I had an early morning doctor's appointment today. Check in at 7:45, see the doc at 8:00. Gavin slept so-so last night. I slept so-so last night; it took me about a half hour to fall back asleep after the 3 am feeding which put me in slumber land by 4. Then Gavin wanted to be topped off at 6:30 and I managed to eek out 30 more minutes of sleep before we all rolled out of bed and stumbled out the door.
Ryan drove in circles looking for my doctor's office. It's been like 5 years since I've seen this particular one so I couldn't remember where the building was - but I did have the address. I called and found out they were in the same building as my physical therapist - I've been going there off and on for 5 years. And there we were driving around looking for the office that I've been to a million times.
Interruption:
GRR! There is a kinda crazy dude talking to this young mom, whose boyfriend, not the father of the baby, is 16 years older than her. The crazy dude's girlfriend is 4 years younger than him. They've been dating for a long time. She was 15 and he was 19 when they started dating. His speech is slightly slurred but not because he's drunk. His conversation, loud and annoying, sways from his wanting children, to the kind of Starbucks drinks he likes to Barak Obama and I don't know what else. Oooh. Silence. He just went to retrieve his drink. He'll be back too soon; it's a tiny store.
Great. Now he's critiquing his drink.
This must be some sort of regular hang out for a group. When I first arrived the young mom's baby was with some other dude and young lady. I thought he was the dad and the woman was the mom. But the 'mom' stood up and left. Then another woman came over and sat down. Then the real mom came. We chatted briefly about how nice the Starbucks high chairs are. She's nice enough. Then groups of people coming by talk to her. And to crazy dude.
Now mom, baby and annoying crazy dude are leaving.
Sweet, sweet quiet. Relatively speaking. You can still hear the baristas taking orders, other customers chatting and Ryan Adams singing from the speakers but in the absence of crazy babble it sounds like serenity.
Back to my story where I need to assign blame.
Ryan drops me off and I go to the 3rd floor to check in. I scan the signs to see if I'm supposed to check in on the left, in the center or on the right side of the massive waiting room. I see the specialty of my doc and proceed to the right. The receptionist can't find an appointment for April Jones. That's because I'm April Jahns. I understand. When I state my name and immediately spell my last name people think I'm being obnoxious because, really, who can't spell Jones? Then they realize I wasn't spelling Jones so I spell it a second and third time.
The receptionist said, "Oh, it looks like you've been cancelled."
Me: "What?" I checked in on time, not late.
Receptionist: "The doctor must have had an emergency."
Me: I was internally really annoyed but since I worked in health care for years I understand the nature of the business. "Eh?"
Receptionist: "Oh. You're appointment is for February 5th."
Me: "Eh?" SO glad I didn't cop a horrible attitude - at least not a huge attitude.
By time I realized what my huge blunder was Ryan was well on his way to the gym with Gavin. I stayed and filled out the mountain of paper work for next week's appointment all the while trying to figure out how I'm going to tell Ryan I hustled us out of the house early for no reason - and we get to repeat it next week.
So, here I sit at Starbucks on First Hill waiting for a call from Ryan to tell me he is near. OK. Another funny overheard story that you don't expect to hear in Seattle. The dude to my right is talking about a big load of hay coming in that he has to help unload because Manny can't do it all by himself. I think it's funny because, like I said, I'm downtown (as far as non-Seattlites are concerned it's downtown). Not a whole lot of horse and hay stories to be had here.
I think I'm pretty safe if I blame it on fatigue since two nights ago I got maybe 3 hours of sleep. Not Gavin's fault. It was my brain. It wouldn't shut off so I played Ryan's Nintendo DS until I gave myself a headache (and gave myself a cushy lead with the high score in the 3 games I play on one of his cartridges). Oh, another weird thing happened. I hallucinated a scent. I smelled cigarette smoke and became nauseous. It lasted a few minutes. Bizarre.
Lack of sleep coupled with a measly half hour nap followed by so-so sleep could cause even the best of us to confuse our appointment times. Even at my best I'm still a little scattered. Maybe Ryan won't ask me how my appointment went and he can find out by reading this post. But no. I married a considerate, thoughtful man who cares about my health. And he married a woman who can spin this story to make him laugh. Eventually.
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