For Helen the bookends of the school run were filled with various acts of cooking, cleaning, washing and ironing. She has had her mind all over the place as Savva had a car collision in Melbourne yesterday. Luckilly, the only damage was to the car, but it still injected a hefty dose of anxiety into family life.
I got up with the firm plan of rehearsing my 24th Oct presentation. My school email was full of the meeting agendas, discussion papers and other stuff that is sent to all staff (even if they are on the other side of the world). Suddenly, the effects of the holiday wore off as I sent back a few messages and questions. A few days ago I'd printed off a hard copy of the presetation, and had read through it, but had yet to rehearse it properly. For six hours today, I've been reading through and annotating the material. It has to sound relaxed and natural, even though the only way to achieve this is to rehearse it within an inch of its life. I've made a range of changes and suggestions and sent them back to Jan my co-presenter for comment. I'm heartilly sick of it now so I've given myself the rest of the day off. As soon as I finish this post, I'll have a lie down and read. I'm determined not to make a mess of the presentation, so from this point on, I'll have to go through it once in the morning and once in the evening, everyday till I return. It's good in a way as it will make returning to work less of a shock.
At about 5pm, Aunty Mary and crew arrived. I kept Ian and Dina amused whilst the rest visited another Aunty (Grandfather Efklidis sister). At 7pm we took off to Uncle Andrew's for dinner. All the cousins etc were there. When they work late, its easier to drop in there than to go home and then start the cooking. Aunty Lito must qualify for some kind of catering degree for the vast meals she produces out of that kitchen on a daily basis.It was a full on big 'saturday dinner" even though it was midweek.
Actually, as soon as I arrived, Antoni asked me to pop into his surgery on the next floor up in the same building to get an Xray of the tooth he planned to repair tomorrow. I was very suprised to see his state of the art equipment. Its all digital X rays that are stored as files on his computer...forget all that clunky last century film that Laurie uses. Just for interest sake he also X rayed my new $2500 crown..to have a look at Ausralian dental work. The news was not good. He said there were clear signs that the work had been botched. The root canal work had not been completed properly, with the canals not fully filled in after the root had been drilled out. There was worse news to follow, with the angle of the drilling for the pins also botched. Laurie had drilled out through the root canal into the adjacent bone, causing a fracture. The Xray showed up clear evidence of the beginnings of an infection setting up under the crown. Antoni thinks that the crown will only last a matter of months before an absese develops. Antoni said that in the same circumstances, he would have given the patient advice to go straight for an implant. I will be taking the X rays into Laurie as soon as I get back and demanding that the matter be rectified at his expense. Well, as you can imagine, all this did quite a lot to curtail my appetite.
I'll keep you posted. Love, Lily
