Schadenfreude

Lots of people let Murray and me know that it would be best to have our child before the new year so that we could get a child tax credit for 2008. That is true that we could have had that, but you see, for us there was financial benefit whenever Gulliver came, and in fact the greater financial benefit would be for him to come after the new year, just like he did. He's already a good kid.

You see, I've needed foot surgery for quite a while, and the last time I saw the podiatrist, he recommended my having it done before having children because pregnancy can wreak havoc on your feet. What I didn't know was that I was pregnant at the time of that consultation. So we put the foot surgery on hold, and along came Gulliver in 2009, which meant that we would meet our insurance deductible early on in the year. So 2009 is my official makeover year, where I will have surgery on both feet and maybe even have a gallbladder removed.

So yesterday I brought Murray to my podiatric consultation so that I wouldn't have to repeat any information to him and lose key info in the transmission and so that he'd have the chance to ask the doctor his questions. (Murray always thinks of questions that I don't think to ask.) That way we could both decide immediately when to schedule the first surgery.

We were in the waiting room for a while---we got there early and the good doctor was way late. We waited along with several people, one of whom was a girl in her late teens. She made a phone call and this is kindof how it went: "Hello? Uh, why haven't you called me? ... You could have borrowed someone else's cell phone if yours was broken. ... I have been worried sick about you for two days but you don't seem to care about that. ... You could have borrowed another phone. I can't believe you never even tried to call. ... Well maybe next time you won't have a girlfriend to forget to call. ... Yeah. I said maybe next time you won't have a girlfriend." At this point she went outside to conduct her very personal conversation more privately and make more ultimatums and stuff.

She was called in shortly before I was. After I was called in, Murray and Gulliver and I waited in the consultation room a while. We could hear the doctor telling the teenage girl that he could shoot steroids into her foot. I talked to Murray about my experience with the steroids four years ago where it was so painful that I couldn't keep quiet, but the only socially-acceptable noise I could make was laughter, so I basically laughed (barked) like a hyena. You'll find that story here.

Well, Murray and I were just talking and suddenly we heard screaming that turned into hysterical sobbing. Murray felt the need to continue talking because he felt it would be more awkward if we stopped talking and were obviously eavesdropping. So he said something like this: "Just keep talking... uhhhhh... so how do you like... world peace? Are you for it or against it?" I must admit that the girl's hysteria was even more entertaining than her waiting room breakup.

We did schedule the surgery for later this month, by the way. I know it'll suck for a while, but I'm looking forward to the day when I can walk for more than ten minutes without having to deal with pain.