Dentists and Voting Twice

There is a dentist office within walking distance to where I live that I've gone to for two and a half years. The dentist who previously took care of my teeth for nearly twenty years left his practice during Covid and his practice was bought out by a just-out-of-dental-school girl---young woman if I want to be political correct. The one and only time I saw her I really didn't actually SEE her at all. She was dressed in a head-to-toe pink hazmat suit and goggles. So was her dental assistant but the receptionist bravely had forgone wearing the hazmat suit and goggles but she had the full face guard and mask on as the other two wore. It was a surreal experience but that wasn't the reason I never when back. I mean who could blame them for protecting themselves during the height of the pandemic, a pandemic made worse by then President Trump who, at the time, was telling people about drinking bleach as bodies were stacking up in refrigerated trucks outside of hospitals. We tend to forget how bad things were back then. Now, we learn that Bob Woodward has Trump on a taped interview admitting---I say bragging---that he sent Vladimire Putin a Covid-19 test machine in the early days of the pandemic when we didn't have enough of them to go around to the hospitals here in the States.

I thought about all this while I was getting my teeth cleaned this week by an overly perky dental hygienist. The Woodward reveal must have put me in a surly mood because I was doing an amazing job of being borderline hostile to Miss Mary Sunshine. My replies were short, usually one word at a time---as if you can do more than that while your mouth is full of instruments. Why to they feel the need for a running conversation at a time like that? And why did I feel like making her work even harder than she was at trying to connect to me? When she announced she was finished, I couldn't believe it. It felt like she'd barely touched my teeth. There was no scaler tool used to scrap plaque off. It's done with sound waves now and what little poking around she did felt like she was applying about as much pressure as Tinkerbell could use. I was disappointed!

The next day I got three requests to fill out a survey about my visit to their humongous practice. The first two I ignored and the third one I opened, then filled out. I was kind and I didn't bad mouth the hygienist or the job she did. But I'll admit that I did start to type a comment about her trying too hard to be perky. Then I backed those words off my computer screen about as fast as I typed them in. What the heck was wrong with me? In a world full of hate and indifference I'll take perky and trying too hard any day. She was young and trying to put me as ease and I was being grumpy and jaded by something that had nothing to do with my teeth cleaning appointment.

I do miss my old dentist though. He was a friend before he became our dentist and there was nothing we couldn't say to one another but the guy liked to nit-pick and one time he wanted to remove two of my silver fillings. I hated to see them go. I’ve had them since my teen years---I was in my 60s at the time---but he thought they were worn out and in danger of cracking thus would damage the teeth in the process. He showed me photos of their surfaces to make his case. I told him I was sentimental about those fillings. He said, “Get over it.” And that’s how I ended up on his schedule to get two, new shiny white fillings. In a few weeks I'll be getting a new crown to replace one of those fillings. I'd put this off for the past year and finally consented to the work. I don't entirely trust dentists not to make up stuff that needs replacing. And why does the proposed work miraculously always cost what's left in my dental insurance plan? But I'm not one to gamble either on letting things go thus costing more in the long run.

Change in topic: I voted twice. Sixty-eight people in my building have to do that. We were sent ballots with the wrong school district candidates the first time and those ballots, if sent in already, will get rejected. There are a few people here who have no sense of logic and one of them was at a lunch table and she was worried she'd get in trouble with the law if she filled out the second ballot. No amount of trying to explain that she won't was getting through. "How will they know I'm not trying to vote twice for president?" "Because they set their machines up to invalidate the first ballots coming from our building so you'll only show up as voting once when you send in your new ballot." I was talking to MAGA voter and I wish I'd just let her think that using that second ballot will put her in jail. I use the tracking-your-ballot website to check on my vote and this year I'll actually have something interesting to see between the two ballot numbers I have to check on. When I told her that she said, "You can do that?" Duh! "Yes, that's why it gives the web address for tracking on the envelope." (In 20 point fonts, no less.) I could feel my grumpy and jaded persona creeping back in and I changed the topic to the hurricane. And that got me even grumpier when someone at the table parroted the lies Trump has been is telling about FEMA's response, lies that have just today the news is reporting have resulted in armed threats against FEMA workers at a couple of their staging sites. Why are some people so quick to believe the conspiracy nonsense coming out of Trump's mouth over that of the boots-on-the-ground disaster personal?  ©

Bathrobes and Property Taxes

Do you know what I dread the most about the time when I (may) have to leave my Independent Living apartment and move down to the Memory Care or Assisted Living building? Aside from the fact that I'd be losing either my mental or physical agility? That's a universal dread here in the land of continuum care living. But the fact that I'd have to get dressed in the mornings on someone else's time schedule is not and I will hate that. (Here I go again, borrowing trouble from the future.) I've never been one to start out my day by popping out of bed and getting into a shower, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as my mom used to say. She was not a morning person either. 

Not surprising I got my love of bathrobe living from my mom. It made Christmas shopping easy for my dad because he caught on to her favorite gift to get year after year. Can you believe it, my mom's all-time favorite bathrobe is still in existence? It's a long, chenille robe with a peacock on the back, circa late 1940's (photo above). It now resides on a mannequin in my youngest niece's bedroom. When I gave it to her eight years ago she promised not to fry bacon in it, but I'm pretty sure my mother did that too many times to count. Just because she liked living in robes doesn't mean she lounged around in them. I'm the same way. I like to be comfortable when I do housework. And if I need to defend myself even farther, when I was younger I used to break out into pressure hives from my clothing so I had to change out of what ever I was wearing a couple of times a day. After months of experimenting we ruled out laundry products and fabric content. Even today, I'll get out of my day clothes as early as I can in the evenings and stay in my robe as late as I can in the mornings. Neither of which is allowed in the MC or AL buildings.

Still on topic, back when I had a dog I once took him to the veterinary because he had a bright purple nose. I was really worried. The diagnosis was “it’s a fungus” and the cure, he said, “was worse than the disease.” What a quack he turned out to be! The next week our dog groomer picked all the crusty, purple stuff off the dog’s nose and showed it to me and a light bulb went off in my head. It was exactly that same color as my new, purple chenille bathrobe. Turned out the cure for the “fungus” was a good vacuuming. I just googled how to prevent chenille from shedding and I got an answer that was labeled "AI Overview." It said: "Vacuum your chenille item regularly to prevent future shedding." Artificial Intelligence really is better than my own, self-made intelligence. I was vacuuming the floors in the entire house when I could have been just vacuuming my bathrobe. 

That winter I was so sick brightly colored dust bunnies around the house that I’d taken to wearing my chenille bathrobe inside out hoping that would contain the little fuzz balls from jumping ship. I'd washed that robe a zillion times and it still created those pretty purple dust bunnies. I'd even find them on my keyboard! But I wouldn't dare wear my bathrobes inside out now that I'm old because it could be used against me in a sanity hearing, if my nieces caught me doing it. “Yes, sir, Mr. Judge. My aunt can’t even dress herself without getting her garments on wrong side out.” The older I get the more I want to write notes about why I do this or that and leave them all over house and in the pockets of the things I wear. My nieces would find pocket notes, I think, because I'm pretty sure they were aware that after my mom died we found ten and twenty dollar bills hidden in the pockets of her out-of-season clothing. 

There is no clever transition from writing about bathrobes to property taxes. So I'll just jump in here by announcing a new topic. For the last four months our tenacious Residents Council here at the continuum care complex has been trying to get to the bottom of why our property taxes went up 19% this past year and also why we even have to pay property taxes at all, given the fact that we're a non-profit and we don't even own our apartments. Some other states don't tax non-profit care facilities and some counties here in Michigan don't either. It's a topic of conversation you're likely to hear discussed around here on a weekly basis and there's even a bill stuck in the State Senate that addresses this very issue. The Residents Council has been over to our State Capital prepared to testify and they've paraded a bunch of speakers past us for meet-and grills---I mean meet-and-greets. Our tax assessor and city mayor, our state representative, a non-profit lobbyist and our CEO have all been been brave enough to stand in front of a bunch of angry, elderly people to talk about taxes.

Anyway: If you are looking into CCCs as a living option be sure to ask them about property taxes. We were all caught off guard by how much that adds to our yearly expenses. This past year it was $3,000 to $6,000 depending on the size of our apartments. Our sister campus is in another city and they pay half that amount. Our meet-and-greets have been well attended with over-flowing crowds and a common complaint is that our Benevolent Fund, that is contractually obligated to take care of us even if we run out of money, might not be able to handle us all if the tax rates keeping going up. (I'm not the only one who borrows trouble from the future.) They have nine million dollars in the Benevolent Trust Fund but supposedly they can only spend the interest. No one can beat me at the game of borrowing trouble from the future. Already, if you run out of money while living here you are subject to sharing a room but I worry that if there too many of us who runs out of money the CCC could revert back to their humble beginnings a 100 years ago and turn a few buildings into a poor farm for the elderly where we'd sleep in bunk rooms lined up a dozen to a room and we'd have to work in the community garden, kitchen or laundry if we'd want to eat. On the bright side, even that would be better than what I used to worry about before moving here and that was I'd end up living in a refrigerate box under a bridge. ©

Until Next Wednesday! 

 

This is my mom wearing the robe pictured above the Christmas my dad gave it to her. That's me with my eyes shut. I didn't take good photos even as a kid. My mom made the matching drapes and slipper covers on the couch. I just bought a clothe laptop case with the same pattern and colors. What goes around comes around.

 

This Cave Woman Writes

Have I mentioned how much I love 23andMe? Of course I have. I've written about my DNA tests so many times that people in cyberspace know intimate details about my body like that fact that I have an innie belly button and my eyes are brown. Having 'brown eyes' isn't exactly an intimate detail but not having a second toe longer than my big toe is and that's one of the useless facts that was revealed to me by me spitting in a little tube and sending it off for testing. I did this several years ago and they keep sending me new discoveries as the science keeps unlocking the mysteries of our genes. It's mind boggling to think about the improvements in our healthcare system when they are able to isolate the genes responsible for certain diseases. They'll be able to target and/or totally eradicate some major heartbreaking conditions. Of course, I might not live long enough to see it happen but my nieces and nephew will. It's not that far off.

This week 23andMe sent me new information about my Neanderthal gene variants. I have 32% more of them than their other customers. There are 7,462 Neanderthal traits in genome and I have 228 of them in my DNA. I've written before that on their website is a forum for customers and I found a thread about having a lot of Neanderthal genes where people were joking around about how they have to trim the hair on their toes or put Band-Aids on their knuckles from dragging them around. One woman confessed that once a month she wants to tear her husband’s arms off and suck the marrow out of his bones and now she knows why. All jokes aside, Neanderthal variants supposedly come into play with allergies and infertility issues which has my name written all over them.

How does one get Neanderthal markers in their genes? This is what 23andMe says about that: "Genetic variant that evolved in Neanderthals and came back into the human lineage when the two groups interbred. Because you inherit variants from both of your parents, you can have 0, 1, or 2 copies of the Neanderthal variant at each marker. We report your total number of Neanderthal variant copies, which is therefore a number between 0 and 7,462. However, nobody has all 7,462 — the most we've ever seen in a 23andMe customer is less than 500."

One of the newest things 23andMe reported about my Neanderthal genes is that I have one copy of the marker rs7169404 which is associated with not feeling 'hangry' when I'm hungry. I so must have gotten that one from my dad's genes because my mom definitely changed dispositions when she went without food. I also got two copies of rs3807714 regarding a preference for sweet vs salty foods. Thanks Mom and Dad. I get to blame you both for passing on our ancient ancestors lack of will power when it comes to sugary and gooey deserts. And the fact that I look at eating salads like as punishment for overeating sugary and gooey deserts? I get to blame my Neanderthal genes for not liking leafy greens. Picture me beating my fists on my chest and shouting out that I love a medium rare T-bone steak almost better than I used to love sex back in the days when I was having both. I love meat!

(At least I think I used the word "Sex" far enough into this post that the internet crawlers won't find it and spam me with advertisements. One that used to spam before I learned not to use the 'S' word in the title of my posts flooded my comment section for a cream to "enhance my sex life.)

Okay, time to change topics. What else did I do this week? I've been busy. Twice I took part in a letter writing campaign to get out the vote for Kamala Harris and our group of 12 (known) democrats here in the CCC are going keep doing two sessions a week through mid-October. I also went over to our sister campus to play Mahjong and to nail down details on a Mahjong tournament that was my brainchild to do. What a lot of work involved! More on that in a future post.

Also on the calendar this week was an infusion for my bones. That was different this time because I was the only woman there out of the 15 stations aka La-Z-Boys where we sit while hooked up with the IVs. The guy next to me was so young, cute and buff that my curiosity was peaked as to why he was there but he never woke up the entire time. First time in the ten years that I've been getting infusions that I've ever seen anyone sleeping. My younger self wanted to crawl up in his chair and spoon him. I usually pretend to read while people watching at the infusion center, looking for blog fodder but this time the book I grabbed at the last minute kept me reading. I take a book based on its weight rather than its content and I had picked a 140 page book off my shelf titled, A Guide for the Perplexed. Copyright 1977. It's filled with yellow highlighter and my handwritten notes in the margins but for the life of me I can't remember this philosophical book. But by the time my infusion was finished I concluded that I must have been a lot smarter back in the 1970s than I am now.©

Until Next Wednesday...

Photo credit: On the 3rd of August 1908, the 3 Bouyssonie brothers discovered the first complete skeleton of a Neanderthal man and the first burial site.  The remains were first studied by Marcellin Boule from the National Museum of Natural History; he described this man as the missing link between man and ape.