It's all fun and games until.....

I wanted to tell you about my Meals on Wheels/eye "surgery" day yesterday but after Benny called I wanted to do a little tribute to Mrs. T. Thanks for your nice comments. It was truly her time to go and I like the way they did it at home with hospice. I will miss her, though. The last thing I said to her was. "Have fun wherever you go."

The Wednesday stuff actually began Tuesday night. We were watching Letterman and at 11:00, I said, "Oh, pause, I need to get my cell phone. Kate's going to call in the next 20 minutes with some excuse about why she is not coming over." Kate is my daughter who promised to go with me to the doctor to get that skin tag removed. Since she started working 2-11 p.m., she keeps crazy hours. At 11:10, the phone rang and she said, "I WAS going to come right over but Justin is moving tonight so I'm going to help for a while." So now on top of worrying about the needle in my eye I was wondering if she would be able to wake up on Wednesday. Somehow I slept just fine.

I called Kate's cell at 10:10 Wednesday morning and she didn't answer. I hung the phone up and thought, well I guess... and then the phone rang. A very sleepy Kate said she'd be over on time. We got a good start, but when we got to the church to pick up the food I had two new people. And we were short two meals, but we had three extra cold breakfasts. I figured I would give two people two cold breakfasts instead of their lunch and a breakfast. Our very first stop was a no response. This means I then have to call them and if they don't answer I have to call MOW to report it. This takes a little time. But it gave me an extra meal. Next was a new guy and I fell madly in love with his dog. It was a black and white border collie named Jack. He was SO sweet and while I was petting his head, he put his little paw up for a shake. This may not sound like a big deal to you guys but I've always been afraid of dogs. Not this guy. Anyway after that everything was going fine and I told Kate, "Since we will be going west instead of east, let's change this up so we can go to Mrs. T.'s house last." I was happy that she was still on the list. Her son told me he would not call MOW to cancel until she died so I knew she was still alive. The last stop before Mrs. T. was a new person and she was a no response also. It's pretty rare to get two in one day. So I went through the protocol and we headed down to Mrs. T.'s house. By now I had a crazy amount of food. I think I had four or five cold breakfasts, a bag of rolls, about 7 bananas and one cold salad lunch. I asked Benny if he would like all the food and he said yes. There were four ladies sitting at the kitchen table as I was unpacking the food. I said, "I had already planned to bring any extras over here, but I've never had this much extra stuff in almost 7 years." One of the ladies (I think it was Mrs. T.'s daughter) said, "The Lord works in mysterious ways." I visited with Mrs. T. for a few minutes and we had to book. We still had to eat lunch and the appointment was at 2:10. I think it was now 12:30.

We hit highway 35 south to go downtown and it was crawling. I'm sitting there looking at the downton buildings trying to do the math and said, "I think as long as we're there (8.0, our lunch destination) between 12:45 and 1:00, we'll be fine. I'm glad this appointment is for 2:10 instead of 1:50 like two weeks ago." Kate was all, "What? Why didn't you tell me!? I thought it was for 1:50 all this time.THAT'S TWENTY EXTRA MINUTES." I just laughed and said, "Yeah, I guess I should have mentioned that." So we finally get to the downtown exit and are starting to relax and then when we turn to go to the parking lot there is a big ole ugly "LOT IS FULL" sign. Then we miss a turn to go to the next closest lot and have to go down and make turns to get back that way. We finally got parked and got to 8.0 just affter 1:00. We were all relaxed now and then I said, "Do you remember how to get there?" She looked at me like I was insane (which I may well be). I said, "Yeah, I didn't think about that but I bet when we get back to the truck and look at the mapsco I'll remember everything." After lunch we headed west and spent the time saying stupid stuff like, "Yeah, I remember we turned left here." Then (DUH!) I remembered his card was in my purse. That helped. I think we walked in at exactly 2:10.

I took a tiny nap in the waiting room because I have "waiting narcolepsy." If I am sitting and waiting I will fall asleep. Sometimes it's embarassing like that time in Discount Tire Warehouse. That's also why I can not sit in the waiting area at the airport when I travel alone. I have missed one plane and came very close to missing another one. Oh, okay, back to the doctor's office. They finally called me. We were only in there about a minute when he came in to shoot me. It happened really fast, but I was very concerned because he did not clean or swab my eyelid before giving me the shot. I tensed up so much that I got cramps in both shoulder blades and my right bicep. He said he'd be back in 5 minutes. I asked Kate,"Isn't that weird that they didn't clean my eyelid first?" She said, "Maybe they don't expect people to come in here for eyelid surgery wearing eyeshadow." I said, "Maybe it's because I so artfully apply make-up, he didn't think I was wearing any." Oh, I forgot to say that this whole time Kate was randomly reading out odd stuff from a magazine. When a nurse had come in earlier Kate said something (from the magazine) about buttermilk. The nurse said, "That's got the most calories of all." I sat up thinking, "This is a NURSE?" and told her what buttermilk was. jeeeez!

The clock kept ticking and I said, "Well he missed the 5 minutes, I hope this shot doesn't wear off." (Because I love ending sentences with prepositions, sort of.) I noticed there was a little portable stereo in the corner with a rack of CD's on the wall. I asked Kate to check to see if there was anything besides Jimmy Buffet over there, not that I hate Jimmy Buffet, it's just that was the only name I could make out from where I was. She picked out Andrew Lloyd Webber's "The Broadway Collection." The doctor finally came back in and it felt like he put tape over my eyebrow. He said, "I saw this show in New York and here in Fort Worth, 'The Phantom of the Opera' " I said, "That's not from Phantom. That's a song from "Evita." He said, "Really?" Kate and I both (and maybe the milk-stupid nurse) said "Yes!" Then he asked, "Do you know who played Evita in the movie?" I said, "Madonna." Then Kate said something about Madonna and then the doctor said, "Okay, that's it." Kate and I had been holding hands but she wasn't looking because she watched the shot part and that was all she could take so then we were both, "What? That's it?"

We ran two quick errands and stopped in at Italianni's for a beer and then the Xylocaine started to wear off. Ouch! It felt like someone had touched a lit cigarette to my eye. So then I tried to remain expressionless. I took some Advil when I got home and it hasn't bothered me since except when I accidentally touch it. But it looks like I got in a fight. I should have had My Sweetie take a picture. Maybe I can take one.