I watch Oprah in spurts and starts, maybe a few minutes in the 4pm hour and then the rest at 9pm because in my market it runs twice a day-yeah King-Kong! I love the days that I can watch the show straight through with a cup of tea in hand, but that rarely happens. My mom calls me “Roadrunner” and she’s right. There’s a reason people call my cell phone first.
Yesterday was no different. I watched the first ten minutes of the show in which Dr. Marta Meana tells us what women really want is to be desired. Desired in that throw-me-over-your-shoulders-and-take me-back-to-your-cave-against-my-will way. Something about her words made me jump up, grab my daughter and rush to the local hospital to take a pregnancy test before 5pm.
In an unusual nexus of medical emergency and good timing, my daughter’s right eye puffed up into a big oozy pile on the way to the hospital. It was a mommy multi-tasking dream. I used my most favorite possession ever (Blackberry cell phone) to call ahead. When we arrived a receptionist tracked down the appropriate medical professionals. Meanwhile I took Sistafoo into the bathroom to witness yet another urine test, a process she finds fascinating and “dees-gusting” all at the same time. She doesn’t know that I am secretly delighted every time she says the word “urine” to strangers.
The very moment I started to feel smug, my mommy multi-tasking dream became a nightmare. My debit card was denied when I tried to check in at urgent care. Hello panic. Ten minutes of hold music later the bank tells me that my account has been closed and reopened under another number because a merchant had a breach of security and my information may have been compromised. Thanks for telling me, Bank of Jerks. When I asked which merchant it was, I learned that the breach of security only involved my personal information and checking account numbers, the identity of the negligent merchant is secret. Nice.
We then spent the next hour in an almost empty emergency room. During which time I tried desperately to avoid verbally assaulting the woman who insisted on telling my daughter what she should and should not be doing with various ER attractions; “that is for little kids only” she says of the sturdy little tikes car that my 40lb daughter successfully wound herself into. “That is not a toy” she says of the long line of shiny wheelchairs, including the perfectly sized pediatric ride that I, yes me, the mother of said child, was using to spin Sistafoo in circles. The only thing that stopped this mommy from throwing down was the steady stream of important phone calls I was fielding; “Mom, when you said no computer, did that include just yours, or ours too?’, “Should I stop at the grocery store?” The answer to that was a clear no, although it was fun imagining My Attorney’s face as his card was denied.
When we were finally taken to a room/funhouse, Sistafoo insisted on wearing a pair of large rubber gloves to gleefully touch every surface while murmuring about how “germy and dees-gusting” they were. When that got boring she took the gloves off and started touching surfaces with her bare hands saying “oops, sooo germy, my hands are dirty again,” and then popping out to the hallway wall dispenser for yet another dollop of Purell. I admit to letting her loiter in the hallway while quizzing strangers and hospital staff as they walked by. I did draw the line when I caught her peeking through the curtains of the room across the hall. She balked at being interrupted and promised to “only look at their faces not their bodies.” No.
An hour and a half into my dream turned nightmare my patience was wearing thin, I had blogs to write, children to disappoint, banks to yell at, but then a conversation outside our room brightened my mood; a man’s voice said “I would do a lot of things for that Corvette, not all of them decent.”
I was still smiling seconds later when the doctor entered our room. My daughter looked at her, jumped on the chair and with a dramatic sigh said “Finally! My mom was TIRED of waiting.”
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