Can't concentrate - another symptom of anxiety.

My mind is all over the place these days, like the floor of a teenagers bedroom, it's strewn with undone tasks and discarded ideas. A symptom of anxiety, my poor brain feels like a fat kid let loose in a candy store with a bucket and the words "go grab what you want". Shiny and bright things keep grabbing my attention and I turn from each bit of bling to the next.

Today is Friday - Writing Day. 8am. I sit down to the computer to write. My mind is still not quite awake, so I get permission to read a little Facebook while I drink a coffee. I see a link to a great writing piece, or a tutorial on using Scrivener, or a link to a news story, or worse, a link to videos of naughty cats or 10 celebrities that forgot to put on makeup. Distractions galore. 

But once I get to the distraction, then 2 seconds into reading that, I am distracted again. I remember that I need to check my bank account, an email comes in, I see a previously open tab of a website that I wanted to read. I check my calendar. I look up and see all the books on my shelf that I still need to read. I decide that a load of washing needs to be put on. While I am in the laundry, I clean the toilet. Fold the towels from the dyer. Go back to the computer and recheck my emails. Check my chin for stray hairs, decide that a mirror and tweezers are needed. Make another cup of coffee. Empty the dead roses from the vase I pass. Think that I need to go pick fresh flowers ....

I chastise myself. I am meant to be writing. I convince myself that my brain needs waking up and I should do my daily brain training to kick start it. Halfway through, I get a facebook message. I check it. It's a link from a friend to her dropbox. She is on holidays. I start checking her pics and remember that I need to book flights to Sydney. I go to the booking site and an email comes in from my favourite homewares shop and they have a sale!

In under an hour, I have 15 tabs on my browser open, the washing machine on spin cycle, half a comment started on a friends blog post, two books pulled from the shelf and stacked beside my reading chair, a clean toilet, hairless chin and not one single word of writing done.

I can't blame the modern age of information overload entirely. I just can't seem to stick at any one task for more than a few seconds. I know its my anxiety that is causing this, I could not still my mind if my life depended on it right now. The notion of 'Mindfulness' is a far horizon.

Telling myself off and to "just get on with it", I reread what I have started and although I can read the words, they do not make a sentence in my mind. I get stuck on one word, while new and brighter ideas pop into my head. I scream at myself to STOP this!

And then in defeat, I sit in my reading chair with a book in my hand and just stare out the window with nothing but how tired I am on my mind. I catch myself nodding off like an old grandma dog and eventually give in to a nap on the couch.

It has taken me two hours to write this. I won't bore you with the 101 distractions I have succumbed to, not because I care, but because recounting them is a distraction in itself. 

By this afternoon, when I have written no more words to my word count and feel scattered and cast adrift in a sea of overload, I will feel so guilty and disgusted with myself that I will watch crap TV to escape that feeling.  

I want my old mind back. Anxiety sucks!

Can women have it all and more important, do they want it?

It has been a recurring theme I seem to keep bumping into, one way or another.  I have tried to stay out of it, or at least tried to keep my opinion to myself, but each time I read more or see more, I get more and more distressed. The issue is - can women really have it all? Or maybe, do we WANT it all?

My generation, and downwards, has certainly been told we can and should.  And its almost a travesty if we don't take it and run, after all, our mothers and grandmothers worked long and hard for our so called equality. A lot of it I am very grateful for, being able to work in any job/career I so choose, being financially independent and not reliant on a husband, the pill, having an opinion I can voice.  The list goes on.

But there is a growing concern, both by myself and others, that telling women they can have it all, and then expecting them to do so, is having a detrimental effect. On their health, mental and physical, their happiness, their future.

I worry for these young women, I really do.  I worry that the choices they have been expected to make are not fair.  They put aside the one thing they can't change, and that's their biological clock.  So many are going to uni, getting a great job, building a career, finding a husband (or not) and then, after this checklist is ticked off, they look to a family.  A child.  But by this time, they are well into their 30's and 40's and time is against them. It's not so easy to fall pregnant, or stay pregnant.  Their body is winding down its fertile phase. A lot miss the boat.  Will they, as old women, resent this?  Will they feel betrayed by women singing the virtues of having it all? 

Our bodies are designed to have children in our 20's.  That's biology. How can we argue with that? I have a lot more to say, and will need to corral these thoughts into a coherent argument. It will make a good essay subject, but for now, I thought it may be a good thought provoker for my bloggers.

What are your thoughts?


A story about a 38 yr old women wanting a child.

I watched Q&A this week - I normally have to walk away from the TV Monday nights as I yell at it (the TV, not Monday) too much.

But this was worth watching and very interesting - women talking about this very subject.

ABC IView - Q&A

Markets, Germs and healthy?

Went to the Subi markets this Sunday.  It was humid, noisy, crowded and well, not very pleasant. Perhaps it's just me, I have become a bit of a recluse of late.  One thing struck me, and I am probably very slow in this, I know my Mum would have cottoned on, is how unhygienic open food in this environment can be.

Now, anyone who knows me, knows that I am no clean freak, I don't mind 'clean' dirt, I can tolerate camping and flies quite happily.  I will eat food and share it with my horse/dog/child.  I don't sterilise my kitchen.

But.  I do have an aversion to 'people' germs.  So back to the markets.  All this fruit and vege, on open display, hundreds of people poking and pinching and prodding it while they make their selection.  Fine for things like potatoes that will get peeled, or a rock-melon   I bought grapes and plums, they looked delicious, and I sat with friends and we picked at them.  

But they weren't washed and I wonder how many hands touched them.  What germs those hands had on them.

Is this why I have had a stomach upset for days now?  

Then there was the open containers of rice, nuts, grains.  People stood over them, scooping out contents into bags.  One sneeze and there are body fluids in droplets all over the exposed food.  The thing I wondered, after years of hell with them, was weevils?  This place was a hot bed for the little critters.

I will still drop my bread on the floor at home and claim the 15 second rule, I will still eat yogurt that is 5 days over its use-by date, but I will always just wonder about open food at markets.  If there was ever a epidemic, some super virus, then these are the places they would spread.  

One more reason to grow my own!

Anxiety ... and depression ... don't bring me down man

Yes, I know, not a very upbeat subject header!  It's OK, don't run away, I am not going to be all down man, or anything.  It has just been on my mind since a panic attack (hate that term will have to try and rephrase it) since last week.  I wonder how many people really understand this, and how many are inflicted with this condition?  In the spirit of education, I will try and explain what happens.

This panic attack was a bit of out the blue (most of them are), set off by a not very pleasant, tardy client not paying his bills and then getting upset when we asked him to pay before we would do anymore work for him (I know we are SO unreasonable).  I had to get a bit cross and firm, nothing really out of the ordinary, its my job to chase debtors for money.  I do it all the time, it doesn't really worry me as I am in the right to ask for money I am owed.

But somehow, halfway through this phone conversation I started to get very breathless, dizzy, shakey, sweaty, out-of-body - all classic signs I was heading for, or indeed in, a panic.  I had to just try and get enough breath to end the conversation, hang up the phone, then let it go.  For anyone not ever experienced this, its scary - you fight for air, you shake and sweat, you are so dizzy it feels like you have drunk a bottle of cheap wine and now have the head spins. I get an added bonus of feeling I have left my body and am floating above it (disassociation) which many people actually pay their drug dealer a great deal of money for.  

It lasts about 10 minutes, for me crying seems to bring me back, seems to be a release.  If I am in a public place and/or around people and can't cry and let go, the panic phase will last longer.  Adrenalin is pumping through my body, I can feel it as if someone has injected me with hot water.  I sweat profusely.   It's the classic fight-or-flight reaction.

Afterwards, I get extraordinarily sleepy, but can't sleep as my mind will be racing and my stomach feels like its on fire.  I do have medication for this, but I try hard not to take it as it makes me sleep for a solid 6 to 8 hours, with the next day spent in a Xanax hangover.  Sometimes I have to take it as its the only escape.

The Xanax stays in my body for the next few days, making me feel very depleted, depressed in a everything-is-shite (fatalistic) way and a total shift from everything is ok, to doom and gloom.  Its all chemical, and completely unavoidable.  

I try hard to learn what is really going on, it helps a lot, especially when you are in the middle of a panic.  The first one I ever had was when I was 16.  I thought, and I am sure my parents did too, that I was actually going to die.  Today I have a much better handle on the warning signs (but still sometimes there isn't one, like this time), what will happen, how long it will last and how to deal with the aftermath.  The internet has been invaluable in this regard.

One thing I do know is, the medical profession as a whole are useless at dealing with this situation.  It is very often misdiagnosed as epilepsy, drug overdose, depression, attention seeking, heart problems.    They think cognitive therapy can fix it, they think you get it as you are depressed, they think anti-depressants work, they think you have control over it.  All wrong.  What I have learnt is that you have to take your own responsibility for this, learn as much as you can, for knowing is the antidote to panic.  It won't stop it happening, but knowledge means you can ride the wave.  Xanax is the only drug I have found to work, but its still not perfect.  

Today is day 8 since my last attack.  Today I feel better, more upbeat, positive, almost back to normal.  So no, I am not 'depressed' and I am not a pessimist,  I am not just weird.  I don't do drugs (other than caffeine  chocolate and gin) which all actually help, despite the health professionals warnings.

I try and manage this condition, keep as many triggers out of my life, avoid conflict, avoid highly strung people, make sure I have a connection to a natural way of living.  This is why I crave living in the country, away from too much hyper-activity, stressful, fast paced living.  Its for my health - for panic that causes great floods of adrenalin to be released is a health risk.  This triggers all sorts of nasties, cortisol being one of the worst.  Cortisol is the hormone (steroid) that tells your body to release glucose, store fat, especially around your vital organs, to protect them as the adrenalin has told your body its under siege   The classic 'apple' shape is often a symptom of too much cortisol.

I will keep searching for answers, but one vital thing I have learnt is - trust what your body tells you, listen to it carefully and take responsibility for your own health.

A Day in Freo bags me 4 books and a new journal

I needed a day to myself, to get my head clear, write, read and walk.  It was a bit of a bleak time at work last week, and the long weekend did not completely clear the decks.  I felt cheated of three days off work, that I could have been writing, spent with a panic-attack hangover caused by the job.  So I took a 'sickie' today.  And I have never felt better.

Mr K had an all day conference in the second city of Freo.  We got up early, left early and after an hour and a bloody three quarters, arrived at our destination.  Sure made me feel like I had gone away on a holiday, I wanted my in-flight meal and drink.  As the crow flies it is less than 20kms, we had traveled about 25 as we are not crows.  This took us 1.45hrs.  Eat your heart out West Sydney!

It was early for Freo, 9am.  Not many people were up and about, stark contrast to Perth CBD where 9am is practically lunchtime.  First stop for me was one of the two Elizabeth's Bookshops - a treasure trove of pre-loved books (or maybe some were only one night stands) stacked on floor to ceiling bookshelves, on the floor, on tables in every nook and cranny.  There is a vague organisation, but the fun part is trawling for a treasure.  Found one book here - 

Breakfast next.  Not feeling very brave or bohemian, and the fact that a lot of the hipper places looked closed, I went for the safe and sure Dome Coffee.  With a foccacia, pineapple juice, skinny cap, newspaper, journal and book, before me I had a little private chuckle at the sheer indulgence of it all.  Took me an hour and a half to eat breakfast.

A walk drew me to the second purveyor of books, New Edition. A tall elegant building housing a book shop and a cafe, and bizarrely, as only Freo can do, at the back of the bookstore, a hippy dress/bead/incense shop.  It was bizarre, as the book shop was rather posh, a bit Sydney.  I found two treasures here -

I will do some book reviews on all these at a later date. Anyone have a cold/flu/plague that they can come and sneeze on me so I can stay in bed and read for a few days?

Spent the next  hours just walking, observing, absorbing.  Found the public library and did a bit of reading which inspired me to sit down to write for a while.  Wasn't really hungry by 1pm but felt compelled to leave the library after it got overrun by kids, people with too few shoes and too much (matted) hair and a permeating sound of furious clacking on keyboards on the public computers.  

On 'the strip' I found most eatery's had now opened, again going to for the known, I chose Benny's - a quiet table up the back with a book, journal and Caesar salad.  Does it get any better than this!  I moved on when the staff seemed to be moving tables around me, perhaps I had outstayed my welcome.  Another stroll back to the library, the kids should have gone home for naps by now, and the shoe-less, matted hair lot surely cant concentrate that long.

Found yet another bookshop, Dymocks, and of course another book -

Nice little haul.  A good days gathering.  I spent the rest of the afternoon, waiting for Mr K in the library until I was joined at the writing table by the Bachelor Of the Year - a man whose body and clothes looked (and sadly, for me, and every person within 100 metres, smelt) like they had never seen soap, let alone water.  He wore three hats, each grubbier than the next, and .. get this ... HE tied a handkerchief, well grey rag, over this nose/mouth.  Was he being kind to me as he hadn't brushed his teeth that decade, or was it me who smelt?  Guess its all a matter of perspective!

Moved into the fresh air, and had a very nice and critical time writing about the comings and goings of Freo.

Day rating : 8/10

Phew - tax audit is over...or is it?

I know I have been MIA from my blog this last few weeks.  Always seems to happen this way.  This is whats been going on.

• I get on top of all my work (paid work as opposed to housework - never get on top of that) and start having some quieter days at work
• This gives me a hope that maybe I could study part time and still get all my work done
• I enroll at Uni - Unit 1 of 24.
• I get very excited about it - prepare all my resources  write out a study plan, do a lot of reading, get familiar with how online learning works.  
• By the 1st February, I am all ready for the start day of 25th Feb.
• I wait and look at my tub of sharpened pencils.
• 2nd February, I get a phone call from State Revenue.
• It appears we have drawn the lucky straw and been selected for a 'random' payroll tax audit.
• For anyone not familiar with this money gouge tax, its when a business pays $750,000 or more in wages over a financial year.  Not a lot when you think of how much an average wage is.  The govt take from you, 5.5% of every dollar over this threshold.  Doesn't matter if you made a profit at all that year, not relevant apparently. We didn't   We made a loss.  So keeping on staff while we were quiet is going to cost us.  Lesson learnt, sadly.
• Even though I do keep very good records, always pay what I need to on time  there is still a lot of work goes into collating, getting the documents out of archive, going through SR checklist etc
• I have been working with my accountant and his assistant for weeks now.  Finally we have it all ready to present.
• Yesterday, we had the audit (great timing, the last day of the month is always a busy day for me)
• She said it normally takes anywhere from 4 to 8 hours.
• My accountant presented her with bound documents for each year, collated and with every record she needed.
• She took just under an hour to complete her audit!!
• She gives me a preliminary finding, but I will have to wait for an official one.
• My accountant says to expect to wait up to 12 months for this!!
• I sent wine and chocolates and a hundred thank yous to my amazing accountant.
• We will have a bill for this financial year just gone, but all the other years are fine.
• We wont be employing any more staff, and pay rises are on hold until they raise the threshold.*
• Great incentive huh?  We are just a small business - and we get penalised for employing people.

OK.  Back to my study!

* Which I hate, our staff are like family to us.  Each and every one is valued and a human being.  We understand their problems and would love to be able to help with regular pay rises.  We would also like to keep staff on when things get quiet, but sadly we can't now.  This is how, and why bosses have to be tough.  It sucks.

Italian Dentists and Writing

This is a representation only of my Italian Dentist - he was WAY better looking than this :-)

Funny where inspiration strikes you.  I went to the dentist yesterday, the last of my appointments to have the black amalgam taken out and replaced with porcelain fillings.  I now have only white fillings and white teeth.  Yay.  No more visits needed other than the 6 monthly cleans and checks.

I always had a real phobia about going to the dentist.  So I didn't go, for a loooong time.  I paid the price however and eventually pain, and Mr K forced me.  I was so terrified that first visit that I actually drew blood as I pressed my hands together.  I had this lovely Chinese lady dentist (Phung) and she was so understanding and kind and she taught me how to meditate and imagine I was somewhere else when I was in the dentists chair.  She helped me for years and eventually I was no longer afraid and went willingly for treatment.  In the beginning, I was so scared, Mr K had to come with me and sit in the room and hold my hand.

I had my happy place I went to each time. It was always laying on a daybed, next to a pool in Bali.  Cool and calm, I would visualise myself reading a book, a fresh watermelon juice laced with vodka next to me.  I got so good at this technique that sometimes Phung would have to bring me round and say, Jodie, we are finished, you can go now.

My Happy Place - hard to be miserable here!

Yesterday, I settled in the dentists chair and tried to go to the Bali day-bed.  My new dentist is a very sexy Italian, he even speaks to his assistants in Italian, so Bali just wasn't cutting it.  He is also a HUGE Springsteen fan and has his music very loud and Joe even sings along sometimes.  Just what I needed - a sexy, singing dentist!  Needless to say, I had all the visualisations right here, I wasn't going anywhere <wink>

Then  the strangest thing happened. The hippy lady who I want to write a book about popped into my head, as clear as day.  She is different to what I first thought she would be, but I like her so much more. Maybe this was why I had trouble starting the book, I had not yet found the right protagonist.  But there she was, in my mind and the first scene of the book.  It was so clear, that I  started to write the words in my head.  

I was so eager to get out of that chair and race home to write, that I didn't hang about and flirt (even just a little) with Joe.  He was asking me to look at my new sparkling teeth (he was very proud of his work) in the mirror and was pointing out the highlights.  I was saying  yeah, yeah, all the while with sentences streaming through my mind.  I must have been crazy!  Who would pass up the opportunity of standing in front of a mirror, with a hunky Italian man very close behind you, paying you the keenest interest (well my teeth anyway)?

I did race home and blurted out the first half of chapter one of my book.  

Wonder if I could go back now and see if Joe wants to still pay me attention!

For the record - I am NOT at all a Springsteen fan - but I wasn't going to say so to Him!

Bad news and perspective

Had some pretty crappy news at work today - can't say exactly what, but it impacts us in a way that we really question why we run our own small business.  I was having a rare (and not always welcome) visit to the hairdressers, and was about to have the only bit of the ordeal I like - a treatment and scalp massage - when my phone beeps a message with the bad news.  Nothing I could do but lay back and pretend to be relaxed and enjoying the pampering when my insides were churning and I was hyperventilating!

Took me a few hours, some lamenting and fuming, some heated discussions,  tears - to then see a newspaper of the terrible floods in QLD - again.

Those poor, poor people.  Seeing one couple's story slapped me about with a get -over-the-self-pity crap and made me want to reach out for these fellow small business people.  For the THIRD time their little shop had been flooded.  There they were in mud and water up over their shelves and counter and still with a feint smile on their face and a determined stiff upper lip.  They lost stock, had to clean up the mess, and try and start again.  I know they will lose lots of money, not just for now, but it will take them months and years to catch up.  They were not rich people, just ordinary battlers trying to run their business.

I so admired them.  I so felt for them.  Sure put my news and day into perspective.

Today, I vowed that the next years budget we set aside for donations and charities (usually to PMH or children's sport or make a wish) was going to the flood victims.  

Joy - The Word

Funny old fashioned word isn't it?  Joy?  Makes me think of Christmas cards on Victorian mantle pieces.  But it also makes me think of a very poignant quote from one of my favorite movies - American Beauty. 


Lester: Christ, Carolyn. When did you become so... joyless?
Carolyn: Joyless? I am not joyless. There happens to be a lot about me that you don't know, Mr. Smarty man. There's plenty of joy in my life.

 

A pivotal scene in the movie, I love it for its contrasts.  This is a movie full of very clever scenes and raw human emotions - AND - it doesn't have a sickly, sweet happy ending like most American movies - Joy!

What made me think of all this?  I was laying in bed this morning, it was 7am, I was awake but as it was Sunday, I was trying to make myself stay there.  My little old dog, Minty, was also awake and wanting to play.  We have this game where she jumps all over me, biting me (she has no teeth so technically she gums me) as I pretend to scream and say 'no'.  The more I do this and try and pull the sheet over me, the more playful she gets.  Its very funny seeing a 14 year old, blind, toothless little dog play like this.  She certainly is full of Joy!  In human years she is 69!

It got me thinking about if my life has become 'joyless' - am I just in a holding pattern until I can retire and escape? Is realising yourself as 'joyless' the tipping point for a midlife crisis? In the movie it is.  I sometimes remind myself of the end part of this scene, the part where she cares more about the Italian silk sofa than the rekindling of their passion - what matters more in the end?

This, to me, is how you lose joy and therefore how you can re-discover it.  Let go of the material things and embrace spontenaity.  Be a little reckless and wild sometimes - spill beer on the couch!!

Just something to ponder.

Staff camping weekend

Well of course I ended up enjoying it!  Always, it's the same.  Anxiety, trepidation, worry - all wasted emotions as when I got there it was all fine.  What did help, a lot, was busying myself taking the photo's.

It was tiring, hard physical work at times, some parts a bit uncomfortable - all totally over ridden by great company, a laugh, some fun, good food, good drink, awesome views.  There are lots of stories to tell but for now I think I will let the pictures say the 1000 words...

Mr K - pretty pleased that we had set up camp and he finally had a beer in hand

Young tech who scored a 'day off' on Friday to help set up camp! He too was pretty pleased with the fact he worked out how to put his tent up!

The camp before the entire team arrived.  The tarps were a nightmare to put up - only 3 of us and a gale force wind!

The moonscape where the camp spot is - in the lee of a sand dune.  The other side of the dune is pristine ocean

The genny - gave us light and powered the fridges - who says we 'rough' it

The old lady 'princess' of the camp.  She was not amused here that she had been put down on the sand.  She did the rounds of everyones lap.

Tom Dog - he waits for his love ... waiting ...waiting

Great white fishermen .... just as well we had steak and chops for dinner as we sure didn't get any fish

The Team - with only a few missing

A boy and a dog ... priceless

Awwww puppy love.  This is Tom Dogs girl.

Love the colours

Magical


 

Pumping up the tyres and a sad and weary goodbye ... well until work tomorrow anyway!

and off we go!

It's the morning of the great camping weekend.  I wish I could say I was excited and looking forward to it, but I am not.  I am anxious and full of dread.  But that's completely normal for me.  I do love to camp, and once I get there it will be fine ... but for now ... there is coffee and xanax!!

The dogs are certainly not full of dread and the only anxiety is that they might get left behind.

They are like cats on a hot tin roof - except they are dogs... boom boom!

How they have added the dots just goes to show how smart they are. 

• The trailer camper is still in the same place its stored in.  It hasn't been pulled out yet.  We have been over to it and checked a few things, filled the water tank etc, but really to a dog, it should look like it always does.
• The 4WD is still full of farm tools.  Not camping chairs and eskys
• There is however a strange ute in our driveway, full of tarps etc, but if the dog could work out what that's for and get excited then he is smart enough to run for PM
• Ok, the big esky is out of the shed and on the front veranda - maybe a giveaway but we could just be having a party at home
• We went out shopping late last night and bought bottles of water and beer.  They too are on the veranda and could be a clue

I don't buy that these things are enough for the border collie to be running around the house, looking in every window to see what we are doing, running to the door of the 4WD and asking to be let in, the little old girl has got out of bed early this morning and is all perky and excited.

I am so glad we are taking them away with us, the looks of disappointment on their little faces would be too much to bear!

 

 

The cat gets the best deal - a whole weekend with no pesky dogs and no bossy humans to tell him where he can and can't sleep.  That's 3 beds, 10 couches and 12 chairs to choose from.  That's five star camping!

Tax .... fear & loathing at the accountants

Tax.

Why does this word always strike fear into the hearts and minds?  For someone who likes to always be very organised - this one is a big FAIL for me.  I am trying to examine why this is so?

Every year, just after the last tax return is done, I get all enthusiastic and organised and start putting aside all the things I will need for the following year.  After about the second month of this, it all kind of runs away with me, and before I know it, its that time of year again and all my best laid plans are stopped at August.  I now need to wade through forests of paperwork, find statements, lease documents, payroll summaries, capital and asset purchases, balance sheets, P&L reports, general ledgers ... and on and on it goes.

Of course it doesn't help at all that as a business, and business owners, we have an extension to March the following year.  No matter what the deadline, I always feel ill prepared, totally out of my depth and approach the whole process with dread.  Why?

We are very behind in the returns - still haven't done the 2010/11 which we have an extension for, but was originally due March 2012. Now the 2011/12 is looming as well, due in March 2013 - but the accountant said we may as well do it now and get it out the way.  I think we are owed some tax back, which is lovely, but also why we got the extension.  The Tax department are very nice with extensions when they owe you money, but not so nice when its the other way around.

Today is operation get organised - so my goal is by 6pm tonight to have it all collated, and ready for our meeting tomorrow.

Wish me luck!

PS: Anyone spot the obvious procrastination ploy here?

Dentists

Who the hell looks this happy at the dentists? 

Had the extreme pleasure of attending my six monthly dental check-up recently. Of course I was looking forward to it very much, having saved the date on my calendar for months now, after I got the very welcome invite in the mail. I get a lovely phone call, from the lovely Carmel to remind me of the coming date. It’s all such a pleasant and happy occasion; I wished it came around sooner than twice a year.

NOT.

 

The Reality

 

I Hate going to the dentist. I know I have to, but seriously, I would rather a pap smear than a dental check-up. Something just nasty and evil about all that white and metal and blinding smiles of the Dental Hygienist, that’s all of 23! The only good part is the very end when she hands you a brand new toothbrush, travel size toothpaste and floss - wonder if that’s what dentist’s kids get instead of a show bag? Poor little tykes.

 

Open ride ...

 

So, while I was laying there, captive and prone, with metal sticks and a hose, a suction thingy and buzzing, grinding things in my mouth - I thought that the whole dental industry needs a giant overhaul in their PR and marketing. It was also a way to calm my nerves - my dear Chinese dentist lady taught me how to use the mind to travel outside my body so that I left my mouth behind in the chair but my mind and body went on a little trip. Usually I imagine I am on a day bed in Bali, Pina Colada and book in hand. But this time, I thought a little harder and got creative.

 

 

If you were offered this service while getting the plague ripped off your teeth would it make it more palatable?

· A foot scrub and massage - your feet are just dangling there out of the way.

· A manicure - you have the time to let the nail polish dry while you lay there in the chair

· To save you using your mind to take you away, what’s wrong with a LCD TV on the ceiling showing Californication on endless loop?

· A scribe to take down notes of all the things you think of while you lay there - like remembering to book your next pap smear, to buy mouth wash, a good blog idea about dentists - who then writes it up and emails it to you

· A way of opening your mouth wide for the very handsome (and obviously rich!) dentist that doesn’t leave you looking like a total dork.

I think I might float this idea with my dentist - but not for another six months!

 

This isnt a joke!

 

 

 

Ahhhh. Hows the bloody serenity?

My little white dog is out the front gates barking (actually yapping in a way that only little dogs can yap).  I really should go out there and stop her but I am making a stance about all the other noise I hear:

• One neighbours little girls are outside playing - which is really lovely, except they both squeal like only little girls can squeal (which is what set my dog off to start with).  It's ear piercing and extremely annoying and been going on for an hour now.
• Three other dogs in the cul-de-sac are also having their afternoon bark-fest.
• Another neighbour is still 'working' in his I-don't-think-its-legal welding and blacksmith workshop.  He is an artist in metal, and he gets the call to create at all hours of the day and sometimes night.  He welds and grinds and bangs most of the day.  I actually don't know how he gets away with it as his place is also a B&B.
• Yet another neighbour is having Friday night drinks - its not too noisy yet, but its only early.  I can hear every single personal conversation and am quite tempted to pop over and enjoy the gossip.
• Thank goodness they have stopped whipper snippering on the railway line for the day.  There are about 5 whipper snippers going full bore, the train comes along and sounds its horn, then a air blast from the works supervisor warns them again.  The whipper snippers cut to idle while the train goes past, and then they all start up again.
• The border collie thinks the train line workers are there for his sole amusement and barks at them most of the day.  Its pointless trying to stop him (I even took him for a extra long run to wear him out, but this too failed)
• The boy at the front of our house is playing basketball ... bounce, bounce, thwat, bounce, bounce, thwat ...
• The sound of peak hour traffic on the main road is broken every now and again by a siren.  Which is then broken by a express train hurtling by.
• The father of the little girls has got his blowervac out. Again.  He does this at least 2 times a week - has the man never heard of a damn broom?  He has already cut down all the trees in his yard, my neighbours yard and 'trimmed' the ones in my driveway.  What the hell has he got to clean up??
• My mother-in-law has stepped outside for a smoke and is coughing up a lung (yes, she lives in a granny flat attached to our house)

Ahhhh.  Hows the bloody serenity?

PS: In case you missed it, I am NOT happy about being in suburbia right this moment.