Furiously knitting throughout the long bus-ride to the hospital was the only thing that kept me from passing out from nausea. I arrived a half an hour early and spent it in the waiting room rehearsing my PowerPoint presentation. For the first time since purchasing this laptop, I was able to use that little Apple Clicker-Thing™ to advance the slides. I felt very professional.
I made my way upstairs at ten minutes to and proceeded to get hopelessly lost in the maze of corridors that existed inside the core of the "Mother Babe" unit. I eventually asked a nurse for help, and she led me once again through the entire maze and then the two of us became hopelessly lost. Along the way she enlisted another nurse, who fortunately knew where we were going. By the time I got to the office I was five minutes late and there was no one inside. The nurse paged the office's occupant, who came running up five minutes later looking extremely confused.
"Hi, I'm Heather, I'm here for the 10 o'clock appointment?"
Pause. "You are?"
"Yes..." I look confused. She looks confused. "We talked on the phone about two weeks ago and set up an appointment to go over the materials?"
Another pause. "We did?"
Her confusion makes me hesitant. Situations like these make me second-guess my own experiences. I mean, did I really talk on the phone two weeks ago? Didn't I arrange a meeting which I then added to my ICal and set my alarms for? Am I here entirely on the basis of an unfinished nightmare that was supposed to end in me appearing in front of a lecture hall in my underwear?
Now wondering if I was a giant idiot, I followed her into her office where she made a call to her fellow social worker and explained the situation.
Fortunately, that person knew who I was and remembered the appointment. She was on her way.
There was supposed to be a room full of people, but apparently all but one forgot about the meeting and instead I presented to just two. While not as good for the presentation, this was better for me overall, as the last time I stood up in front of people and spoke was for my ninth grade book report and following that I ran from the room to vomit.
After some initial stumbling things went, for the most part, smoothly. A few times a slide appeared and I felt completely stumped. I paused for a few seconds too long, then both heads turned to look at me expectantly, and I very near gesticulated wildly to the screen saying, "Yup. Right there!" as my talking points seemed to explain themselves, and repeating what was on the laptop verbatim seemed idiotic. Didn't I just rehearse this? I surmise that I must have lost interest in my own talking and flitted off to stare at one of the bunny rabbits outside the window.
Afterward, one social worker was in tears and another was stony-faced and looking a little like she was unimpressed. This, naturally, terrified the ever-loving shit out of me. Fortunately her words betrayed that and she talked warmly about the service and the other volunteers. They both took the information packets, brochures and personal cards (for contact information) and one pulled me aside to say I may get a call shortly about a particular case that she wasn't sure was going well (baby is alive, but passing soon).
She was still choked up from the sample slideshow and held back tears as she talked about their situation and how special the family had become to her.
I left the hospital with my too-full bag feeling a little bit lighter, still shaking, and caught a bus that was waiting at the stop, but was once again being the only passenger.
I both love and hate being on an empty bus, it gives me more peace with my thoughts but I always feel like I should be chatting to the driver to keep him company. Some of the drivers are very friendly, others wear earplugs and scowl at you if you say hello.
However, all of them wave or say "have a good day" in response to the passengers thanking them as they exit the bus. Thanking the driver seems to be a west coast Canadian tradition, I don't hear much about it on the east coast, and never in the USA or Europe. Every time I exit the bus downtown, when the throng of people get off, you'll surrounded by a chorus of "Thank you!"s from every other passenger who exits.
I've always loved that about public transit.
Tempest is doing a number of Thanksgiving-themed projects in her Kindergarten, as Canadian Thanksgiving is in just a few days. She's brought home several drawings of turkeys that look a little like cats with feathers, and several crate paper headdresses and figures.
She also brought 'homework' back the other day; a fire safety checklist where you had to fill in the blanks and walk around your house checking your smoke alarms.
We've had ours disconnected for months because of the oil smoke/steam/etc that comes out of every night's meal. Home cooking may be good for you but it results in a lot of sweaty kitchens, and our detectors are abnormally sensitive to everything. We also burn incense several times a day on the mantle, which is situated directly below an alarm.
It makes me nervous when they're disconnected, but we never seem to get around to replacing the batteries. Yesterday Curtis finally decided to go out and get new ones because, "I don't want to lie on her homework". A better reason might have been our family's safety, but that works too.
Tempest gave us another story sheet, this time spelled perfectly, that said, "Xan is a cat" with a little drawing of a cat-like thing with large human ears.
I've been putting all these things away in her art folder, where I one day hope to scrapbook it all the way my mother did with me.
Curtis left to pick up Tempest from school today with Xan on his back. While they were gone I called my labs to work out an order that wasn't going through. While on the phone, I heard the rousing sounds of the children approaching home punctuated by Xan's screaming, "APPLE! APPLE! AAAHHHHHHH-POOOLLLLEEEEE!!!".
Followed by Curtis' exasperated, "YES OH MY GOD IT'S AN APPLE."
They came barreling in the door with Tempest holding up some sort of horrifying science experiment. I jumped back, hung up the phone (the call was over anyway) and watched her put it on the table.
"It's a turkey!" she said, as she ran off into her room.
'Turkey' wasn't my first impression. While the intent is admirable, the end result looks more like 'fruit of Hellraiser with an erection'.
Links of the Day:
Five Minute Presidential Debate. - all the more hilarious if you made it through the real one without falling asleep or facepalming yourself into unconsciousness.
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