It's ice-cream-headache weather, cold enough that your head feels as if you've been downing chocolate ripple too quickly. Wind chill in the -20's; the school is surrounded by a shiny moat of smooth, lethal ice. I cross it gingerly on my YakTrax, but young daughter wails in fear and I creep back to take her hand. It takes us five minutes to work our way around the school.The sidewalks are clear, save for the odd ice flow, so I bounce slightly on the steel springs criss-crossing the soles of my feet and a suddenly hear a high pip-pip-pip, a sound I haven't heard since the autumn. My gaze travels up the trunk of a naked maple at the corner and perched atop is a blaze of crimson. The first cardinal of the year. It must be March.
Into the house with the glow of organization that I've been cultivating over the past couple of days: tracking my time usage, making lists, updating the calendars. Now, I carefully bag my contact lens paraphernalia. In preparation for this morning's appointment with the ophthalmologist, I've eschewed eye makeup, so I look more worn and washed-out than usual, but if I'm going to have streaks of yellow pupil-dilating solution down my cheek, no one will take much pleasure from looking at me anyway. Checking the time, I waltz down to the bus stop; catch just the right bus.
As I stride confidently to the receptionist's desk at 10 on the dot, I suddenly remember I've left my care card at home. I apologetically explain this to said receptionist who keeps calling me Carol, then directs me to another desk. They direct me back. This time she sorts out my name and informs me that my appointment is March 23rd. "But I had a confirmation call," I falter, "and I returned the call." As she explains that this couldn't have been from her, a little voice says timidly from somewhere near the top of my head: This is Dr Tabor. The message was from Dr. Martin. Isn't he your dentist?
The receptionist has evidently seen the penny drop, and suppresses a smile as I beat a hasty retreat in search of a payphone. The dentist, whose office is a fifteen-minute walk from my house, fits me in half an hour later. My teeth look great...for an bird-brain...
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5 comments:
Oh dear that was so funny Persephone, although I'm sure it wasn't at the time... If it's any consolation, my bit of bird brainedness this week was forgetting to pick up my friend's daughter, having texted her to say I would. Luckily I was in the junior school next to the infant school when I remembered her...
And given that I'm married to a dentist, you'd think it would take less then two weeks for him to reattach the veneer which pinged off when I forgot about it flossing my teeth... Or that between us we'd manage to make a new appointment to sort out a proper replacement as the original is a) chipped and b) stuck on with very white gluey stuff (don't know the technical term) which shoes through very very white, when in fact it should be transparent and you shouldn't be able to see my tooth sticking out like a sore thumb...
I spotted my first Cardinal yesterday! It gave me a warm fuzzy feeling, even with a below-zero (F) wind chill...
Thus far I've not mixed up doctor appointments but I know we made little one's 2yr appointment somewhere in the week between her and my birthdays. Heck if I know which day or time. I've still got just over a month to figure it out... I hope...
Hah, mixing up eyes with teeth. Good one.
It was my eye teeth, okay, Joe?
I turned up a whole day early for a meeting with friends once half way across the country (for a Canadian the distance may feel like 'down the road')
Very annoying, though it did give me the great opening line on the second day I travelled over and my friends started arriving: 'have you been here long?' 'technically, since yesterday...'
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