Annoyance is a pair of bookends on either end of my day’s events. My first round of annoyance popped up on my trip to the OBGYN’s office in Sanford. My phone’s GPS lied to me. I dont know the northern part of Seminole County well because I’m not really a fan. I am, as a rule, good with directions but, for some reason, my mind does not like traversing the roads in that part of my county. I always use GPS, which usually works just fine. Today, it brought me to a road it hadn’t even highlighted in blue. It is good I gave myself about 50 minutes to get to the doctor’s office. After a couple of turn-arounds I found SR 46, or is it CR 46?, I passed where, at the last second I thought the office was so, I pulled into an Auto Zone lot and called Dr.Sweet’s office, “Hello, I have an ultrasound appointment there in about three minutes and I’m on 46, I think just down the street. Are you guys behind the Subway?” They were, indeed, behind the Subway sandwich shop, I finally arrived at the office at 2:03, Three minutes late. Good thing the place was laid back and not swamped. I love it when doctors’ offices are so busy you’d swear they were giving away tickets to a Led Zeppelin reunion concert. Both my orthopedic’s office and my dermatologist’s office can be like that. There have been a few times when I wanted to holler, “Hey, you guys reserecting John Bonham back there? Cause I want to watch, unless it involves goo.” I might do that one time, just to freak them out. Both docs SHOULD know who Bonham was cause, they are both 50-ish and, the dermatologist loves Rush-kind of the same genre.

By the time I arrived I had to tinkle, I opened the restroom door without reading the sign posted on the outside, Once I was done and on the other side, I sat down in a chair directly in front of the potty door, My roomie accompanied me to my appointment and, when I read the sign, I laughed and pointed to it for her: “blah, blah, blah..having an ultrasound, we ask that you DO NOT empty your bladder,” Ooops. I said, raising my half full bottle of Sprouts Spring Water, “I guess I better chug this.” I got called back into the ultrasound room and the tech, who was nice but, did not introduce herself and I did not read her name badge said, “I know usually we want your bladder to be full but, for this procedure I need you to have an empty bladder.” I laughed and told her I had just reloaded. I was told to unload, which I did. I returned to the ultrasound room and got down to the required paper sheet over my lower torso and sat on the table. I noted stirrups, hmm, not odd in an OBGYN’s office but, hey, this is an ultrasound room.

Oh, yay, I had to get in the usual OBGYN position; butt on edge of table, feet in stirrups. Oh goodie, it’s a metal tampon with a camera and a cord attached to the computer thingee. Couldn’t they at least disguise it as a BOB (battery operated boyfriend)? Guys, you have it so easy. On a screen larger than my flat screen TV at home I got t see the inside of my uterus. Can we change the channel? I haven’t seen a juicy episode of,”Snapped,” in years? The tech wasn’t reading my thoughts. Psychic ability should really be a prereq to work in health care. I mean, seriously, vets pretty much have to be animal whisperers and many humans are horribly inarticulate (hmm, there is a psych research project here: are the thoughts of inarticulate speakers also inarticulate?). The tech wiggled that metal tampon around and what did we see? Emptiness, It was like looking into the soul of Wilfred (see previous blog). It was a vast empty wilderness. With the pain I’ve been having, I swore there would be a fibroid the size of a mango in there, and I dont’t mean one of those tiny yellow honey mangoes, I mean a big fat redish-greenish mango that was grown on a Caribbean island. After about five minutes the tech said, “You’re all done.” “Seriously? that was so quick.” Honestly, it was a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the time it took to actually get there. Somehow, I felt cheated.

I even asked, “Anything scary in there?” “No, but this will go to your doctor pretty quickly and she will she will decide.” Oh yay! More waiting. Have I mentioned how impatient I am? No mangoes, that is a relief but, there is still pain and occasional spotting so, something isn’t right. Dr. Bernal mentioned polyps as a possibility. They usually are not cancerous. I left surprised, releived and perplexed. I guess the next two procedures will yield more solid results.

I took a different route home. I chose to drive on US HWY 1792, which I wanted to avoid because it is perpetually under construction. It turned out to be way less complicated than I feared. We even rode on a new patch of asphalt for about 30 yards. I felt like celebrating with a libation. As we rode along we passed the Seminole County Sheriff’s headquarters which completely conceals the Criminal Courts Building where I am supposed to report for jury duty on March 8th. It reminded me I had to deal with that issue when we got home.

I got out my jury summons. Theoretically, the excusal request can be done online. Using my phone, I went to their website http://www.seminoleclerk.org and clicked on Jury Duty and saw the option of requesting an excusal or a postponment. I clicked on Jury Duty and found the print was so tiny on my phone I couldn’t read it and it wasn’t expandable. Geeze, I guess I am cranking up the computer.

I have to confess that my iPhone has made me lazy. It does almost everything that my laptop does. I am so out of practice with the format of WordPress on phone versus laptop, For example, everytime I add a new paragraph I have to adjust font size and line spacing. Don’t have to do that with my iPhone. It’s annoying.

I got my laptop out and turned it on and went to the website. I entered my juror ID and phone numbers in the correct boxes and even filled in the name of my service provider. I thought it was odd they wanted that information but, oh well. Then I tried to scroll down to the submit button. It didn’t scroll down far enough. It was a complete dead end. I even asked Rose to fiddle with the tool bar on the bottom cause it was her computer until she got a newer one. Moving the tool/task bar out of way did not do anything. While she fiidled with the laptop I tried on my phone again. I got the same results.

So now, I’m going to just have to drive there tomorrow after my shift ends at 3 pm or go very early on Friday before my shift that starts at 3 pm. They close at 4:30 pm, Those are my only choices because I have to submit my request within ten days of my report date. It makes me wish February had more days.I don’t seem to fit the criteria for being excused; I will probably have to settle for a six month postponement. Seriously, what would happen if someone had brain surgery scheduled? There appears to be no option for medical issues-at all,

It should not be this ridiculous to fix.