Author: Kathleen Fisher

With time off for wedding planning, I am back to my job search.  I have decided that working in a doctor’s office would be a good fit for me.  The pay and hours are better than retail and you can sit.  Winning!

Specifically, I thought an eye doctor’s office would suit me because I love picking out glasses for myself and others, and I’d likely not be called upon to save somebody’s life in the waiting room.  Three hours after I responded to a Craigslist ad, I got a call to come in the following day.  It was as if the universe agreed that I was on the right path.

It wasn’t an easy interview by any means, but I felt like I was holding my own until the doctor mentioned the math test. 

I am sort of a whiz at math.  If I’m at Macy’s and shorts are $39.00 less 30% plus a 20% off coupon, I can figure out exactly what I owe with tax.  All in my head.  I’m especially gifted when it comes to the clearance rack.

I was presented with four problems.  Four. Word. Problems.

Help me Jesus.

If Patient X has an eye exam that costs $92.00 and there is a co-pay of $20.00 and $40.00 of that is a contact lens exam that insurance does not cover but allows a 15% discount less an annual deductible of $50.00, how much does Patient X owe at checkout?

No worries.  Add this column, carry the one.  No, no, carry two.  Or should I double that and subtract four?  82………82…….82……….246.

I read the problems over and over and over which didn’t result in any answers, but more of a pre-diarrhea feeling settling in.  I scored a below average 50% on my employment quiz.

The doctor asked me to explain how I arrived at my answers.

My what?

Your answers, she said.  Explain your logic.

Here’s my logic.  I  kept throwing shit against a wall and waited for something to stick, and lookie, here, half of it did.  You should hire me for your relief pitcher.

She’s going to do a background check on me and will be in touch in a few days.  There’s a 50% chance that it will reveal to her that I am deficient in logic.  Math and otherwise.

After some freedom in her schedule and consistent nagging of her parents, Mallie Bee is finally enrolled in a driving school.  If you’ve done this before………..twice but who’s counting………..you know that it costs an arm and a leg to get somebody else to agree to teach your kid what the pioneers did long ago with the horse and buggy.

Day One’s lesson ended in the Scare The Shit Out Of The Kids movie which parents were invited to. I only saw the last few minutes of it as I scare the shit out of myself all the time.  I can do without the reenactment.

The 2nd day, we arrived a few minutes early so I got to see all the soon-to-be drivers getting dropped off by Mom or Dad.  In walked a prepubescent kid, just over the five foot mark, working a whole lot of swag with his driver’s ed folder of pertinent information.

The age in which you can get a permit in Kansas is fourteen.  Yep, fourteen.  That Bad Ass likely just finished the 8th grade and is anxiously awaiting the deets of his high school locker and combination, some pubic hair and a driver’s permit.

Oh, Lordy.

Sometimes when The Big Daddy and I are sitting on the porch with our adult beverages, we discuss what we’d do if we won the lotto.  That we never play until the odds are ridiculously stacked against us.  Without exception, we first decide who we would help out.  That’s not because we’re stellar citizens, but because we can’t help but notice the number of people affected by a shitty economy or ongoing health problems.  With a lump sum payout in the millions, we could make things easier for them.

After that, we decide what to bank, what to use to blow out the back of the house, what to set aside for a dream vacation for everybody we like/love/just met.

It’s pretty much a pipe dream, but we do it often.

When Maggie and Nathan married, we had the perfect day as parents.  This hard, hard work of raising people all came together, and a dozen times that day I looked at this guy I married 29 years ago and thought…………..Look what we did.  Look at our family who traveled from all over to be with us.  Look at the friends we’ve made over the years who were so happy to share this celebration with us.  Look at these kids of ours who love and laugh and dance and make us oh so proud.  Look.

If I ever come into a pile of money I’d share it with everyone I know who needs help, but I am very aware these days that I have already won the Lotto.

For at least ten years, I spent nearly every summer afternoon at the community pool with the kids.  It was the cheapest entertainment in town with an annual pass for the entire family a whopping $120.00.  The kids loved to go and while they played shark and Marco Polo, I’d have some desperately needed adult conversation with other moms.

At the time, there was a baby/toddler pool, the main pool, a diving pool and adult pool.  The baby pool sat up higher with steps that went down to the toddler pool.  Wet steps that water constantly ran down.  And what does a toddler like to do more than anything?  Climb steps.  And what happens when a wobbly toddler climbs up and down wet steps?  They smack their face.

For most of those years, I was with one toddler or another on those steps and even if you were mere inches away, if you took your eye off of them for a second, they’d do a face plant onto the concrete stairs.  Some face plants required lifeguard intervention when the screaming wee one was bleeding from a fat lip.

It. Was. A. Design. Cluster. Of. The. Greatest. Magnitude.

A fence separated that pool from the main pool, and I’d look through the chain link with such envy.  One time, I saw a kid go up to his mom who was laying on her chaise lounge smoking a cigarette and she yelled, “WHADDYA WANT????” when he was still ten feet away.  Snack bar, he said, and she threw some dollars his way and told him to leave her alone.

Sigh.

One more summer and I could join those lazy slackers who actually relaxed at the pool and left it up to God and the lifeguards to make sure their kid didn’t drown.

That fall I got pregnant.  It would be four more years before I finally had my Shawshank Redemption.

While Maggie and Nate went on their honeymoon, we were the guardians of Butters…….the Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disordered dog.

Butters has an affinity for underwear, garbage, toilet paper, cat food, and sleeping on my white sofa.  She barked at everything that walked by the front of the house and phantom sounds at 1:00 in the morning.  She harassed the cats, the dog and Mallie Bee.

I walked her twice a day and took her for play dates down the street.  You would think 100+ temps would do her in.  Instead it slowed her down until she got a second wind.

She wore on our nerves and wore us out, but in the end we prevailed.  On the last day of her visit, The Little Shit finally rested.

Soooooo…………….Tom Cruise got kicked to the curb by Katie Holmes.

Wow.  Never saw that one coming.  Said no one ever.

When he yanked that young one off the street and decided she was his fresh, new “love interest”, all I could think of were her parents……..normal, low-key, average people who sent all their kids to Catholic schools.  Along comes Mr. Celebrity married twice before for all of five years each time and a Scientologist to boot.

The conversations those two must have had lying in bed and wondering how to come to terms with their daughter’s new manfriend.  Before long, he was visiting Oprah and jumping up and down on her custom leather sofa declaring his love for this woman nearly twenty years his junior.

Oprah said she could tell this one was someone special.

Go figure.

Through the magic of television and hundreds of miles away in front of my Samsung in Kansas, I thought it all seemed bat-shit crazy. 

In the planning of this wedding, it was my thought that I would be the hit girl for stress so that Maggie wouldn’t feel overwhelmed and worn out by the time the big day came.

As someone who gets anxious when I have to go to a different ATM or gas pump, who was I kidding?

In reality, the coolest girl in the room was always the bride.  I, on the other hand, was freaking out daily.  I was not sleeping or eating very well worrying about the details, and repeatedly asked about the logistics like I had short-term amnesia.  When any of those details got changed, which by the way happens constantly in Weddingville, I got the vapors.

The night before the wedding the kids were chatting and Will mentioned that he was meeting Nate in the morning.  MEETING NATE?  YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE HELPING DAD SET UP!  NO.  ABSOLUTELY NOT.  NO, YOU TELL HIM YOU CAN’T BE THERE.

The Bride said the groomsmen were going to Panera for breakfast.  Panera?  Seriously?  I’ll buy Panera for all of you, but nobody AND I MEAN NOBODY can leave this house.  To which I was told that there are certain responsibilities involved in standing up in a wedding and apparently danish is one of them.

I paced.  I called The Big Daddy into a consult behind closed doors and he agreed with everything I said.  I might have been shrieking.

Later on, Will came in to tell me that Nate wanted the groomsmen to deliver roses to Maggie in the morning, and so they were going to meet at his apartment, get the roses, bring them by the house and then go about the rest of their day.

Oh.

When you act like an idiot, sooner or later you will look like one.

Maggie and Nate did things a little differently when it came to their first dance.  It was top secret and required lots and lots of practice.