what does 90+9 equal

Today I felt like I had a million things on my to do list. I was needing to make some phone calls. And I was also waiting on some calls from the day before that I had not received. Well, I was washing my hair and the phone rang. Yay.. one of the calls I was waiting for. From Boo's pedi.

About shot records. Sounds simple enough, doesn't it?

I told her I got a notice from the school that she needed one of her boosters, but that I knew she got it one night in urgent care (in the same group with her regular pedi, by the way). So the nurse told me to call urgent care and ask for it.

So I called urgent care only to find out they are NOT owned by the same people as her regular pedi any longer. And when that happened, it seems like they shipped all of those records to the children's hospital for storage and started over with a clean slate. So I needed to call the hospital and see if they could dig it up.

I called the hospital and after pressing one and six and saying yes and all that stuff I got to talk to a real live lady. She told me that I would have to sign a release of records for her to send me the shot records. ok. Can you fax it or email it? yes. (great..we're getting somewhere and it looks like this isn't going to take all day) Then she said it costs 90 cents for each page of things they have to print out for me. I knew it was just one page. So 90 cents. ok. She said she could bill me. That sounded great too. But then she said she had to receive payment of the 90 cents before she could release the shot records to me and that if we did things through the mail, it could take ten days to two weeks to complete the request, transaction and retrieval of my one piece of paper that has a one shot record on it that costs 90 cents.

You gotta be kiddin' me!

But the school needs this by May 5.

So I decided I needed to go down there so I could pay the stupid 90 cents and get my stupid one piece of paper with one shot noted on it. But nothing is as easy as it seems. Can you pick up on the theme of the day yet???? So I asked her where I needed to go to pick it up.

I loved her answer. "The hospital".

Me: (thinking) No duh, lady... I called YOU! "So where at the hospital should I go?"

lady: Have you been here before?

Me: um yeah.

lady: the basement

Me: (surprised) OH! I've never been to the basement before. (probably the only floor I've never been to at the children's hospital... remember this is where Bub was treated. Just the smells bring it all back.) So do I get on the regular elevator in the lobby and take it to the basement?

lady: No. There is an elevator next to the marble stairs. Take THAT elevator down to the basement.

Me: Oh ok.. I didn't even remember there was an elevator there. (duh..feeling pretty stupid because I thought I had every inch of the public places at that hospital memorized... and yes I had walked near those elevators dozens of times and did not remember them. sigh!)

So I got there and found a parking place. I hate parking garages. Even ones I'm familiar with. But I didn't do this one correctly and I ended up in an unfamiliar section (spoken from the girl that parks in the same place at Walmart every time so I can find my car.. ahem!) and I sort of freaked out that I was not gonna be able to find the roof. My ace in the hole is finding the roof to the parking garage and parking there. I know the roof. So finally I found my way up. But not to the section I'm comfortable with..on the roof. But I figured that part out. And remembered where the door was to the staircase that leads down to the skybridge that takes me over the street to the hospital to the marble stairs and the forgotten elevator to the lady named Sheila that had helped me over the phone and was sort of ready for me. I filled out a release. And paid my 90 cents. And then I got my one piece of paper that says she has had this one shot.

And I left. And drove down the maze of the parking garage, told the guy in the toll booth what I was there for (medical records) and he told me I didn't need to pay since I wasn't a visitor. And he raised the gate and I drove home.

But on the way home, I decided I wanted to make a copy of this silly record, because this isn't the first merry-go-round I've been on regarding this ONE shot since she got it at urgent care, it's like it was given in the black hole and I'm forever having to remind them that she got this one shot. Well NO MORE!

I stopped at Office Depot to make one copy of my one piece of paper. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, I had to slide my credit card in a slot on the copier to make one copy that cost 9 cents. And it took forever since this machine kept trying to tell me it was low on paper (like I care at this point!) and insisted that I press a dozen buttons in order to make my one copy. For 9 cents.

So I got my copy and made a run for it. What a day... and it was only 10:30am. So what does 90+9 equal? A big pain in the boo-TAY!

And that was just the little pesky piddly thing I needed to get out of the way before I moved on to the 'main event' type stuff I had to take care of. I finally got home from all of that stuff and ate my lunch around 2pm.

What a day!