Day 21: Drugs, Coffee Table, Photos

 I took some time to comment on some blogs before writing this, which was a mistake because in the course of commenting I have run out of steam entirely. On the bright side, I am not staring down the barrel of Thanksgiving (once again, American friends, I salute and admire you, I don't know how you do it.)

While at the cottage on the weekend I got a text from my drug store reminding me to pick up my prescription, and giving me a date until which it would be held, which seemed a little weird because I've never been given a cut-off date before. Then I realized a previous text had said that I had failed to pick up my previous prescription which was now no longer being held.

Okay. This is new. Our drug store has gotten really busy - every time I go in to pick up a prescription, there are baskets and baskets of little white bags lined up against the counter. This also seems to have resulted in some pretty poor customer service, which generally has the result that I declare to myself that I will switch to someplace smaller and more customer-friendly, and then immediately lose the will to do so once I have left the store.

I guess fair enough, they maybe don't have the space to keep prescriptions for a long time. So what happens now? They pour the pills back out and I either can get them to fill it again or... not? Checking how long they held it... ten days. Huh. That doesn't seem THAT long to me. I will call and ask, and report back. Bets on if this will be the thing that finally gets me to switch?

Today I cleared off our old coffee table - the one that used to reside in the family room and is now in the living room against the big window - so I could clean out the top, having already done the drawers. This was both amusing and dismaying. So many shelves or boxes I open and think "hmm, can I bear to get rid of this?", and this was more "oh, so here's when I was straight-up just storing garbage." Empty photo envelopes. Old receipts. An actual PHONE BOOK. Oh look.

Well, I guess it doesn't say how LONG after.

It's not that baffling, really. Matt said consolingly that obviously we just invited people over and had to stick a bunch of shit somewhere. I can't actually say I don't remember the feverish overwhelmingness of literally everything when the kids were little. I was too feverishly overwhelmed to clean up to this extent just last year.

Angus loves when I sent him old pictures. 

Obviously he was always a style icon.

Look, me when I was hot. And Matt was, like, twelve.

and we were hanging out in my sister's old university residence room with her roommate Zdenka. Why? Who knows?

We were over at our friends' place after a birthday dinner last weekend and they pulled out old photo albums from just before and just after we'd all had our kids. Our friend Dave said what I couldn't articulate until then - 'a few years ago I would say I didn't recognize the guy in the mirror; now I don't recognize the guy in the photos'. Mostly I'm okay with it. Mostly.

Okay, I just phoned the drug store. She said it was actually just a reminder, and my prescription will be there if I go in tomorrow. Uh-huh, sister, however you want to spin it. I'm totally going to switch stores. Any minute now.