My Real Life

Had to get blood work drawn this morning.

I have to go every few months, for my diabetes, but usually I can go after school, before the kids get home.

Clearly, not an option in the summer.

Of course, the blood work must be done while I am fasting, so I also need it to get done first thing in the morning.

That’s one of the fun things about diabetes.

If you don’t eat, your blood sugar can fall perilously low, which can cause all sorts of issues.

However, your blood work must be done while fasting.

Good times.

So, Tiny and I wake up, Monkey in the Middle and Baby are soon to follow.

Monkey Girl, however, is in full teen mode with her morning hours.

If left to her own devices, she won’t get up until around 9.

So, at 6:45, I woke her…much to my own peril.

I’m not in the mood for any whining, either, this morning, because the fasting means no medication and you’ll remember my Log Flume adventure?

Yeah, turns out the neck is bad…really bad.  So, after an exam where my doctor says “Wow…I can feel how tight and in spasm these muscles are!” she puts me on muscle relaxants 3 times a day and tells me to take Motrin 3 times a day.

Except today.

Because I have to drive and fast.

So, whining?  It will not be met with my usual patience.

We get in the car and head to Lab Corp.

Luckily, because it is early, there aren’t many people there, so I sign in and we wait.

Tiny gets busy walking around the waiting room, charming the old ladies, while Monkey in the Middle frantically follows him, telling him “no” and trying to control his every movement.

I keep explaining that he’s fine and to just leave him alone, but Monkey in the Middle isn’t happy if he’s not in control of everything.

I can’t even begin to imagine where he gets that from.

I finally get called and I asked Monkey Girl to keep Tiny in the waiting room.

She says, “I’ll hold him…I just want to come with you.”

Baby and MM absolutely do NOT want to come with me for fear one of the techs might be wildly tossing around needles and accidentally take THEIR blood.

So, the boys stay in the waiting room and Monkey Girl brings Tiny with me in the back.

I say “Do not put him down.”

She says, “Don’t worry, I won’t.”

Until she does and the lab tech walks in and says “Ooh, I wouldn’t put him on the floor back here…lots of different kinds of specimens get spilled.”

Monkey Girl scoops him up immediately and takes him to the waiting room, and I immediately begin drawing his bath, in my mind.

Ick.

So, it’s just me and the tech now and I hold out both arms and say “They usually can only get blood out of the right arm.”

She says, “Let me take a look,” and decides that the left is the better arm.

Until, that is, she has stuck in the needle, put on the vial, dug around a little, had me clench and unclench my fist, untied the tourniquet, and slapped at my arm a little longer.

“Hmmm…let’s try the other one.”

Oh, you think?

So, she does the other arm, and it comes right out.

While all of this is going on, I can hear Tiny yelling “No! No! No!” from the waiting room and I know what is happening.

Monkey in the Middle is picking him up when he thinks Tiny is too close to the door, or too close to someone else who is waiting.

Monkey in the Middle is constantly moving that child around.

I think of the two of them like a giant claw machine. No matter where Tiny goes, MM finds him, picks him up and relocates him to some other, inconvenient place, but never quite gets him to the promised land.

So, when she puts my second bandage on, she proclaims me done and I stand.  A little woozy.

But, I gotta get out there, so off I go.

Sure enough, as I approach the waiting room, Monkey Girl is standing with her hands on her hips looking at MM who is holding Tiny in awkward position, where one leg and arm are flailing about, the others bent in some strange way, both of them yelling “No!” at each other.

Baby Monkey is in his own world, pretending to be a superhero who needs to climb on chairs to save the day.

I can see the other patients breathe a collective sigh of relief as I walk in the room and proclaim, “Okay babies!  Let’s go!” and out the door we go.

My embarrassment has my blood flowing, once again, so I am no longer feeling woozy and we head to the Acme, as we are out of milk (I bought 4 gallons on Sunday…it’s Wednesday), and to get a bagel for myself.  Terrible for me to eat, but on fasting days, it’s how I break the fast.  Carbtastic.

The kids ask if they can get a bagel, also, and I say yes, which immediately begins a conversation about whether or not we can buy cream cheese and how big the container should be and whether or not MM and Baby should be allowed to have bagels because they had Raisin Bran before we went to the lab and that Tiny doesn’t get a bagel, but maybe Baby could have his bagel and what kind of glue do I think they use to build radio towers and is it okay to have butter on one side of the bagel and cream cheese on the other and do I think they’ll have cinnamon raisin and will they have the same bus driver this year even though their bus number is different and do I think Batman has a pet and they think Tiny might have pooped, but no, he didn’t it was just one of them passing gas because it doesn’t smell like baby poop but more like big kid gas and why are we going to Acme again?

So, it’s no surprise that when I got out of the truck and dropped my cell phone on the ground, I whacked my head on the sideview mirror on the bend down to get it AND on the way to stand up.

Because that’s how it goes.