Apparently I'm suffering the backlash of having nothing to write for days because this is the third entry I'm writing on Monday, although I'm not posting it until Tuesday because honestly, I have to give you people some time to read what I already posted on Monday, right? So just know that when I write today, I mean Monday.Aside from all my talk of food and conspiracies, I also knew the joy today of having a long list of things to do and doing them all. Most of them were phone calls to make, and in general, I'd rather drive to a mall 45 minutes away from home to buy a wooden spoon than make a phone call for appointments and such, but I soldiered on. First, though, I returned a pair of pants to the Gap, because what was I thinking, and went to K-Mart for some nice new Martha kitchen curtains and a Mickey Mouse watch. Lately I've been repossessed of the need to wear a Mickey Mouse watch, and because I pretty much wear only cheap watches, none of the seven or eight of them I've got laying around work. (Why do I keep them then? Hello, I'm Chai; have we met?) So I got the $19.00 watch at K-Mart, came home with it, and found out that it didn't work. I took it later and got a battery put in and now it's a $26 watch, so no big deal.
I made the various appointments I needed to make, but one of them was for the annual mammogram, and, if you'll excuse the crudity, they've got your tits in a vise from the second you dial the phone. Since my mother was first diagnosed with breast cancer, which I guess is ten years ago next month, my sister and I have gone only to one particular place, which is The Center for Breast Care, or some equally upscale sounding name, at Hackensack Hospital, which is the best hospital near here, a teaching hospital. That first year, when the Center was new, we were each shown into an individual room, with an examining table and a La-Z-Boy, given fluffy terrycloth robes to wear, and where we waited in elegance for the films to be taken, immediately after which a doctor came in, did the exam, and gave us the results. The next year, we waited together in the room, table and chair gone, with a couple of other women, and then went into another room for the denouement. It's gone downhill from there. The big news today is that they have moved the doctors out of the Center into another building across the street from the hospital. This means that my doctor is no longer right there, so I have to get a prescription from her before I can even schedule the mammogram, and then I have to go back to see her a week later for the results.
W.T.F? As industrial a medical facility as this became over the years, and as much as I and about half the women there always left in tears, just from the stress, at least you always saw a doctor and got the results before you went home. So I says to the bored appointment maker on the phone, I says
"So let me get this straight. Now, instead of taking off one day from work to get a mammogram, now I have to take off THREE? One for the original gram, one for when they call me to come back for more pictures (because they ALWAYS make me go back for more), and one for the day when I have to see the doctor? Three days in one week?"
And she says, no hesitation, "Yes, that's right."
So now they get to torture you physically and mentally, and no one thinks there's anything wrong with that. Anyway, I made the first appointment for Yom Kippur when there's no school (don't tell anyone), and the last for a week later at eight in the morning, so I only have to take off a half-day. As for the going back for the second set of films in between, I'll have to go when they call.
In other news:
I got two interesting bits of mail today, one snail and one e. In the snail, a note from my mother's best friend, enclosing something she'd come across, my mother's Sour Cream Coffee Cake recipe, in her own handwriting, written out and given to said friend sometime in the early 60s. Especially interesting because it was only just this past Saturday that I finally got around to framing and hanging up my grandmother's Chocolate Cake recipe, in her own handwriting, which someone had given me years ago, and which I'd always wanted to hang up. So now I have a companion piece.
And the email. Wow. I don't know if I mentioned this -- I think I did -- but I was recently given the email address of a former student now stationed in Baghdad, and I finally got to write to him yesterday; today I got a wonderful response. I almost cried. I will definitely have to read some of it to the staff on the first day of school. It was very moving; he compared what he is doing, as an officer and a leader of troops, to teaching, and that he can now understand more of what teachers do. It was beautiful.
