sneaking in some calm

Last evening I went to pick up a prescription for #5. She is recovering from pneumonia and the doctor wants me to give her breathing treatments to help her little body out a bit. There is a lab near my pharmacy and I was determined to get my blood drawn. My doctor had ordered blood tests so long ago and it is so hard to get to the lab!

So I snuck away and left Jake with the kiddos. I drove in silence. My mind racing with all the things I have to do, but there was quiet around me. I brought the book I just got from the library and I walked up the stairs and into a huge waiting room that was almost empty. I signed my name on the list and sat down across from a very grumpy looking girl. I wondered if I should make conversation with her, but she was staring at my feet with this look on her face. I thought about how I had run out of the house without bothering to put socks on because some things don’t matter enough to distract me from the goal (in this case: actually leaving the house without five kids noticing that I am sneaking out to run an errand). My shoes didn’t match my outfit and they definitely looked weird without socks and it was obvious when I was sitting there all alone without the distraction of kiddos running around me. I decided to leave the girl alone and let her fester and I opened my book and read a page before my name was called.



He looked me up in the computer and he announced that the orders were sent on February 11th. “It’s so hard to get to the lab!” I told him apologetically. He told me that’s what the last guy said and he jovially started making conversation from what he knew about me from the vast pool of information about me on his computer.


He sat me down in the chair and I stared at the walls as we chatted and he tied the rubber thing around my arm. The walls were covered with all kinds of pictures. Covered. Some were personal pictures, obviously belonging to the staff of blood-drawing folk, and some were torn out of magazines and what not. There were puppies and kittens and family pictures. There were pictures of the woods and of waterfalls. Babies in costumes and a random bear. I thought about Fringe (I can’t help it - I love that show!): Olivia was getting her blood drawn and she was staring at a screen that had peaceful things playing on it—a waterfall with the gushing sound, and then the ocean with the sound of the waves crashing on the shore.

“Are all these pictures supposed to calm me down?” I teased. He joked about the fire risk that his co-workers are imposing on him. He kidded with me that he could tell by the color of my blood that I wasn’t where the computer said I was from because my blood would be blue. By the time I left I was completely calm.