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American Teeth

I went to the dentist today. We don't have a car yet (mostly because I still refuse to learn to drive and Hamid has to get his social security card before he can get a license/insurance/car - we want a Ford Escape. Well, what I really want is a classic Corvette, but there's no room for the darling little person we're trying to invent) Anyway...my mom had to drive me to the dentist. Imagine. I just turned 34 and my mother had to come and pick me up at 8:15 a.m. and drive me to the dentist. Worse still, she made the appointment for me in the first place. Of course, instead of looking at it like, 'What happened to your independence?!' you could say 'Wow your mom is a sweetheart!' because she is, and I still am. It's just that we're literally in the middle of the desert here and our Haro mountain bikes are still on order and well, I just told you the why's of our lack of transportation.

The people at the dentist's office were some of the happiest, nicest humans I've ever met. I wondered to myself how that many people could be so very enthusiastic to wake up so darn early just so they could scrape junk off of other peoples' teeth in a big white office in the middle of the Arizona desert; but there they were, super friendly and clearly well-rested. It was the most fun I've ever had at the dentist, even though they told me I have three cavities. One of which is behind the veneer that was broken (and then repaired by an angel of a French dentist who just happened to be in Tamil Nadu that season). Of course this means the veneer has to be replaced which means the one next to it has to be replaced too (I only have the two...but if they don't match then really what's the point of having them?). And if I'm going to get new veneers I've got to have my teeth whitened because I did finally give up those nasty cigarettes (hooray for me! Six weeks cold turkey and not a craving in sight!). I sat there nodding and smiling, adding oral hygeine procedures to my shopping list as we all chatted on about the surprising importance of flossing while pregnant and thought nothing of the cost of any of it until they showed me the bill.

Now, one other thing we don't have (yet?) is insurance. I know, I know...it seems crazy to try to get pregnant if there's no insurance what with the whole pre-existing condition rule imposed on us poor consumers by the insurance companies. I'm not even going there right now and will explain my logic at a later date. For now, let's just say we've got it covered. But not having insurance means these bills get paid out of pocket and out of pocket in the United States is a far cry from out of pocket everywhere-else-I've-lived-the-past-four-years. I think my emergency veneer repair in India cost a whopping $50; compare that to the cost of the original veneer in Seattle: $600. Here, in the middle of nowhere, where apparently veneer-stuff is highly coveted and more valuable I have to pay $900 for each one. You do the math. But it's worth it, every single shiny copper Abe. We have no idea how much we take for granted here in the States, how exceptional our health care, vision care, and dental care options are. How the fact that we even have options is extraordinary. We forget, or never even realize maybe, just how blessed we are and what a gift it is that the dentist doesn't just knock out the cavity-laden teeth with a stone hammer and plunk a dirty piece of ripped cotton shirt over the gaping, bloody hole (this happened to a friend of mine in India...truth). We don't know it, but the rest of the world certainly does.

While we were living in Iran, Hamid and I went to the dentist of his childhood to get our teeth cleaned. It was a fairly uneventful visit aside from the very startling moment when the otherwise mute doctor popped up from his work to point out in quite a loud voice, "You have goooood American teeth! Europeans, not so much. Iran, OK. But Americans, and Canadians - you Americans all have wonderful teeth!"

No excuses.

I'm not the kind of vegetarian who treats it like a second occupation. I'm not out to convert anyone, although I'd be perfectly happy if my darling husband wanted to forsake his steaks and chicken breasts for the soy burgers and veggie cheese I am so addicted to. There's nothing I can say to a carnivore that's going to take away that addiction to flesh - but when people have asked me why I became vegetarian I would tell them about the night I came home from Thanksgiving dinner at two a.m. too stuffed with all the overindulgence the holiday commands to sleep. I turned on the cable network and flipped mindlessly through the channels until my attention was caught by the image of a man beating a clearly injured pig.

The pig, massive to the point of not being able to move on it's own, was half in and half out of a holding pen so small it defied logic that the poor animal had even fit there in the first place. The man kicked the pig, the pig screamed a baby-sound in response and the camera panned out to reveal an entire factory of swine - every single one of them literally packed into individual holding pens too small to allow even a single step in any direction.

I watched, horrified - sick at what I was being shown. There were film clips from every possible kind of animal factory America allows. Chickens in rows and stacks, pecking eachother's eyes out, broken legged and crazy from forever being in a lit airless room with no hope of ever actually being a chicken. A cog in a machine, watiing for slaughter. Turkeys grabbed up by wherever the workers could get a grip: their necks, their wings, their legs which are all quickly broken to avoid their struggling. Cows strung up live by hooks, their crying and bellowing in pain on the way to have their throats slit open so very human it made me physically ill.

When it was over I promptly vomited my Thanksgiving dinner and cried myself to sleep with this intense sadness at having been an unwitting part of all of it. The next day I bought every single vegetarian item I could find and never touched meat again. It was the best decision I've ever made in my life.

Those images have stayed with me all these years, I've never forgotten what it felt like to realize that the meat I'd been eating had lived such a painful, stress-filled existence. It was not surprise to me anymore that our society is so plagued by diseases, by cancer, by emotional problems. The message stayed with me but I never did find out who had made the video or what it was called. Until recently, while browsing for something else entirely on the net...I found it.

I actually found it on my birthday, which was lovely by the way, and clicked the link - letting the video play for about ten seconds was all it took to break my heart all over again and renew my commitment to live a meat-free life. This video so impressed upon me the deeply destructive nature of our animals-as-food factory system that I would like to invite you to watch it. I don't care if you keep eating meat - it's not for me to decide what you put in your body...but educate yourself, at least.

Meet your meat.

Little Earthquakes

We designed and now run a major blog directory for a client and part of the maintenance and upkeep involves going through every single one of the 7,000+ current listings by hand and removing bad links, abandoned blogs and the like. Thank goodness for Hamid's code - at least the 404s have been removed from the database already...even so, it's a big job going through the world's diatribes this way, has to be done though.

I spend hours clicking links, scanning blog pages, and making reports for edits, link moves, and flat-out deletes...until my eyes glaze over with the boredom of it all. But in the middle of this monotony there's a little sadness whenever I come across a blog that's been totally left to rot for the past few months...it was clearly submitted with the best of intentions but somewhere along the line the author just...gave up. No more lofty goals of publishing one's life, thoughts, and opinions to the web on a regular basis, consistent communication with the rest of humanity via this most inhuman format, forever.

I don't think anyone ever starts a blog knowing full well they're going to one day abandon the project completely; their online persona left without a drop of attention, like dusty dried-up plants in a hallway somewhere no one cares. I don't know anyone who starts something with the intention of unfinished business. At the same time, and in all fairness, a blog is by it's very nature a volatile and needy creature and it can at times begin to feel like an annoying requirement; striving to keep the distance between date stamps as short as possible. And the ridiculous guilt that creeps in for having not posted for days, or weeks....or months until finally the very thought of it leaves one inventing a million ways to frame and phrase a graceful exit in hopes of finding the one that makes the most sense. These half-penned blogs - the ones that actually make a point of being done with a proper adieu...at least they provide some closure. It's the ones that just fall off into the nothing of the net with increasingly sporadic posts and an eventual, obvious silence that break my heart.

I came across one the other day that survived only long enough to mourn the loss of a marriage. A man crying openly into web space over his divorce, over a woman who no longer loved him enough to wait for whatever it was she needed. He wrote that her eyes had changed. He wrote that he knew he had not done enough to keep her happy, that he knew he had not spent enough time getting to know the her she was becoming as she grew and changed and evolved. By the time he started writing, it was too late. It was already over and she was standing in the doorway with the eyes he didn't recognize and that was that. He worked out his demons for a few more posts; alternating between hopeful and hateful until his friends finally came over to drag him out to a baseball game. And that was the last post - there was nothing more to tell me what had happened to the man, or to his wife. If they'd stayed friends, worked out their differences...if he'd truly made it out of the depression he mentioned. I felt cheated by this story of a stranger's life - half assed and as incomplete as any book with pages ripped out.

Not every one of these abandoned blogs has a trauma in it's virtual pages - but their emptiness, their failure reminds me that if I don't start worrying about the space between date stamps I'm going to have to delete my own link. Fortunately, it'll be months before I get to Personal Blogs ----> People and Society.

What women want

I need some domestic goddess goodies and I've seen enough husband-buys-wife-appliance-for-anniversary-gift movie scenes to realize I'll be doing everyone around here a big favor if I just buy this kind of thing for myself. So, I went in search of the perfect vacuum. Now, to me, 'perfect' means not only functional, but funky. It sounds simple enough but is much harder to come by in terms of a vacuum cleaner than one might imagine.

I really do detest housework, and while I realize that to many it will seem a useless formula, experiments in my own home have proven ten times out of ten that if I like the look of my vacuum cleaner and it truly does get all of darling Mooshy's dog hair off the couch without destroying the fabric in the process, I'll be all the more inclined to actually use it on a regular basis. So, when I saw these urban-stylish orange, black, and gunmetal grey Dyson vacuum cleaners I logged on to their website and voila! the joy of cleaning in style was immediately on it's way straight to my doorstep. Lovely. Now if only Dyson would go about making an equally stylish and magical clothes iron I might actually get some laundry done as well. And while they're at it, I'd love to see a pink model.

No. Really.

Skinny on backorder

I have this plan that if I start to exercise *now*, I'll be that much more ahead (and that much smaller) when we do get pregnant. I mean, once that bump starts forming there's no going back, you know? It's the expansion of all that I hold dear...and if I can fortify the walls I'll feel better going into it.

Last night over dinner, after a quick trip to the restroom told me that we are definitely not pregnant just yet, my dad was explaining with great animation just how 'destroyed' a woman's body becomes after childbirth and all I could do was smirk and say 'Thanks Dad!'

Men.
Really...
Thank goodness my husband has inifinite amounts of sensitivity.
But I understand where my dad is coming from; as a man he's naturally predisposed to notice a handful of things about any woman at first glance and *all* of these are, of course, physical attributes that nature has designed by law to sag, bulge, quiver, and roll once a child has been birthed.

It's a process of natural selection, or de-selection in this case. Once a woman has conceived and given birth she is no longer meant to be physically attractive to the general male population as the assumption would now be that she 'belongs' to one male in particular already. I realize this is sounding very caveman, and that's intentional. When you look at the things that happen to a woman's body during pregnancy and after giving birth it's unavoidably obvious; we're being taken out of circulation by Mother Nature herself.

This is fine with me from one angle: I don't really want to be 'in circulation' in the first place. I've got the caveman of my choosing and can't imagine any other possible future. *But* one thing I'm so not cool with is the idea that just because I'm out of circulation I've got to look the part.

So, aside from the Haro mountain bikes - which are actually not available until December it turns out - I've ordered two prenatal yoga DVDs, a Swiss exercise ball, and an extra thick yoga mat.

Down the rabbit hole

At the drugstore buying supplies for life in the first world I fumble with just about everything and there's too much of all of it anyway. Five hundred kinds of shampoo, etc. I feel like a calf - wobbly legs, gigantic eyes and all; trying to figure out how to operate myself in this very modern America. Not that it was the stone age or anything when I left, but I am sorely out of practice with even the basics. And the one thing I was most talented at (shopping) takes on a whole new meaning.

I'm looking at everything sideways when the cashier takes my plastic and asks me 'Debit or credit?' I don't know, I admit and she swipes it in a huff and swings the keypad toward me and just waits. I stand there, dumbstruck, not knowing what to do and she lifts the techno-pen out of it's cradle; motions for me to sign the digital screen in front of me. She does not speak to me. She is annoyed with me because I don't recognize this ritual.

With an air of 'Oh that...' I try to regain my composure and tell her with the same 'I wanna be adored' smile I used at a new school in fourth grade, 'We didn't have these things in India.' I guess hoping to start up some kind of conversation that will turn this stranger's opinion of me from 'dumb as a doornail' to 'worldly, just a bit out of sorts and plagued with jetlag and culture shock. Probably brilliant on a good day.'

She flicks her eyes up at me and says, 'Indiana?' with a bored drawl that tells me she wouldn't give a damn even if she did know where India was or how long I'd lived there. She is wearing coveralls (on purpose) and her permed hair is sprayed into a chunk on top of her head, bangs teflon-stiff and straight up to heaven, and that makes me feel a bit better.
'Uh, yeah.' I give up trying to talk to this creature and puzzle over the contraption some more. And then in a blessed flash - Ah yes! I remember now. A glimmer of a past life flickers on in my mind and muscle memory kicks in. I sign the computerized screen with pixel ink, click 'OK' and triumphantly take my receipt in hand and walk out of the store feeling like I've mastered an Olympic event.

Halfway to the car I realize I've left my bags inside and creep back to the counter, sheepishly grinning at the woman who just rang me up and now stands looking at me as if I must be the most undereducated person she's ever seen in her life. She is wondering which cave they found me in. I take my purchases and slink out.

It's impossible to imagine what it must be like for someone coming to the States for the first time but I've got a pretty decent sense of it now. Sort of like Alice down the rabbit hole.