The longest day

Happy summer, y'all! I meant to post this the other day, but this is as soon as I could get to it. June 21st, as you are probably aware, was the longest day of the year. There were points when it felt like it, too. I had quite the series of adventures.

The day got off to a complicated start when, just as Dad and I were heading out the door, Dad got a splinter and we lost the truck key. So we both got there late.

A man came in to have his teeth done. That was fine, but then he wanted to pay with a credit card he didn't actually have with him. He called his wife to ask for the number, but she wasn't available either. He finally decided to pay with a different credit card and the credit card printer ran out of paper. I couldn't find the refills. I went and got Rebecca (dental assistant, same-church-goer, and homeschool friend of mine). She couldn't find the refills either. I went and got Dr. Matthews. He found the refills, and then the phone rang. So I answered the phone and the dentist refilled the credit card machine, and I finished the phone conversation and consulted the instructions on how to reprint the receipt. It worked! So I got the poor man out of the office and happily it was almost lunchtime. So I escaped too and Dad came and got me and we went to the bank and then the picnic table outside the library to eat.

Rebecca discovered that we (mostly me, but I had help) had submitted her insurance claim wrong for the previous day and then done something to that day's procedure, which was also entered wrong, so that I couldn't even delete it and start over.

Mrs. Matthews came in to do financial stuff and showed us a package that had just arrived. It was full of flashing light-up toothbrushes that she'd ordered at the convention a week or two ago.

The entire afternoon was full of random things like that. We lost a chart—how we could lose it, I couldn't fathom, because we're very careful about not losing them and the man had just been in to see us, and furthermore it's a tiny office and there's really nowhere it could go. It finally turned up. I'd filed it by putting “Ma” before “Mc,” when it turned out that the rest of the Ma's were after the Mc's. Apparently this is accepted dental filing procedure. Mrs. Mathews said we didn't have to follow accepted dental filing procedure because it caused problems. Yes!

The phone kept ringing. The waiting room was much fuller than usual, because all the patients brought friends and relations. The to-be-filed pile of files piled frighteningly.

That was also the day the entire office went to Santa Fe for a good-bye dinner for Lori, whom I'm replacing. Reservations at Olive Garden were for six. So the entire office congregated around five, just as all craziness had about spilled loose. A fire truck sirened past in the middle of this, but I didn't think anything of it; I was busy enough. Lori solved three or four tangles, Mrs. Matthews did some of the end-of-day stuff that I couldn't get right (it went perfectly smoothly Tuesday and Thursday), and we discovered Angelina (the other dental assistant) had told her husband to meet her in Los Alamos at six. Whoops. So we piled into the Matthews' suburban and went out on the town.

We got as far as DP road and discovered a traffic jam, the likes of which are but rarely found in Los Alamos. We suspected the fire truck was probably headed to the scene of the accident, which explained the traffic jam. We were running late. So the dentist did some exciting driving and we turned ourselves around and tried to go down the truck route instead. We got caught in more traffic. We didn't have a cell number for the lady whom we were going to collect at the Y, either, so we couldn't even let her know why we were late.

The left turn signal at Diamond and the truck route, for some odd reason, was set so that only about three cars could get through per cycle. So we waited, and advanced three car-lengths, and waited, and advanced three car-lengths, and finally we were second in line. Yes! The signal finally turned, and the car in front of us—didn't. So we honked. And honked. And the car behind us honked. They sat there! It finally got going just as the light turned yellow, and we saw a bicyclist laughing.

We finally got to the White Rock Y at about ten to six and picked up the other hygenist. Angelina and her husband made it to Olive Garden before us.

Angelina, I would like to state, has an evil sense of humor. She's Iranian, and while her English is fluent, her first language is definitely Farsi. We had a very good dinner, and then it was time for dessert. Rebecca and I split a berry thing, and Angelina tried to say she didn't want dessert. Her husband got them a big chocolate and cream cake thing. Angelina took one look at it and started trying to give part of it away. “I'll take a bite,” said I. Little did I know. Angelina sliced off a third of her cake and tried to give it to me. “That's not a bite, that's a hunk!” I said. Somebody laughed and told me to define my terms, and Angelina grinned and went, “I do not speak the English well.” Yeah, whatever! But it was really good cake.

On the drive home Rebecca told a story about back when she started working and didn't realize Angelina was a patient. In thoroughly Derridean fashion, Angelina's real name is not Angelina. Her nickname is Ferishte, which is at least pronounceable, but both her first and last names legally are these long jawbreakers, and her jawbreaker names are what got into the computer. So Angelina made Rebecca go out and try to call this patient who turned out to be her. Well, I guess when you're in a foreign country you might as well get some fun out of it!

I finally made it home at about nine o'clock. It was just about dusk on the longest day.