Me: “I need to schedule my son’s checkup and he will also need rabies pre-exposure shots.”
Receptionist: “Has your son been bitten?”
Me: “No. This is a school requirement for students who will be handling animals.”
Receptionist: “Well, you can explain it to the doctor when you come in for your check-up.”
Me: “But, this is something the doctor is going to have to special order in for the appointment.”
Receptionist: “You can explain it to the doctor when you come in for your check-up.”
Me: “Can you just leave a note saying what I am requesting?”
Receptionist: “You can explain it to the doctor when you come in for your check-up.”
Me: sigh
Me: “I haven’t gotten my son’s financial aid report or any kind of status report.”
Financial Aid Person: “What is his name and date of birth and social security number?”
Me: quickly spout out the requested information
Financial Aid Person: “He is in the system.”
Me: “Can you tell me if there is a problem is so that I can try to fix it.”
Financial Aid Person: “Not without your son’s written authorization.”
Me: “How can we do that?”
Financial Aid Person: “I will mail him a form.”
Me: sigh
Me: “My son needs rabies pre-exposure shots.”
Nurse T: “Has your son been bitten?”
Me: “No. This is a school requirement for students who will be handling animals.”
Nurse T: “Well, you can explain it to the doctor.”
Me: “My son needs rabies pre-exposure shots.”
Dr. B: “Has your son been bitten?”
Me: “No. This is a school requirement for students who will be handling animals.”
Dr. B: “We don’t have anything like that here. I will write you a prescription.”
Me: sigh
Me: “I have a script that the doctor wrote for rabies pre-exposure shots.”
Pharmacist: “Ummm, I’ll have to look that up. Come back in 45 minutes.”
Me: sigh The next 45 minutes are spent chasing Evan in the toy aisles.
Me: “I’m here to be told that you can’t fill my son’s script.”
Pharmacist: “Ummm, I don’t know how to fill this script. Maybe you should take it to a veterinarian. Or the CDC.”
Me: sigh
Continuing on my summer tour of government buildings, I visited the Social Security building on Kingston Pike today. I mailed in my old card YEARS ago with paperwork to get my name changed and apparently it disappeared into space. I didn’t know there was a problem until Tommy’s college paperwork claimed that our e-filed taxes for the past 2 years were denied because my name was wrong on the tax forms. Wouldn’t you think the IRS would have sent us a late penalty notice or something? So, since I have moved from denial that Tommy is going to college to frantic activity, I am trying to fix all of the problems simultaneously.
I was very pleased that the Social Security building is in my neck of the woods. It must really chafe the everything and everyone should be downtown Grumplestiltskins that the Social Security building is halfway between one end of town and the other. Actually, they don’t want everyone downtown. They think that the homeless population should be bused down to the wealthy part of town daily. Anyway, I parked right in front of the building which has been everything from a grocery store to an indoor skate park. It has a new, professional facade to hide the building’s eclectic history. At that point, the experience became the opposite of the DHS building visit. There were no people smoking outside and there was no giant ashtray instead of a flower bed. This place is Disney-clean. When you enter the building, the chairs are lined up in an aesthetically pleasing angle with wide rows around the sides and through the middle to easily traverse the room. There are no employees anywhere to be seen. Everyone checks in with a computer and sits silently until a disembodied voice calls their name and/or number with directions to follow. “Number 67, go to room 15.” “Number 68, go to window D.” Did I mention the unnatural silence? The people looked like zombies, staring at a television that was playing a looped recording of a woman telling everyone they could avoid the wait if they handled their needs online. The recording played over and over, but nobody left to go find a computer. Social Security might want to rethink their plan to get less people in the building.
I quickly figured out the reason for the silence. If anyone tried to use their phone or spoke in a normal voice, a guard appeared out of thin air and barked at them to go outside. “Not allowed. Outside.” You know the experience of getting through the security gate to enter a military base? The guard who is incapable of saying anything outside of his script or thinking independently? That was this guard. A senior quietly asked the guard if he knew where you get birth certificates. “We don’t do that.” “But, could you tell me who to ask?” “We don’t do that.” Dude. It’s the Social Security building, not Buckingham Palace. The computerized voice gave me directions and the clerk corrected my name in the system. I was in the building for less than 20 minutes. On the way out of the building, I pushed a button on my phone and held it up to my ear while waiting for the person I dialed to answer. The guard appeared in a poof of blue smoke and stared at me, waiting for me to speak out loud into the forbidden device. I felt like we were passing each other on a dusty saloon lined street. I spoke as I opened the door to exit. The guard smirked and vanished.
In less than a month, I will have FIVE children attending FIVE different schools. We will have a child in College, High School, Middle School, Elementary School and Preschool. Five different locations, schedules, supplies, expectations and everything else, including the kitchen sink. I think I need a catchy title for the year. The Year of Living Dangerously? Nah. Fighting for Five? Too dramatic. Operation Carpool? Too limiting. I need suggestions. The best idea will replace my current “There’s no place like 127.0.0.1″ tagline. Maybe I’ll tape it to my car window. Maybe more.
Suggestions and authors:
“Survive the Five” by Barry
“Five Roads to Education” by Michael
“Five roads to insanity” by Michael
“Five roads, then recovery” by Michael
“Five roads to bankruptcy” by Michael
“Watch me single-handedly raised the cost of oil $40 a barrel.” by Doug
“Running on Fumes” by Doug
“5 children, 5 schools, 1 nervous breakdown” by Doug
“Egad! They left the nest and took me with them!” by Doug
“The Drive for Education. Sponsored by Dodge & AT&T.” by Doug
“Just living my own version of the 5 step program.” by Jennilu
“Heading Home: The Road Less Traveled” by BlueCollarMuse
“Five is right out!” by Rich
“Number five is a drive.” by Rich
“We rule 5 schools.” by Rich
“All your grades are belong to us.” by Rich
“Like the Partridge Family, only without the singing. Or the bus.” by Rich
“The Year of the Quinary” by Dean
Instead of comparing life to a hill that you struggle to climb, linger a millisecond at the top and then free-fall to the bottom, let’s compare it to something else. How about comparing it to Isla Sorna with the meanest dinosaurs on the exterior of the island and the peaceful giants in the center? No? Then you’ll have to create your own metaphor. At any rate, pop culture would like you to believe that the post-child-bearing years are when women are insane and in need of constant air conditioning. I think it would be more accurate to call it a second adolescence. As a teenager, your hormones are out of control. You have somewhat calm during your child-bearing years. The chaos is external to your body instead of internal. Women who disliked pregnancy will disagree with me on this point. When you are finished reproducing, your body decides to start powering the systems down. Done making babies? Begin dying. The process feels a lot like adolescence, when the systems were booted up. Hormonal chaos. The difference is that women harness the chaos of their second adolescence. As a teenager, you try out vegetarianism and lead protests again school dress codes. As an adult, you become a foodie and have meetings with your congress rep. As a teen, you cry over teddy bears. As an adult, you cry over commercials. Well, maybe that one is still a little insane, but that’s okay. Besides, the second adolescence comes without social guilt attached to your libido.
One night this week, a mosquito viciously attacked me on the bottom of my foot. It woke me up enough to know I had an itch, but not enough to think clearly. I tried scratching with my non-afflicted foot, but apparently my toenails are too short to be useful. I rubbed the foot on the edge of the bed, but despite the fact that our bed is sharp enough to cause Noah to need stitches in the distant past, it wasn’t sharp enough to ease the itch. I finally took my fingernails and scratched the skin off my foot. When the itch became a burning sting of pain, I ceased scratching and rubbed my abused foot on the sheets until I drifted back into a deep sleep. I blame Oak Ridge for my foot’s discomfort. Everyone knows Oak Ridge has secret laboratories with misunderstood geniuses in lab coats conducting top secret experiments. The evil scientists must produce some sort of mutant mosquitoes. I suspect the giant bugs in Peter Jackson’s version of King Kong were all from Oak Ridge labs. I think we should get an Oak Ridge ????????bat that was modified by the good scientists and let it live in our house to eat all the mosquitoes. Then again, maybe it would be easier to just put malaria netting over our beds so we can survive the East TN summers.
Unfortunately, I am going to have to put our laundry fairy on notice. She has not been doing her job in anything resembling an acceptable manner. Her job is very simple and I am certain that she has no other duties to tend to than the following.
Twice a day, she must search under furniture, behind doors, in the bathroom and on the floor beside the bed for dirty clothing. This laundry should be taken downstairs and sorted by color and fabric. All clothing, especially that which is worn by small children should be searched for stains and pre-treated. All pockets are to be emptied of notes, rocks and small toys. The laundry is to be put in the washing machine in small quantities with appropriate amounts of detergents. At the end of every wash load, the clothes should be moved to the dryer and allowed to dry with fabric softener. As soon as the washer is emptied, a new load should be started. When the clean clothing is dry, it should be removed from the dryer to allow a new load to be dried. The clean, dry clothing must be folded, sorted by room, delivered to that room and put away in closets and drawers. There will be one full load of towels and washcloths every day. Additionally five beds and one crib have sheets, pillowcases and blankets that need to be laundered at least once every week.
I know that the laundry fairy is failing because the children have been making verbal complaints about the speed with which their jeans, socks and favorite t-shirts are made available. Since a sudden burst in the quantity of hole-free jeans and shorts, Doug has been unusually quiet about his laundry complaints. The teenagers have made sure to pick up any slack in the level of complaining by making multiple daily protests. Effective immediately, I will be counting the number of complaints made daily. The family can take comfort in the knowledge that their complaints are about to result in changes that will impact their satisfaction with the speed with which laundry is completed. If the laundry fairy continues with this level of dissatisfaction from family members, the laundry fairy will be dismissed and the rest of the family will have to tend to their own laundry needs. I expect this notice will result in an immediate change that will result in a noticeable absence of complaints. Thank you.
Seriously. I know tomorrow we are back to reality, but we have just had one awesome day after another lately. I am still on a happy high. Thursday night, Tommy had a class party at Versus. The students and parents at the party have experienced more turmoil than most people could even imagine. Thursday night, everyone was smiling. Students, teachers and parents were just bursting with excitement. The building was probably hovering from all the good vibes inside it. Doug and I snuck away for fifteen minutes so that I could go somewhere I have never been. We went in MagPies and bought cupcakes. It’s a good thing Magpies isn’t near home, because I could seriously become addicted. Yummy is an understatement.
Friday morning, Amy sang the Star Spangled Banner at her school. Too much cuteness. The day’s errands blurred together as we brought home the new family member, set-up and decorated the LAN room at Project Grad (with a LOT of help from a friend) and spent too little time with the extended family who came to be a part of Tommy’s big day. Friday night, I was the mom with the big, goofy grin on her face. Unexpected guests came to see Tommy walk the stage and I was so surprised that I almost lost my composure. We made one last second run backstage to check on Tommy before the long ceremony. Tommy was completely calm. As we RAN back across the floor of Thompson Boling, teachers, principals and a school board member acknowledged Tommy. I thought my heart would explode from the joy and pride. After the ceremony, there was so much hugging and happiness that I thought we wouldn’t make it out of Thompson Boling.
The LAN room was definitely a success. In the beginning, we had the Asperger kids and few hardcore gamers. When they all took a break for food (the mountains and mountains of food), a group of rowdy guys came in to play. The trash talk was flying and the female companion wannabees lingered as close to the boys as possible without actually draping themselves over the new graduates. Extremely entertaining. After that group wandered off, the girls came in the room. This was the funniest group of the night. The girls travel in pairs, with two to each computer and instead of trash talk and whoops at kills, there was giggling and whispers. The girls left and all the students gathered for raffle drawings. I morphed into set strike mode and we put the room back together at world record speed. As the sun peeked over the horizon, we raced to return the borrowed computers and get to our own bed. Never has a bed felt as comfortable as our bed felt that early morning.
We slept Saturday away and impulsively went downtown to see a movie with friends later that night. More sleeping followed by lounging have left me with a house that is a wreck and a giant pile of dirty laundry, but I don’t care. Today, it’s all good. Tommy is happy and that makes me happy.
Natural disasters, wars, accidents, illnesses and George Bush. The news is too depressing to watch. I spent my day cleaning and the house is STILL too filthy for visitors. Doug made me a cake unlike any cake I have ever had before. I asked him to take all the children to Boy Scouts so I could have an hour to myself. I mopped the floors for that hour. Now, I’m out of my cleaning supplies. I’m tired. My hands smell like dust. I still don’t have Tommy’s graduation gift. Or food for Friday. At least I am not hysterical yet.
You know how I get a little bit crazy the week before Christmas? Shut up, Doug. The next week is going to make PCS (Pre-Christmas Syndrome) look like a week of quiet reflection. Tommy is done with classes and has entered some sort of graduate la-la land. He has a grin permanently plastered across his face and can’t be motivated to do anything but play, eat and sleep. We still haven’t found his graduation present. I am allowing myself one evening of playing hooky from the massive list of things to be done before next Friday. Tomorrow night I will be at Versus from 7 until 9. The rest of the week? Chaos. Tonight?
