New Job, Knitting & the Doctor's Office

I have a new job! Again!

Yes . . . yes . . . I realise it is only March (the beginning of ), and this is my second "new" job, but 3 weeks in the last one was enough to last me a lifetime!

Remember the office-mate with the country music? Well, by the time I left she had started to accompany the song in woeful mis-harmony. Woeful for me, that is!

Which brings me to the question - what on earth leads people to believe that they are making a pleasant sounding tune, which others (such as myself) would wish to share?
And this is obviously a serious problem! Just look at American Idols, and all the hopefuls who appear genuinely hurt when advised they have no talent.
Who tells these people they can sing?
And shouldn't they be brought to justice?

Anyway, three weeks into hell . . . (did I mention said-singer also had the social skills of a neo-nazi?), and someone somewhere learned about my lonely plight and dropped me a line of hope.

Strangely enough, it was a job offer I'd been made way-back-when (last year), when I had been offered two jobs at the same time after streaks and streaks of nothing - and in true ZambeziGirl style, I chose the one that would close down in four months!

But here it was again - and this time I leapt! (Huge, bounding, leaps, no less!)

And now I love my job :)

That's not the end, of course. Fate wouldn't be that kind to ZambeziGirl!
And in case fate thinks I am too content at this time, I have been making a valiant effort not to stick out like a sore thumb, and decided to take up knitting.
Yes, I realize there are people out there who find knitting easy; even pleasurable!
In fact, I heard one person say they found it "relaxing", and I don't want to call anyone a liar - I don't even know her very well - but relaxing is NOT a word I would use to describe knitting.

First, there's the Casting-On!
This is not like fishing at all, although complete silence and lots of beer just might help. There was one occasion when I used my knitting needles with the very same arm movements used in fishing, but no-one was hurt, and I managed to snag a number of stitches that way.

And then there's actual Knitting! Completely different body movements involved here, by the way. And you have to make certain that you knit the same amount of stitches that you cast on originally - on every row!

Well, I'm proud to say that I have successfully accomplished 4 rows of knitting, and if I continue in this light, I may just end up with something recognizable. And so determined am I to accomplish this, I almost hosted a knitting-night myself.

I say "almost", because only an idiot would have expected things to go smoothly.

After much preparation - the house was even tidy - I was just about to pick up the pizzas, when I got a phone call from 4-year-old's school, suggesting she might have pink-eye!
Eeesh (as they say in Africa)!

In two hours my house was to be filled to the brim with knitting moms and their offspring, and my child had to contract a contagious disease! Fabulous!

So I cancelled knitting; (I could hear the cursing of knitters everywhere who had made no plans for dinner); collected the infected one from school, and dropped in for a quick visit to the doctor's room!

Yes . . . yes . . . you can stop laughing now. Quick visit, my foot!!! (As my mother used to say). Three and a half hours with a four year old who is not actually sick is difficult, to put it mildly.

And what the hell does the doctor do in all that time? There were three people ahead of me when we arrived at 4 o'clock, and only one person came out in the two hours we waited in the "outer" waiting room. I'm sorry, but that doesn't seem very busy to me!
But they are very tricky, these doctors.

Just when you are about to succumb to whatever disease you may have, a nurse calls your name, ushering you into the "inner" sanctum, and thereby giving you a renewed sense of hope.

And then they weigh you.
WHY? To torture me more? Put me in my place?
They don't say anything, but I know. . . And who wants to complain about the long wait after that?
See? I told you they were tricky.

Hang on a sec! I'm having flashbacks to my last visit to the doctor.
Four-year-old still thinks the scale is a fun piece of equipment (little does she know) so we entered the next, private, waiting room with psyche intact.

Won't be long now, the nurse promised. Hah! Never trust a nurse!
Forty-five minutes later and we've read all the magazines; spun around (and fallen off) the doctor's stool; taken each other's blood pressure (well, if they didn't want us too, they shouldn't leave it on the wall like that); and told so many variants of Lil Miss Red-Nosed Hooding Ride, we could out-tell the Grimm's Brothers.

Enough! I open the door quietly and peek out - no-one there! I close the door impatiently (and yet quietly).
I try to think back to my fellow sickees who went in before me - which one of them is taking so long??? Probably that woman who'd been sitting across from me in the lime green blouse. She looked like a hypochondriac, for sure. Probably still droning on about all her ailments! Oh for heaven's sake! Surely, the doctor can tell she's not that sick!

Another fifteen minutes. It's very quiet out there. Oh god, what if they've forgotten us and all gone home? I dash to door, and glance around. Whew, I see another sickee in the "outer" room! Poor bastard!

I sigh loudly (did they hear me?) and close the door with just a little bang. Four-year-old has found the box of tissues and is blowing her nose loudly. Not many tissues left now.
We play the rhyming game again.

Another fifteen minutes. Four-year-old is getting boisterous and loud. I don't care anymore . . . at least they won't be able to forget about us. Is the doctor taking a nap? Did he go out to dinner?
Oh god, make it go away!!

And then the door opens, and a nice young doctor walks in. It takes 5 minutes to establish that it may (or may not) be pink-eye, but here's a prescription for eye drops, just in case. Thank you very much, and I'm sorry about the state of the room.

Ten minutes waiting for a prescription. Twenty minutes at the Drug Store. One minute phone call to husband establishing that no, he had not thought about sorting out dinner. Fifteen minutes to pick up take-out. And just a couple of hours to realize that despite going to the doctor in a perfectly healthy condition, I have managed to pick up a cold (or worse) whilst there.
Tricky, those Doctors. They sure know how to drum up business!

P.S. Knitting is postponed to next week!

Moving abroad, the Totton Girls have not been very newsworthy lately (or perhaps they are just not sharing their exploits with me, anymore), but I did hear a rumor that one of them is threatening a mid-life crisis, so that should be interesting.

On a more serious note, I am very sad to read about the tragic death of Susan Tsvangirai, wife of Zimbabwe's "true" President, in a suspicious car accident yesterday. As if the Tsvangirai family have not lost so much already in their long struggle for democracy in Zimbabwe! My heart goes out to Morgan and his children at this sad time.