Showing posts with label Dentist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dentist. Show all posts

Wednesday 29 October 2014

But I had other plans!

The years fly by. The clocks have gone back, hallowe'en and bonfire night are fading memories and it is officially open season on Christmas in the shops, although last Christmas still seems very fresh in my mind. Where does the time go?

Every year is a new chapter, a clean page with nothing yet written/scribbled on it, an empty calendar and diary to fill up, a new list of things I would like to do, achieve, finish, start, and the inevitable fact that life will take its own course no matter how I try to impose my own agenda upon it. As John Lennon so famously said "Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans."


The seasons come and go, the birthdays become increasingly improbable and I can start to look back on the life already lived, the two thirds of life I have already had if I am lucky enough to live out my natural life span and I can start to see the shape of my life and also the unexpectedness of it. Life is like a river, it picks you up and sweeps you along. I wonder where it will set me down next?

So, as the year winds down, I am thinking about what has happened, the things which have mattered to me, the highs and lows. This has been a year of painful and stressful dental and oral surgery which is now thankfully coming to an end. Sometimes it feels that life is the bits I squeeze in between sessions in the dentist's chair! There are worse things, I know.


My partner's father is adjusting to the changes in his life, the loss of his independence, although it seems unlikely he will ever be able to go home again. Frailer than ever, he is still hanging in there. It's difficult.
The children are all doing OK and that is the best thing. They are all finding their paths in life, the things and people they need to make it satisfying, riding the tiger. Now that summer is over they are making plans to visit, spend some time with us, although Christmas is going to be very different this year as they redefine how they want to spend their holiday. We might even have Christmas off for the first time in over thirty years. 

The house has been on the market most of this year but despite receiving an offer for it, we haven't sold. There is still uncertainty about where and how we want to live and I think we need to spend more time researching. Getting it wrong is an expensive mistake.

Sailing into Venice and Stockholm has been memorable, not always for the right reasons. The sea can be treacherous and should never be underestimated - it could easily have been us, as well as our lunch, that ended up in the sea.  Our own small boat is over-wintering near Stockholm and I am looking forward to spending more time in Sweden and possibly Finland next year. I hope we will revisit Venice too, but the next trip will not involve living on a small boat with four other people and potential near-death incidents! 

What sort of year have you had so far? Did it go the way you hoped?  What are your hopes and dreams for next year?

Thursday 5 June 2014

D is for Dread

June 3rd seemed a long way off when I blithely made the appointment in mid-April but, like all dreaded occasions, it duly came around and I found myself yet again in the dental surgeon's chair (not my regular dentist, we are talking hard core here) with a mouth full of injections (I lost count, but more than 8, less than 12) and an hour and a half later I had a mouth full of stitches, a splitting headache and a 'trout pout'. There is something particularly invasive about any surgery that involves the face. Something to do with identity I suppose, and yes, it was worse than I had imagined, which is just as well as I would have dreaded it more!

But.  It is done and now all I have to do is heal, rest, enjoy catching up with your blogs and recover. Just as well perhaps that the house hasn't yet sold as I need my cosy nest right now, undisturbed for a while until life returns to normal and I can face the world again.