Excuse me for a moment, I’m in shock.  I took my new little doggy (a stray) to the vet today to have her teeth cleaned.  Turns out this dog had a mouth full of decay and they had to remove like 7 teeth (although the vet told me two just fell out once they cleaned the tartar off).  Her gums were all diseased and she needed sutures and packing and pain pills and all kinds of stuff.  So they just called me back with the total bill.  I am about to have a heart attack.  $394.57!  Really, seriously, that’s how much they are charging me for doggie dental care.  I have no idea how that incredible amount was reached.  When I got the estimate it was like $150, although they warned me extractions would be $20 each.  Now it’s $250 more?  Even if they charged me for the teeth that just fell out, that would only be $140 more.  Just when you think you’re slowly recovering from lots of surprise, really expensive purchases (in addition to expected really expensive trip to England), you get hit with a whammo.  kablam!  The moral of the story is:  Don’t ever plan to try and get ahead.  Ever!  You will lose, I promise. You just paid a thousand off on that credit card?  Don’t get too smug, because you’re about to add $400 to it.  Ack, so frustrating, just want to climb under bed and let mommy pay for everything again!

Now mind you, I realize that there are people who don’t even have health insurance, and the thought of having the luxury of spending $400 on their CHILD’s dental care, not to mention their dog’s, is a fantasy.  I realize I am fortunate to even have this dilemma.  I also love this dog to pieces, even though I’ve only had her for 3 weeks, and don’t hesitate to spend the money on her, but it just feels sometimes like Murphy’s Law is a real, active force in our lives.  Some days I wanna’ be very irresponsible and just buy a bunch of cute clothes and buy lots of cute shoes and fill my house with crap from the Pottery Barn.  Luckily, this desire is tempered by the fact that I cannot buy cute clothes because I am not Mary Kate-sized. 

God, I sound like a spoiled teenage girl, forgive me.  Just some days I have a green jealousy streak mixed with a streak of self-pity.  Sigh.

---

Comments

Tarv

2004-08-20T15:22:40.000Z

I know what you mean…try buying a house and getting married within a few months of each other.  Then I realize that I’m complaining about the financial strain, and THEN I realize that I’m lucky enough to have a house and to be getting married.   Boo-fucking-hoo, Travis…boo-fucking-hoo.

So I was watching  this silly show on Bravo the other day called “Things I Hate About You”.  If you haven’t seen it, it’s a show where couples go on national television to prove who is more annoying.  There’s a panel of judges and in the end, the less annoying half is branded a saint, gets a prize, and is allowed to subject their more annoying half to a silly punishment.  Ex: for the woman who thinks her husband chews too loudly.  She had to sit between two speakers and listen to him eat all sorts of noisy foods (corn nuts, chex cereal, etc) into a microphone.  It’s highly entertaining and addictive.  Anyway, the point is the other night they had the most functional couple I’ve ever seen on there.  Their habits were a bit annoying, but not psycho like most of the other couples on the show.  As the relationship expert said, their neuroses complemented each other.  They were also the first gay couple they’d had on the show.  These two men had been together for twelve years and watching them was like watching your parents (if your parents are still happily married).  They were as great an example of a good relationship as I’d seen in a long time.  And it struck me that these people are living without any sort of recognition from the state that they are a unit.  And it reminded me of the friends I have that have been together almost as long as my parents and are forced to live like roommates.  And it made me sick again and sad again and frustrated again like it always does.  Please, someone, anyone, tell me why gay people are so scary?  I want to know, really, seriously, what is it that makes your skin crawl?  Why are they your boogeyman?  Why do they threaten your marriage?  Because you think they’re hot and really want to make hot gay monkey-love to them?  What?  And I don’t want to hear no bullshit about “God says it’s wrong”.  You know what?  That’s crap.  Because for one, God does NOT make the laws for this country, no matter what you want to believe and two, the day God comes down to earth and tells me how gay people are an abomination and explains why, despite that, he continues to make more of them, then I’ll say, “oh, God said it’s wrong.”  And then I’ll double-check with Jesus, and then I’ll say, “You guys are pretty sadistic, what happened to this forgiveness thing?”  And then I’ll go join the Scientologists or the Wiccans or something.  But until that day happens, which I’m not going to hold my breath for, I’ll continue to believe that gay people should have every right and protection I have and that our loves are equal.

And what pisses me off the most is that I think we are merely a generation  away from getting to the point where everyone feels the way I do, at least in some degree.  Where everyone knows gay people and sees how un-threatening they are and thinks they deserve basic human rights.  But the assholes of our grandparents’ and parents’ generation who are ruining the country right now, are trying to pass through changes to our FUCKING CONSTITUTION so that things are changed forever.  Hey, while you’re at it, could you please leave the Bill of Rights on your way out?  Obviously, we’ve decided it’s not useful anymore, but I’d like to keep it to show to my grandchildren some day. 

If you can’t give everyone the rights and protections of marriage, take it away from all of us.  Either have the state give domestic partner certificates and the church do the marriage part, or just don’t let any of us form official monogomous unions.  Liberty and Justice for All.

don’t listen to alan keyes.  he will drive you crazy.  he is insane.  he said that Barack Obama “had the slaveholder’s position on life” because he’s pro-choice.  He talks in circles and makes absolutely no sense.  Oh, and he isn’t even from Illinois.  He just moved there to run against Barack.  He would also ban abortion even in cases of incest or rape.  wow, he scares me.  Mommy!

---

Comments

Jeff

2004-08-13T05:05:15.000Z

I think maybe Keyes is the Kucinich of the GOP. Plus he’s got that whole Uncle Tom thing working for him. It can be fun to watch someone who’s got basically zero real relevance shoot their mouth off. I think he’s basically there to keep Obama busy, and off the Kerry campaign trail.

So I am at work right now.  It’s 8:02.  And the whole reason I came in early is now officially over, before it even began.  We are interviewing a candidate for VP this morning who flew in, so my boss asked me to get in before 8 so I could have coffee going, pick up some danishes, etc.  I’m normally in at 9-9:10.  So I got up at the butt crack of dawn this morning and got in at 7:45am, made some coffee, put the cherry turnovers on a cute little plate, etc.  Then the guy comes in and he’s brought two Starbucks coffees!  So my entire reason for being here has been taken over.  Not that I really mind.  Honestly!  I mean, my job is really flexible, so if every once in a while I have to get up at the same time I did every day for two years, I can take it.  But it’s just funny because there really was absolutely nothing for me to do.  I didn’t even greet the guy at the door.  So it’s back to trying to look busy…

So our second Slapdash comes to a close.  Some of the things I learned: 

Sometimes your first impulse is the right impulse.  I fought and fought the scene that was coming out of my head and so much wanted to be written because it wasn’t “clever” or “cool” or deep enough for me or something.  But Erin advised me to just go with it and thankfully I did because once Laurie, Frank, Franklin and Ian got their hands on it, I saw that sometimes silly is good.  Sometimes silly is great!  Thanks you guys for doing such an awesome job with my baby! 

I am not invincible.  My brain will not work properly and memorize like it should without sleep.  This was a very hard lesson for me to learn.  I would like to maintain that I had a shitload of lines and a shitload of difficult lines and that’s why I had an exceptionally hard time keeping things in my head, but I know that wasn’t all of it.  My brain was like swiss cheese and things just were NOT sticking.  I’ve always been able to memorize anything and everything as quickly as I’d like so I wasn’t really too worried about Slapdash.  I should have been.  Without sleep, I couldn’t retain anything.  So while I had SO much fun acting in Slapdash and that is honestly what I’d love to do again next time (in addition to writing, of course.  They’ll have to pry my laptop from my dead cold hands!), I think it may be irresponsible of me.  I think I may not be able to do it, unfortunately.  But thank you Le, Clint and Liz for giving me a really fun experience anyway!

I really like seeing the product of my writing.  Perhaps I should write more.  Of course, this means I have to be more disciplined and lock myself in a room, which sucks, but God, the payoff is enormous. 

I will have sympathy for actors trying to memorize Tim’s lines from now on.  It’s really hard, they were right!  Of course, not too much sympathy because they had 6 weeks and I had about 11 hours. 

Bring back the sacred circle! 

We miss you, Brandon:(

It was SO cool to have you back, Paul!  And you wrote a fantastic script!  You’re at the top of your game!  Next year I want Paul AND Brandon and I want a sacred circle!  Okay, so I dream big;)

Bill is a writer!  Yay, Bill, way to go!  You are now One of Us.  Welcome to the circle, the virgin sacrifice is at noon.

“Roaches live on a diet of feces and grease.” So says James from ABC Pest Control. Thanks James, now I have that little tidbit of information in my head forever, from now on. As if I didn’t find roaches disgusting enough already.  Oh, and this was told to me at work, not at home.  Although we suddenly have some roaches there too, after years of not having them.  Oh, bring back the spiders!  I feel another tangent coming on…  Yes, we’ve seen the entire cycle of deforestation since we bought our brand-new house 3 years and 5 months ago.  First we had the mice.  The cute little field mice that Punky would reduce to a pile of fur.  Or worse, paralyze, their little eyes staring up at you helplessly.  Then we had the spiders.  God, there were spiders EVERYWHERE!  I’d tear down a web only to find 5 more taking its place.

So the last vestiges of orthodontia were removed from my mouth this morning.  Oh sure, there’s still plenty of metal in my mouth, in the form of fillings, but nothing to keep my teeth from collapsing into disarray.  Not that they ever were in disarray to begin with.  I don’t remember my teeth ever being crooked in the first place and suspect the only reason I got braces as a child was that my mother never had them and had been ashamed of her not completely straight teeth her entire life.  I never saw her smile for a picture with her mouth open until she was 40 and got her braces off.  So I had braces twice because of my parent’s devotion to dental care.  Correction, my mother’s devotion to dental care.  My father didn’t go to the dentist for 25 years and still has never had a cavity.  He has perfect teeth which I obviously did not inherit.  So infuriating.  Anyway, since I was 15 and got my braces off, I have had this little piece of metal cemented in behind my bottom front teeth.  It’s called a lateral retainer and supposedly if I ever take it off my teeth will collapse into a pile or something.  Well, I’ve obsessively ran my tongue over it for the last 12 years and finally, last week, thought something was stuck in it and just would not come out no matter what I did.  This is not that odd of an occurence, but this time I decided to look and see what it was.  My retainer was broken!  After 12 years of constantly being rubbed, poked and prodded, it had broken down under the strain.  I ignored it for a couple of days, then decided perhaps the best plan of action was to go to a dentist to get it removed, so as not to spend my vacation in England with bits of metal poking into my gums.  And you KNOW you don’t want to have to get dental care in England;)  Well, after 45 minutes of waiting for the dentist this morning, (this part is kind of gross, sorry), I was biting my nail and got it stuck in my front teeth (this is a pretty common occurence, too).  So I was trying to work it out with my nail and there, into my hand, fell part of the little wire!  So I’d come to the dentist two days in a row, spent two hours there total, not to mention $45 and i could have done it myself all along.  Of course, the dentist ground down the cement and now I cannot stop running my tongue along my newly smooth teeth.  My tongue doesn’t seem to fit in my mouth correctly.  Oh, and my teeth are completely crooked again.  Just kidding.  The dentist said i should go to the orthodontist and get a retainer so they don’t all go cockamamey, but I think I’ll take my chances.  The top ones haven’t gone anywhere yet, other than my overbite, that was never really much of an overbite, is back.  Ah, medicine is just a giant moneypit.  Don’t even get me started on veterinary medicine!

---

Comments

Tim

2004-06-16T19:19:53.000Z

Is not that bad. They’re just not all that thorough.

Dr. Wolfe, D.D.S.

2004-06-17T14:34:35.000Z

Let us look at the picture book…The Big Book of British Smiles.

Lisa

2004-06-17T17:51:46.000Z

I like the picure with the tooth growing through the face.  I want that one.

Tarv

2004-06-17T17:56:57.000Z

I had the same thing put in my mouth when I was a kid after my braces were removed, and was told repeatedly that it needed to stay there for at least my next 6 or 7 lifetimes.  What would have happened had I come back as an oak tree is beyond me.  Anyway, a dentist looked at it recently and said it needed to come out, was doing more harm than good.  And much like you, after tongueing that damn thing for, oh, let’s see, 15 years I guess, it is gone.

But the exchange rate is even eviler.  Morrissey is playing in London when I will be there, which means I HAD to go.  But I missed the tickets going on sale and selling out completely.  So I went to Ebay.  Evil Ebay.  Auctions kept ending early on me.  And then, I was the high bidder on a pair, pretty great seats, the Friday night I wanted to go, it seemed good.  I bid about $12 more than I’d planned to in the hopes that I’d get them.  Then came along another bidder who wanted them just as bad and we got engaged in a death match to the last second.  I was victorious.  But I wound up paying substantially more than I planned to.  I can’t calculate the exchange rate that fast!  Damn the pound.  So that was my first and last experience with Ebay.  I’ve had a stomachache ever since I placed my freaking bid this morning, and I had a brief moment of triumph when I won, followed quickly by a buyer’s remorse hangover.  But let’s face it, my 14 year-old self would think I was pretty darn cool.  Everybody has their addiction:  for some it’s porcelain dolls, others toys, some people are addicted to collecting video games.  I have none of those addictions.  My addiction is live entertainment.  Yep, I admit it, I will pay ridiculous prices to go see my idols perform live. 

Alright, enough of that, buyer’s remorse: go away and replace yourself with the sweaty swooning ecstasy I will experience while watching Morrissey.  In London.  Yowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!

---

Comments

14 year old Julie

2004-05-07T16:07:05.000Z

God, you like totally need to grow up or whatever.  I’m 14, so I’m allowed to do dumb things like buy concert tickets with dad’s credit card or sneak out of the house to go smoke in a ditch, but you’re like an adult or something, you need to like, be responsible.  That’s so immature, oh my god.

Are up.  Check them out at:

http://www.pbase.com/ritheah/sibl

I got one of those silly email attachment/potential virus emails and the subject was “you are a bad writer”.  Ouch, no need to get personal!

---

Comments

Mollie

2004-05-01T07:26:22.000Z

Hey—

drop me an email at molissa@yale.edu to let me know how Betty’s Summer Vacation went over.  I fell in love with the play and am thinking about putting it on at my school next year.  Thanks!