Admittedly, I am a little obsessed with my teeth. I floss like it’s going out of style.  I floss so much, it’s like a nervous twitch during quiet time.  However, I try to be considerate when I’m around others and reserve stringing-my-teeth-along for the appropriate areas.

There are several things I look for in a dentist, so when it comes to searching for one on Angie’s List, I will take the following into account:

• Does the dentist specialize in cosmetic dentistry? This is important in case I ever need a crown and I want to be picky about its design and shade of white.

• How long have they been in practice?  If they’re good, they’re good, but I prefer a dentist with over 10 years experience.

• And finally, what are people saying about them?  This is where The List reviews will help me make my final decision.

As I type, I think of all the work I need to get done today … then it occurs to me that I don’t have my floss in my purse. That means tiny pieces of meat will congregate in my teeth like it’s a town meeting. There’s nothing I can do about it unless I run to the store at lunch, which I’ll most definitely do.

No, not of each other, thankfully. His little idiosyncrasies — like making sure the kitchen pots are hung the right way on the hooks — plus my own nuances — like helplessly striving to get all the streaks off the bathroom mirror — aren’t enough to put either of us over the edge … yet.
But the profusion of boxes filled with some useful items but mostly useless literature were enough to push us to a cliffhanging situation recently.

A few weeks ago, we underwent fall cleaning — a belated version of the spring cleaning that never took place. The daunting task consisted of digging through papers upon papers — mostly my husband’s old bills and receipts and some seemingly ancient books and assignments from college.

Boy was that an adventure. Talk about dealing with scraps — both the physical scraps of old documents and the emotional scraps of a husband, wife and mother-in-law (his mom) trying to come up with the best way to clear out a cramped apartment on little food and a less-than-desired portion of sleep.

On top of that, we had to move furniture around and adjust our flat-screen television without disrupting the cable connection — the climax of the day. That’s when we realized we didn’t know where those finicky orange and green cords went and how in the world our TV’s new location would work without stretching one of those cords beyond its capacity. But we did it. And we’re all still alive to tell the story.

Our apartment has suddenly come to life as well — even if the two trees we purchased to “spruce” up the place, no pun intended, are admittedly artificial. Hey, we moved heaven and earth to get our apartment looking like it’s now a step up from a college dorm.

It was this kind of situation that led us to regret not hiring a home organization services company earlier. Angie’s List really would have come in handy that day.

But alas, the day is over. And now that the mammoth mess is out of the way and our living room no longer looks like the maze from “Labyrinth,” my husband’s back to hanging pots and pans and I’m back to cleaning those stubborn mirrors.

I have convinced myself the reason I am disturbed by such noises is because my place needs furniture.  I truly believe, like kids want candy and adults want careers, homes want to feel like home.

As I prepared myself for another furniture shopping adventure, I discovered a hideous stain embedded on my gray carpet near the fireplace. I suspect when my brother and his wife came to visit two weeks ago (and refused to remove their tennis shoes) he must’ve had some mud or oily concoction on his shoe. Or maybe it was his wife? Who am I kidding?  Regardless of who created the stain doesn’t mean I’m going to start acting like some pretentious person, monitoring every visitor’s move or putting plastic protectors on my carpet.

Instead, I’ll put the Resolve carpet stain remover to rest and look for a credible carpet cleaner on Angie’s List.  Besides, I could always buy a sofa that would cover the stain.  Nah, I’d feel too guilty.

Perhaps I shouldn’t double-dog-dare karma like that. The latest call was somewhat less close. I was riding with my family in the car — home from the pumpkin patch, no less — when a series of events involving the highway, someone zooming into our lane at 90 miles an hour, and an oncoming semi led to our car being totaled, my wife with whiplash, my toddler son with a broken leg, and me with a concussion.

Guardian angel was working overtime on that one, though. If the semi had hit us at any other angle, one or more of us probably wouldn’t be here, and Kat and I are healing pretty quickly. Even little Armand Zefram Pogue turned out remarkably well — his car seat held through the whole ordeal, so he didn’t even have any muscle soreness or bruises. His leg was fractured by the back seat being crushed up against the front. But it’s a clean break, they tell us, and he should have his cast off in a week or so. Which says a lot about the healing power of little kids, I guess!

On the upside, he still loves his toy cars and very much likes his new car seat, so at least he wasn’t automobile-traumatized by the event.

You learn a whole lot about perspective when you wake up in an ambulance, on a backboard, with your little boy crying, your wife in the next ambulance, and your car looking like origami on the highway. It’s amazing who comes through when things really do go to hell like that — the insurance company that gets on the ball, the primary care family doctor who drops everything the next day to follow up on your issues, the friends who help you find an old car that, even if it’s got 189,000 miles on it, will at least get you around town while you work on getting a new one, and the trusty mechanic who’ll confirm that the car really is in as good shape as you’ve been told. Lots of people will be getting some good reports on the List after this one.

I’m about to jump out of my skin as I sit here working on our upcoming magazine. Not because I don’t love what I do, but because I’m leaving on Thursday to go on a 10-day Mediterranean cruise. Woo-hoo!

Soon, I will be sipping wine in ports in Italy, France, Morocco and Spain, gorging myself on delicious meals and wandering around foreign cities.

Luckily, as I rush to get everything knocked out on my to-do list here and at home, I have very little to worry about when it comes to the actual trip details. My husband and I are traveling with our good friends. She happens to be a travel agent — a very obsessive travel agent who already has every single detail nailed down. She even knows a little Italian.

Now, if she could just make time skip forward so I can sit back, relax and enjoy the trip!

Ciao!

I usually hear the grumblings of those who think DST is ridiculous. Folks who “miss” the sunlight (here’s a tip: It’s available in the early morning!) and whine about how dark it is all the time. But the thing is, no matter what the clock says, winter means less daylight hours and more darkness. That’s just the way it is.  Since there’s little to be done about changing the Earth’s axis and rotation, I say we embrace the extra time.

How did you use your extra time? Did you return phone calls, clean your garage, write someone a love letter or go out for a jog? Or perhaps it just meant another hour of pre-game drinking before Sunday’s bevy of football games. My guess is most of us slept right through this small, but significant gift. That’s what I would’ve done — if only someone had explained the concept of DST to my 1-year-old. He had no idea. Instead of waking up at 7:30ish, he was up at 6 a.m. He had his breakfast, played and was ready for his midday nap by 10.

So much for the extra hour being a thing of celebration!

My biggest concern quickly became whether or not I could somehow keep him awake and engaged during the day so he wouldn’t want to go to bed at 5!  Luckily my sister and her husband were in town and helped with diversionary tactics. I thought the day would never end. Good thing spring is around the corner and I can give this hour back.

Maybe next year I should plan a little better and get ideas from the List on how to best spend that extra time.

Learning of his plans, I quickly stepped in, volunteering my Angie’s List membership to help locate a good painter. I pulled three names from the List, all highly rated of course, and gave their contact information to my roommate. But he decided against using any of them. The result? The painter started in September and just finished last week.

I’m not knocking Billy** the painter [**name changed to protect his self-worth] as a person. I just think he should find another profession. My roommate is a commercial real estate agent, and Billy worked on some of his properties in the past. The main reason he rolled with Billy was the price. Billy came cheap.

But Billy completely underestimated the job. He didn’t know how to deal with dry rot, failed to scrape or control a power washer properly and was just physically unable to perform the job in a timely manner.

Warning: If you ever hire a painter and he shows up limping with a cane, find someone else.

Billy: I feel bad telling you this, but you need to find another profession. Physical labor isn’t for you. Plus you smoke, play loud music and my yard looks like you took a cheese grater to the outside. Not only does it look like you failed to clean up, it looks like your goal was to leave the exterior paint in bacon bits across my front and back yards. Plus, you should consider covering up some of those drug-related tattoos. Now that I’ve lambasted Billy, I have something for my roommate.

Roommate: Please listen to people! Now what’s the point of having the List as a resource if you don’t use it? It stinks that I don’t own this home. I would’ve used the List to get this job done in a three days rather than two months. And don’t ever go with the lowest estimate! Lowest estimate typically means the lowest quality. I’m sure he was the cheap choice, but I’m convinced Billy brought down the neighborhood property values at least $100,000.

Look for this report on Angie’s List Indianapolis.

Among the costumes this year: Hermione, Cookie Monster, and the whole Scooby Doo gang.

Besides preparing for the holiday with things like costume rental and holiday decorating (who says that’s only for Christmas?), there are plenty of reasons for you to check the List after Halloween, too. If you ate too much candy, Angie’s List can help you find a dentist to take care of those cavities. If your kids ate too much candy, check the List for childcare — just until the sugar high wears off. And if the pumpkins you carved and put on your front porch have since been smashed across your front lawn … well, you get the idea.

And make sure hang on to the phone numbers for those service companies — in a few months, you might want the guy who turned your house into a haunted one to come back and string up some Christmas lights.

First up on the to-do list: new shared bank accounts and closing the old personal ones. We got that done this weekend and it was surprisingly easy (I’m of the belief that the List should rate banks, as I’d rate my new financial institution highly, but that’s for another post). Next up: filling out reports for all the service companies we hired for our wedding ceremony. I’ll be rating and reviewing the reception hall, the florist, the photographer and the DJ. I should have done this weeks ago, but hey, I just got married — I do what I want (if it’s OK with the wife).

What else? For the long term, we need to find a home to purchase in the next two years; figure out a shared financial investment strategy (with the economy, I’m thinking of buying stock in the manufacturers of Ramen and refrigerator boxes); determine how to reduce our now shared debt; and decide on whose medical insurance we’ll use. I’ve got the feeling my Angie’s List membership will definitely come in handy in the future.

This brings me to the point where, as a 30s-something adult, I had to turn on a furnace for the first time. I rented an older home in a historic district of Indy and I love it, but this heating system is enormous, and dealing with natural gas has always freaked me out. It should be easy right? WHATEVER! With years of Southern fear and guilt bred into me, the dramatic “Lighting of the Pilot Light” was a big deal. A ritual, if you will, leaning over a prehistoric space heater, letting the gas run through the line and waiting to spontaneously combust. I can hear my mammaw saying right now, “ You’re gonna burn yoursef’.” or “Oh, lawsee, you’re all gonna die of carbon monoxide poisoning!”

The thing is, I was terrified of this monstrous furnace and lighting the pilot until a little research working on one of the November Angie’s List podcasts featuring heating and cooling service providers. We interviewed a local HVAC guy about furnace maintenance and his info on yearly check-up tips eased my mind about fiddling with the flame on my furnace. After a cold night, I got over that fear quick, successfully getting my new found giant warm fuzzy friend lit with a little help from the List.