In Which Jer Gets Band Aids For His Booboos

I wrote this post this morning and am only now able to get to the internet to post it. Jer came out of the OR just fine and is now hanging out playing games on his new PSP! Mom's at the hospital with him and Connor and I've come home to take a much-needed shower and to post here. Wish I'd seen the comment about borrowing an army cot-- that was a great idea! Oh well.

Jeremy and I got a very special package in the mail yesterday evening, courtesy of Jess Wilson, Darby, and Kendall. I’m very happy to say that in addition to the sweet little gifts for Connor and I and the wonderful drawings (We especially love the giraffe!), Jeremy now has, as displayed here, band aids for his booboos. The orthopedic surgeon has promised to save them when she takes his cast off for cleaning today and put them back on afterwards, as no doubt they will aid the healing process. Thanks Kendall—he loved ‘em!

I also now have a whole herd of birthday goats—and since they’re the paper or electronic kind, they haven’t even eaten my upholstery! Loki is unimpressed by our new family members, but I sure like them. It’s also pretty funny to watch Jer reading the cards and e-mails people have sent that I've been printing out for him to read, as a lot of them make references to things I’ve written in my blog and he hasn’t had a chance to read it for about a month. He was a little confused about the references people kept making to him having a stubbed toe, for instance. Also the coconut crab hat.

Anyway, I’m sitting in the surgical waiting room right now, as Jer’s left leg is cleaned out in the OR for the sixth time. Basically he goes in every other day right now. There’s some badly dubbed anime playing on the television. Otherwise the room is totally silent; I’m the only one here. I had to turn the lights on when I came in.

Had a down moment yesterday afternoon; I went out to the PX to get myself a camping mattress (I’ve been sleeping in a rocking chair as the floor we’re on isn’t set up for people spending the night (they are making an exception for us, which is very nice of them), and it is Not Working) and I desperately needed some caffeine. I’m not normally a coffee drinker, but they had those Frappacinos there, which aren’t really coffee but more like some sort of vaguely coffee-flavored smoothie, so they don’t really count. Anyway, I knew Jer would want one too, and I went ahead and got him some snacks he particularly enjoys too. I dragged myself up to the register, and while I was putting the camp bed and the coffee and the candy up on the register, I accidently dropped one of the Frappacinos on the floor, where it shattered into a million pieces. Glass and caramel-flavored deliciousness went everywhere.

“I’m so sorry!” I said to the cashier behind the counter. “Please charge me for that. Do you mind if I grab another one? You can put my stuff aside and I’ll go to the end of the line.” The coffee was in a refrigerator at a register two lines down.

The cashier threw her eyes up and gazed at the ceiling for a moment, as if to ward off idiot customers. “There are people waiting,” she said.

I was too exhausted to fight about it. I figured I’d just go back after I’d checked out, find another one, and pay for it in a different line. “All right,” I said. “Please charge me for two then-- the one on the counter and the one I broke.”

She glared at me. “You know, I don’t know whether or not we make customers pay for things they break or not, but I really think you should.”

“I know,” I said miserably. “Please charge me for it.” She checked me out in stormy silence.

To make it even worse, I’d discovered I’d left my military ID, which is required to check out at the PX, sitting on the dash board of my car. I offered to go out and get it and then just go to the back of the line, but she told me she’d just check me out “so I could just go.” Everyone was staring at me by now. I fumbled out my credit card, red-faced and defeated, and paid.

“I’m sorry,” she said, turning to the other customers in line as soon as my transaction was finished. “But you’re going to have to go to another line. I’m going to have to close until we get this mess cleaned up.”

So in other words, she was going to close the whole time and had only waited to tell everyone to go to a different line so that I wouldn’t get another coffee. I've never had a problem with any cashier at the PX before; normally they're wonderful. Maybe she’d just had a bad day, or there were things going on in her life that were making her prickly. Ordinarily I’d just be rather irritated, and I’d probably have handled it a lot better. But I wanted to get back to Jer and I was totally exhausted and the last week had been so horrific I didn’t have any reserves left. I fled the store with just Jer’s coffee and broke down out in the car.

So I didn’t go back for my coffee and I had to drive around a while because I didn’t want to go back to the hospital with my face all swollen and puffy. It seems so silly that such a small thing ended up making me lose it, but it was that I had looked forward to drinking that stupid Frappacino—I’d been craving it all day—and I’m vulnerable enough right now that it what should have been an awkward moment ended up being a much bigger deal than it would have been otherwise.

Stupid coffee. Stupid cashier.

Anyway, the camp bed I slept on last night worked wonders, and I feel one hundred percent better today. It’s absolutely amazing how much better a good night’s sleep will make you feel, isn’t it? I didn’t realize how much of my mood was due to sheer exhaustion. I think they design those hospital rocking chairs so there’s absolutely no way to sleep on them for more than an hour at a time without your neck cramping. The little bed worked really well—though I think the bare cement floor would probably have been a step up from the chair. At any rate, I feel much refreshed, and I’m going to stick around here until Jer’s back from the OR and then go home and get cleaned up. Then I’m off to run errands!

~Jess