Oral Fixation

I must admit that, after all these visits to the dentist I’ve been having - the many bad, the mostly ugly and, finally, blossoming from the whole steaming pile, the one good one who appears to know what he’s doing (a quality sadly missing in the dental profession) -  I have rather lost my fear of dentists.

Not sure exactly why as the pain is pretty damn HUGE! And the previous lot really did stuff up in ways that verged on malpractice, but I think that, after you’ve had a raw nerve or two drilled on, you really can’t get more painful than that and you know that at least, in the end, it will lead to finally being comfortable! (Biting, I remember that, it was fun…)

I’m like one of those women who has had ten kids. First two o three probably hurt a bugger to pop out, but after that you sort of get into the swing of things. The advantage of all those rugrats is at least one will support you in your old age and, in my case, the advantage of going to the dentist over and over is that I might actually have teeth in my old age!

Actually I think this is how they get ordinary folk to like really bad music. It gets played over and over and over, on popular radio stations, and then plonked on tv with music videos where scantily clad women, with rear-ends in the XXL division, and identical dance routines, gyrate about. The song is everywhere! And eventually you decide, hey, I like this song, even if only because you don’t want to have to change the radio station or admit to your trendy friends you find it rubbish.

It’s like common sense and your will to live comfortably go at war and you finally give in to just stop the maddening cognitive dissonance*.

Of course I could be completely wrong, but it sounds very plausible! (Hopefully it’s not like those militant vegan or crazed religious videos that sound almost plausible until you sit and really listen and discover they’re all hogwash and wild guesses, thinly disguised as proof found by top officials from the University of Narnia.) 

I’ve also come to rather like my latest dentist. While this might seem a bit like Stockholm syndrome**, it’s really more just that, FINALLY, sweet god of Muppets, I’ve got someone who can do the job and do it right!

Mind it does cost rather a lot, but at least it stops me buying unnecessary extras right?

Or necessary items either actually *shakes wallet and a moth and half a coffee bean fall out*

Not sure I like that…

*cognitive dissonance is when two different beliefs in our head that just don’t match up.  Sort of like a dieter trying to tell themselves that, that SWEET, CHOCOLATEY, HOT muffin is bad, bad, bad for them!

** named after a hostage situation in stockholm that lasted for ages, where the hostages took a shine to their captors and even fought for them. (I’d have agreed with my hostage takers as well, but mostly because I’d hope that if they started spraying bullets it would be at the naggers who complained too much)

We love Telephone Support! Or not hey!!

Finally, after two days of hassles, that luckily weren’t mine, I got to do telephone support at work. This basically entails clients phoning in with problems, and you trying to solve it over the airwaves or reassure them when they start planning a bloody koo of your company.

Now I will admit that while it was something new to try and did perk my pointy ears up in interest, I must say I wasn’t really looking forward to it in the same way you do something fun like a visit to the candy store or intrusive dentistry work.

It wasn’t the idea of ‘JO vs. THE ANGRY CLIENT’ that got me bothered like many people thought. I can deal with angry people, I was married to one, I know they’re just upset and angry and not to take their ragings to heart. (Well if one did ever whisper, “I know who you are Jo, I’ll get your little hamster yet…” that miiiiiiiiiiight put a bit of Eeeek into my day…)

For me the worst part of Thursday was the fact that I simply could not help 9/10 of the people who called! You get whirly-gig frustrated when you have to ask for their details and say, “I’ll get one of our technical guys on it” when you know all they’d like is a simple solution that you blooming cant give them! I feel like a bouncer at a Barney festival turning away little kids with polio.

Plus I’ve never been very good at giving instructions. People’d ask me where the shops are and I just sort of point in a vague direction and say, “Go thatta way!” I’m terribly honest as well and tend to admit I haven’t the foggiest as well and this makes people wonder what you’re doing on support and then you have to explain you’re just there to ensure that their calls aren’t dropped and they end up with a tone in their voice similar to someone who phoned NASA and was patched through to Coco the deviant test flight chimp.

Besides all this was the alarming way the calls came in so fast! The second one customer hangs up the phone rings again. That isn’t even exaggeration, don’t I wish it was! It is very disconcerting and makes you start to hope the customer would hang on a bit longer to give you a breather and maybe swopping raisin bun recipes.

And there were problems logging me out of the system which can be a bother when you need the loo and none of your co-workers are keen on you peeing up against the sideboards. Once in the system, there was no escape! The phone just rang and rang, I felt like I was stuck in a glitch in the Matrix!

And then, because life loves stuff like this, when I managed to log out and catch up on sending the helpdesk 100 000 000 messages, I found I couldn’t log in again though I followed the head bloke’s instructions to the typed letter. Eventually he had to come and help me and I started to feel a right tosser only to see him do some occult thing on the keypad that I sure as heck hadn’t been told about! Then POOF-O! I was back, connected to my mostly miserable people, yay.

But we all have our strengths and weaknesses. And while my techno knowledge is somewhat lacking, like herds of naked mole rats are at the south pole, I did spend a goodly while getting people to not panic and even getting a laugh or two out of them. That added a bit of sunshine to it.

I need to increase my knowledge in general so that next time I don’t feel quite like a presumptuous plank of wood! Mind between you and me and anyone else reading this, I am sort of hoping they decide that my skills could be better used at the office, you know cleaning toilets with a bobby pin or something. Aren’t I terrible? Well if I am you can call and complain about it on 011 529….

Heart pounding

I've always wondered why Valentines day is such a maligned day? The second it's anywhere near the vicinity and straight away you're bound to hear at least one voice raised with the usual complaint of, “Valentine's is so commercial! You should love someone everyday not just one special day!”
I see the logic of that, but disagree with the heart of the matter.

Valentines day is commercial. So is Christmas. And Easter. And everyone seems very happy to celebrate those days with reckless, spendthrift abandonment! What makes Valentines different? Heck if anything it’s a lot less commercial in the sense that Shops get ready for Valentines at the end of January, a month before the event, but come October and Christmas and Halloween (another commercial one) are duking it out for shelf space! (One day we'll probably end up with a hybrid 'Rudolph with fangs' to save on advertising.)

You should love someone fully and utterly to the best of your ability all the time, amen I agree to that with tinkly bells on! But if you had to shower your sugar-lump in gifts all the time, well here’s hoping your bank account is full, fat and happy and up to that mammoth task! The sad fact is we can't always spoil the ones we love as we'd fully like to. So why not have one day that you go that little EXTRA out for the person you love? That you can save up for and just have a blast on? One day to show the world how much you love that person? (Or just to show off how much you can spend and creep other people out? Some folk need to learn what "OTT" stands for...)

Now some random folk may come sidling up to me, cough politely, but irritatingly, and go, "Ah but wee Jo, what of those without romantic prospects then?"

First off I'd wonder how a stranger knew my name.

After that you can't help pointing out that while not all of us have someone to love and squeeze and call our own, we do have family. We have friends. We have co-workers - the ones we don't want to kill in their sleep. We even have pets. And if we still have none of these, not even a hamster, then there are charities to donate to! People desperate for any show of affection, however third party it is! Giving - that in itself is a warm fuzzy feeling. Why not use Valentine's as an excuse to show love to every and anybody you feel deserves it? Maybe even a few people you feel don't?

It's a silly day. It won't change the world. In some areas it's hardly paid attention to. But if you do note the day on your calender, then why not be an agent of good cheer and go all out and just make it worth getting out of bed for? You are the instrument of your own happiness and only you dictate how much love you share.

Sunset Raven

Because this was on my mind for 5 hours straight! Ah but it was fun to paint again! There's something very satisfying in creating! ^_^

How'd you do that?

People who are really good with computers fascinate me.

It’s like they somehow have insider info to a whole world I am not party too, like the starving kid staring in at the feast and leaving tongue marks on the glass. They know… things! Like how to create programs, create virtual machines, debug a system, crash windows or even find the ‘Home’ button on the keyboard without having to search for it! Such power!!

I suppose in a way we all take two views on people who are better than us in certain areas, especially areas we would like to be ace in ourselves. We tend to either sit in awe and feel akin to drooling hicks “what are watching a doc work on Aunty Susie Ray”, or we get envious and try to down play their accomplishments, like, “Please! I could compose MY own piano concerto if I had started playing at 3 years old, 6 days a week, with impeccable pitch, tone and good hair!”

It’s also interesting to see what happens when folk meet people who excel in areas they couldn’t care less about. I mean if I meet one of those rain-man-shoulda-been’s who can do math in their head and find trigonometry a nice way to relax after a hard days calculus, well, really so what? They’re just like a really expensive calculator you can’t put in your purse without uncomfortable questions being asked.

People who are brilliant in some areas do sometimes tend to have a bit of an ego though. They’re the ones we tend to not admire quite as much and, should they take a fall as so often happens, our sympathies are rather hard to express through the satisfied smirks.

People also sometimes forget they’re not the bees knees in every field just because they excel in one. Stephan Hawkings ,I’m sure, is a riot at any physics party but I still think you shouldn’t go to him for the suspicious rash on your butt.

A programmer is great bloke on his machine, but wait till his car breaks down! Then he runs around it panicking like a headless chicken, squawking about “googling carburetors” and how the flat is probably due to the pressure on the fanbelt because that happened to a Facebook friend! Meanwhile Billy bob and his mechanic lads watch on and think him, “The dang right stupiderest Pard’ this side o’ that side!”

I think, in all this, what I was trying to say, and not really doing so, is that people are all different. *MASSIVE INSIGHT!* We shine in some areas, and hide the bodies due to ‘EPIC FAIL’ experimentation in other areas, so it goes!

It’s just nice to appreciate people for everything they can do! A little gratitude costs nothing and makes everyone feel just that much nicer about themselves. It’s a nice warm, fuzzy moment!

Now, who wants to take a look at my home PC? There’s a ton of gratitude in it for you?

And a muffin!

Thank you

A couple folk have asked me why I bother doing Community Service if, I quote, “you don’t have to?” My company offers you points for your Community service but I don’t qualify until next year, so really, why should I bother until then?

I’ll tell you why.

A year ago I came out of a bad marriage. I was shattered and insecure. Depressed and terrified. I had no job, having been a housewife for the last ten years, no experience or impressive qualifications. I was about to lose the roof over my head and I was sharing food with my pets to make ends meet. One of my top ten moments in life this really wasn’t.

But then a wonderful friend, a knight in shining armour (Or at least a nicely polished car), came to help me out. This was a guy whom I’d chatted to on a social network and only met once or twice. Rob opened his heart and his home and took me in when other people told him what he was doing was naïve, foolish and potentially the stupidest thing he’d ever done. And that was just the good things they said!

I got a little room to myself and helped out financially where I couldn’t pay it back a cent. I had nothing but my company to offer. No money! Can you imagine? Who’d take in someone like that? They probably deserve it!

I was seen as some dark temptress who had lured this innocent person into taking me on. Some spider who would suck his very life juices dry. When you’re already dealing with a heap load of hurt, insecurity and confusion this doesn’t really make you feel top of the pops.

But then, thanks again to another friend’s charity and willingness to let me try my hand at something new, I managed to get a job! An actual real job! And it became permanent! I could finally pay my way! Do you have any idea how much of a head rush that was? Hell still is! I go to work each day thrilled!! I love it!!!

And I can’t ever forget what it was like to have that hand offered to me when I was so low and pathetic.

So why do community work if you ‘Don’t have to?’

Because you never, ever know the influence you might have on a person’s life by giving what you can to those who desperately need it! I’ve been there, I know the terror and hopelessness they feel, when people look down on them and they start wondering why they should bother to draw breath anymore? I was ‘them’ just a few months ago!

It’s a little bit of time and effort. It’s giving back to not only help repay the enormous karmic debt I have but to maybe add enough to other peoples’ lives, people who’ve had it far worse then me! (I never kid myself into thinking I’ve had it the hardest, oh hell no!!)

A little hope, a little compassion, you’d be surprised how far these things go. When people don’t automatically judge you because of your “low” station in life. When they just genuinely want to help you! I needed it back then and now I can do the same for others! How frikkin awesome is that?!?!

In my books there will never ever be a time when I ‘Don’t have to’ help someone else if I can! And the fact that I can… Cor Blimey… just shows how wonderfully life can turn out when someone takes a few moments to care!

So screw points and weak excuses and lily white hands! I’m here and I’m ready to get my hands dirty and my nose sunburnt for my fellow human being!

Let’s do this thing!!

Half baked

Why do they say 'easy as pie'?
How is pie so easy that it got that distinction?

Have you tried baking a pie?

It’s actually one complex little pastry! There's no combining of ingredients, dashing it into a pan and baking it to a delicious death black. It's a small science of getting the base just right, mixing the right fruity mix (or meat if you’re so inclined) and popping the crusty lid on and baking it an even golden brown!

Surely it should be as easy as say, pancakes! Or toast! Or something that is well, easy to make!

 (I'm pretty sure they also don't mean 'as easy as Pi' cause that takes the saying to whole new decimal point of uncertainty!)

Best I can recommend is gathering up a furrowed brow, a calculator and tasty baked good and then sitting back and pondering this interesting piece of Pie-losophy!