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FlossingApril 06, 2006 So I woke up at quarter to four, had to pee, did, returned to bed -- couldn't get back to sleep. This happens from time to time, and there's a stack of books on the bedside floor to prove it. Sometimes I get up, pull on my bathrobe, pad into other room, and edit or write. Why didn't I do that this time? The current job (yeah, that one -- chapter 15 showed up the day after I overnighted chapter 14 back to the production editor) has soporific properties that work in broad daylight. I would have been asleep in minutes. Instead I watched the random thoughts and questions that scrolled through my head. For instance: Dentist said after completing the (temporary) Filling from Hell that some discomfort was to be expected, but unless it woke me up at night nothing to worry about. So had the discomfort woken me up? Maybe I'd been grinding my teeth in my sleep. (There's always a first time . . .) Was the discomfort keeping me awake? Or was it worrying about the discomfort that was keeping me awake? The Commonwealth of Massachusetts -- that would be my home state, and the one in which I currently reside -- has just passed a statewide health insurance plan. "Massachusetts Sets Health Plan for Nearly All" said the headline in yesterday's New York Times. I should be euphoric. Instead I'm suspicious. Supposedly people who can afford insurance but don't buy it will be penalized on their state tax returns. What does "afford" mean? This is a scary question to be pondering at 4:30 a.m. Do these legislators, not to mention Governor Rich Guy (a Republican), think I could have "afforded" the $643/month premiums that my useless old policy jumped to just before I dropped it? The Washington Post article on the subject quoted a Princeton University professor as saying that the uninsured were "moochers." I don't trust any plan devised by political dickerers and schmoozers all of whom have coverage and none of whom will be subject to their definitions of "affordable." I also don't trust anything the insurance companies have a hand in. Hand in? Make that "hand out" -- the state's going to subsidize them for what they should have been doing anyway. Who are the moochers in this picture, eh? So I'm hanging on by my fingernails to the edge of this cliff, telling myself over and over that if I can just hang on long enough a publisher will deliver me from purgatory. Two retina detachments couldn't make me lose my grip, but now the damn state wants to stomp on my fingers. Maybe I should get up, get dressed, turn on the computer, and write another query letter. But Morgana IV's beeps seem awfully loud in the dark, and my downstairs neighbor's bedroom is right under my "office." (See previous blog about office-in-home deductions.) I still haven't really decided that I'm going to WisCon. Rhodry hasn't had his annual checkup and inoculations, and I'm overdue at the optometrist. And about the Problem of God . . . So if I flossed more regularly, would that cavity have been such a mess? I do floss pretty regularly but it's true, regularity gets more regular the closer I get to a dentist appointment. I blame my crooked (but orthodontically corrected) teeth on my father, my rotten (but multiply filled) teeth on my mother and the fact that I was born before widespread fluoridation. Remember what a commie-inspired flying wedge for socialism that was supposed to be? Good thing the dentists' lobby wasn't too strong back in those days -- fluoridation looked bad for business, they would've been agin it. But aha! Nearly all of those responsible for implementing fluoridation had probably had at least one traumatic experience in the dentist's chair. I wonder how many of those responsible for this statewide health insurance plan have any experience with being un- or underinsured. How many of them even know someone who's un- or underinsured? If I flossed more regularly, would I be awake at five o'clock in the morning?
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