I trust my dentist very much, and I've been going to her for at least 15 years if not more. However, if it was any other dentist I'd not known for long, I'd get a second opinion on $5K of work.

I think it's just the "if you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail" as applied to dentistry -- only it's a drill they're using, you know? I can't see much purpose in crowns put on baby teeth, seriously.

Oh, GOD. Everything short of canon admission, I'm sure.

Angel had canon admission. I'll be wanting visuals to pass the feather boa on to White Collar.

MySpace? That's soooo 2007! C'mon teens you can't let the adults out-Internet you.

I think they out-Interneted us by throwing up a rampart of blinking animated backgrounds and song clips that play automatically to keep MySpace for themselves. It feels as if my eyes and ears bleed any time I look up a profile on that site.

The dental stuff is such a clusterfuck of horrible. It's incredibly expensive (hello, I needed that money to buy my house a new roof!), stressful when they sedate your kid (though in this respect they are great and gentle and the kids are not scared or in pain - but still, parents take it hard), AND you get to feel like shit because it's either your fault for not ensuring good oral hygiene OR it's your fault because you have bad tooth genes, possibly BOTH! Woot!

For marketing, my cleverest idea has been the bathroom stall monthly newsletter. I know they pee.

I have a 25-year-old friend who doesn't even have an email address. She texts exclusively. I'm not sure she knows exactly what Facebook is.

flea, are they permanent teeth that need capping? That's just so unbelievable to me! Poor Casper.

My goodness, in my day I don't think we even went to the dentist until we went to school! They had a hygenist there part-time, which in retorspect was pretty weird. I know she passed out flouride and did teeth cleanings, but what else filled her day. Maybe she helped the school nurse/attendance.

No, they're baby molars that won't fall out until she's 10 or 12. Can't pull them, because then the teeth move around in bad ways for the developing adult teeth still in the jaw. Can't leave them, because the roots will get infected and they'll abscess.

The other thing that's driving me crazy about this is the trust issue. It's damned hard to get your kids into a new dentist for a second opinion, and obviously, you pay for that. This isn't anything really complicated like a poorly understood kind of cancer or some undiagnozed constellation of symptoms - it's simple tooth decay. We pretty much understand tooth decay I think. Why there isn't an agreed upon standard of care and I have to worry that my DENTIST is upselling me makes me furious. I do not WANT the responsibility of being a good consumer for this. I have too much else to do.

Uhg. It should not be so hard to figure out who I go to for signatures to take my laptop offsite.

flea, I did get another dentist in town to give me a second opinion for free for Liv. I got worried that the pediatric specialist was upselling us, too. I got lucky and a moms' club I belong to had a dentist as a guest speaker. She told me her husband had a practice and would give us a free exam. When I went in, he told me our dentist had done the same kind of work on his own kids, since he didn't do sedation and they also needed extensive work. It made me feel a lot better about getting the work done on my kids.

Also, you've just stated my EXACT feelings about my kids' teeth.

Mother of god, I think I am going to kill one of my teams. Slowly, painfully. I may even let them live just to make them suffer more.

Now this is an awesome wedding cake: HR Giger wedding cake