Waiting Room

Dana's days are a carefully balanced yet ever changing series of trips to baseball practice, batting practice, baseball games, driving the right baseball gear to the right kid at the right time, because they don't have room in their lockers for it. Sometimes she delivers other people's kids or other peoples' kid's gear as well. Sometimes there is basketbalI, or yoga, or ballroom dancing (de rigeur for 7th graders). It's all a moving target, leaving little free time for Dana OR the kids. I remember making a color coded chart when my kids were this age just to keep track of their activities I did have three kids, but they had fewer activities....

Everything fell apart last night when Peter complained of an earache for the second night in a row. In the morning he says he feels fine, doesn't want to miss school, doesn't want to go to the doctor, doesn't need Advil or Tylenol. That worked yesterday morning, but today Dana asked me if I would take him to the doctor because she had to take Will to a baseball gam. Oh, and he has batting practice after the doctor...Oh, and he has regular baseball practice after that... We met him at school, broke the news that I was taking him to the doctor and then to batting practice, and loaded his GIANT bag of equipment and his smaller bag of baseball clothes into my car. He ate a lunch bag full of snacks on our way to the doctor's office.

We had very little time to admire the fish in the aquarium in the waiting room before we were taken into the exam room to contemplate the poster on the wall with pictures of small children with DREADFUL diseases for which there is an inoculation, but only if it is given. Peter said it had been on the wall in every exam room for as long as he could remember. Soon the doctor was telling us that he had two infected ears, one infected eye and a "whistle" in his chest, and that he should go home and rest. Much texting with Dana ensued, and I took him to batting practice. His father will pick him up at batting practice and make the call about the practice after that. I commented to Peter on the way to batting practice, that he felt fine until the doctor told him he had three or four things wrong with him. Peter (resignedly): "That's what you get for going to the doctor".