The Tegretol wasn't cutting it anymore, and it takes about six years to get into a specialist like this, so that's not that weird. It should be impossible, but welcome to America.
First off, Mo is a routine-oriented kiddo. So the fact taht Daddy was picking her up meant Weekend, no matter how it was explained to her, ad nausem, that I'd be taking her to the doctor and then back to school for Fun Friday.
AFKFL handed Mo her backpack for school, and Mo ran back to the togetherment* door and threw the backpack into the living room.
Normally, Mo is shot out of her cannon by six in the morning. There's never a guarantee she'll sleep all night, though medications have been deployed to keep getting up at midnight for the day from being the norm. Imagine my surprise when I'm struggling to get her ass in gear at 7:30.
The appointment was at 8:30, and I didn't leave as much time as I should. It was 8:40 by the time I signed us in. Through town, on the highway, through midtown, people shouted 'CUP!' and honked and waved and in one case nearly rear-ended a guy trying to get my attention, to tell me there's a coffee mug on my roof.
Of course there's a coffee mug on my roof, I glued it there. I had no idea the reaction would be so huge. It's a Magic Christian type prank, but if you think your fellow man is indifferent to you, glue a coffee mug up there. I even had a guy get out at a stoplight and come back to tell me when hand signals failed.
I don't want them to feel ill used, so I smile, thank them, explain I did it as a joke but didn't know it would get such a rise out of folks.
Most people, if they say, 'You have a coffee mug on your roof,' and I say, 'Yep!' they laugh, realizing the gag, shake their heads and move on. But I think some people feel like it's a sort of crying wolf. Still, it's sweet, how worked up people will get trying to save me from a shattered coffee mug.
It does seem to keep the tailgaters at bay, if they notice. Sometimes a car is the usual one-car-length back at 70mph, and they see the mug and all of a sudden there's a football field between us as they hit the brakes. Which means I probably won't take the mug down. My membership in the Caucophany Society is confirmed.
So we get to the neurologist, and you have to feed the meter, plus have a hanger they keep inside. So you have to take the kid who focuses on routine, go in, come out, go back in. Then they tell me the appointment was for 8/24.
A day ago.
WTF?
They offer me a reschedule, the earliest they can offer is October 5. I'm not making this up. I'm not even sure I believe it.
On the way back to school, I took Mo to the Waffle House. We don't eat out much in the divorced world, but we'd been running late and by 9:00, my stomach thought my throat was cut. Mo loves the Waffle House, I'm not sure they offer anything she wouldn't eat on a given day.
My eyes were too big for her stomach, I guess. When I asked if she was hungry, she said she was. When I ordered the bacon, two gets, toast, hash browns, I figured the last was the only thing she might skip. She eats potatoes in every form, so hash browns might go over big, but I can't recall her ever eating them. At home, she'll even eat frozen french fries straight from the freezer.
She wouldn't touch her food. Even when I held out a piece of bacon, she'd shove my hand away. I've never, ever seen this kid refuse bacon. I didn't even think she'd have to be hungry to tie into it.
Then I thought, most of the trips we've made to the Waffle House, she's gotten a waffle. Maybe that's it, she wants the routine, so I ordered a waffle. At 99¢, I figured it was better than releasing her on the school in a fit of starvation.
She ignored that too, except to put syrup on it. She covered her ears against the country music and played with the wrapper from her straw and when I asked her if she was hungry she said 'no' even though it had been a good 15 hours since she'd eaten anything.
*They call them apartments, but they're stuck together. Not original to me, I think it was Steven Wright circa 1984, but maybe it was Emo Phillips.
1 comment:
I love me some waffle house. Did she end up eating anything???
Maybe it was the country music? It has a way of making me lose my appetite too.
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