March 28th 2008

Driving down the hill (Brady Road) to get to the 192nd street exit on highway 14 we were following a really slow truck that was annoying me. They had their breaks on the entire way down the hill and I was thinking, you need to apply them every so often, not constantly or you’ll warp your rotors. I noticed that he also had a busted passenger side mirror and told Kristy to look and I was just about to call him an idiot out loud when Kristy said “Maybe he hit a bridge too!” and totally humbled me. It humbled me because a few weeks back I gently tapped Kristy’s Volvo XC 90 on the side of a bridge breaking the turn signal lens. So I didn’t call him an idiot.

Collette was working the desk as usual. “Hello, how are you? Oh, about ready to be done! Do you want the big receipt or the small receipt?” Then she got on the phone, “I thought I was getting Arthritis, okay, send me the info on the one that is just like mine, not some other one, the one that is just like mine.” And I figured out that she was talking about her chair and so she must have been having some ergonomic issues. Waiting for appointments goes by so much quicker when Collette is the administrative assistant checking you in, too bad she couldn’t check you in for every appointment that required you to wait to be seen, like the dentist and getting your tires changed, et cetera.

Well it’s the middle of Oregon State’s Spring Break and one of my co-workers Bryan and his family is in Hawaii. It is snowing here in the Portland-Vancouver metropolitan area. Bryan should be jet setting around Maui with a personalized google map we made for him, complete with beach reviews, number of parking spaces and best times of day to visit, but he forgot to print it out and hasn’t been able to download it yet to his laptop. If only he had an iphone, then he could bring it up anyplace, anytime. How did we ever live without those things. Well, hope he is enjoying Hawaii, Kristy and I really miss Hawaii. We are still trying to figure out a way to go back to Maui for two or three days in May and catch a Jason Mraz concert while we are there.

I was suddenly snapped out of these thoughts by Collette’s voice. “Thank You! I appreciate you and have a blessed day!” I had forgotten that she said that to folks, but then I started thinking about how much more pleasant things might be if we all had a similar attitude towards other people, including strangers.

The nurse called Kristy’s name so we went back to weigh in. Kristy and I both noticed Collette walking around the nurses’ stations collecting two dollars from different nurses here and there. So was saying “Jeans on Friday, if you were up pay up!” We asked our nurse about it when she brought us to our room and she said that if they want they can wear Jeans on Fridays but they have to pay two dollars to the social committee to support social stuff like Jeans on Fridays. Our nurse was wearing scrubs, not because she didn’t want to pay the two dollars, but because she said that scrubs are like pajamas, they are way more comfortable to work in than Jeans, which is exactly what Kristy said she was thinking.

Well, Joy didn’t think we would make it this far but she said she’d check Kristy’s Cervix again (Ladies remember the leg lift fist under back/butt trick). This time she was 4-5cm dilated, so a little progress and also a little more effaced. The head position was at minus two and if you don’t know what that means than google and Wikipedia are great tools and since you are reading this blog you have access to them and I suggest you try them out.

The baby’s heart rate was in the 140’s as it should be. Joy asked who had Carter and we told her she was visiting with Kristy’s parents. Then we started going over Joy’s schedule to see if we could plan around it, like if we walked a few miles maybe we could induce labor on the days that she worked. Let’s see, on tomorrow night (Saturday), on Monday, on call Wednesday and maybe Thursday, but in Bend, Oregon next weekend for a big conference. She also told Kristy that as soon as she was 39 weeks, which was next Thursday, we could call her and schedule an induction, but Joy didn’t think we’d make it that long.
As we were leaving she said “Think Saturday and Think Monday”. So we are still on Yellow Alert. Who knows, maybe the next blog will be the hospital blog?