After I posted yesterday I went over to the DMV, where I was very disappointed that I didn't get to read more of the Joe Hill book I'd started. There was a line out to the door and I was still in and out (with new registration tags and an updated driver's license) in less than ten minutes. WTF? What's the world coming to if you can't depend on the DMV to provide fodder for your blog?
[sidenote: I was sad about renewing that license tho'. With a eight-year expiration I'm pretty sure the picture on the front will be the last one to bear witness to my hair. {sob]
I was out so quickly that I headed to the hospital to visit my Mom before taking Smiley to school. I was stymied at the information desk when I was informed my Mom was not, nor had ever been, a patient.
Fortunately I was taken aside by someone I knew and slipped her room number, with a stern warning not to divulge where I'd gotten the information. She had been listed as 'Jane Doe' for security reasons - what security reasons I can't fathom, lest she's been slipping cookie recipies to Al Queda - but no one was supposed to know she was there. (Yeah, that suprised my Mom too)
Anyhow, she looked awful. As I walked in she was asleep with her head to one side and her mouth open. Her arms were bruised and her legs heavily bandaged. She told me the story I'd heard yesterday was very nearly accurate. She had been told of having an 'e factor' after my sister's birth and warned to divulge the information whenever she needed a blood transfusion.
"I carried the little card with me for twenty years before I threw it out," she said. "I figured, I hadn't needed it this long . . "
By the time I saw her the transfusion had taken place already, two pints of 'blood or whatever', and scans of her legs had revealed no clots, which was certainly good news.
Her speech was very slurred and incomprehensible at times. She had no explanation for it but told me the doctor was sending her home that evening. I couldn't believe it. I'm not a doctor but she looked and sounded awful. I told her she must be mistaken.
* * *
After saying goodbye I hurried home in time to take Smiley to school via bike, just to show the morning's disaster hadn't dampened my resolve. It was again eezy-peezy, but I had the misfortune of talking to his classmate's Mom, who (naturally) bikes her kid in via a twelve mile roundtrip each day.
"You got tired after only a mile? How odd," she said. I think she was honestly oblivious to the lack of tact involved in saying this to a 300 pound man, so I don't hold any anger towards her.
[I will say however, that a pre-Rennasaince era Danny might, conceivably, have looked at this unnattractive woman and thought something like "If I biked twelve miles every day I'd look a hell of a lot better than you do now sister"
But this is a new era, and so a thought like that never crossed my mind. Not once.]
In the evening the kids had dance and in their absence I took Lump on a ride too, although I concede this was nothing but showing off to my readers. While I was wrapping up my Dad called to say his car had died taking my Mom home from the hospital, so I drove out to pick them up.
While in the car my Mom told me a story about dreaming of a bright tunnel with a peaceful white light at the end.
Malarky.
"Ma, I've known you for thirty years. With that mouth of yours there's not gonna be any 'white light'. The best you can hope for is to avoid a red glow and pray for puragatory," I said.
She laughed. "Your [paternal] Grandma used to tell me the only way she'd get into heaven was if Grandpa Mike died first and held the ladder for her. She used to say that to me all the time. Remember Eddie?"
"Yeah, but it didn't work out that way, did it?" my Dad said, being a buzzkill and referencing my Grandma's early demise.
Anyhow, that was it for the day. A busy day, and productive.
