Belle Weather by Rivenbark Celia

Author:Rivenbark, Celia [Rivenbark, Celia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Humor, Form, Essays
ISBN: 9780312363000
Google: kJCrjU_YzdkC
Amazon: 0312363001
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2009-09-01T05:00:00+00:00

17

Christmas at the “Urgent” Care

If you plan to travel with children during the holidays, there’s about a one-zillion-percent chance that you’ll spend at least some part of “the most wonderful time of the year” in the urgent-care outpost of some town you’ve never heard of.

I’d hoped to avoid this feverish truth by demanding that everyone in the family use hand sanitizer roughly eighteen to twenty times a day during the month of December. Sadly, it didn’t work.

As we sat for hour after hour in the Doctor’s Immediately Urgent Prime and Emergent Medicinal Care complex, I pondered the hollow nature of those words: “urgent” and “immediate.” I also comforted myself with the image of the Silkwood-style hot shower I would take the moment we got out of there. Gawd, who would’ve thought there would be so many sick people in this place?

A few snarkily mentioned that they’d had time to write their wills during the wait and one claimed to have asked the receptionist to be his witness.

I’d worked so hard not to be here with the Princess, who sat silent and beet-red, occasionally rousing long enough to mutter the word “brandy” over and over. In fact, she had awakened me the night before to simply say “Brandy” and I just thought she was having some weird dream about that skinny singer with the so-so pipes and snotty attitude. It’s not like we have a house full of snifters and ascots for shit’s sake.

Because I’m a superstitious sort, I wondered if I had brought this misfortune upon us by failing to send Christmas cards this year. Out of time and patience, I’d announced that when it came to the whole buying, stamping, mailing thing? Over it. Duh-hubby said he’d do the Christmas cards this year, which was funny since he, like every other man I know, hasn’t mailed a Christmas, birthday, or any other greeting card since the “I do”s were spoken. Women do all that stuff, even when it’s his relatives. We’re brain-dead that way.

Not sending Christmas cards was deliciously liberating.

I know I should’ve felt guilty about it but I just couldn’t. When I think of all the years that I have agonized over our family Christmas card photo, I feel silly. There’s real tragedy in the world, people. Cate Blanchett is down to, like, eighty-five pounds, y’all. Now that’s something to worry about.

The Princess squirmed in her seat while I filled out the required paperwork and continued to wonder if my selfishness had somehow jinxed our holiday.

I had to giggle when I realized that one of the many forms I was filling out asked if my daughter, the fourth grader, was married.

“Should I fill this out?” I asked the receptionist, from behind the turtleneck I had neurotically pulled up over my nose.

“Oh, no. You’re special,” she said. “The forms are for all the other people to fill out.”

Oh, snap!

“Brandy” came a small voice from across the room.

I returned to the plastic seat that had been factory-molded to most comfortably

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