Pull Up a Stool and I’ll Tell You a Tale

There are days when your own life seems surreal to you.

I mentioned the G/I doctor has ordered a bunch of tests for young Wonderboy. For some of the tests, we needed to deliver a stool sample to the Children’s Hospital—between the hours of 9 and 11:30—within one hour of, er, the sample’s production, if you know what I mean. The first hour of the day was filled with suspense. Would he or wouldn’t he? When would he?

Suddenly, at 8:15, there it was. Cue instant frenzy of parental activity, gathering lab slips, notating the time on the side of sample containers, barking out prepare-to-travel instructions to various children. It was downright cinematic, like the scene when the transport team flies into motion to get the liver or the heart to the desperate patient on the other side of the country. You could almost hear Ride of the Valkyries playing on the soundtrack.

I’d been given three separate vials whose tops unscrewed to reveal tiny, pointed spoons with which to scoop the precious commodity. Gross. Seriously gross. Scott put his own life at risk by saying, as he watched me maneuver a loaded (so to speak) spoon into the vial’s narrow opening, “It takes a very steady hand…”

What kind of crazy man messes with a woman armed with poo?

With astonishing rapidity I found myself in the minivan, large brown bag of samples stowed in the passenger seat (ew), boy and baby buckled in behind me. Before backing out of  the driveway, I invested thirty valuable seconds in tucking my Bluetooth into my ear and dialing Alice‘s number because, you know, we share everything.

“Houston,” I crowed, “we have liftoff!”

Alice happened to be at a Dunkin Donuts drivethrough window and I’m sure she was just really super happy to hear all about my adventures in poop-collecting. Sorry about that, sweetie. I hope you hadn’t ordered the chocolate cream-filled.

I could go on with this, but frankly the rest of the day was a bit anticlimactic. We made it to the lab with twenty minutes to spare, happily relinquished the brown bag to the care of gentle lab techs, waited in a line that materialized out of thin air at the stroke of nine for my poor boy’s turn in the bloodletting room (more tests), and returned to our happy home in plenty of time for an early lunch.

Not that I felt much like eating.

Later in the day, believe it or not, there was yet another doctor appointment (at the ped’s office this time, not the hospital), and then I braved the waiting-until-almost-the-last-minute crowd at the grocery store to buy cream for our Thanksgiving dessert (Scott’s famous grasshopper pie) and thirty or forty other small items I suddenly remembered I needed for turkey day. (On which, as it happens, we eat ham.)

Then I cooked and cooked and cleaned and cleaned (tomorrow is Shakespeare Club), and—dare I say it?—I’m pooped.