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First Molar From the Jaw

01/22/2013 14:58

Hello's to all my internet friends out there! I trust this day finds you well in health and spirit.

Today, I want to talk about something I really know nothing about. So, this should allow for lots of room for thought.

The subject for today's blog is Wisdom Teeth. What's the deal with wisdom teeth, why do we get them and why do we throw them away?

I've done the immediate research that I could do on the web and it appears that almost all entries on this subject are posted by a member of the dental profession who basically says that you don't need them and you should just get rid of them. I wonder if this type of advice has allowed the oral community to stay in business as it has grown over the years.

Here's a quick question: How many of you remember the days when you could just show up at a dentist's office and have him pull a tooth or just fill a cavity in less than a half hour and only charge you $25 to $50 dollars for the whole job? I do.

Nowadays, their focus is on your smile. They aren't dentists in the original sense of the word. Some won't even pull a tooth; they send you to an oral surgeon instead. It's all about how much they can get out of you without having to actually take out a tooth.

Which begs the question, will the dentist remove a wisdom tooth. Probably not, or at least not today anyway. Either you will get sent to the oral surgeon, who has his own way of doing things, or the dentist will first need to take x-rays. He may provide you with a prescription for pain medicine, if you are lucky and then reschedule you to come back on another day for the actual extraction at which time he will also need to perform a root canal. Suddenly, the cost of pulling the wisdom tooth has shot up like Jack's bean stalk to a whopping $700!!

Do you need dental insurance? You're damn right you do! You need it but not to help cover the cost of the dental work. You need it to help cover the charges that have been run up by the dentists themselves. Ever wonder why dental insurance only covers so much of the dental bill and you still get stuck with a humongous debt? They know!

So, what's so special about the wisdom tooth and why is it called that. My research tells me, ad nauseum, that early man used them, are you ready for this?,............ to eat with! Imagine that! 4 extra teeth to eat with. Who'da thunk that to be a good idea? Oh yeah! God would have. Could it be that the extra teeth would actually make it easier for our digestive systems to process our food and combat obesity? Hmm.

And why is it called the wisdom tooth? Well, they say that it's because they come later in life, during your late teens and early twenties when we have become so much wiser. Raise of hands; how many of you have actually found that wisdom comes from such an age? Are you kidding? We are just discovering life at that age. Wisdom is much farther down the road.

So, let me surmise a premise. I offer this for your consideration. Our ancestors were smarter than us. Ever wonder how the pyramids were built? Other wonders in this world of archeological significance, the stone faces on Easter Island and Stonehenge come to mind, still make us wonder today how they got there.

Even cave drawings tend to make us wonder if extraterrestrials have been here before. How could our ancestors have communicated with such beings? What is the difference between them and us today?

I offer you this; our ancestors most likely had their wisdom teeth. The third set of molars, those that were probably trying to grow in when you had them pulled, could it be that they are the key to vast knowledge?

Maybe it is these teeth that allow use of the parts of the brain that today lie dormant and unused.

Maybe, just maybe, it was not until after people started losing their third molars that humankind began to refer to them as wisdom teeth due to a definite loss of intellect that coincided with the loss of the tooth.

Just think. Our ancestors probably had to allow the tooth to reach it's potential. Though it was painful, it probably was no more painful than that of a baby cutting it's teath. Little babies can endure such pain and get over it. But have we, as adults, become such wimps that we choose not to endure it? We are wusses, and our fear of the pain prevents us from reaching our full potential. Not only could the wisdom one gains from allowing the third molars to grow in completely, vastly increase one's knowledge, but could it also be the cure for obesity in the United States? Food for thought. We may never know until we allow the first molar from the jaw to grow in.

Les Miserables

01/14/2013 15:18

I went to the movies yesterday and saw Les Miserables, or as I prefer to say it, Less Miserables. I don't particularly enjoy movies that are all the way though musicals, but I have to admit that this was very good. Anne Hathaway was el primo superbo and should win the Oscar just for her rendition of I Dreamed a Dream.

Amanda Seyfried seems to amaze me every time I see her in something. She plays the part of Cosette and takes her first soprano voice to new and amazing heights. She was wonderful!

Russell Crow and Hugh Jackman were very good too, just as we would expect them to be. They all did their own vocals however, I have to wonder if Russell and Hugh didn't have a little help with a few of those notes that I am pretty sure were a little out of their range. Help or not, it was very good and it you haven't seen it yet, then go. It is two and a half hours of pure entertainment. The only way you would not enjoy it is if you have no couth.

My wife and I have a favorite movie theater that we frequent in Denver. We see a movie at the theater at least once a week. The theater has promotions to entice you to frequent them and we take advantage. If I buy one of their refilable cups (in this case two) and bring them back each time I can get a large refill of it for only a buck fifty (three bucks for two cups). Going as often as we do, that saves us $338 a year! That pays for half of the movies we see during the year.

Another promotion they offer is a T-shirt that, if you wear to the movies, will get you a FREE medium popcorn. By my calcuolations, this would save us another $260 a year! So, let's see......$338 + $260 = $598 each year. Divide that by $13 (the old people price), and that means that forty six of those movies are paid for! Wow!

So, yesterday I bought one of the T-shirts. It comes in a bundled package that I would have to wear the next time I go to the movies. It was an investment. I held onto it throughout the movie. When the movie ended I took our cups into the restroom to rinse them out. I laid the bundled T-shirt beside me on the sink counter. I dried out my cups and left. I sat down on a bench just outside the restroom and it hit me. I'd left the T-shirt on the counter. I went back in immediately and it was gone. I felt miserables. I know it was just a T-shirt but I couldn't believe that in a mater of a few seconds, I had totally forgotten it, especially since I was looking straight at it the entire time I was in there.

It wasn't one of my better days anyway. I had been feeling a little light-headed and wobbly from the MS. One of the problems I deal with is forgetfulness. It upset me that I thought that I was so focused and in a matter of a few seconds, I had completely forgotten what I was so focused on.

Ah, such is MS. Such is life. Les Miserables.

We Survived the Apocalyptic Year of 2012

01/07/2013 19:51

Hello and a very Happy New Year to you all!

If you are one of the billions of people who managed to, somehow, dodge the apocalypse of last year, congratulations! If you think you might have escaped it but are now somewhere other than on earth, let me help you understand your predicament. You are still here, with the rest of us. This is not the Elysian Fields. This definitely, is not Heaven. This is the same old earth that you have, to now, tricked yourself into thinking that you could see, but were no longer a part of because you have moved on to another dimension. That is not a cloud that you are floating on. It is the bed that you are refusing to get up from and lest you think that the moisture that you feel is proof of the clouds existence, let me set the record straight for you. The moisture you feel is not the moisture you might experience from being in a cloud. You have wet the bed. Its' time to get up now. Take a shower, drink some coffee and go buy a new bed. No one is going to share that bed with you now.

Welcome to 2013! It is a new year that offers the promise of many good things to come, or it could simply be a rehash of what we just went through, minus all the ridiculous bombardment of political ad like the ones we just suffered through last year. The same players are in place and it looks like we are reading the same book. Only difference is the hope for new and better lies and what we make of the new year, ourselves.

Now, if you are the superstitious type, even though you may be hopeful, let me point something out if you haven't already done so yourselves. It's 2013! It is the 13th year of the new century! Think Friday the 13th to the hundredth power! For the superstitious minds here, that could mean that you are in for a world of hurt this year.

However, for those of us that are not superstitious, it simply means that 2012 is over and it is a new year. We may be in for a world of hurt, too. That remains to be unfolded, but we have hope that this will be the year that we have all been waiting for; the year that all our ships come in. Probably not, though. We humans are stupid by nature and the people we have decided to allow to lead us will undoubtedly find a way to screw us and make life unbearable.

I, personally, have hope. I've always had hope just because I know that Jesus is my Savior. But this year I've added direction to my endeavors.

I will write more books and each will be better than the one before. I've often said that I may not become famous in this lifetime, but someday, after my time is up, I will be recognized as one of the greatest writers of all. Then someone will get rich off of my efforts.

So, there. You all have something to look forward to. Agents. Publishers. Did you hear that?

I've been working on a new a different novel this past year that I hope to have ready in mid-February. The working title of the book is The Thorium Endeavor. It will be an action-packed introduction to a new heroine, Agent 355. That's right, I said heroine. She is a lady and a warrior. Her touch can be gentle and sensuous or it can be brutal and deadly.

Be on the lookout for news about its release and how to get a copy.

Happy New Year Everybody!!

Marglyn You Are My Hero....and Other Thoughts

10/30/2012 13:13

Hello everyone! Hopefully you live in an area that was spared the disaster of Sandy. If you happen to live within its reach, I hope that you and your loved ones are okay. Please know that a whole nation is praying for you. That means me too. As many of you already know, I live in Denver, Colorado, so I am fortunate to be nowhere near the destruction. I do have a son in Baltimore who I haven't heard from yet or been able to reach, but I know where he lives and I think that he was spared from any real damage. Hopefully, we'll find out something today.

I want to thank Marglyn for reading my novel, Rescue of the Heart, and also for giving me such a very nice review on Amazon. I was about to give up. I thought that it may not be good at all because no one was letting me know their thoughts on it. But now, thanks to Marglyn, I know that it is as good as I thought it was. I sure worked on it long enough. So, God bless you Marglyn. Now if I could only get some more reviews like that. I love knowing that somebody likes my work. It makes me feel like a legitimate author.

This morning I was blessed with a sight that I am sure was not seen by many. I was on the outskirts of Denver and driving westward, back toward home. The sun was just coming up behind me. The road I was on was a straight, two-lane highway that had no other traffic at the time. To my left were power lines running toward the mountains in the distance. On my right was a train track and about a quarter mile down the road there was a train coming my way and it had it's headlight still on. The overall lighting of the area was soft, leaving a peaceful feel to it. It was pretty much quiet where I was because I could not yet hear the train. Looking up in the sky and toward the mountains was a full moon on the right side of this view. On the left side and just off center were four wispy clouds. I don't know what type of clouds they were. They were just wispy and appeared to be stacked like a set of plates atop one another. They were a soft pastel pink with a pastel streak of blue lining the bottom of each cloud. The rest of the sky was clear and still carrying the last hint that night was giving way to the new day. The terrain around me was open fields. It was a beautiful sight that I wish the whole world could have experienced.

It reminded me of my younger days when photography was everything to me. I lived for moments such as this. I would often stay out all night just waiting on the perfect moment to photograph a scene, sometimes on the Arkansas river or sometimes atop of Pinnacle mountain just waiting on the perfect lighting so that I could capture the perfect picture.

Those days are behind me now. When digital photography came on the scene, even though I fought against it, my love of being the great photographer slipped away. Film is hard to find nowadays and is too pricey. Everyone and everything has gone digital and automated. I prefer to take all day to get one shot as long as it is just right. With digital, you can fake so much of the picture. On film, what you see is what you get. Dimensions and depth of field is so much better produced on film. To me, a digital picture is nothing more than a snapshot. In my eyes it has the appearance of snapshots that have been glued to a poster board. So, my desire to create the perfect photograph has gone away. It was my art.

Back in the day, I would have stopped at just the right spot and unloaded my gear to capture that special moment. I wish you could have seen it.

I don't know why, but yesterday I was thinking about whistling. My daddy taught me to whistle way back when I was a young whippersnapper. He always enjoyed the musicality of whistling and would often be whistling one tune or another. He was pretty good too. That is the way I learned, whistling tunes. But as I grew older I found that a lot of folks thought it was annoying, so eventually I stopped doing it. Whistling had become something you did to call your horse or your dog or just to get someones attention. This type of whistling I could never do. I wanted to but I never could do it. I still wish I could but somehow that talent has never landed here. Nowadays, if I try to whistle, no matter which way I try it just sounds pathetic.

Consider this...Imagine that!

06/23/2012 00:24

...is the title of my blog which can be found online at https://considerthisimaginethat.blogspot.com.

I will also post it to this website on the Blog page for your convenience.

Today I have included the transcript from one of my past blogs for your enjoyment.

I HAVE MAN BOOBS!!!

06/22/2012 18:11

I'd say I'm about a C cup. Maybe I should start wearing a bra. Maybe I could design a belly bra! You know, something to add support for my large gut that would help to take the strain off my back and make my pants fit around my waist so that I look human.

I started this blog several weeks ago after a long look at myself in the mirror. Trust me, the sight of me naked is hideous and would make you want to abandon sex for good. Ok, I'm not Jabba the Hutt fat but still I'm much more than is healthy. Anyway, I had to stop writing for two reasons: A) problems with managing my own thoughts while dealing with Multiple Sclerosis often makes it very difficult to concentrate on what I'm doing, and B) I slipped on the ice and broke my shoulder. It isn't easy to sit here even now and type.

Still here I am, a dedicated trouper, writing anything for anyone who cares to read. I'm sorry, I drifted away for a moment. I heard a delivery truck across the street making some noise and it caused my mind to wander away for a moment. Now what was I saying? I don't know. Too many distractions today. I hear a neighbor a few doors down who is using a chain saw to cut up some trees that were damaged by the snow and a small plane that is flying overhead. I'm finding it difficult to concentrate. I will come back to this later.

Well, here we are another day now. Have you been waiting on me? You have? Thank you so much! It feels so good to know that I have faithful readers. However, I must say that if indeed you have been looking at you computer screen for the last 24 hours waiting patiently on my return, it's a little freaky. Surely you can find something else to fill your day with. I appreciate the loyalty but I have to tell you, I'm not the only writer out there. There are others. Some are pretty good. I encourage you to expand your horizon.

Anyway, it's 10 days til Christmas. Yay!! I don't get into all the gifting though, mostly because I can't afford too. My grandchildren will grow up hating me I guess. Maybe one day I can right this wrong. I hope so. That is part of my motivation to write. Maybe by the time they are older I can be in a position to do things for them.

Oh well, in case you haven't figured this out just yet, I'm doing a lot of rambling here. I had to take a Percocet to ease the pain in my arm and I'm trying to get this done before I get drowsy.

It's a beautiful day outside! I hope you all get to enjoy it. Thanks so much for checking in on me. I pray that God blesses you all.