I used to go to the dental group next door. They charge mucho dinero and I could no longer afford it, so I switched to the Careington dental plan. It isn't insurance. It's a discount plan. So like instead of paying $2,000 for a crown, which I did with the dental group next door (you can't very well refuse in shock, after they already did the work), I only paid $600 for the crown that my Careington dentist just put on me a few hours ago.

I found her on the Careington website. The closest dentists are her and some other dental group, both in Plainfield, NJ, a predominantly black and Hispanic town. I don't care what they are, black, Hispanic, Hindu, Arab, I don't give a shit. You can't tell a good dentist by race.

I first tried the dental group, thinking it's better to have a group than an individual because it is more likely at least one of them will be available when you need them. But you can't even talk to anyone on the phone. All you get is a message. And when I sent my daughter to them, she paid them in full, and then I kept getting additional bills for $39 for something she already paid for, cause they are just nuts. And I couldn't even talk to the person responsible, so I keep writing them a reply that I don't owe them this and they have to delete it from their records. They can't do anything to my credit rating anyway, I always get offers in the mail for new platinum cards or whatever. So eff them.

Who the hell is tap dancing on my roof? It's not raining. Something is tap dancing on my roof. Is it a woodpecker convention? Is it a mouse dance? Are squirrels playing with nuts? I swear it is very weird to be here in the attic on the computer listening to a woodpecker rapping at my roof, or whatever it is. Maybe it is the ghost of Fred Astaire.

Shut the fuck up, Fred. Sit down and shut the fuck up. Stop clomping your stupid ghosty shoes on my fucken roof ya dingbat!

No, he's at it again. I never liked your damn movies anyway. I have two words for you. The first is Gene and the second is Kelly.

Where was I? Are you paying any attention at all to me? Wake up, Stupid!

Oh yeah, something about dentists. Are you interested in this? Anyway, I went to this nice Indian lady on the plan. She mumbles when she works. Sometimes I can't understand what she's mumbling but she sounds very reassuring, like she's reassuring a baby. I don't need that but if she wants to baby me, fine. I let people baby me if they want. I was the baby of three in my family.

She told me I have an incredible tolerance for pain. All dentists tell me the exact same thing. The guy next door told me that if he was doing this to any of his other patients they'd be jumping out the window. She was busting on a tooth that needs root canal and asking me if it hurts and I said no, don't even notice it. I never once needed even an aspirin after dental surgery, whether root canal or impacted wisdom tooth extraction. Maybe I'm already dead. My father used to tell me I don't know if I'm dead or alive. But when I told Nanette that, she said he's wrong, you know if you're dead or alive.

She finished putting a cap on my rear left top tooth and then she started poking at the bad tooth on the bottom, a molar that is just one big well of silver fillings. You know what I think? I think the dentist next door charged me a lot of money to fill that tooth, and shouldn't have filled it, because what it really needed was root canal. The gum next to it is sensitive and sometimes has pus spots on it and swells, if something is stuck between my teeth. Isn't that an attractive image? Well, it isn't swelled now, has no pus spots on it, and there's nothing stuck there now.

Anyway, all you need to do to get the swelling to go down and eliminate the pus spots is to floss there and then put on some of that white stuff that bubbles up, what the hell is it called, peroxide, or even Listerine should take care of it.

Then the Indian lady dentist told me that she recommends for me to go to a different dentist to get the root canal done. How do you like that? She said if she does it, she will take four separate visits, but an oral surgeon will do it all at once. I think she's scared to do it and doesn't want to. She repeated a few times that she wants me to come back to her for the post and cap. She's comfortable doing that.

I already called two oral surgeons to do the root canal. I called one on the Careington plan who will have to do it for $459, and I called the excellent one I used to use, who would probably charge more than twice that, and left him a message that I'd like him to do it for $459. I wonder if he will. He's rich as hell, and elderly, and maybe not so greedy, and just might go for it. He knows me from the past.

Someone told me that my old oral surgeon once had a patient die in his office from general anesthesia. I don't care. I think that's a wonderful way to die. I'd love to die in his dental office from general anesthesia. But I'm not going to do that anyway, because I'm going to tell him not to do general, just local. I hate that groggy feeling coming out of general anesthesia, and there's not much reason to put me under because I don't feel much pain anyhoo.