Rat Race Week and Bickering old Women

I made it through what I’ve been calling Rat Race Week. A week when I had ten commitments stacked up: Book club, mahjong, a lecture about NATO and a follow-up appointment for my cataract surgery, my annual bone density test, a haircut, a blood draw and an ultrasound screening test for stroke risk, aneurysms and peripheral arterial disease plus my second appointment with my new financial advisor. Added in the mix was a last minute invitation to go downtown to an art show and because the Ring Master of Rat Race Week didn’t think I was busy enough he threw in the unpredictable---two fire alarms, two days in row and a washing machine that quit working in the middle of a cycle. 

The first fire alarm was caused by someone taking a long, hot shower and the steam setting off the alarm. A maintenance man with a couple of firemen close on his heel burst into the woman’s door using a pass key but with an axe handy in case that didn’t work which put the fear in all of us regarding taking long, hot showers. And doing them naked if we do. The second fire alarm was harder for the fire department to assess and they were all over the buildings trying to figure out what caused the alarm to go off. They finally concluded it was caused by the maintenance men who were power blowing and washing our underground parking lot. It took over an hour of it annoying everyone with ears before the alarm company was able to talk our maintenance men through disconnecting the main system because even the fire department couldn’t over ride it this time---the dirt in a smoke alarm fried the unit. Thankfully that happen the morning I had to get up early for my blood draw so I was dressed properly for standing on the sidewalk. 

My follow up for my cataract surgery went as well as could be expected. I didn’t see the surgeon, knew I wouldn’t as another doctor does most of her pre-op and post-op appointments. He says in a year I’ll probably need laser surgery for tissue that has already started growing over the artificial lens. I didn’t know that could happen but I guess they do the laser thing in the office and it’s no big deal. My sight in my left eye with the macular pucker still sucks, but I did get a prescription for computer glasses which should simplify my life. Finding the right space to look through on trifocals is a constant and annoying series of head bobbing. He also gave me a sample of over-the-counter drops for dry eye that are supposedly easier to get in your eyes because the container is softer to squeeze. I do 3-4 drops for every one I get in.

The blood draw should have been simple but when I got to the blood lab I used just a month ago it was closed down permanently and they sent me to an urgent care I’d never been to. I am not good with driving changes like that in parts of town unknown to me and in the morning rush hour to boot. But I did it and the results were waiting on my patient portal before I got back home. If I was a doctor I’d be ordering me an iron infusion but I’m not so I’ll have to wait and see what happens next. At least I’m finished with blood tests until late July when I’ll need them for my bone infusion treatment.

That same morning I got invited to go to an art show downtown and out for ice cream afterward with four others from my CCC. I didn’t really want to go because by then---Friday night---I knew I’d be dead tired but it was the first invitation I've gotten to go off campus so I didn’t think it was wise to turn it down. I did managed to stay a wake and not drop my ice cream cone in my lap. 

It was also the day my washing machine quit working with an error message that the filter needed changing. I’ve never had a washer with a filter before so I dug out the manual to figure out where it was but I couldn’t get the little door off to get at the trap. I called maintenance. It was the end of the day so they sent someone who’d never done it before and it took him over a half hour and a YouTube video to get the damn little door open. When he finally got to the filter and unscrewed it water flooded my laundry room. So I’m grabbing towels to soak up the water and wondering why he didn’t have common sense enough to screw the thing back in until I could find something to catch the water draining out. You can’t yell at a maintenance man like you would a husband so I kept that thought to myself. 

That was late Friday afternoon and the clothes I wanted to wear to the art show never made it on my back. One of the other ladies I went with had the same thing happen to her with the filter shutting down the machine and water all over the floor. But another woman in the car kept insisting her machine stops all the time, too, but if you just wait it will start up again. Hint: I met my match in the bullheaded department. I kept insisting this was different, that all machines appear to stop/pause before they change cycles but when the filler needs cleaning you could wait for a month and it’s not going to start up again and she kept laughing, while insisting I didn’t wait long enough. The other woman in the car who’d had a filter problem too was smart and dropped out of the bickering contest when even the fact that the machines flash an error messaging wasn’t getting through to the woman. "I'm not in the laundry room when it stops and starts up again to see any messages." The whole thing was like living in a Golden Girls skit and I was Dorothy trying to reason with Rose. I wish I had apologized to the group for my surliness, though, with one of Sophia’s famous lines: “Forgive me [for bickering], I haven’t had sex in 50 years and it’s starting to get on my nerves.” 

Oh and what was in the filter? A Color Catcher sheet which brought on another round of crazy talk. Two of us use them and the other three didn’t have a clue what they are. ©