New Year’s Eve at the Kroger Little Clinic

This afternoon around two, Susanna started wailing, crying, screaming, “Maaaahhhhm!!! My ear hurts! I can’t hear. I CAN’T hear!!!! Maaaahhhhm!!!”

She’s quite the drama queen, so I let this go on for awhile and really tried to figure out if she was sick or just bored. (I think she probably frequents the school nurse’s office several times a week with some “ache” or “pain.”) After an hour of this screaming/crying/wailing, I decided to take her in for a look at her ear.

(To all mothers everywhere: don’t you just wish you had one of those light/ear thingeys and knew what you were looking for so that you yourself could just see if your kid has an ear infection? And don’t you wish that amoxycillin was over-the-counter and you could just go get it? And don’t you just wish you didn’t have to pay $25 and wait 2 hours just to find out what you already knew?)

So, with the pediatrician’s office closed (both because it is Wednesday and a holiday), we head over to The Little Clinic at Kroger. Let me just say that every single person who lives in the 37221 zip code decided to come grocery shopping on New Year’s Eve at 3 p.m. Anyway, we get there and I try to make sense of this convulted sign-in sheet.

Left corner is time slots by 15-minute increments: 3:00, 3:15, and so on. I thought I was to find the time that I arrived and sign by that time, then record my actual check-in time.

I DID NOT REALIZE THAT IN REALITY I WAS SIGNING UP FOR AN APPOINTMENT.

We actually arrived at 3:15. So, Debbie was before us and had signed in at 3:30. Lester had signed in at 4:00. 3:45 was empty, but I didn’t see Lester. So, I just signed in under Lester, which was 4:15.

Aargh. So, Debbie finally gets in around 3:35. Lester wanders up, and by the time he’s called in, I finally start to figure out this crazy system. Yes, Lester gets in next around 4:00. We are finally called in around 4:30 and get to leave at almost 5:15.

Now, if most of the appointments take 30 minutes or so, why, oh, why, are the slots at 15-minute increments anyway? But I digress…

Yep. That’s right: 2 hours of sitting at the Kroger check-out aisle with a screaming, wailing, “Maaahhhm! My ear hurts!” child. Thankfully, I was able to distract her for a little while with tic-tac-toe and guessing words and drawing pictures.

Really, the most interesting aspect of this adventure (besides my now burning desire to help Nurse LaTonya of The Little Clinic REWORK THE SIGN-IN SHEET!) is all the people I saw checking out at Kroger on New Year’s Eve.

In no particular order:
*2 of Susanna’s classmates
*a worker at Susanna’s school
*a worker at the Y
*a lady I know from Melaleuca
*one guy who was in my ballroom dance class freshman year at MTSU (that would have been 1989). I remember him because he was so weird and would wear the oddest boots to class.
*another guy I did student teaching with at Freedom Middle fall of 1998
*a former sorority sister
*a friend’s husband and two daughters
*our neighbors: dad and daughter
*one silver sequin top on big-haired lady

Now that’s a fun way to ring in the new year!

Happy 2009.