Catching Up

This has been an incredibly busy week for me: some of the events expected and some, not. I had no idea that Thursday morning I would take a 3 1/2 hour chunk out of my day to sit in the doctor's office. Well, to be honest, part of that time included the trip to the pharmacist, but you get my drift. L has been stuffed up and then draining for a few days. Wednesday after school she had a severe ear ache. I called and made an appointment with the doctor for Thursday at 10:40. Our regular pediatrician, Dr. M**, is not in the office on Thursdays, so we were going to see Dr. S**, who is Dr. M**'s brother. (As a side note, another brother, yes, a different Dr. S**, was Mom's anesthesiologist this summer) In that family, they are all in the medical profession.

Where was I? Right. Doctor's appointment at 10:40. We got there a bit early, just in case. At 11:00 we were still in the big reception area. We got a magazine. L zipped right through it. I then picked it up because I saw something I wanted to read. I figured that would surely mean that we would be called in the middle of the article. Wrong. I finished it. I saw a recipe I wanted to try. I got out my little notebook and started copying the recipe. Surely that will trigger a call from the nurse. No. By this time, L, who is not known for her endless patience, is squirming and saying she's fine, and can we go now since they are not going to call us since they have already called 6 or 7 people who came in after us. At 11:40 (a full hour after our appointment) we are called back to the examination room. Dr. S** checks her ear, her nose, and her throat, says she has a sinus infection and ear infections in both ears. Total time: about 5 minutes.

Now we head to the pharmacy. I used to go the pharmacy in Wal-Mart. But I learned something from my mother in her later years. Small pharmacy = better (and faster) service. There is a pharmacy in Lucedale run by a very community-minded man. One of the pharmacists is a lady I go to church with. It is a neat place to wait for the 10 or so minutes that it takes to fill a perscription. And this time we just dropped it off and walked across the parking lot because L wanted to eat lunch at Waffle House.

Waffle House is new to Lucedale. Ours has been here for about 6 months. It is exactly like every other Waffle House you've every been in. Well, it may be smaller than some. Every table is accessable from the cooking area: no tables on the outside walls. It is always full. L and I did something I've never done before: we sat at the counter on swivelly stools instead of a booth. (My legs are not long enough for that to be comfortable for any length of time.) But I can say that I've done it.

After lunch, we picked up L's medicine and I took her home, where Mr. H works on Thursdays. I thought I might be able to catch our group at the elementary school before mentoring was too far under way. I was about 3 minutes from the school when Mark called my cell phone and said there was an assembly program going on, so we were cancelled. I got back to my office about 1:35 and had a few hours to get ready for the budget meeting that night. I had thought I would have to make another trip to Lucedale to get M, who tutors on Thursdays, but the grandmother of one of her friends volunteered to bring her to the house when she picked up her granddaughter. (Bless her!) I managed to get everything ready and plugged into the spreadsheet and the spreadsheet converted to a file type my laptop would run and I was good to go. I got home, reheated leftovers for dinner and was back at the church in time for the meeting. By 9:00 p.m. the budget was DONE!!!!!!! What a long day!!!!!

Yesterday, L was feeling better and went to school. Mr. H and I headed to Mobile. I had thought we were going to Lowes for pumphouse supplies, but we never got there. We did some birthday shopping for the eldest, did some atlas shopping for our trip to Phoenix, and had Chinese for lunch (I tried sushi for the first time...It was very good) We went into a Blockbuster to rent Wall-E for the girls but they didn't have any copies. We got Kungfu Panda instead, as well as The Clone Wars. (Boy, am I glad we didn't pay for all of us to see Clone Wars at the theater!)

While we were in Blockbuster, Mr. H lost most of the sole on one of his old hiking boots (imagine hiking boots with flip-flip bottoms.) We looked at boots in a couple of places close to the Blockbuster with no luck. There was no way he was going to walk all over Lowes with his boot flip-flopping with every step, so we headed home. We'll go to Lowe's this morning for pump house walls. And work in the cold today.

I'm taking the girls and one of their friends to see Twilight tonight while Mr. H watches football. I read the books and really enjoyed them, but somehow I imagine I'll wish I'd stayed home with him.