Mary + Her Mental Health

Happy Administrative Professionals' Day!

I suppose I am the only one in this enlightened/inclusive/socially aware society of ours that thinks this exclamation, Happy Administrative Professionals’ Day, is just about the most comical thing ever. And I do mean, like, ever.

Ohhhhh great goodness or heavens (whichever you prefer), if you so much as even dare to call me SECRETARY, I will stone you!!! This is 2006, for pity’s or heaven’s (whichever you prefer) sake! We don’t use ugly words like SECRETARY! SECRETARY means bad. Our over-heightened sense of anti-sexism and hierarchical power trips, driven by an effort to over-correct ourselves for previous decades of degradation to subordinates in the workplace, has now forced us to construct the single most transparent, wordy, and otherwise ridiculous alternative phrase to its odious predecessor which involves the use of the word SECRETARY for purposes of celebrating one day a year those persons to whom this once-odious title refers. Why do we do this? Because we believe it will empirically change people’s thinking.

Besides, now we’ve got more male AP’s, and calling them SECRETARY would never do, because we all know the female connotation to the S-word, and we hate that! Yes, we do! We just hate that! It’s wrong to think a SECRETARY is female! Because what if she’s a he? Huh? Did you ever think about who you’re excluding? And who wants to be called SECRETARY anyway? Only weak people, that’s who. Weak people who wear their hair up, sharpen pencils and get people coffee. Eeewwwwww!

Man, I miss the dark ages. Who do I have to pay to bring back a little cave people talk? Whatever happened to respect for our heritage anyway? We’re just going to throw our narrow-minded history out the window? I’m pretty sure Ned Neanderthal’s first word was SECRETARY, doesn’t anyone feel to honor that somehow? I’ll tell you what’s disrespectful: not being allowed to use words like Stewardess, Maid, Waitress and SECRETARY, even if you are doing so in honor of your Great Uncle Carl from Back Woods, USA.

So you'll never guess who came hoppin' on ovah to my house last Sunday!!!


I woke up Sunday morning to find a note from the Easter Bunny explaining that he never gave me a fair chance all those years ago. So what did I get this year? A totally wicked awesome easter egg hunt in my apartment! Eggs galore!



I totally rocked that hunt. Look at that sleepy smile on my face! Thanks Peggy....er...Easter Bunny (bawk! bawk!)

This photo was taken approximately 30 minutes after my root canal was completed yesterday afternoon. I walked in to the apartment, and Peggy just about fell on the floor laughing because I tried to smile with only half my face. Naturally, we needed photographic documentation to capture this blessed day. I showed it to my boss, and she thought I looked like a serial killer.

I couldn't breathe it was so funny! I could NOT get the left side of my face to move at all. My mouth made this perfect 45 degree diagonal. Peggy and I were doubled-over, doing the silent-laugh thing for 15 minutes.

Here's my sexy pose:



Hey, what's the point of having your tooth's roots scraped out if you can't look like a pirate afterward? Am I right?

Thank you all for the marvelous support and prayers. I made it through without any trauma. Jaw is sore, and my tooth is sore...but that's expected. Just so relieved it's over!

Today started out just about as lovely as a day in early April could. Birds, sunshine, mild breeze, buds starting to appear on trees, a pegasus flying across the puffy popcorn clouds and blue sky...okay maybe not the pegasus thing.

Then you go to this silly place called a dentist because you've had a minor pain in one of your tooths for about, oh, three months. You figured you'd just keep flossing and everything would be okay. Then you start to wonder about it possibly being a broken filling. You dismiss from your mind the two most dreaded words in the world of dentistry almost as quickly as you thought them. And you go to the dentist.

Then you sit in the chair, put your pretty bib on, and wait. You notice the floor needs a good mop and question the cleanliness of the man's teeth tools. Dirty floor=Dirty Drill? Possibly. You choose to not think on it. You choose not to think about a lot of stuff when you're sitting there.

Your dentist barely pokes at anything before he announces that you do not have a broken filling, that indeed you have a broken TOOTH. Indeed. His hands are still in your mouth so the only socially appropriate way to respond to this news is to widen your eyes to the size of hub caps. You resist the urge to throw his hands out of your mouth and exclaim, "Shut UP!"

Then the dentist explains that the likely reason for a broken tooth at your age is, and I quote, "a monstrous cavity." Oh bliss. Dentist goes away, and dental assistant comes in to take a couple pictures of your tooth. He lays that heavy x-ray blanket thing on you, and STILL your mind refuses to rest on the dreaded two words.

Dental assistant goes away and you wait. You listen to John Mellencamp sing about how he can breathe in a small town, but wonder if that's really true since the man smokes about 15 packs a day and probably hasn't been able to take a deep breath since he was 7.

Dentist comes back with "bad news". Your countenance changes to helpless victim in one last effort to prevent the reality from happening. Feebly you utter the words, "does this bad news involve two words?" He nods in the affirmative. You smile out of pure denial.

In your particular case, however, two words doesn't quite cut it. Dentist Man throws in a third word: "Emergency". Ah. Good. A word that always puts one immediately at ease. As if the two words, without the qualifying "Emergency", weren't enough to open the anxiety floodgates. Dentist asks if you've been in pain. Well, yeah sure you have. Dentist asks why you haven't come in sooner. Carefully you explain in as polictically correct a way as you can that you simply don't like his kind. You think all his kin need to be rounded up and shot. He takes the criticism well...for a dirty, good for nothing Dentist Man.

Okay, so now you've got THREE words vamping over and over in your brain as Dentist says something about calling this specialist, this Extra Dirty Devil Dentist Person, who is "really nice", that can perform the now three-worded deed for you. Dentist recommends this be done this week. Oh please. What is this...advanced cancer? No. It's a tooth. But then Dentist speaks to you with added concern as he issues another fun phrase: "pain you have not yet experienced in this lifetime."

And an hour later from now, you walk back out into the gorgeous New England afternoon to enjoy the rest of your half sick day. Perhaps you'll go to a movie, or go home and straighten up your room, or hop onto your laptop so you can post a long overdue report on your life and how you've added a FOURTH word to the official definition of the worst news a dentist can give you: "STINKIN' EMERGENCY ROOT CANAL." And the party in your mouth starts THIS WEDNESDAY AT 3:00 P.M.

Now did you really deserve to hear that? No. No you didn't.