White Lightning Axiom: Redux

Oddly busy day yesterday afternoon. I had that lunch meeting with the Boss Lady scheduled for noon. As you can imagine, she was a bit late and I was a bit early. Ten seconds past noon, my type A personality starts to kick in and go through the different scenarios about what has gone wrong. Did she forget. Is there another restaurant called Bamboo Club that I do not know about? Is this the wrong day? All the usual crap that I cant seem to suppress. I start to wander back and forth in the open space within the mall that has chairs and such set out. There are a series of restaurants in this part of the KOP mall that would probably need this kind of waiting space. Mortons Steak House, Cheesecake Factory, and a few others. I plopped down into one of the chairs and looked up to the skylights some 3 floors above me. Then I noticed it. There was a big wireless hub tacked to the side of one of the openings. Well, now that is good to know. Next time the horde wants to go to the mall, I'll bring my laptop and spend my time here! I heave myself back out of the chair after a few minutes of contemplating my discovery. As I slowly make my way back to restaurant entrance, the Boss Lady sneaks up beside me and slyly quips 'Fancy meeting you here!'. Heh, stealthy, she is. We make our way into the delightful culinary establishment and get seated promptly. She comments that she likes lunches with me because I always select a new restaurant each time and it isn't McDonald's. What can I say, I like to eat. I would have chosen Ruth's Chris Steakhouse but I have given up red meat, coffee and alcohol for lent. Can't go to a steak house and not have a porterhouse with a glass of shiraz and a post dinner coffee ... it just isn't done! But I digress (digest?), the meeting was fairly low key. We talked a bit about how well the business was doing this year and the issues with the client that I am working with right now. Mostly, we talk about kids and raising kids and kids and a bit more on ... kids. We did do the mandatory Conservative Secret Handshake on how awful the UN is and how absurd it is for Germans and Austrians to sue the NOAA over the Tusnami. Our eyes meet and we show each other our Illuminati Right Wing Conspiracy pinky rings. Heh, never would have guessed a life-time Yankee and a Minnesota Farm Boy to end up in a dimly lit restaurant talking about business and politics. It was a good meeting indeed.

The drive home was relatively uneventful. Today is my big MRI day. The appointment is at 2100 so I need to get everything taken care of before then. The bulk of the concerns revolve around the kids. Need to get them in bed before 2030 so the Mrs does not have to go it on her own. The second I get into the heart of the Manor, the phone rings. It is the hospital calling about my appointment. The voice on the other end wants to know if I could possibly come in NOW? Ummm, no. How about later then, the voice inquires, like around 1800? I counter with 1830 as a more doable time since I'll have the kids home by then and the Mrs should be back from Corporate HQ by that time. I let the pleading voice know that I will tentatively accept the new appointment time moved from 2115 to 1830 but will reserve the right to call back and reschedule back to the original time. Life with kids is ... unpredictable. Since tonight is pizza night, I immediately leave the Manor after tending to the Hounds and getting a fire started in the wood stove. The Pizza Joint is only a few hundred meters from the Day Care and ReEducation Facility, so I stop in there first and slap down a Franklin. I demand that they provide me with the tastiest pie available and I need it yesterday. They have slices ready so I get 2 cheese & garlic, 2 pepperoni and 2 sausage to go. 12 bucks ... yikes. At least I got it in 5 minutes and they took a charge card. I dash out of the store and run into a trio of young skate-board punks mucking about on the curb by the parking lot. They pay little attention to me but eye up the pizza box like it was the Ark of the Covenant. Ahh, I recall those days of youthful hunger. I jam the steaming box into the front seat and dash off to complete my S&R mission. I grab the kids and skillfully deposit them into their seats without letting them run wild though the car. They would have discovered the pizza quickly and complained about it the whole trip home. Or stepped on it. Neither is a good way to start the evening. We zip back to the Manor at Mach-6. The dusk sky is heavy with clouds and the twins remark that there is no moon because of the clouds. I see the dark orange sun setting over the western hills, crowded out by two banks of clouds so only a narrow column of light pushes its way through like a cartoonish arm of a drowning victim. It's been a long time since I last say a sunset. Finally, winter is ending. It's 1730 and the kids are happily munching away at their full-size pizza slices. Jacob got the sausage and Alexis got the cheese & garlic. They dearly love pizza night and tell me so with their shrieks of delight. Now I just have to change and get ready for my magnetic brain wipe. I expect the Mrs to be home at 1800 ... but the best laid plans of men and mice come into predictable play. I have my sweats on, my leather slippers and not an ounce of metal outside of that tracking implant that the Mrs slipped on my finger many years ago on that fateful day. I sit there and watch the clock slowly tick off the minutes. At 1800:15, the psycho-type-a personality kicks in and starts fretting over where the Mrs has gone to. Abducted by Aliens? Or even worse, Socialists? Has she run off with the CTO of her global pharma hegemony? Nope, bad traffic. There are isolated snow flurries in the area and people are panicking ... you know it is the apocalypse afterall. She bolts into the house at 1820 and I demand that she fork over all her liquid assets so I can pay for parking at the hospital. She pulls out a couple stacks of Benjamins and I dump the contents of her coin purse into my hand (not pocket, mind you) and run off with one last instruction: Call AMH and tell them I'm running late, but will be there.

I make it there by 1835 and they are indeed waiting for my. All 4 of 'em. The reception assistant gives me the typical health history encyclopedia for me to fill out ... in triplicate. I zoom through it since a great deal of the questions involve menstruation, implants or aneurism clips. I do not mention the carbon-tungsten reinforcement rods I use to hold the finger tip laser beams in place. A super-hero/world conqueror in the making has to keep his secrets, don't you know. After I finish the form, I am escorted by nurse #2 to the second waiting area where I am to change out of my clothing into a hospital gown. She takes one look at me and tells me to skip that since I have no metal on me. She starts asking some questions and I have the answers half way though her utterance. She smiles and notes that I am a pro at this. Yes I am. She asks some of the questions from the sheets I filled out before and I make some wise cracks about alien probes and such. She grins and thanks me for not wearing my tin-foil hat in.

I have brought my old scans from 1996. Back in the days when they imprinted the artistic interpretations of what they think your brain looks like into clay tablets. She said they would digitize them for me and I could pick them up in a few days. Cool. The things are huge and I never seem to find a good place to store them away. Too important to put on the book shelf and too big to put in the safe. It will nice to have the palm-sized holographic emitter version. I hear they make coffee now too. The actual scans are mundane. They toss me into the pigeonhole and the machine makes sounds like an old Chevy engine on it's last mile. Each time they take a set they let me know how long it will take. It is either 6,4,3 or 2 minutes. I nearly fall asleep in spite of the noise. I can see how this would be dreadful for a person with claustrophobia but I am enjoying it. Right up to the second set where they have to fish me out of the bowels of the man-eating machine and inject me with some plutonium isotopes. She said I would feel some tension for a few seconds ... yeah, except for that needlephobia of mine. That is the real tension. It is over pretty quickly, but the universe slowed time to a near standstill so I could fully imagine every flash of pain. Some day, the universe will pay dearly for it's imperiousness. Who will be laughing THEN! After putting a gauze pad on the gaping needle wound the size of Rhode Island, She stuffs me back in and we go through a second flight at I start to nod off. Almost immediately, they are pulling me back out. Nothing is wrong, they are finished and they thank me for being so cooperative and professional about it. Heh, I guess some things can be done in your sleep. I wander out and navigate the maze of hallways that seemed to have shifted ever so slightly from their configuration from when I came in. Not a person in sight either. A bit eerie. Perhaps the MRI exploded and sent me to an alternate spatio-temporal continuum! Nope, there's the hallway to the parking garage and it is still damn cold out. Definitely my dimension. Damn.

I'm driving up to the Haupertonian International Combine HQ and Manor ... it's nearly 75 minutes since I left and I can see the kids though the bay window in the front. I'll expect that the Mrs will be happy to see me. I sneak in but the hounds detect my entry and begin baying almost immediately. They catch sight of me as I make my way to the kennel room. The howling stops and they start their patented happy dance. I don't think we need a burglar alarm anymore, these two would wake the dead and scare off any unauthorized intruders. What would you do if you saw a 125 lb ball of raised hackles and flashing fangs bearing down on you? My kids drag their nose and yank 'em to the ground. Ballsy! I give the dogs a quick back-scratch and throw a bit of wood into the stove before I head off to be with the family. The Mrs is sitting on the leather sofa with Jake at her side. They are going over the alphabet puzzle and seem quite content. Alexis is dancing around and instructing me to come into the play room, NOW! Heh, ok. I sit down in front of the Mrs and Jake as Alexis grabs a book for us to read. In speaking with the Wife, I find that something wonderful has happened tonight. We have been bringing the pottys down to the kitchen lately so that we could try to catch Jake before he unloads into his diaper ... quite unsuccessfully mind you. I did not bring them down tonight to save the Mrs the inevitable hassle their presence incurs. Shortly after I left, Jake apparently requested to go pee. The Mrs lead him up to the kids bathroom where the pottys were stored and let him use his. So he went about his business of peeing and then ... in his excitement, he went poop. Big time too from what the Mrs described. Well, there were smiles all around and Jake got his Big smile sticker for the toilet lid. He even bade the 'poopie' a fond farewell as it circled the tank on it's way to turd heaven. Well, some things take care of themselves, don't they!

We spent the rest of the evening playing the ant-march song on the cd player really loud, like, all the way to 11 loud, and marching about the living room. Jake was high-stepping it while Alexis trailed behind in lock-step. Did that for about 10 minutes before we got settled down again. Play, bath, lotion, dress, milk, story, bed - all is right with the world.

# posted by mdmhvonpa @ 9:29 AM