Sunday Dental Thread: No teeth today...

[PCIntern]

So in the midst of the worst week I can recall, I moved my office a few floors after 24+ years in my old place. There is no such thing as a "good" move, and this proved to be no exception, since I had 31 years of accumulated crap to sort through and decide upon. Just to give you an example: we order about 100 pounds of plaster/stone for dental models MONTHLY, and not all that many of them are thrown out, but they're filed away in special boxes designed to hold them. IF you do the math that's a lot of weight accumulating after 25 years, and whether kept or discarded, all that weight had to be lifted and maneuvered. We have about 7500 'active' patients and about 12000 inactive charts which we also had to manage. This is in addition to the equipment, the supplies, the books, the financial records, the artwork (substantial, since I used to barter with my starving artists all the time), and the electronics. I worked 18-20 hour days four days in a row and substantially for the three weeks prior to this one.

I state all this because dropped on top of all this was the horror of Tuesday night and worse, the inevitability of the Election, given that we saw it coming, as though we were a stalled car on a railroad track. I'm exhausted, sick at heart for the squandered opportunities which we had two years ago, upset about the MSNBC business, pissed-off-beyond-belief that I will have to listen to these arrogant fools prance about as 'winners' for the next few months, even angrier that we're going to have to deal with whatever evils with which the devise in order to derail the Democrats, who will happily just go along and not fight back. On top of everything else, I had to witness the San Francisco Giants win the World Series, which they deserved to win, having soundly beaten my beloved, but no-show-hitting Phillies. Contrasting all this with how I felt two years ago at this time is even MORE upsetting.

In 1980, when Reagan and the Republicans swept Carter off the table, I called my Dad of blessed memory. I asked, "Dad, what are we going to do?" He replied, "What you're going to do is get up and go to work. What did you think was going to happen in a country where the prime rate is in double digits, there's a probably-manufactured crisis in Iran for months and months, and you have a professional orator, even though he's a dope (my parents knew Reagan personally when they were young) running against a fellow whose good intentions are dwarfed by his introversion and relative inability to do what Americans want, and that is to 'sparkle' in the lights?"

Mom and Dad, I've been thinking about you all week.

[Skittles]

1. K&R

yes INDEED

[Dogmudgeon]

3. What *she* said.

--d!

[Richard Steele]

2. Your dad sounds like an awesome guy. K&R

[PCIntern]

4. Both my parents were remarkable...

Dad was a pragmatic progressive, pro-working man and woman, pro-Union, and a REAL patriot, not a phony asshole with a flag in his hand.

Mom was a real humanist, a feeling person who wept openly when the injustices of the system, hell-bent upon destroying the individuality of the Citizen, who felt that the whole setup was to create 'worker-bees' and keep the Republican and Stupid and that the educational system was being directed to do so.

Both were remarkable well-read and my Dad sent a letter to the Philly Inquirer which raised a real storm here when Reagan was running against Mondale. I have it somewhere and will republish it here when I find it.

[tavalon]

7. I'm sorry they are gone

but damn, you were blessed.

[PCIntern]

10. Very few of that generation

and mindset are left...

Vanishing daily...

[marginlized]

5. Reagan had American Star Struck

Carter conceded even before polls closed on the West coast.

And more than any other relationship in my life, my dentist and I are going on 35+ years. Say "Ahhh".

[tavalon]

6. Moves suck

My husband has an interesting idea about a way in which this election was a lose/lose for the Republican party (We already know it was a loss for the American people) and that is that these newbies can ally themselves with The Party of No and hopefully the public will more clearly see who got them into this mess in the first place or they can decide to ally with the teabag crazies and well, there just isn't any good that will come of that. Basically, had we kept the House, come 2012, the electorate might well have decided to throw the whole Democratic party out thinking we're the do nothings (when we're actually the we just didn't do enough and certainly didn't communicate well but then, when do we?).

Now if these newly revived Republicans decide to actually do some governing rather than just gumming up the works, then hell will have frozen over. It ain't happening. You and I both know it and soon, so will the rest of the public.

As well, maybe, just maybe, Obama is playing rope a dope, a game he's really good at. Barring that, maybe he can remember candidate Obama and bring back that sparkle, hopefully with a leftward twist.

[PCIntern]

8. I hope you're right...

but the Republicans always manage to spin their shit into gold fabric...so we'll see.

[Ruby the Liberal]

9. Go back to bed and sleep in, friend

What a long, trying week! Its Sunday morning. The sun isn't even up yet. Crawl back under the covers and sleep in.

:hug:

[PCIntern]

14. No sleep for this man...

18-20 hour days until we're running at full-tilt. I have no choice in the matter, sorry to say. :-(

[Evasporque]

11. this will bring out the Anti-Dentites...nt

[Turbineguy]

12. "Get up and go to work"

It's still the best choice now.

[Warpy]

13. Your dad was a very wise man

I think my right wing father might have said the same if we'd been on the same side politically. He, too, was practical except when it came to the illusion of tax cuts. He never did figure out it was an illusion, that every cut at the federal level meant a bigger increase at the state and local levels.

We survived 16 years of having total morons in office taking their marching orders from a handful of fascist plutocrats. We will survive 2 years of the House being full of grandstanding morons who will ignore the country's business while the economy continues to fall down around them, preferring to mount bogus investigation after bogus investigation.

In other words, this too shall pass, as anyone who has ever been constipated knows. Sometimes the passing is painful, but it does eventually pass.