm. You needed to cool the freezing chamber for at least 8 hours first…
I noted the basic recipe for my favorite flavor:

Vanilla Ice Cream

4 egg yolks
2/3 cup of sugar
1 cup half and half
2 tbsp butter
1 cup whipping cream
2 tsp vanilla extract

It was simple, a little simmering and cooling, then pop it in the ice cream maker. After 20 minutes, voila you have ice cream!
But, it sounded just a little too good to be true…

I noted that I actually had bought whipping cream on my last trip to the market and thus had all the ingredients necessary.

Was making good quality ice cream out of my own household ingredients really a possibility?

My mouth watered when I thought about the Irish sweet cream butter in my freezer and the pure vanilla extract (usually reserved for my most special cookies) coming together in a melange of frozen flavor.

Seruptitiously, I released the freezing chamber from its packaging and placed it in my freezer.

As I slept, I dreamt of cows munching of lolls of Ireland’s green meadows.

I wake up giddily, and after handling my morning affairs set to work.
As I grabbed my last fours egg, and separated them, conceding that egg white omelette would be ok for a while for the sake of homemade ice cream…

I mixed the eggs and sugar and plopped the yellow blob in the saucepan on low.
[Then I realized that I did Not have half and half so I pinch hit with some dry whole milk from Switzerland, omitting some of the water.]
Adding the ‘half half&half’ slowly until it thickened.

‘This is so simple and easy’, I remarked to myself and wondered why I didn’t do it sooner.

After taking mixture off the heat I swirled in chunks of butter, and it began to form into a silky custard. Then I added the whipping cream and vanilla.

The hardest part was waiting for it to cool in the fridge for another hour, before putting it in the machine;
which is why this blog is even being written!

As I type, a steady hum of the frozen mixer is churning my swiss milk, whipping cream, gourmet butter and pure vanilla into a delightful treat!

Something so pure and delicious, easy and yet still homemade…

A confection so marvellous that even a water ice enthusiast can get excited about.

It would have made a nice gift…but instead I think Christmas came early for me.

Got to Go! I think its ready!

A believer

ButWhatWillIBe? believer; in myself. I guess.
After all the metaphysical mumbo jumbo I’ve explored, and philosophical rants I’ve been required to study and the religious ridiculosity I have endured and embraced…

the only thing left that I know we should do is:

believe in yourself, believe in the God within,

the creator in all of us

that makes the things we see and feel in our inner world/ the things we create in the outside one.

Just keep loving,
just keep doing out of love

The Owner of this Dog

What the hell IS this cute little guy?

Awwww! What else is there to say?

Who knows what kind of dog this is? I’m guessing a hybrid.

and that the picture is photo-shopped, but still…

AWWWWWWWW!!!!

To have ‘it all’ work-life balance

So…my boyfriend broke up with me or I broke up with him. It doesn’t really matter; it ended amicably.
One of the last conversations we had was probably the most revealing since we’d first met. Without the fear of rejection or misunderstanding affecting our future as a couple, we could expose our true intentions and expectations.
Not only did we discuss the shortcomings of our relationship, but we examined our roles and our contributions. We shared the things we’d been to scared to say and we gave each other advice for future relationships.

In the process, I discovered something I am both ashamed and afraid to admit…

I want to be a wife.

I large part of my being clings to the notion that marriage is NOT overly idealistic
Nor are my expectations unrealistic, I am a healthy, attractive female of marriagable age and status who was in fact I was married before.
Yes it ended in a flaming mess that took a lot of personal strength and composure to wrap up.
But even beyond my ugliest adult experience, I still see beauty in the institution, even while experiencing the reality of it.

Early on, I understood that my recently exed-boyfriend did not want to get married; ever.
I accepted that truth he was honest enough to share with me, and all the goodness that turned out to be the rest of our relationship.

But I also had to accept a truth that I was only honest enough to share with myself– that our relationship would eventually end because I did have a desire to be betrothed again.

I cannot generalize, but despite my past experience and current predicament I feel like I was MADE to be married.

In my weaker moments I wonder:

It is because of an outdated message to female society?

It is a cop-out to invoking a healthy existence of my own?

It is to have a fabulous party, something for my family to get excited about or ‘because it’s been long enough’?

In some instances maybe. But in my case, I’m not the typically conditioned suburban mother either.

I grew up in a family of strong, independent, career oriented women. And no my mother and aunts weren’t man-hating, bitter, scorned spinsters.
They were raised in a two parent home of entrepreneurial and educated (respectively) individuals who were married twice as long as I’ve been on this planet.(Rest in Peace) They had pleasurable moments and trying times. I experienced spousal squabbles AND holiday happiness. I have seen what marriage is, or at least what it can be.

With the recent Atlantic article trending online about why women still can’t have it all
and marriage becoming devalued to more of society in general;
becoming a wife seems at best, foolish; and at worse, a pipe dream.

Like the Anne-Marie Slaughter article aludes, the feminist revolution set us back a bit.
Although it allowed many women to make significant strides in terms of freedoms, choices and responsibility; it also set an improbable standard that forces women to decry and devalue certain aspects of their femininity to progress the movement.

My grandfather’s leadership and my grandmothers example as a college graduate encouraged their daughters to excel academically and all of them went to college. I will note that my grandmother stopped utilizing her degree through employment soon after the child rearing began.
Nevertheless two generations of prior of post-secondary education paved my own path as a 3rd generation college graduate.

I have academic and professional pursuits and have barely begun to pursue my vocational calling, so why is there this desire within me to submit and domesticate?

First of all, the myth of a wholistic-synergistic-work-life balance is just recently being quietly unveiled being as unrealistic as Barbie’s proportions.
Chasing this media-fueled mirage can become damaging to individuals seeking the unattainable image they are presented.

When we say balance in these terms: family, errands, friends, your mate, yourself and your interests, and your career. The fantasy image is that of a scale swaying to statis.
In reality it’s more like balance in the sense of the federal budget, needs keep growing, but SOMETHING’S got to get cut.

The feminist movement was very effective in the promotion of professional progress for females, following the ‘take it like a man’ approach, but as a consequence, this devalued the alternative; thereby constraining choice.

To be ‘domesticated’ carries into modern day a negative stigma that may include
fear of professional incompetence,
lower status and interest, and
societal subjugation, even amongst the varying ranks of females.

To choose being a wife and mother inherently meant NOT promoting professional progress as a female or among females.
Over a generation of females have subconsciously rejected a natural perogative of extreme significance as anti-feminist and anti-progressive thought.

Additionally stay at home mothers and wives are stereotypically understimulated, overworked, underappreciated, and devalued;
by society in general, professional women, and often by the families they devoted to serve.

Furthermore, statistics will show you that men benefit significantly more within a marriage arrangement than when single. And statistics also reveal that there are MORE benefits to marriage for men than women.

So why bother at all ladies?! (My recently heartbroken ego cries out)

The economy is fucked, yall. I’m not just talking about the recent recession.

A family has to work almost twice as many hours, and commute a considerable amount more to afford the overinflated costs of a home and utilities at the very least.

Don’t be a working mother, because your kids need accomodations at the precise times you need to focus enough begin and wrap up your daily work. and a level of intimacy and attention throughout the shifting life phases that detracts from career concentration and can only be supplied by you the mom.

Especially don’t be a working, single mother, because you need two jobs now to basically do anything more than survive and you must work them both in addition to the vocation of motherhood.

Those in my generation felt so smug with our degrees. We thought we had solved the puzzle, we would get careers and get our nurture on!
We would satisfy that primal drive from within the womb by making money as teachers, nurses, social workers and other feminine dominated career-tracks.
We had beat the system!

Until we graduated and the system beat us.

Traditionally female-dominated careers like childcare workers, restaurant servers, and housekeepers, pay significantly less than both male-dominated careers and gender neutral careers, even in college required professions; and that women of all races often get paid less than men for the same or more work or work responsibilities which can place stress on an individual and limits their time and energy to enjoy the family they are serving or supporting with employment.

Even within career success of stable employment, old boys clubs and fancy titles were all it took to circumvent much of the feminist movements professional progress.

No, the sublimation of spousedom and motherhood through employment is not the ideal way to accomplish work-life balance. (Lesson learned for all of us!)

So back to the initial choice;

If you look at it, the question is not really

Have a career or have a family?

or even:

why is there this desire within me to submit and domesticate?

These are false choices which subconsciously make me feel like I am lacking in some way. Like there is not enough time or assistance or creativity out there to solve this problem.

I want a family because I’m a woman, it’s in me, I need to love and trust and care and nurture.
AND I have other equally pressing professional aspirations to satisfy my life’s purpose and healthy personal development.

I personally hold hope for marriage because I want a pledge of lasting devotion from a partner who understands how significant both are to me and helps me do both instead of making me choose.
This partner would inherently understand that by him helping me, I can help him and we can model a realistic work-life balance bonded together.
This partner would take a leadership role in parenting, domestic duties like cleaning, cooking and scheduling family events as well as his career. Our choices would be whats best for the children or the family instead of our respective careers; even if the answer to that question varied day to day. (I know you’re out there, email me!)
In turn marriage would end up rewarding him, becoming a reward to him. A lifetime of conscious effort at unconditional love. Like they always say, a happy wife, means a happy life.

The question becomes

How do we limit the messages of false choice; that it is less worthy, submissive, anti-progressive or otherwise negative to domesticate? For men OR for women.

The question is not, can one woman (or man) do it all, but:
How do we collaborate with partners, family and the community to engage full responsibility to the children?

How create a system-wide support system that provides the opportunity to raise your own children AND endeavor your life’s work?

Philly Mascots 2004…Can you name them all?

you don’t look anything at all like your profile picture…

It’s the end of the world as we know it…

Just remembered a dream I had last night….
In the dream, it was the end of the world. Everyone had known it was going to end for quite a while; months, maybe years.

All the looting and partying and craziness had already ensued and had burnt itself out. Some towns were abandoned; and in ruins.
Nevertheless, the time until the end was near, much closer, maybe a week.
“It would not hurt” we were told, “a flash of white heat and then nothing”
we all had been mentally prepared, presumably by news reports and public service announcements.
We would be frozen in ash like Pompeii unearthed at the base of Mount Vesuvius. Or a pillar of salt outside Sodom and Gomorrah.

The roads and streets were increasingly hushed and deserted as most people had already considered at length where they wanted to be for their last moments and decided with whom to share them.

A few things were different about the times;
The sky looked weird, for one.
Neon lit clouds floated along against the carnival colored sky; mustard yellow clouds against and electric blue sky, fluorescent orange clouds against a lavender sky…
As if it was ALWAYS almost sunrise…or sunset.
And there was a tense energy in the air all the time now, a sense of URGENCY and seriousness and meaning about any action.
Instead of consequence, humanity was focused on symbolism. Making a statement with the moments remaining; outside of the context of punishment or reward
–everyone striving in some way to make an impact, to become immortalized upon collectively accepting physical mortality.
More people were posting on youtube, publically stripping, and defacing national monuments. Mall walls were graffiti-ed by suburban moms…
Many took control by taking their lives in dramatic ways, corporate executives bicycling off of sky scrapers and such.

But the end of every day, the clock was still ticking.

Oddly enough,there was PEACE.
The panic was over; very little looting and crime remained because it had peaked and subsided when the news was first released.

Only quiet, unanimous resignation remained at worst; at best was freedom!
Letting go of pretense and civility and even history. Just embracing whoever you came across as a relative, a neighbor a friend.

I remember my final moments and who they were with but to wrap up a long random anecdote, I’ll savor those by myself, as a revelation into what really matters to me.
and fast forward to the ending;

I wrangled some family and friends on a almost week long hiking trip through the ruins of cities and districts and we trekked to my childhood home in the country.
We got there in enough time to be comfortable and settled, to relax a celebrate the last of life in open-air and greenery with a bonfire bbq, beers and music.
Then we went in the home, rested, awakened the next day and busied ourselves with waiting.

After eons of silences and just minutes to go, of course the secret cynics (or optimists) peeped up in everyone.
“How silly we felt just waiting around for the ‘end’” we chuckled with each other;
“how stupid will we feel tonight when we all breath a sigh of shame and relief” we assured each other, with our eyes still darting around at every view, face and feature to fill our souls memory with the last of the earths beauty.

How melancholy,
in the skewed lighting of that candy colored sky, earth seemed like

such an achingly beautiful place.

It touches a cord when you look at something and know, in your heart, it is a last time you will ever have to gaze upon it.

Maybe even more so than the first time, when love and appreciation is still unknown in front of you….

Something jolts me back to dream reality; even when there, I am caught in a web of my own thoughts.
My heart starts to race.
I feel something happening. Everyone does…
Just as a go to cry out; there is COMPLETE silence.
I look around at the others and see the same panic in their eyes but not a decibel escapes from our gaping mouths.
There is no rushing of wind, no dripping of water, no crinkling of leaves, nothing.
It’s as if time had stopped for an instant or maybe forever…
And before we know whats happening the sound rushes back at us. Every animal is braying or crooning or howling, it sounds like a storm is coming outside…

Suddenly unfrozen we move toward the window.
No one bothers to speak; to try and articulate the unexplainable. We all felt it, we all understand it, we all instinctively know what is happening.
Arriving first, I crack the blinds and capture another achingly beautiful photo memory. No storm, just stillness and serenity.
That perpetual sunset, splashed into the backdrop of my happiest childhood memories.
Then I feel it happening. Something is coming.
I can’t describe the feeling as anything but momentum, inertia;
my head is sweaty and my heart is about to beat out of my chest.

Then I see it and my gaze is fixed.
It is silent again. I don’t know if the universe has been silenced or if nothing is just worth saying out-loud anymore; I don’t even bother to turn around and check.

In less than an instant, coming over the horizon is the bright white light that rises and fills up all of the sky. Blinds out any other view but pure, radiant white.
I feel warmth, then numbness and the pull of gravity release.
I feel exhiliration as I also feel myself explode into millions of pieces,
for ever or for no time, my sentience remains in my scatter mass of atoms.
I feel myself flying in every direction, exceeding fast; beyond the whoosh of travel, I only perceive warmth and light.
Suddenly the motion stops, is as if I am floating, levitating, hovering in nothingness or everything-ness, I don’t have enough consciousness to know.
What happened? Where is everyone? Scattered?
where am I? the only pieces of me? It seems as though my consciousness is all concentrated in this one remaining atom of me. I release myself from the confines of consciousness and fade away…

What does it mean?

DIY Journalism

I really don’t like watching the news. By ‘really don’t like’ I mean, sickens my mental health. I am saddened by much of what I see and disappointed in the matter-of-fact way the sordid details of a stranger’s life are exposed and exploited.

Fresh from the dreamscape I roll out of bed and stretch. I start the coffeepot as I begin to prepare my day. What to wear?  Let’s check the weather—and ooh, I fell asleep on that game last night, I wonder as to the final score.

I creep to my quilt-covered futon as the sun creeps toward the horizon of the cloud-covered sky.

Taking a small sip of my hot beverage and a deep inhale, exhale; I point the remote like a wand in the direction of the box on top.

What comes out is anything but magic. “…in other news today a body was found…”

“A house fire broke out early this morning and…”

“..a young father was gunned down…and another was locked up….”

A beautiful photo of a person who once was is flashed in a corner of the screen; some colloquial neighbors give their 2 cents in exchange for their 15 seconds of fame….

Cut to the attractive face with too much makeup:

“Now that you’ve swallowed these real life horror stories, we promise to tell you what you really wanted to know; how to dress today and who won the game – but first,

in order to finance these our informational reign of terror, we have to feed you something else; COMMERCIALS!

That being said, I find that I consume most of my news the old-fashioned way or the futuristic way, foregoing the present all together.

Someone will tell me.  I figure there is no point in hearing about each and every horrible thing that happened in the city overnight. It would mostly remind me the world was an unsafe place, who needs the news to remind them!

Besides, if it involved someone I knew, or even someone who knew someone I knew; word would eventually reach me. And that person wouldn’t have to be disgraced in my eyes by whatever was told to me from a journalistic stranger’s perspective.

The news will tease you with clips for how to save money and enjoy your life, after they barrage you alternately with messages to spend money cause you need some widget to be happy; and information proving nobody has any money and won’t anytime soon. At worst it’s subconsciously damaging to shape my reality around these negatively generalized concepts. At best, it’s unnecessary.

The wave of the future, of course is ridden on the internet.

With the web I can tune into the same channels as the general public, yet be focuses and selective about what I open my mind to.

I can compare perspectives and choice of coverage between news sites to better understand similarities and differences in the ‘organizational culture’ of mass media. And if I ever get the urge, I can always stream a broadcast or tune back in on the boob tube.

I’ll admit though that currently most of the ‘news’ I get is probably from facebook. I have mixed feelings about this of course, but I’ll save that for another blog.

What it boils down to, is that most of it is real and realistic news. Yeah I’ve heard about a few gun downs and unfortunate happenings through that information channel, but its news that is also relevant to me, its people who know people I know. I am free to empathize.

And it helps me see what a day-to-day can be, not how much can go wrong in a city between broadcasts. I like knowing that such and such’s kid got an award today or so and so is having a bad day because she misses her boyfriend; much more than seeing some stranger trump up a tragic situation.

Because I am a conscious individual though, I realize the limits of my own ever-expanding awareness, and the necessity of expanding further. I need to know what’s happening outside my own personal network; and if I choose to Not be passively parsed perspectives I still cannot close my mind to the outside world and feel like a complete human being, because part of that is connection with the human race.

With ALL THAT being said, I begin an adventure to consume information as consciously as I do with food or body products.

#that’s why i joined twitter

Ten again, (or maybe just Insured)

WTF. I woke up out of my sleep this morning with a tiny, yet horrible ache. I couldn’t place it…My right side, was it my head?; or my arm?The radiating ache extended everywhere, and in the early morning haze I traced it back through the labyrinth of nerve endings.  My face; my cheek, my jaw…more specifically a wisdom tooth worming its way out of it; and the discomfort of my already crowded chompers being forced to make way. *whimper* I hate taking medicine; but the ache unrelenting I popped 1 advil and went back into a fitful sleep.

 Fast forward to 5 hours later, the hour before I can take another dosage according the package prescriptions.( I take that stuff seriously! long term damage from just small long term overdosages can have serious effects. I had a friend whose middle aged nonalcoholic mother had liver problems behind just that.) 

I am currently experiencing each millimeter growing, pushing its way out; an everyday ordinary miracle like…a sprout from a seed or a bud on a branch; although with its agonizingly slow decent and the tender feeling radiating along a nerve from my nose to my temple to my jaw and in between and inside of each tooth…It feels more like tectonic plates grinding apart instead,inside my head. Why now?! (why EVER actually; why can’t we just grown another set like sharks?!?!)  it hits me that I probably grind my teeth at night.

When I mentioned it to a friend she smirked, ‘and I get heckled for going to the dentist every 3 months…’ Argh! You know, at that moment, the pain of being uninsured hit me. Almost worse than the tooth for a second.  

My dental freak friend has a good, stable job and a husband with another; and my situation…well it’s obviously a little different, I freelance blog for goodness sakes.

  For the most part I don’t have a twinge of jealousy at her life; I love mine, even without the luxury; but I’m telling you, if I could have snatched those pearly whites out of her mouth and exchanged them, we would have to go to small claims court for her to get them back.

Ah dental care…it truly is a freelancer fantasy to have it. ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU HAVE A TOOTHACHE *whimper*.

But it shouldn’t be. Health insurance is not a luxury.Then I think back to the days of (indentured servitude aka) traditional employment, when I was covered. Even then, a visit every 3 months might seem a bit…extravagant?I thought they were supposed to be annually, but why SHOULD it be?!

We DO have to keep our dazzling dientes for as long as we can, and take care of them. Constant wear and tear for 50 plus years?  How come my health insurance only alloted for maybe 2 visits a year? I should be able go as much as i want! Let’s face it, fake teeth just aren’t the same, as opposed to the naturally exposed bone that connects all the way to the skull. a crown and dentures are like plunking an oak tree in a shallow pile of dirt.

I wish I could go back in time and tell toddler Zee that brushing teeth is not just a power struggle game, and that flossing may seem superfluous at 13, but you’ll wish you had taken that extra 60 seconds each day when they are falling apart painfully at 32. and wisdom teeth, damnit I love you dearly and would like to keep you, but without proper regular evaluation (say every 3 months who would have known that the roots were hook-shaped so they’d grow in crooked and the extraction would take 3 dental staff and implements that looked suspiciously like a mallet and chisel. Moreover, good insurance would have paid for the twilight anesthesia instead of a local and some horrid memories.

The point is it shouldn’t be a choice.

No matter what i will be, I should be insured.

No matter how I earn my keep, self-employment taxes are bad enough, why should I be paying with my health?