Raise your hand if you like to talk on the phone for hours at a time. Me neither! But there are folks who like to do that. And they always call me...at least twice a week...and talk for an hour and forty-five minutes. Sometimes I wish I weren't so meek. Just once I would like to find the nerve to say, "can I call you back? I'm kinda busy right now." Of course I never do. I always say, "Oh, Hi! No I'm not busy," even though I've just sat down on the toilet, or I'm trying to put out a grease fire in the kitchen.

Now I know that some people can ignore a ringing phone, but I can't. A ringing phone effects me the same way a baby's cry does... It means I have to rush over and pick it up and do whatever I can to make it stop.

Have you ever met anyone who can talk for over an hour and say absolutely nothing?

You have?!!

I'm betting it was my Aunt Veenie.

She is sweet old soul. She lives all alone with her four cats, a goldfish and her best friend, the telephone. When she starts talking she's like a twister in a trailer park. Her conversation is one long, run-on sentence with no punctuation what so ever. She just lets it fly and leaves it up to the listener to insert the periods and commas. She jumps from one subject right into the next without even a pausing for a paragraph break. My head doesn't stop reeling for an hour after she hangs up the phone. I believe the National Weather Service is considering naming the next tropical storm, "Aunt Veenie".

Yesterday, when I noticed some gray streaks among the red in my hair, I knew right away it was time for me to dye. So I rushed out and bought the color closest to my own shade and set to work.

Now, I don't know how I ended up with my auburn hair color. Mama's hair was a dark chestnut brown and my father's hair was strawberry blond. Neither of my sisters have red hair. However, my mama is a strict Southern Baptist Christian so I know there weren't any "neighbors in the woodpile". I'm positive that he is my father. I suppose when you keep on crossing a fruit with a nut, you're bound to come up with something strange at least once.

But let me not digress.

I had just finished applying the color to my hair when wouldn't you know it...the phone shrilled. Woe unto me, it was Aunt Veenie.

Hi Aunt Veenie" I said. "No of course I'm not busy..."

I listened for the first twenty minutes, uttering a "bless your heart," here and a "Well I never," and "I declare," there, each time she paused to catch her breath.

Meanwhile the clock kept on ticking and my hair kept getting redder and redder. And so did the phone, my shirt and my eye where some of the stuff trickled into it. I was tempted to lay the phone aside and rinse my hair while she kept talking, but I was afraid that she would breathe again and wonder where my "now hush!" was. So I kept pacing and murmuring, nodding and rolling my good eye...the other one was burning and watering so badly I couldn't open it..

Finally she started to run out of steam. After making me promise to come for a visit on Sunday, she said goodbye and hung up. I ran to the sink and stuck my head under the faucet. I rinsed and rinsed and rinsed, first my eye then my hair. Finally satisfied that all the color had been rinsed out of both, I looked into the mirror. My hair was the color of an over ripe tomato. And it matched my right eye perfectly.

I almost started to bawl, but I knew it would only hurt my eye. I went into the bedroom and looked in the closet. Then I did what I should have done in the first place. I called my friend who is a beautician. She told me to come on over to her shop and she would tone down the color and add a few highlights.

I got dressed, then squinted at my reflection in the mirror. Hmmm. Too bad it isn't Halloween. In my yellow shirt and green shorts I make a perfect traffic light.

What in God's sweet Name is happening to our society? Where has the compassion and honesty gone? Where is the concern for one another that should be there. Have we all turned into a pack of animals, each trying to grab his share of the kill ahead of the others? I am heart sick. Things like this just shouldn't happen.

When I read this news today, I felt like vomiting...

HURRICANE RELIEF

Sex change, booze billed to FEMA

Government agents working undercover found that FEMA gave money for hurricane assistance to prison inmates and other fraudulent claimants.

BY LARRY MARGASAK

Associated Press

Hurrican Relief   Read the entire article here...

I've never liked to go for a doctor's visit. I'm always nervous and I always over dress. I feel like I am going to be on display. I worry about everything from having bad breath to ' is the skin on my elbows too rough'. I'm just not an up close and personal type of woman. I don't like to be poked and prodded even if that is what I pay them for. And I hate the waiting. However I do go for my regular check ups.

But after my last visit, it may be my last visit.

Allow me to elaborate on my not so pleasant experience at my doctor's office the other day...

After a very short wait in the main waiting room they called my name and then put me in a white room with a chair, a cabinet with a small sink, a rolling stool and an exam table. Now this sounds pretty normal so far doesn't it? I thought so too.

The next logical step would have been that after a wait of no less than twenty minutes, the doctor would come through the door with my chart in hand.

He didn't. Thirty minutes crawled by and still no one came. Each time I heard a voice outside my door I would cough or clear my throat really loud..in case they had forgotten me...but still no one came. Forty minutes elapsed. I could feel the hair on my legs starting to grow back. I just knew that I was going to sweat, even though the thermostat was set to ten below zero. Was my mascara smudged? Did I have lipstick on my teeth? I pulled up my shirt just to make sure I had worn my good bra. I looked down at my toes peeking out from my sandals. 'Ohhhhh! my toes are turning blue. I need to see a doctor,' I thought. Then I remembered that I had used some of my granddaughter's nail polish. Funny, it had looked pink last night though.

Finally after an hour of this unmitigated torture, I marched to the door and opened it a crack and stuck my head out. "May I please go to the bathroom?" I squeaked to the lady sitting at the desk nearby.

She said of course and that I would be the next patient seen by the doctor.

And, sure enough, she was wrong. I returned from the bathroom and sat down to wait some more. I counted the cotton balls in the jar on the table. I rearranged the tongue depressors in the cup. I took out all the rubber gloves and refolded them and returned them to the box. I memorized the emergency fire exit map on the wall. I memorized the eye chart. ( I can now pass an eye exam from way across the street, if the need should ever arise.)

I read the notice taped to the door. Do Not Sit Or Play On Rolling Stool! Hmmm. Defiantly I sat down on it. That felt good. So I sat on it again, rolled myself across the room and then spun it round and round and round. It made me get dizzy and sick to my stomach. Guess that's why they said don't do that!

Now I don't claim to be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but even I know this is not your normal waiting time in a doctor's office.

I was becoming more and more agitated by the minute. I climbed up onto the exam table and mussed the pillow and wrinkled the paper sheet. I paced the floor. I chewed a whole pack of gum. I made a game of seeing how many pieces I could get into my mouth at one time. I looked at the clock again. I had been in this windowless, five by seven room for exactly one hour and forty seven minutes. Broken and exhausted, I finally sank back into my chair, wound my hands in my hair and began to rock back and forth humming to myself, "Noooo--boddddy knooows the tru--ble I see..."

The door opened and the doctor came in, looking around the room in an odd way. "I am so sorry you had to wait so long," he apologized.

"Oh that's quite alright, it wasn't a problem." I lied through my teeth, hoping he wouldn't notice the claw marks on the inside of the door. (boy, I can be so phony sometimes all in the name of good manners)

After he checked my vitals, banged me on my knee with the hammer, stuck the ice-cold stethoscope to my back, he wrote something in my chart. Then he informed me that I needed a B12 shot. "And maybe something for that cough," he added. "Wait here and I'll be right back" he said heading toward the door.

This was more than I could bear. I flung myself to the floor, latched onto his ankle with a death grip and began to sob. "Don't leave me in here again. I can't take this room anymore I screamed as he walked down the hall, dragging me behind him, attached like a third limb to his ankle. He looked at his nurse and shook his head. He whispered something to her, then handed her my chart.

'"Where would you prefer the shot, Dear? in the arm or hip?" the nurse asked.

"Right here in the hall," I said.

I didn't care if she stuck it in my eye...so long as I didn't have to go back into That Room! Ever Again!

Studies have been concluded, and it is now a scientifically proven fact that waiting two hours in a white room will make you crazy.

Written by an early twentieth century renaissance man, Lt. Col. John McCrea, a Canadian Army medical officer, physician, college professor and poet, who was inspired by a visit to Flanders Fields, a small American Military Cemetery on the France/Belgium border

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow

            Between the crosses, row on row,

            That mark our place, and in the sky

            The larks, still bravely singing, fly

            Scarce heard amid the guns below.

            We are the dead.  Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunsets glow,

Loved, and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders Fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders Fields