Dentists ...... Oh, my.

Hi
As I type this, here in New Zealand,  it is 9.30 a.m. on Monday 31 March.  I have to see the dentist today at High Noon ("do not forsake me, oh my darling....." ). 

Oh boy, I would give anything to be forsaken by the dentist.  I've brushed my teeth faithfully all my life, I believe in fluoride in our drinking water, I have semi-regular dentist visits, I try not to eat too many nuts and grains - a dentist told me once that so-called health foods were the main causes of broken and cracked teeth.

But for the last fourteen days, after the dentist put in that temporary crown,  I have eaten nothing but mush, mainly in the form of mashed potato, creamed corn, and flaked tarakihi fish.  I have drunk soup and water out of a straw.    My mouth has been very sore.

So, what do I have to look forward to after my appointment today?  Will the famous crown that I'll be forced to wear solve all problems?  It didn't for poor old King Charles I.

Stand by ... same bat blog, same batty writer ....

2.30 pm, 31 March:    Oh dear....  I've just come back from dentist.  I don't know whether I built up this torture chamber in my mind and made-it-so or whether today was truly as horrific as I thought it would be.

I (only) got three injections this time.  And I cried.  How embarrassing.  Then I wriggled, then I sort of kicked out with my heels on the chair.  Then I hyperventilated......

I hope there was no video. Otherwise, the staff at the dental surgery will no doubt elect me as the champion coward of the year when they show all 2014's hilarious videos at their Christmas function!

Sleeping on international flights

Hi there

Let's take international travel.... Ooooh, yes please, I'll take it anyday.  

I've flown to America a few times.  Brisbane is a 4 hr flight from Wellington, and then to get to the States, it's a 14 hour 'Virgin Australia' journey.  The dilemma is always.... will I have a window seat, or an aisle seat on the plane?  With a window seat I can perhaps-maybe sleep with my head resting against the wall.  The downside is that when I want to do my promenade around the plane every hour or so, I have to push past two people to do so.

With an aisle seat, there's no wall to cuddle up against, but I can zip up at any time without waking people, stumbling over their bags, shoes, magazines, blankets, feet, or legs.  I don't block their tv screens right at a plot's crucial moment as I try to exit the row, or end up sitting on some guy's lap when the plane lurches.  

With an aisle seat in the middle block, the betting is that there's a "pair" sitting beside me who know each other, and they'll both exit the row at the other end.  Or, if I'm truly lucky, there'll only be someone at the other end of the row and nobody in the middle.

The true downside with an aisle seat, is that it's pretty hard to sleep in.  I blame it all on there being no footrest.  I have this truly deep feeling  that if I only had a footrest on a plane, I would sleep as sound as a bug in a rug.

I toss, turn, sit up, slouch down, lean to the side, put my chair up, put it back, try self-hynosis and will-power, count sheep, sing songs, watch tv, drink endless free colas, prowl around the aisles, want to throw something at all those folk who are actually sleeping ....  Well, you get the idea?

But last time when I flew, and in total desperation - wait for it! - I bought a neck pillow!  Now, I've always looked snootily down my nose at neck pillows.  How sissy, I figured.  Neck pillows were for wusses.  No red-blooded kiwi should be caught dead with a neck pillow.

Last year, with my neck pillow in place, I slept for five hours.  Repeat, five hours!  On the return journey I slept for seven. 

I was so thrilled that I even bought a souvenir top-of-the-line neck pillow in Las Vegas. .  I think I'll start a collection.  Maybe a church in their honour.  How about I should get a neck pillow tattoo?

. 


***

Oh, Helen, will you please forgive me for intimating that Cliff Richard is, eh ....old?  It's just that in my head he's still that 21 year old rock'n'roller I ran screaming after at Wellington Airport in November 1961.  Then I suddenly see a picture of him taken recently, and I'm shocked that he's not that kid anymore.  I tend to forget that our idols grow old, just like us.  (Hey, do you think he does wear a wig nowadays?)

Hataitai Beach kayaks

Hi there

J and I have been swimming practically every day this month at Hataitai Beach.  Over the last week, the water has been really nice.  We struck one little patch the other day that we called 'our spa pool', it was so warm.  I always worry when I swim into a warmer patch of water because I think it might attract sharks and sting-ray.  So I'm in two minds whether to bask away, or high-tail it back to colder waters.

Many of our beach friends are saying farewells to each other, expecting any day now to suddenly stop coming to the beach.  All it takes is one storm, a bout of coldness and... that's it!  We won't see each other again until next summer.   With J and myself, it is different because we try to get in a certain number of swims per month all year round and, boy, do we get stressed out trying to reach that number when we only have a few days left for the month.  We chew our nails praying that the weather will be fine, the tide will be high, and we won't feel Alaskan-cold in just our normal bathing suits with, perhaps, a light t-shirt for warmth.  No wetsuits for us..

This year, however, I admit I am beginning to feel a bit ....wimpy about winter swimming.

Yesterday there was a bunch of beginning kayakers at the beach.  Both them, and J and myself worried about getting into each other's territory.  We didn't really have a successful swim because we were a bit wary about being mowed down by the seafaring newbies.  We skittered away any time a kayak came close.  Many of the kayakers seemed to go backwards when they were trying for forwards.

Several newbies  couldn't get back into their kayaks after going for a 'roll'.

Feeling Sorry for myself

Hi there

Back to dentists again, sorry.  The past seven days have seen me feeling all sorry for myself.  I blame the dentist.  All dentists.  Every dentist who has ever existed ...   In my mind, dentists are one step above medieval torturers ....

A week ago the dentist went ahead and seemingly emptied the contents of an entire drawer into my mouth.  Since then I have been having to put up with bruising and tearing and pain (oh, my).  I haven't been able to open my mouth very wide at all to eat.   I've been living on creamed corn, mashed potato, scrambled eggs and Weight Watchers chicken casserole for days .... and days.  My friends have suggested tins of baby food, but I nixed that.

Yesterday, I bought a blueberry muffin from New World.  I had to break it up into a thousand crumbs.  The muffin took about an hour to eat.

And to think that the tortune goes on next Monday with another hour and a half scheduled session. 

Still ... I pulled myself away from my lethargy and forced myself to go for a walk during the weekend.  I traversed the zig-zag path down to Scorching Bay.   The first photo is of the bay from about halfway down the path.  In the second picture (click on it) you might be able to see the outdoor tables and chairs that belong to the cafe "Scorch-a-Rama".  This cafe used to be called  "The Chocolate Fish" and when "The Lord of the Rings" was being filmed, the actors and crew used to love going there for a bite to eat.  I believe, under it's new name, the cafe has been popular, too, with "Hobbit" and Weta Workshop workers    The cafe building is separated from the beachside tables and chairs by a road.  Waiters have to face maybe-death-by-traffic to deliver meals.

Oh, how I hate dentists...

Hi there

I don't intend to denigrate dentists... well, yes, actually,I guess I do.  The whole dentist thing as we know it is barbaric.  There should be finely-tuned lasers that dentists can do the job with, instead of the medieval torture equipment that is currently in use?

Today I went to the dentist to have a crown put on a tooth.  I was three and a half hours on the premises - 3 hours in the dentist's chair and half an hour, between tortures, trying out a massage chair in the waiting area.    There is another one and a half hours to go at some future date.

When I was nine,  dental nurses at the Dental Clinic in the old Willis street dental clinic building threatened to put me in The blue Room if I didn't stop squirming.  I had nightmares about The Blue Room until I was well into my teens.  I realise now The Blue Room was just talk to keep a kid under a strict disciplinarian's thumb.  Oh, NZ dental system, you have a lot to answer for.

Today was horrendous for me.  The torture just kept on going... and going .... and going...  I had so many injections that I lost count.  Proper numbness didn't hit my mouth until an hour into the session, and it was supposed to take, like, five minutes.  This happened to me once before with another dentist.  Something about my being so tense, maybe?

Oh, below is the famous Steve Martin "Be a Dentist" song from the musical movie "Little Shop of Horrors".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=bOtMizMQ6oM

I'm typing this about five hours after the event, all sorry for myself, and I can still hardly talk (wow, what a relief, some people might say).  This evening, I could only splutter down the receiver when a friend rang me.   When I tried to swirl a glass of water around in my mouth in front of the dentist, the whole lot spurted out of the corner of my mouth and down my new jacket.  I guess dentists are used to this.

Anyway, here's a funny dentist skit from the old Carol Burnett television show.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9T8i4FkNVo


Oh, and for the guy from down the road and around the corner who wants to see more of the models I photographed at Hataitai Beach last weekend.  Sorry, Bob (an alias), I don't have any close-up pictures.

... and what decade was our favourite for music?

Hi there

As my english blog reader has pointed out in the comments.... what about our favourite decades for music?

Of course I was in to rock'n'roll.  Even today, I can't hear "Rock Around the Clock" or "See You Later, Alligator" without wanting to get up and dance.

Then there was The Beatles.  I waited 7 hours at Wellington Airport to holler and scream at them  (I went to two of their concerts, front row seats).  Years later, I even wrote an account about my airport-waiting for the New Zealand School Journal, entitled "The Day I Saw The Beatles".

In the late fifties-early sixties, Britain's King of Rock'n'Roll was Cliff Richard.  In my adoration stakes, Cliff was second after Elvis.

What?  You're all laughing?   Cliff's an old guy, a pensioner, he sings grandma songs, Christmas songs, he's a fogey? 

Sigh.  We all grow old.....

And which decades do you remember?

Hi there

When I lived through the fifties and sixties, I thought we were in the height of modernity.  It's only now that I watch tv (English) programmes set in the fifties like "Call the Midwife" that I think, "I lived through that?  How did we all stand it?  Everything looks so old-fashioned."

We didn't have fridges, and we had one (corded) telephone per house - and that phone took 3 months for the Post Office people to install.  No tv until the sixties, and only one channel for years and years, and certainly no remote controls on anything.  Not many people had cars, and those that did, well, they bought three-quarter 'car coats' and driving gloves. and the highlight was going out on the Sunday 'run around the bays' - this was always a big dress-up expedition.

In the sixties, we got our fridge.  An Astral that sat on the top of a cupboard, with a tiny freezer box inside.  The freezer box just about took a packet of frozen peas - the only frozen thing  on the market to purchase at that time.   Mum came home with the packet of peas and we oohed and aahed and kept opening the tiny door in the freezer compartment to look at the packet.   Frozen peas?  Oh, my goodness, how modern were we?

I also remember bouncing in my seat at The Brunch Bar, upstairs in James Smith's department store, waiting for a meal of Fish Fingers and coleslaw to arrive.  When they first came in, Fish Fingers couldn't be bought by 'normal' people.  They were only for cafes and restaurants and bought in bulk.  Coleslaw was exotic, too.  As was Weiner Shnitzel, and croissants.  Oh, the list goes on....

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