Waiting Rooms

I am at one doctor's office or another's once or twice a week. In addition, I get bloodwork done all the time. I think this is one of the reasons I have almost driven myself into self-imposed agoraphobia.

Today, doctor's office...

While I am filling out paperwork, the door that leads to the rooms is flung open by a 5 year old boy, who is unattended. He runs up to the receptionists' counter and begins yelling, "Hey, you two! Hey, you two up there! I'm talking to you!" Then, he runs around pulling pamphlets off the wall.

A grandmom comes out, and instead of addressing the boy's inappropriate behavior, she begins a conversation with the receptionists. I am shooting both boy and grandmom horrified, disgusted looks. Still trying to fill out my paperwork, the boy climbs on a chair and turns the lights out. Grandmom says, "Get over here," but he manages to flick them on and off multiple times.

Finally, his mother comes out, and I am horrified to discover she is pregnant. Really? Really?! You f-ed up the last time, so having another one is the answer? Really?!

Both mom and grandmom spend 2 minutes telling the boy to put his coat on. There are many attempts at counting back from 3, which always go like this:

Grandmom: 3...

Boy joins her: 2...1...(Laughter.)

What is the point? What happens when she gets to 1? Damned if I know.

That aside, I have always been bothered by the uncertainty of the layout of doctor's offices. The one staff member calls me back, so I start to follow her. She starts to go into a room, so I follow her, only she was just stepping in there to get something, which resulted in me almost bumping into her in the doorway. Then she heads back out, I get turned around and start going the wrong way. We finally make it to the intended room and there is a chair and a table. Will someone please tell me which one to sit on?

After that nonsense, the doctor comes in. When the visit is finished, she gets up and tells me that I'll get the slips for my bloodwork at the front desk, so I get up, too. Then, she opens the door, and as I'm heading for it, she closes it. Um...were we not finished? Assuming we weren't, I sit back down. I'm mulling over her last sentence and thinking, I am supposed to go to the front desk. But, I'm looking at the door she closed in my face thinking, I guess there's more.

Five minutes later, I decide to just walk out to the front desk. Both receptionists are like, "Oh, here she is." I explained that the doctor closed the door, so I assumed I should wait there.

Now, I had asked for a receipt when I payed my co-pay before being seen. I asked for it again, and the girl complained about having to use a computer. You see, she wishes everything were done on paper, the receipts, the scheduling. One of those! She is then trying to manage all my bloodwork/urinalysis slips, and I know she is doing it wrong. I am trying to explain to her how it needs to be done, but she is not listening to me. I keep speaking up, because I am not going to do all these tests a second time. Thank goodness the doctor walked through, because she stopped to ask her, and it turns out I was right. And, can I have that receipt for a third time?

On to the lab! It is 10:30, but it is packed. There is one woman who just can't seem to shut up. At first I thought she was there with her elderly parents, but no, they were just the unfortunate couple she was talking to.

In the "conversation," it came up that the elderly couple used to live in one particular town and they moved to another. The lady laughed and said, "Woah. They're a far cry from each other!" meaning, Boy you sure took a step down! You'd have to have been there to realize how evil it sounded.

She also mentioned that her friend asked her to run for mayor of the town she lived in. She said, "She's got $75,000 for me to run my campaign. I told her forget it. I would take her money and give it to the people who deserve it. My town is so small. Why do I need 18 cops all driving $180,000 Ford Explorers? Is there a mountain in my town they need to climb that I don't know about?" Okay, that last line made me smile a little.

She kept asking them personal questions, too. She asked the little old lady how old she was while the husband was at the front desk, and she replied, "Twenty-nine." The husband looked at her and smiled. That really made me smile.

In the end, the weirdo did offer to help the lady up and offered to help walk her back with the husband, so there was something redeeming there.

The lady that drew my blood is one of my favorite people whose name I don't know. She's just great. So, I decided to tell her. When she was done, I said, "I love coming here, because you always do such a nice job." She kind of just smiled smugly and said, "Well, thanks." She totally knows she's awesome.

Now, I am going to pee in a jug so I can go back to the lab and do it all again Monday morning.

Looking Back

My other two attempts at a blog were super secret, because I didn't want anyone to read them. I tried to find them today to see what the hell they were about.

One had only 3 entries from back in June of 2004, and this was the first one:

Everyone Else

Hey, Ma, I have a blog now.

A what?

A blog. I guess it's kind of like a journal in a way, only it's on-line.

Why would you do that?

Everyone else has one.

And if everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you?

If only I had the strength, Mom. If only I had the strength.

This always happens to me. Whenever I read something that I wrote in the past, I can't even get my mind around who I was. When I read stuff I wrote in high school or college, I'm always thinking, Was I smart once?

The other blog had a few more entries, but one was simply my top 5 fruity and chocolate candies. It was from October 19, 2006, and it went like this:

Flava Faves

Top Five Fruity Candies:

1. Starbursts
2. Sour Watermelons
3. Skittles
4. Gummy Bears (dependent on the brand)
5. Airheads

Top Five Chocolate Candies:
1. Reese's Peanut Butter Cups
2. Butterfingers
3. 5th Avenue
4. Milky Ways
5. Rolos

This is where my mind goes when I wake up in the middle of the night with a raging low blood sugar.

While I am not changing my chocolates, I may have to replace sour watermelons with Bottlecaps. But I don't know if they fit in the fruity candy category due to the inclusion of rootbeer and cola. Hmm...

I like the titles of those blogs better, but oh well. Maybe I should start thinking of names for my fourth. It will probably be starting summer of 2010.

No Thanks, Facebook

I "no-thanks" students all the time. I find if someone is doing something I don't like, it's way more effective to simply utter a terse "no thanks," rather than specifically address the behavior and person. That way, I often take care of a few things at once. For instance, I could say, "No thanks," and the kid who was humming stops, but also, the kid who was gluing his erasers into a house stops, too.

The husbo and I have turned it into a verb to represent us getting fed up with something and abandoning it. We pull into a gas station at the second pump, because there is a car in front of us at the first pump. We turn the car off. After the attendant finishes settling up with the first car, it leaves, and he motions to us to pull forward, only we've been there with the car off. The husbo starts his car, and instead of pulling forward, he peels out of the gas station all together. Citgo just got no-thanksed!

Well Facebook, consider yourself no-thanksed.

I whole-heartedly preferred myspace. I loved, loved, loved the option to be on it without people knowing I was on it. The privacy options for facebook are horrible. I enjoy having my friends in one place, because I never remember (or go to any lengths to develop an organizational system for) everyone's contact information, but man alive, facebook is not the format I want to do that in. And the blogging! I loved being able to write every now and then and not have to maintain a separate site. But, just like most things in life, my preferences do not align with those of the masses, and everyone seems to have tired of myspace and has chosen to go the way of ridiculousness.

So, here I am, intending to start a blog...again. Yes, there have been other efforts.

Blehhhhhhh.