Airplane mode

OK, the drama quotient was slightly higher yesterday, starting at 6am when my wifi stopped working.

I rang my internet provider every few hours throughout the day and got a slightly different explanation for why it was stuffed each time. There was a lot of shifting of blame to NBN, an easy target. I was told to be patient and check it again in a few hours time. I am not a patient person. I had a Drinks Digest newsletter to publish. I was NOT HAPPY.

NIB Dental Centre wasn’t happy either when they rang me at 10.10am to ask why I wasn’t at my my appointment with Dr Ko.

ARRRRRRGGGGGGGGGH. I’d forgotten about the dental appointment. They were very nice about it and rescheduled me for 4pm.

I’m going to keep you hanging with how the wifi situation went until the end of the blog post … edge of your seat stuff …

The day passed in a blur of hotspotting the youngest’s phone to the youngest’s laptop so I could do my most urgent work, combined with a shopping trip for birthday gifts for my ex and a friend of the youngest’s and various other chores. I had a brief attempt at painting the final coat on the deck rafters, but it was so freaking glary and hot that I gave up.

Then I raced to the dental surgery and apologised profusely to everyone I encountered. The dentist was very sweet and said it was totes fine, could happen to anyone. It was my first visit to Dr Ko and he asked me if I had any medical issues that he should be aware of.

Upon reflection he probably didn’t need to know about my three-month ear infection and MRI … ah well, at least I didn’t tell him about my ovarian cysts.

While he was examining my teeth he noted, ever so politely, that I had a “dominant tongue”. And he wasn’t referring to how much I talked about my health issues. He meant it was disproportionately large for my mouth, which apparently makes it very difficult to work on my teeth.

Now that he comes to mention it, my tongue does have weirdly scalloped edges, which must come from it being wedged against my teeth 24/7.

And it was a bit hard to hear him over all the suctioning, but the words “gum disease” were muttered quite a lot. Sigh. At the end of the uncomfortable cleaning process he made me look at a black rock of something blerghy that he’d removed from between my gum and one of my back molars. He lovingly rolled it between his rubber-gloved fingers for an eternity while making me look at it and reflect on my poor dental hygiene.

I have agreed to have more regular dental check-ups and cleans in the future.

He also took a photograph of the emergency wire that the dentist in Newcastle glued to the back of my front teeth in November. He was VERY unhappy about it and said it had not been applied correctly, so one of my teeth was now on a funny angle.

I had trouble focussing on my crooked tooth situation because I was so busy gaping in horror at my mouth and lips blown-up on the TV screen in front of me. My upper lip looked like it belonged on Tom Selleck’s face. All I could think was; I. NEED. TWEEZERS. IMMEDIATELY.

My travel tweezers were in the car and I was vibrating with the desperate desire to clamber out of the dental chair, dash off and de-moustache myself immediately.

I think facial hair might be the number one thing I hate most about being middle aged. It’s even worse than the spread and the wrinkles and the groaning whenever you get up.

Although … the number one thing I hated about yesterday was that when I called my internet provider for the fourth time, a nice young lass suggested I move the ethernet cable in my router from the yellow port to the blue port and voila, my internet returned.

FFS. I’m really not understanding why the first three people didn’t think to suggest that. Or why it had been working perfectly well in the yellow port for the past six months.

Now I just need to work out how to get the bloody computer to switch out of aeroplane mode and I’m back to business as usual. I didn’t realise that computers could automatically do that and then be completely impenetrable about how to undo it.

FFS.

Have a great weekend and I’ll catch you on Monday.

Song of the day: John Denver “Leaving on a jet plane”