Black and Blue and Yellow

Yesterday, Aidan and I played out our now well-developed emergency room routine. It starts with witty banter with the registration lady (this one actually thought we were funny-points for Avista-usually we are the only ones amused). Then we move into hopeful chair waiting-as in, we are hopeful that this will not take all night, which gradually moves into the stage called "we have been waiting here all night".  At this point, our slouching grumpy posture, only briefly alleviated by a short Pinterest moment, conveys our displeasure. This is when Aidan starts coming up with fantasies about how to make our stay shorter, some of his ideas are not so helpful, which is when I smugly remind him that we are sitting there, because perhaps he hadn't thought through his previous actions. Finally, when there is no one that they could possibly call next if they tried, and the seats have long conformed to our shapes, we finally get in for our blasted x-ray. The final stage is when I get to spend the remaining bits of my night at Walgreens waiting for a prescription to be filled. Because no matter how I try, they will still somehow either forget to fill my prescription, or overlook the fact that I am sitting in the hard plastic chair right in front of them, and forget to tell me that it is ready. Maybe the little black storm cloud I was sitting in, obscured their view.

Junkyard

But there is always beauty, even in the junkyard. We had the sweetest, kindest nurses, who clucked over Aidan sympathetically. And Aidan chose to have a hole drilled in his toenail to relieve the pressure and spent the rest of the night thinking how lovely that tool was, and how handy it could be in all sorts of scenarios. (Our doctor's cousin did the same procedure on himself, with a drill.) Never mind that it turns out he didn't actually need to have a hole drilled in his nail, it just added to the already chewed up look. His gym teacher is going to be unhappy that she has lost her "ninja warrior" to compete with the other gym classes, and his coach is unhappy that Aidan is going to miss his soccer tournament, but the 8th grade girls have been very empathetic...