Adventures on a Thursday

Thursday began normal enough.

A 3am wake up from the 3.5 year old proclaiming her need to pee.  As I shuffle into the bathroom without glasses in the dark, she then asks in the sweetest voice, "Mama, can I sleeps with you now?" Duh.  I'm just happy she's not likely to pee on me between now and 6:30am because she just went. So we both shuffle back to the bed.  That's when I realize that my husband isn't in the bed.

I get her all snuggled in.  I shuffle off again to find what happened to hubs.  I find him propped up on the couch with a washcloth over his eyes.  Super.  He's flash burned his eyes.  AGAIN.  He is a welder/fabricator so this has happened before.  He bought a new welding helmet recently and is still getting adjusted to the new settings.  Once I know what the dealio is...  I shuffle back off to bed.

I get up at 6:15am, make some coffee, turn on the local morning news.  Listen to the snores coming from the couch.  Getting the two oldest kids out of bed for school is always the most fun part of my day.  They finally wander out of their rooms in time to make it to school.  I don't think my daughter brushed her hair.  I hand her a hair tie and tell her to bun it.  I'm nervous and not paying much attention because Thursday was my appointment with the gastroenterologist.

I arrived 15 minutes early because I knew I would have to fill out a few forms.  I start talking to the receptionist and after a few minutes she asks for my insurance card and a picture ID.  Sure.  Oh wait...  I left my damn wallet in the car.  So I shuffle speedwalk out to the parking lot and grab my wallet.  She hands me my paperwork and tells me to go to the next waiting room.

Behind me the waiting room begins to fill in.  Apparently there are a couple of older than me couples sitting behind me (I didn't swivel around to look to see just how much older).  They begin chatting about food, people... politics.  It began as a little conversation about the current candidates for Kentucky's governors office.  Somehow this conversation morphed into gay people.  At first I was upset, maybe a little angry, when one of the ladies mentioned how so and so's cousin's brother was "that way" and how she wondered what the "older folks" must think of "all this mess".

I began to realize while listening that I wasn't really feeling anger.  I was embarrassed.  Embarrassed that people still have these kinds of views.  It all felt so 1950's to me.  Like I was overhearing the conversation at a cocktail party.  It's hard for me to convey the inflections of their conversation or even all of the conversations.  I wanted to say something.  I felt the need to say something, anything.  But I heard my husband's voice in my head telling me to not get into it.  He usually is the one to talk me down from confronting people.  THEN!  The same woman who was condeming so and so's cousin's brother for being "that way", began talking about Etta's granddaughter who married that one boy after they had that baby together and how she'd just kicked him out of the house, etc., etc.  I just continued knitting away and said in my best sing song voice, "That's a SIN TOO!!!"  Sorry hubs, I tried to keep my mouth shut.

By this time, it's 9:20ish and the nurse opens the little window and says the doctor isn't in yet.  She doesn't know where he is.  My appointment was at 9am.  He must have had a sixth sense about the nurse because she called me back just after her announcement.  It went pretty quickly.  Not the news I wanted to hear and in about 2 weeks I'll be sharing loads of gallbladder surgery photos and recovery tidbits.  It's going to be amazeballs.  Not.

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE!  We're just chillin', watching the evening news when I see one of our neighbors (that lives about 3 miles down the road because we live in the kuntry y'all) pull into our driveway on a tractor.  We go outside to say hello and he says, "Y'all want a garden?"

Uh... yes, please! So he used the disc to turn over a huge spot in our backyard.  He even said he'd come back in a few days and till it all up for us!  Now it's already May and I'm frantically trying to research what I can buy and plant to get this sucker growing.  I have grand dreams of canning my own salsa and eating fresh canned green beans in December.

And my Thursday ended just as normally as it started.