Some Thoughts About Yesterday

1. You should always shave your legs. In the past, I have been a proponent of leg hair growth, fur for warmth, and even the great curl challenge, but I retract my earlier statements. You should shave your legs, even in winter.

2. Your mom is right: it is important to wear nice underwear. Just because it covers both cheeks with nary a wedgie doesn't mean that there's not a stray elastic boinger, a stretched place across your crack, or a suspicious stain. You think it's safe to wear those bad boys under your sweat pants on the weekend. Not always, my friend.

3. If, perchance, your OB tells you that he believes it necessary for you to go to the ER on a Sunday, it probably is. However, instead of groaning about having to go, use that time to consider that you could be stuck there for 8 or more hours. Consider your hair. Have you washed it? Are you wearing your scrunchy from middle school? Are the little wing pieces over your ears sticking straight out like a bird in flight? Review. Also take a gander at stray hairs. The two poking out of your chin will bother you for the entire day and you will have no tweezers. You will be certain that all the doctors, nurses, and techs are looking at your two erupting chin hairs.

4. Upon admittance into the ER, be sure to stare at all the people and memorize their appearances. You will be hearing them - and their stories of injury - from your ER bed for the next several hours. The stories are much more entertaining when you can envision their skin-tight denim capris, tassled flip flops, halter top, and waist length mullet. ("Are hound ain't never bit no one before!")

5. Try not to panic when the time comes to pee in a cup and the problem is that your pee-er isn't working. If you wait long enough, your thighs will begin to quiver, your aim will become iffy, and you will surely pee on your own hand. Okay, there is nothing positive to reflect on that incident.

6. Be grateful for the first three diagnoses of appendicitis. Why? Because after envisioning abdominal surgery while pregnant, then healing pregnant with a 16 month old hanging on you, the actual diagnosis of hydronephrosis with kidney stones won't seem half bad.

7. Take a book. Always take a good, long book. And if anyone needs a good recommendation, I quite enjoyed The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids, by Alexandra Robbins on Sunday. All of it.