To be on the wire is life: the rest is waiting

Okay, so I’m not exactly on the ‘wire’ but I felt like today was all about waiting. Seriously if I added up all the waiting moments today I reckon I’d have a whole other day to use. Possibly on the ‘wire’…probably not.

Of all my ‘waitings’ possibly the worst was in the vets while a sad and sorry cockerpoo lay morose and trembling in my lap. Though it wasn’t the most frustrating.

I think that honour goes to the wait while in the doctor’s waiting room waiting for one of the receptionists to give me Mirinda’s hayfever prescription. I don’t blame the one on the phone. She was dealing with a patient and finding a doctor to see them. No, it was the other one.

I have no idea what she was doing except it involved looking at stuff on her computer and jotting things down in a little grid on a scrap of paper. It was probably incredibly important but would it have hurt to just ask me what I wanted? If it turned out that I was going to take up too much of her scribbling time then that’s fine and she could have told me to wait while she scrawled.

But no. She just told me to wait till she’d finished. And, in the meanwhilst, the other receptionist had finished her phone call, booked the patient in and proceeded to deal with me. I’m sure they don’t mean to be deliberately rude but that’s how it often comes across. I felt very sorry for the lady behind me with the shakes because she had to wait even longer.

The very long wait in the chemist (to get the prescription filled) was more frustrating because…well, to be frank, they are pretty useless. There wasn’t a queue and yet I was still stuck there long enough to complete Sudoku grids. Hard ones too! I guess being the chemist next to the surgery means they don’t really have to try very hard.

Then there was the wait for the bus. Because I’ve been sick (though feeling a lot better today) and because I had to go to the hospital anyway, I decided to get a bus back from town. The wait wasn’t that bad (possibly the shortest of the day) but it’s still a part of the whole.

Come to think of it, my waiting didn’t start until after Talking Newspaper. Up until then, the day was progressing quite well with narry a wait in sight. We had an excellent recording session though the engineer, Pete told me off for being too free with my opinions. Apparently calling our local MP a penguin is fine in conversation but not when you’re making a recording for the hard of seeing. I take his point but it’s difficult sometimes.

Other than that little hiccough, it went well and we managed to get a lot of laughs. I also had a new reader (for me) who said afterwards that it was the most fun she’d had in ages. Ah, my work is done.

When I finally arrived home it was to two insane dogs who’d been entertaining themselves for about six hours. I made a big fuss over them then started to unpack the groceries. That’s when Freya started squealing in discomfort. She was not happy.

She would shake her head then squeal then run around at a weird angle with the right side of her head towards the floor. Clearly there was something wrong. I rang the vet and asked if I could bring her up straight away.

And it was a grass seed. The smallest thing you’ve seen outside one of those incredibly painful one millimeter splinters that drive you insane. The seed was a long way in and the vet had to use the longest, thinnest ‘grabbers’ he could find. He put this strange device in her ear and, having located the offending item, proceeded to fish it out with the ‘grabbers.’

Freya was not happy. A nurse came and held her as she squealed and complained every time the vet did anything. It was all a bit fraught but eventually the vet dropped a tiny little black thing on the bench and declared that was it. Freya was instantly back to being herself, licking the nurse and generally trying to wag her butt off.

Back at home we had a ridiculously late lunch then caught up on a few things I had to do while waiting for Mirinda to get home.

More waiting.

By the way, the title is a quote from tight rope walker Karl Wallenda and used in my favourite movie, All That Jazz. Apparently Wallenda died shortly before the film was finished so they included the line as a homage to him.

And because there’s no photos in this post…here’s some of the annoying hollyhocks growing on the border between our place and Dave and Gail.