Lesson Learned

I feel guilty about enjoying such near perfect weather while folks in Texas are freezing to death.

Guiltier still that I’ve been so annoyed with the utility company’s continuous energy shaming.

I first brought up being energy shamed back in 2019. The utility company was emailing me a monthly report indicating I was using more than my neighbors.

Since then, it’s been continuous monthly email reports of my being an energy hog and, just this month, I was also subjected to a mailer indicating the same.

My thinking has been I need what I need and, so long as I’m paying the bill, what’s the big deal. Besides ... how can a person use too much energy. Energy was out there, available for use. I even considered lodging a complaint, with the utility company, about their harassing me with not only the emails, but now double tapping me by snail mail.

Well, reading about the Texas power outage this morning, how it’s the result of the state’s infrastructure not being able to handle the inclement weather and how California was, in the past, mocked for its energy policy, which urged us to turn off unneeded lights and limit use of appliances, I got woke.

Lesson learned. I get it now. So, today finds me turning off lights and being mindful of which appliances are plugged in.

This morning’s workout at the Pain Cave was preempted by a dental appointment.

Everything went well. I felt pandemic safe in the dental office, and with the hygienist. However, Dr. McDreamy was not in office today. Instead, in comes a DDS I’ve never seen before who looked to be about 15 years old, let’s call him Doogie Howser DDS.

”You’re a young one”, says I.

”I get that a lot”, said he.

"You remind me of that television show about a kid doctor, Doogie Howser MD I think it was".

He looks puzzled, like he's trying to remember, so I said, "That was probably before your time".

"No" said he. "I think I heard of that ... Neil Patrick Harris?"

"Correct", said I, after which Doogie began his examination.

While he was doing so, another DDS, that I couldn’t see because he was behind me, came into the room, and what proceeded sounded to me like a script the two were running.

The second DDS said to Doogie, “You did a great job on that root canal”.

Color me suspicious, but I right away felt the compliment was for my benefit, so I’d be confident Doogie knew what he was doing. And, I have to admit, I was a little impressed that Doogie got high praise for a root canal.

Then Doogie said he found an area up front, lower teeth, that appeared to be spacing. That it looked like it once had a filling, the filling fell out and that it was an easy fix. “We wouldn’t even have to numb the area”.

I must have made a face because the second DDS said, “Oh, oh. I don’t think she’s going for it”.

He was right but only because I never had a filling in that area.

Doogie should have looked at my chart before making that pronouncement.

I didn’t call Doogie out on it though. Instead, I told Doogie that in all the time I’ve been examined by my regular dentist, he’d never mentioned a problem in that area. That I didn’t want to insult him (Doogie) but I’d be asking for a second opinion, and I be asking it from Dr. McDreamy. Whereupon, the DDS behind me told Doogie to put a “watch” on it. So Doogie said he’d mark it as such.

At home now, looking in the mirror, I don’t see a hole or anything different than usual, but I’m not a dentist.

At any rate, I told the hygienist to be sure to set my next appointment for when McDreamy is in the office. If McDreamy agrees with Doogie, I'll have the so-called spacing filled in.

However, if and when McDreamy retires I’m going to be in a pickle because, if Abbot and Costello (Doogie and that other DDS) are primed to take over, I'm already feeling distrust and will be looking to go elsewhere ... maybe find a female dentist.