October 24, 2006

I had a doctor’s appointment this morning, for which I arrived promptly on time, like a total goddamned fool. I had almost forgotten the joy of slowly decaying in a waiting room while idly flipping through a ragged copy of Pregnancy Today (no, I’m not pregnant, but my other choices were Highlights or an instructional brochure titled: Hand-Washing For At Least 20 Seconds: Together We Can Prevent Illness!).

This was a new doctor for me, and he asked if I had any illnesses to report, past or present. “No,” I answered. No serious diseases to speak of? he asked. No, I said. He tapped his pen, then peered at me with great intensity.

“Asthma?”
“No.”
“Heart disease?”
“No.”
“Arthritis?”
“No.”
“Diabetes?”
“No.”
“Pneumonia?”
“No.”
“Problems with the eyes?”
“No.”
“Chronic inflammation of the blowhole, housemaid’s knee, case of blabbermouth, analreticulitis?”
“No.”

Okay, I made up the last few, but seriously, I felt like I was on trial or something. I should have confessed to a little bout with Hantavirus just to see his pen go flying.

Once we had wrapped up the Disease Rundown and done all the requisite poking and prodding, he left and a woman about my age came in to take my blood. “I hope you have good veins,” she said with all the warmth of refrigerated tofu.

“Sorry,” I said. “I don’t.” She heaved an enormous breath of disbelief (yeah, right) and peeled back my sleeves to inspect what surely had to be an arm bristling with giant pulsating blood-tubes. After squeezing me here and there, she sat back. “You really don’t.”

I managed not to say “that’s what I just fucking told you” because she was the one with the needles, and she began a long and painful process of poking around with her fingers, sliding in a butterfly needle and probing it around, then removing it with a huff and slapping on a bandaid.

“I was on a roll,” she told me with great irritation, “before you. Three people in a row with no problems.”

Soon I had multiple bandaids and holes in my skin, and she asked me accusingly where did they normally get the blood and I said I don’t know, from my ARM? – but usually they get it by NOW? and things were sort of tense as she frowned deeply at my horrible, nonexistent, ROLL-KILLING circulatory system.

In a weird effort to make light conversation as I was being methodically pricked to death, I wondered out loud why I had such crappy veins. “Some people are born with organs on the outside of their body,” she said, shaking her head at my ingratitude. “You really shouldn’t complain.”

Oooooookay.

She then told me that apparently I didn’t want to “share” my blood. “I’m not the one that even wants it,” she said. “The lab wants it, not me.” I said I really did want to share it and go far far away where I could whimper over my many, many wounds, but she didn’t seem to believe me.

“I’m going to have to send you to the lab,” she said, pulling off her gloves with an authoritative snap.

“What will they do differently there?” I asked.

“I don’t know, I think they’re allowed to take blood from…different areas, and stuff.”

So that’s the information I mulled over as I drove nervously to the lab. That they might be taking blood from a…different area. And stuff.

I got to the lab, handed over the paperwork, and the woman behind the counter slid her eyes towards me without moving her head so she looked like an unfriendly flounder. “Fasting?” she said.

“Pardon?”

“Are you fasting.”

“No…”

“This is a fasting test.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling a bit like I’d dropped down the rabbit hole about an hour prior and there was NO LIGHT, NO LIGHT IN SIGHT. “I don’t know what that means.”

She sighed in disgust and informed me that the test required that I avoid food for twelve hours beforehand.

“I…they just sent me from Dr. R’s office because she…couldn’t get my blood? And you have other stuff? Uh?”

“Well, the test results may be OFF,” she said, and then instructed me to have a seat. She then walked directly over to the door connecting the office to the waiting room and said, impatiently, “Come in.”

“Me?” I said stupidly (hadn’t she just told me to have a seat?).

“Yes,” she said, barely hiding an eye-roll. “You.”

After that she had me stick out an arm where she thrust a needle into the exact same hole the other woman had been mining with great vigor and no results, and my blood obligingly gushed out into the tube collector deal and oh my GOD I could finally go home. “Have a nice day!” the flounder cried as I walked out the door.

Well, it had been about…oh, 14 months since I last visited a medical facility. Here’s hoping for at least 14 more before the next time. It’s probably going to take me that long just to get rid of all my attractive, heroin-chic arm bruises.

October 23, 2006

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I love hearing about your weekend plans. Probably because I am incredibly fucking nosy a student of life. Also, can I just say that the fact so many of you were planning to run various sorts of races involving the letter “K” or actual no-shit MARATHONS makes me feel a little guilty about my own weekend, which involved both candy corn AND cheesecake?

JB’s parents have departed, which does mean a return to normalcy in our household’s consumption of clean dishes, thank christ, but sadly it also means a 2-person reduction in Team Riley. Having a couple of doting grandparents hanging around the house sure makes life a hell of a lot easier. If someone would have told me a few years ago that someday soon I’d be practically clinging to my in-laws’ pantlegs as they prepared to leave and begging them to consider staying an extra day or two, I might have laughed airily and inquired as to the exact amount of crack they had been smoking – not because I didn’t get along with them, but hosting their visits used to seriously jack up my personal Stress-O-Meter, you know?

These days I feel no pressure to meet anyone’s expectations, real or imagined. There might be dust bunnies in the living room and schmutz on the kitchen floor, but I have produced a GRANDCHILD, by god. A grandchild whose company delights them to no end, which means FREE TIME FOR MAMA.

Riley loved having them around, too. He was happy almost all weekend, with very few instances of Toddler Meltdown. There was so much activity, and so many people to play with. There was always a family member available who was happy to pick him up, or read a book to him, or feed him. If one person got tired or had something they wanted to do, someone else stepped in.

My god, it DOES take a village. Or perhaps a small hamlet.

Having them here this weekend was so nice, actually, in so many ways, I realize how things might be if we lived closer. That would mean moving to Oregon, because they’d never move here (the traffic alone would give JB’s dad a coronary in about one week). JB would love to get back down there someday, to live in a more rural area where he can teach Riley how to skin an elk with his bare teeth or whatever, and I like the idea of wider spaces too (for the many, many pygmy goats I shall have).

Both of us are pretty invested in our jobs, though, so there are no moving plans on the immediate horizon. For now we’ll just have to trade off on that I-5 slog in order to reunite the hamlet.

Mmmm, hamlet sandwich. Jesus, is it lunchtime yet?

Anyway, here are a few photos from the weekend:

102206_rileywalking.jpg

The boy is walking more and more, although some of his movements would be more accurately described as “lurching”. Here he is lurching down the hall, clutching his Halloween bear and looking suspiciously as though he’s got a loaded diaper on board.

102206_us.jpg

I made JB’s parents take approximately one billion photos of our little trifecta, since we rarely have a chance to get such an image. All attempts to get Riley to smile at the same time the camera was operational failed miserably.

102206_rileygrab.jpg

Does it make me a bad parent if I admit I was holding a cigar just out of Riley’s reach in order to get this photo? It’s not like I let him smoke it.

102206_rileyteetertot.jpg
We found the best teeter-totter on Sunday – not that I’m exactly a teeter-totter aficionado (I do not subscribe to Teeter-Totter Monthly, although sometimes I read it in line at the grocery store), but this one had big springs underneath the opposite seats so you didn’t go flying up or down too violently. Also, you could teeter all by yourself, if you felt like engaging in such an activity.

102206_boys.jpg

Riley still fits in the backpack, although it’s a little more of a workout these days.

102206_pkaboo.jpg

I love how Riley’s peering at JB like he’s wondering what in the hell he’s doing in this picture. For the record I believe they were engaged in some sort of tree-themed peekaboo activity.

:::

So, check it out:

laptop.jpg

Oh yeah, baby. 2GHz of pure Intel Core Duo power. That right there is my brand new MacBook, courtesy of Workplace’s fan-fucking-TASTIC hardware benefit policy, which allows employees to accrue money they can spend on computers to use at home.

I love it very, very much; it’s zippy as hell and is an overall joy to use so far. The experience of setting it up went like this:

• Open box
• Turn on MacBook
• Tell Mac OS X I speak English
• The End

It found our wireless connection, it came fully charged, and it just. Started. Working. No setup, no configuration, no cords to mess with, nothing. Nicely done, Apple.

Having a mobile computer is super handy in a thousand little tiny ways. I don’t think I’ll necessarily be online more often, but it will be more convenient for me to do so.

Now to learn how to type on a laptop-sized keyboard. If my typo-production skyrockets for a while, I apologize.

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