Cabin Fever and Racial Identity

What, you might ask, do the two things have in common?  Not much, except maybe I would not have commented on the racial identity issue if I hadn’t been confined to the house by Tropical Storm Fay, which means I might have missed the comment by “Babette” on eehard’s blog entitled “Is Obama Black Enough?”

First, let’s get something out of the way.  I’m white.  Naturally blond.  Freckles, even.  My grandmother’s grandmother was from the Old Country.  That country would be Ireland.  My mother and grandmother had carrot red hair, which regrettably my sister and I did not inherit, and have been trying to correct artificially ever since.   On my father’s side of the family, we can only guess that their background was French.  Mostly because of the name, which shall remain unrevealed here, but also because of the location where they surfaced, and their appearance.  Dark brown hair and big noses.  Don’t believe me?  Go to France and walk down any street. 

So could it get any better?  Northern European descent.  The whitest of the white.  Well, somehow, I missed the part growing up where that made me special.  I thought it made me have a different skin, eye, and hair color than other people.  Here is as racist as I got:  I thought, Dang.  How sad that black people only get to have black hair and brown eyes. 

It took living in Memphis for me to understand that I was an enemy, and it took moving to New Orleans to finally get a break.  In New Orleans, it’s impossible to determine anyone’s race.  The absolutely wonderful New Orleans newspaper (the Times-Picayune) once did a  series of articles about the issue.  I hope they won a Pulitzer for it, but I don’t know.  They published a group of photographs on the front page of the newspaper, and asked, “What race is this person?”  You had to guess, and then on the inside pages, you found out what race the people identified themselves as, with some shocking results. 

In Louisiana in the 1990 census, something like 30% of the population checked “other” on the census form under the category of “race”, and wrote in “Cajun” or “Creole”. 

So Babette, don’t let the forms cramp your style.  Write in “Other”.  The real answer to that question, as eehard points out, is “Human”.

Dental Emergencies

First, let me say that I’m experiencing cabin fever and storm fatigue as a result of Tropical Storm Fay, and it’s only Day One of my captivity. 

Nonetheless, I have important information to impart about the hazards of going to the dentist.  Now everyone who enjoys going to the dentist, please raise your hand.  Okay then.  Thought so. 

It’s been a while since I went to the dentist and I have a lot of work to catch up on, but this past week I went in for what was supposed to be a relatively routine “deep cleaning”.  First the dentist gave me five injections to numb my entire mouth.  Fakename’s first piece of dental advice:  Never, ever let anybody do that to you.  The first thing that happened was that I had this sensation that my tongue had swollen to the size of a whale, and I could no longer speak.  It’s quite amazing how much of a role the tongue plays in speech. 

There is that moment between getting numbed and having the dentist or the hygienist actually start the work, when you worry whether you’re numbed enough or not.  Once the work starts and you realize you can’t feel it, you breathe this sigh of relief and relax.  Not counting the mild tension of worrying about whether the anesthetic will wear off prematurely. 

So I relaxed once the hygienist started to work.  At least my mind relaxed, but my body didn’t seem to be cooperating.  After only a couple of minutes I started to feel this rising sense of panic.  Deep breathing and concentrating on something else was not working.  I began to feel that I was choking, I was having trouble breathing, my hands started shaking uncontrollably, and I had the sensation that my insides were about to fly apart.  Keep in mind that I couldn’t speak.  I could only look at the hygienist with terrified eyes and show her my trembling hands.  The hygienist calmly left the room to speak to the doctor, and returned to say that they were going to give me oxygen, but to do that, I would have to move to another room. 

Only when I tried to stand did I finally realize this was some sort physical reaction I was having, and wasn’t just the result of being a scaredy cat, which would have made me deeply ashamed of myself.  I was so wobbly that I had to hold onto the hygienist’s arm to make it across the hall to the room with the oxygen. 

While I was hooked up to the O2, the hygienist explained what was happening.  Not to put too fine a point on it, I had been overdosed with epinephrine.  I had no idea, but it’s common practice to mix “epi”, as it’s fondly called, with dental anesthetic.  Epi contracts the blood vessels, which has the effect of causing the anesthetic to stay in place rather than dissipate; therefore it lasts longer.  Also the contraction of the blood vessels cuts down on bleeding.  I’m not allergic to epi, and I have no idea why this happened–maybe just the result of getting so much of it at once. 

And I’m not sure why the oxygen worked, but it did.  Partly, I guess, it had the effect of calming down the hyperventilation that was a consequence of the panic, and maybe it actually had a physical effect, allowing my body to somehow rid itself of the epi faster.  In any case, it worked, and I was able to go back to our original room, where the hygienist completed her work for another hour.  At the end, she pronounced me an awesome patient, which I think means, “Had a scary reaction to the anesthetic, and did not run screaming from the office”.

Now my chart has a big fat note on it that says “NO EPI”.  Fakename’s second piece of dental advice:  No epi.

Go Joe!

To all the Obama Bashers out there, and especially to you Hillary wannabes:  Joe Biden is the perfect choice.  First of all, there was never any hope that Obama would choose the she-Clinton as his running mate.  It would have been the dumbest thing he could ever possibly have done, and no matter what adjectives may be applied to Obama, dumb ain’t one of them. 

The list of reasons why Hillary would have been a terrible choice is long.  First, I don’t think she even would have accepted.  It would have been a bitter pill to swallow, that you ended up having to settle for second place.  Second, even if she had accepted, she would never have settled for second place.  Obama would have had to spend his whole presidency looking over his shoulder.  The third reason not to choose Hillary can be summed up in one word:  Bill.    Finally, when you get right down to it, she has no more experience than he does at actually running something, or at foreign policy–unless you count the fictitious running away from mortar fire at the airport in Bosnia. 

So before you Obama Bashers jump on me for that experience comment, be advised that I don’t care about Obama’s experience or lack thereof.  I see the president as the idea person:  the person who sets the tone, and represents the country.  The presidency, if you’ll think about it, is not really a position of great power, unless Congress abdicates its responsibilities and hands over the keys to the henhouse to the fox.  (See: George W. Bush, Iraq.)  Note that only Congress can declare war, and it has never declared war in Iraq.  So I guess we aren’t really at war, are we?  To me, smart counts.  I’ve had enough of dummies. 

So what were Obama’s choices?  Hillary–Not.  Another woman?  Even more insulting to the Hillaryites.  That leaves selecting a man, unless there’s a third sex I haven’t been informed about yet.  Selecting a male clone would not have been too smart either.  So what you get is an older, white male, with experience in foreign policy.  Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee.  I was kind of sad that Biden’s own candidacy didn’t go further.  He’s smart, and tough, and will do a fine job as hatchet man while Obama remains the cerebral good guy. 

A final note to the Hillary fans.  I liked her.  I think she would have made a fine President.  I liked Obama better, and voted for him in the possibly relevant or not Florida primary, but I would not have been disappointed in the least if Hillary had won (which she did, in Florida).  However, in two words:  she lost.  She didn’t lose because she was a woman.  She lost because the woman she is, is Hillary Clinton.  Despite cries and whimpers to the contrary, I didn’t see a single shred of sexism in the campaign.  I did hear Hillary Clinton say Barack Obama wasn’t a Muslim as far as she knew.

So get over yourselves and do the right thing.  Don’t vote for a third term for Bush.  And, Go Joe!

No Longer Waiting for Fay

It seems that Fay made its closest pass to Tallahassee at about 3:00 A.M. and the eye is now somewhere near Panama City.  What that means for us is that we’re now starting to experience the worst of the storm. 

For those of you who’ve been living in a cave, or in Nebraska, tropical storms and hurricanes in the northern hemisphere turn counter-clockwise, so as it rotates, it “throws off” rain bands to the “right” side of itself.  Therefore, the east side of the storm is the worst place to be.  Like where we are right now.

The winds haven’t been that bad.  There are some pine branches strewn about the yard, but at least the pine cones have stopped dropping on the roof with such regularity it sounds like machine-gun fire.  Last night I had to give the dog a Valium to keep her from jumping out of her skin.  (She is prescribed Valium to help guard against having seizures, and takes it once a day.  Last night I thought an extra one was in order.)

As many of these storms that I’ve been through, the amount of rain never ceases to amaze me.  It’s been raining here since yesterday morning, more than 24 hours now.  And regardless of the scientific explanation, you can’t help but ask yourself Where does it all come from?  I mean, this weirdo storm has made landfall in Florida four times now.  Doesn’t it seem like it should have run out of rain by now?

The good news is that eventually (sometime tomorrow, they say), it will stop raining.  I do know this:  today there will be no leisurely reading at the backyard picnic table.