CHOP packed turkey shopping bed fic
We spent Thanksgiving in NJ with Will's family, of course. But first, Two and I schlepped to Philly on Wed morning for his long-awaited CHOP appointment at 11am. I left plenty of time for the trip, concerned about ever-present Philly traffic, especially as it was the day before Thanksgiving, but it was - shockingly - the least trafficky trip I've taken to the City in AGES. We were there a good 20 mins early, which turned out to be a good thing because then:
* It took awhile to find a parking spot.
* CHOP has, since our last visit, initiated a new security policy. Everyone must stop at the "Welcome Center" on the 2nd floor to have their IDs scanned and a temporary badge made. You won't be allowed to traipse around CHOP without it.
* We went up to the 5th floor for Endocrinology, started checking in, only to be told, "Oh, it looks like your appointment is at the building on 3550 Market St."
Now, in all fairness, when they'd called to confirm the appointment on Tues, and I'd asked for confirmation of where I was going, they gave me that address. What they did NOT say was that it was nowhere NEAR the main CHOP building. I had naively assumed it was, so I had merely put in CHOP for my GPS, not that particular address. I figured that either WAS the building we needed, or it was nearby, no problem. But - nope. The clerk who had started checking us in said that it took her 10 mins to walk - but she was a fast walker. It was already 10:55a at this point. I asked if she could call over to say that we were coming, but she said that office never answers their phone so there was no point. Nothing for it but just to hoof it over as fast as we could.
It was maybe 1 km to walk, so it wasn't like it was impossible, but it was just so frustrating! We arrived around 11:10a to the building, and then nobody seemed to know which floor/office our doctor was in. Isn't that the guy's job, the one who sits at a desk in the lobby?? We took a wild guess and stopped at the third floor, which of course was the wrong one, and even THEY weren't sure where to go, but they suggested the 5th floor, which turned out to be correct. Our doctor no longer works in an official Endocrinology office, but one labelled "Family medicine" or something along those lines because there were signs everywhere about birth control options. And, apparently, trans-kid care, as well.
The actual appointment went fine, at least. I made SURE I understood exactly what was going on and what was going to come up in the future. Two's current hormone levels are still good (read: v low) with absolutely no signs of physical puberty. This means they'll check him again in 6 months. She had me make the appointment on the spot. She also gave me the lab order for his bloodwork before the next test, so I have that in hand. She gave me a lab order for a bone-age xray, which we were able to have done in an office across the hall, on the spot. (They're monitoring his growth plates, which I guess will be important in deciding at which end of the age range (14-16) he'll be given testosterone.) I don't have the lab order for the next bone density scan (he has to take calcium so he doesn't develop osteoporosis like an old lady, since we've stopped estrogen) because it would expire too early if she wrote it now, but at least I know there's supposed to BE a lab order for that, and can ask for it as time gets closer.
By then it was after noon. We hiked back to the car, paid for parking, and made our way home again. Alas, we did hit some traffic on the way back - not horrible traffic, but more typical for the area - which meant we didn't get home until 2pm. We hadn't eaten lunch and were starving, and still had packing to do for NJ.
Will had taken the day off. He'd exercised in the morning, dealt with a contractor who was evaluating asbestos removal in our basement crawl spaces, and then got ready to load up the trailer. We're starting to move some lesser-used stuff to R&K's house, sigh, starting with a bunch of bookcases and almost our entire library of books. I told Will he was taking away all my friends. (I've kept back a handful of treasured favorites or things I might need to reference, but if I want to re-read anything else, I'll have to go to the library.) We also loaded up our sleeper loveseat, which took some serious finagling because the door from our laundry room to the garage - and also the door from the downstairs den to the kitchen (in other words, either way out from the den) - are smaller than normal. We had to take the bed out of the loveseat to cut the weight, then actually remove the back laundry room door off its hinges and carry the loveseat out through the back yard and around to the front. (The folded bed, once removed from the loveseat, fit through the narrow door to the garage.) Meanwhile, I'm chomping at the bit because we hadn't planned to have dinner at home - we were going to eat with R&K - and it's getting later and later. Will's been going gung-ho dealing with moving and tossing stuff, but right then, I was ready to throttle him for his fanaticism in getting as much loaded up as possible, even more so as I was exhausted from the trip to Philly and grumpy that I hadn't gotten a quick nap, nor that I would be able to in the car, since he'd need my extra eyes to compensate for the awkwardness of hauling a trailer.
He finally got it done and strapped down to his satisfaction, while the kids and I loaded up the rest of our car with our usual stuff (duffle, dog bowls/food, laptop, blah blah). We finally left around 5:30pm. Normally it would be about a 1:40-1:45 trip, but because of the trailer, Will (rightly) drove more conservatively, making it a full two-hour trip. Thankfully, R&K had ordered Chinese and it was arriving right when we did, so the kids and I dug in immediately. Karen insisted on unloading the trailer that night so she wouldn't have to juggle that with Thanksgiving cooking, so she and Will didn't get to eat for another hour, but at least it was done.
Thanksgiving and Friday were both a bit warmer than usual, so I took the dog and ran outside for 3 miles, before cleaning up and starting to help with food preparation. Rob and I had made the pumpkin pie (following my old SCD recipe) Wed night, and I helped with the apple pies on Thurs. Thankfully, they have two standalone electric roasting pan devices, so the hams went in one and the turkey in the other, leaving the oven free for the apple pies. I made the mistake of going to take a quick catnap late in the afternoon, leaving Karen to fend for herself in what turned out to be a crucial moment in juggling everything. She'd over-milked the mashed potatoes by accident, leaving them much looser than normal, although plenty of people ate them anyway. She was looking kind of frazzled and I felt really guilty, so launched myself back into helping juggle heating veggies in the microwave, making the Stove Top stuffing, and other final preparations. We had aimed for a 4-5pm dinner, but sat down at 5:40p. Oh well - it's always kind of like that. Food was good, people behaved themselves, all was well.
I used to avoid Black Friday like the plague, swearing there was nothing I wanted in the world badly enough that I'd get up in the wee hours of morning and deal with the crazy people to get it. Then, one year when the kids were in preschool and Will had to work on Black Friday (they often do big upgrades and such on this holiday, since the college is closed) I took the kids to Kohl's (dept store) to browse mid-late morning on Fri. By then all the really crazy people were gone, and we could just browse deals until we'd had enough. For the next few years, that was our Black Fri approach when Will had to work: go mid-late morning, usually with no particular goal in mind, hit one or two places just to see if there was anything good out there, go home when we'd had enough of crowds.
Then, two years ago, when stores started opening on Thurs night, I went out late at night with K for the first time in order to covertly buy MiniPlu her first cell phone, because Best Buy had a good deal. And ... it was kind of fun to do something that wacky.
Last year, MiniPlu was deemed old enough to come along with me and K for the first time. We shopped from, I don't know, 9pm or so until 2:30am, came home and crashed. And it was ... fun. (In general, we were taking the same old approach: pick a few places, usually with no real particular goal in mind, see what we found, buy if we liked it. Sometimes we've had a few things we definitely did want to check on, but not tons of them.)
This year was a fairly even repeat of last year, except we shopped until 3a, getting home at 3:30a. More stores at the mall seemed closed, or had closed at midnight, than we remembered from last year, which was kind of disappointing, but I couldn't fault the shop owners in the slightest. In fact, I apologized to every cashier we encountered, thanking them for being there at such a gawdawful hour. Highlights of shopping: $70 silver chain necklace for $20, some DVDs for $4, new winter coat for Two, new flannel PJs for me (I couldn't believe how hard it was to find a 2-piece flannel set this year!), socks for various people, fleece throw for my mom, Star Wars gift for hamsterwoman's son, lightweight hoodie from Aeropostale for MiniPlu. (She's going to pretend to forget I bought it. :-P) There was other stuff, too, but those were the highlights.
Came home and collapsed, then hauled myself back out of bed 4 hours later so I could get to Barnes & Noble when they opened at 8am. For the second year in a row, they've offered a limited selection of signed books on Black Friday. One of them was The Phantom Tollbooth, one of my very favorite books in all the world. MiniPlu was interested in both The Outsiders (which she loves) and Paper Towns, which she was interested in because, John Green, but in the end I only got her Outsiders. Plus a non-signed book for Hamster's daughter. There were a number of other shops within walking distance, so while I was there I bought a bunch of chewy, sticky candy at Five Below for MiniPlu's braces-less celebration in 2 weeks, a little basket to put it in at Michael's, and some fleece gloves (for kids) and tights (for me) at Old Navy.
The rest of the day was fairly quiet, thankfully. I did get a nap in the early afternoon, desperately needed. Proofread MiniPlu's 13-page paper (oy, the (s)PaG - spelling mostly fine, but the kid has a love affair with run-on sentences and is still grasping the niceties of dialogue punctuation. And keeping to one tense.) Will fixed the clutch on one of R&K's cars, and Two played with their cousin, M (age 8).
We had planned to come home Sat a.m, but with one thing and another (and another) we didn't leave until noon. The rest of our weekend has been fairly quiet - usual weekend errands and chores, plus wrapping MiniPlu's "giving tree" gifts, and getting some of our Christmas decorations out. Will had to work starting late Sat night and throughout today. Poor guy is running on 4 hours of sleep, and the entire project had to, in the end, be declared a failure. So now he has to restore everything and they'll have to retry the project again another time. It's already several hours past his usual bedtime and he's still working. At least I don't have to get up for marching band tomorrow - no school until Tues.
MiniPlu provided some unexpected hilarity at bedtime tonight. She was talking about how, if she rolls to the edge of her twin bed near the wall, it almost feels like a queen bed, that there'd be plenty of room for Two (if Two didn't flail all over the place :P). I pointed out that before Will and I bought our current bed, we'd shared that bed (her bed - used to be mine). She was agog that two adults could share a twin bed and asked me to climb in with her and demonstrate. Since it was already quite cozy with one of the two people being only half grown, she was even more amazed that Will and I could fit together, as two grownups. I assured her that, yep, when we were at my apartment, it was in my bed, and when we were at his, it was in the daybed (now our guest bed - used to be Will's).
Suddenly, MiniPlu realized something. "Wait - didn't you say you weren't a virgin when you got married??"
"Yes."
"Ack! That means you ... in MY BED???" MiniPlu jumped out of bed. "I'm going to sleep in the guest room!"
"Except that used to be Dad's bed."
"ACK! I'm going to sleep with Two!" She ran to Two's room and curled up in a ball on the foot of his bed while he tried to shoo her back off again and I just laughed and laughed and laughed. Maybe you had to be there, but, man, the horror she had at realizing just what had transpired in the bed she now slept in - it was priceless.
Then, last night, while I was keeping Will company, I was lured into a Steve/Bucky/Tony AU fic: Open Up the Door That's Shut. I'm not much of an AU person normally, but this came recommended and ... I loved it. By turns sweet, funny and hot. Seriously, go read. Set in a modern-day diner, as if Steve and Bucky were middle-east-battle vets, rather than WWII vets. Otherwise stays very very true to character, and there's even a Stan Lee cameo. :D
* It took awhile to find a parking spot.
* CHOP has, since our last visit, initiated a new security policy. Everyone must stop at the "Welcome Center" on the 2nd floor to have their IDs scanned and a temporary badge made. You won't be allowed to traipse around CHOP without it.
* We went up to the 5th floor for Endocrinology, started checking in, only to be told, "Oh, it looks like your appointment is at the building on 3550 Market St."
Now, in all fairness, when they'd called to confirm the appointment on Tues, and I'd asked for confirmation of where I was going, they gave me that address. What they did NOT say was that it was nowhere NEAR the main CHOP building. I had naively assumed it was, so I had merely put in CHOP for my GPS, not that particular address. I figured that either WAS the building we needed, or it was nearby, no problem. But - nope. The clerk who had started checking us in said that it took her 10 mins to walk - but she was a fast walker. It was already 10:55a at this point. I asked if she could call over to say that we were coming, but she said that office never answers their phone so there was no point. Nothing for it but just to hoof it over as fast as we could.
It was maybe 1 km to walk, so it wasn't like it was impossible, but it was just so frustrating! We arrived around 11:10a to the building, and then nobody seemed to know which floor/office our doctor was in. Isn't that the guy's job, the one who sits at a desk in the lobby?? We took a wild guess and stopped at the third floor, which of course was the wrong one, and even THEY weren't sure where to go, but they suggested the 5th floor, which turned out to be correct. Our doctor no longer works in an official Endocrinology office, but one labelled "Family medicine" or something along those lines because there were signs everywhere about birth control options. And, apparently, trans-kid care, as well.
The actual appointment went fine, at least. I made SURE I understood exactly what was going on and what was going to come up in the future. Two's current hormone levels are still good (read: v low) with absolutely no signs of physical puberty. This means they'll check him again in 6 months. She had me make the appointment on the spot. She also gave me the lab order for his bloodwork before the next test, so I have that in hand. She gave me a lab order for a bone-age xray, which we were able to have done in an office across the hall, on the spot. (They're monitoring his growth plates, which I guess will be important in deciding at which end of the age range (14-16) he'll be given testosterone.) I don't have the lab order for the next bone density scan (he has to take calcium so he doesn't develop osteoporosis like an old lady, since we've stopped estrogen) because it would expire too early if she wrote it now, but at least I know there's supposed to BE a lab order for that, and can ask for it as time gets closer.
By then it was after noon. We hiked back to the car, paid for parking, and made our way home again. Alas, we did hit some traffic on the way back - not horrible traffic, but more typical for the area - which meant we didn't get home until 2pm. We hadn't eaten lunch and were starving, and still had packing to do for NJ.
Will had taken the day off. He'd exercised in the morning, dealt with a contractor who was evaluating asbestos removal in our basement crawl spaces, and then got ready to load up the trailer. We're starting to move some lesser-used stuff to R&K's house, sigh, starting with a bunch of bookcases and almost our entire library of books. I told Will he was taking away all my friends. (I've kept back a handful of treasured favorites or things I might need to reference, but if I want to re-read anything else, I'll have to go to the library.) We also loaded up our sleeper loveseat, which took some serious finagling because the door from our laundry room to the garage - and also the door from the downstairs den to the kitchen (in other words, either way out from the den) - are smaller than normal. We had to take the bed out of the loveseat to cut the weight, then actually remove the back laundry room door off its hinges and carry the loveseat out through the back yard and around to the front. (The folded bed, once removed from the loveseat, fit through the narrow door to the garage.) Meanwhile, I'm chomping at the bit because we hadn't planned to have dinner at home - we were going to eat with R&K - and it's getting later and later. Will's been going gung-ho dealing with moving and tossing stuff, but right then, I was ready to throttle him for his fanaticism in getting as much loaded up as possible, even more so as I was exhausted from the trip to Philly and grumpy that I hadn't gotten a quick nap, nor that I would be able to in the car, since he'd need my extra eyes to compensate for the awkwardness of hauling a trailer.
He finally got it done and strapped down to his satisfaction, while the kids and I loaded up the rest of our car with our usual stuff (duffle, dog bowls/food, laptop, blah blah). We finally left around 5:30pm. Normally it would be about a 1:40-1:45 trip, but because of the trailer, Will (rightly) drove more conservatively, making it a full two-hour trip. Thankfully, R&K had ordered Chinese and it was arriving right when we did, so the kids and I dug in immediately. Karen insisted on unloading the trailer that night so she wouldn't have to juggle that with Thanksgiving cooking, so she and Will didn't get to eat for another hour, but at least it was done.
Thanksgiving and Friday were both a bit warmer than usual, so I took the dog and ran outside for 3 miles, before cleaning up and starting to help with food preparation. Rob and I had made the pumpkin pie (following my old SCD recipe) Wed night, and I helped with the apple pies on Thurs. Thankfully, they have two standalone electric roasting pan devices, so the hams went in one and the turkey in the other, leaving the oven free for the apple pies. I made the mistake of going to take a quick catnap late in the afternoon, leaving Karen to fend for herself in what turned out to be a crucial moment in juggling everything. She'd over-milked the mashed potatoes by accident, leaving them much looser than normal, although plenty of people ate them anyway. She was looking kind of frazzled and I felt really guilty, so launched myself back into helping juggle heating veggies in the microwave, making the Stove Top stuffing, and other final preparations. We had aimed for a 4-5pm dinner, but sat down at 5:40p. Oh well - it's always kind of like that. Food was good, people behaved themselves, all was well.
I used to avoid Black Friday like the plague, swearing there was nothing I wanted in the world badly enough that I'd get up in the wee hours of morning and deal with the crazy people to get it. Then, one year when the kids were in preschool and Will had to work on Black Friday (they often do big upgrades and such on this holiday, since the college is closed) I took the kids to Kohl's (dept store) to browse mid-late morning on Fri. By then all the really crazy people were gone, and we could just browse deals until we'd had enough. For the next few years, that was our Black Fri approach when Will had to work: go mid-late morning, usually with no particular goal in mind, hit one or two places just to see if there was anything good out there, go home when we'd had enough of crowds.
Then, two years ago, when stores started opening on Thurs night, I went out late at night with K for the first time in order to covertly buy MiniPlu her first cell phone, because Best Buy had a good deal. And ... it was kind of fun to do something that wacky.
Last year, MiniPlu was deemed old enough to come along with me and K for the first time. We shopped from, I don't know, 9pm or so until 2:30am, came home and crashed. And it was ... fun. (In general, we were taking the same old approach: pick a few places, usually with no real particular goal in mind, see what we found, buy if we liked it. Sometimes we've had a few things we definitely did want to check on, but not tons of them.)
This year was a fairly even repeat of last year, except we shopped until 3a, getting home at 3:30a. More stores at the mall seemed closed, or had closed at midnight, than we remembered from last year, which was kind of disappointing, but I couldn't fault the shop owners in the slightest. In fact, I apologized to every cashier we encountered, thanking them for being there at such a gawdawful hour. Highlights of shopping: $70 silver chain necklace for $20, some DVDs for $4, new winter coat for Two, new flannel PJs for me (I couldn't believe how hard it was to find a 2-piece flannel set this year!), socks for various people, fleece throw for my mom, Star Wars gift for hamsterwoman's son, lightweight hoodie from Aeropostale for MiniPlu. (She's going to pretend to forget I bought it. :-P) There was other stuff, too, but those were the highlights.
Came home and collapsed, then hauled myself back out of bed 4 hours later so I could get to Barnes & Noble when they opened at 8am. For the second year in a row, they've offered a limited selection of signed books on Black Friday. One of them was The Phantom Tollbooth, one of my very favorite books in all the world. MiniPlu was interested in both The Outsiders (which she loves) and Paper Towns, which she was interested in because, John Green, but in the end I only got her Outsiders. Plus a non-signed book for Hamster's daughter. There were a number of other shops within walking distance, so while I was there I bought a bunch of chewy, sticky candy at Five Below for MiniPlu's braces-less celebration in 2 weeks, a little basket to put it in at Michael's, and some fleece gloves (for kids) and tights (for me) at Old Navy.
The rest of the day was fairly quiet, thankfully. I did get a nap in the early afternoon, desperately needed. Proofread MiniPlu's 13-page paper (oy, the (s)PaG - spelling mostly fine, but the kid has a love affair with run-on sentences and is still grasping the niceties of dialogue punctuation. And keeping to one tense.) Will fixed the clutch on one of R&K's cars, and Two played with their cousin, M (age 8).
We had planned to come home Sat a.m, but with one thing and another (and another) we didn't leave until noon. The rest of our weekend has been fairly quiet - usual weekend errands and chores, plus wrapping MiniPlu's "giving tree" gifts, and getting some of our Christmas decorations out. Will had to work starting late Sat night and throughout today. Poor guy is running on 4 hours of sleep, and the entire project had to, in the end, be declared a failure. So now he has to restore everything and they'll have to retry the project again another time. It's already several hours past his usual bedtime and he's still working. At least I don't have to get up for marching band tomorrow - no school until Tues.
MiniPlu provided some unexpected hilarity at bedtime tonight. She was talking about how, if she rolls to the edge of her twin bed near the wall, it almost feels like a queen bed, that there'd be plenty of room for Two (if Two didn't flail all over the place :P). I pointed out that before Will and I bought our current bed, we'd shared that bed (her bed - used to be mine). She was agog that two adults could share a twin bed and asked me to climb in with her and demonstrate. Since it was already quite cozy with one of the two people being only half grown, she was even more amazed that Will and I could fit together, as two grownups. I assured her that, yep, when we were at my apartment, it was in my bed, and when we were at his, it was in the daybed (now our guest bed - used to be Will's).
Suddenly, MiniPlu realized something. "Wait - didn't you say you weren't a virgin when you got married??"
"Yes."
"Ack! That means you ... in MY BED???" MiniPlu jumped out of bed. "I'm going to sleep in the guest room!"
"Except that used to be Dad's bed."
"ACK! I'm going to sleep with Two!" She ran to Two's room and curled up in a ball on the foot of his bed while he tried to shoo her back off again and I just laughed and laughed and laughed. Maybe you had to be there, but, man, the horror she had at realizing just what had transpired in the bed she now slept in - it was priceless.
Then, last night, while I was keeping Will company, I was lured into a Steve/Bucky/Tony AU fic: Open Up the Door That's Shut. I'm not much of an AU person normally, but this came recommended and ... I loved it. By turns sweet, funny and hot. Seriously, go read. Set in a modern-day diner, as if Steve and Bucky were middle-east-battle vets, rather than WWII vets. Otherwise stays very very true to character, and there's even a Stan Lee cameo. :D