How to kill time in West Plains MO.

After the surgery, we needed to get something to eat since she hadn't been allowed to eat anything since the night before. It was like 9:00 in the morning, and neither of us are big on breakfast food, so we went to the surly Sonic (A&W wasn't open yet.).

The carhop wasn't as surly as the one last time, perhaps because any reasonable observer would conclude that she was stoned. Eating at Sonic took, like a half hour. Her follow-up appointment wasn't until 1:30, so we tried to find things to do for four hours.

First, we went to a florist and picked out some flowers for Memorial Day. Then we tried to find the army surplus store, but apparently it had moved or closed down. Then I went to an outlet store and bought an excellent $50+ shirt for nine bucks. Then I went to the hospital thrift store, where I picked up a couple of coffee cups (one of them has "PROZAC" plastered across the front) and a They Might Be Giants cassette, all for less than a buck total.

We made a quick pitstop at the park that's near where FLAT* used to live. Then we went to a healthfood store and got a book on treating diabetes, and two low-carb cherry cordials.

We still had well over two hours to kill, so I went to the tattoo parlor, hoping to get my first tat (right arm, just below the sleeveline when wearing short sleeves), but a sign on the door said cash only, and I had planned on paying with my credit card. It's probably better this way; it gives me more time to decide what I want -- I'm thinking maybe the Chinese or Japanese symbol for "bear."

So when that went bust, we went to the Family Dollar store, where I found these excellent giant staked butterflies to go with the flowers.

Then we couldn't think of anything else to do, so we found a shady spot in the eye doctor's office parking lot until about an hour before her scheduled appointment. At that point, we went in.

She was put in the second waiting room rather early, but we had to sit there a LONG time. The room filled up with people and the walls started closing in on me, so I went outside and sat in the car on the pretext of "making more room for other people."

While sitting there, watching cars go by, I began noticing correlations between car colors and the sex of their drivers. Red cars are probably driven by men. Blue cars are probably driven by women. Gold cars, if their driver is over 40, are probably driven by men. If the driver's under 40, it's probably a woman. Except Sunfires and Neons -- they are almost always driven by woment.

After correlating cars and drivers awhile, I noticed that walking up the street was THAT DAMNED OLD BAT WHO INSISTED ON SITTING NEXT TO ME IN A RELATIVELY EMPTY WAITING ROOM during our first visit to this eye doctor. I knew for damn sure I wasn't going back in after she went in there.

After Mom got out of the eye doctor, it was almost three. We picked up some chicken from Colonel Sanders to have for supper and went home. If you ever need proof that there have ALWAYS been gays in the military, all you need to do is take a look at Colonel Sanders. I mean, have you seen how that man DRESSES?!?

The sunglasses Mom has to wear when she's outside make her look like one of the aliens on "V".




* - If you know who Flat is, you get the joke. If you don't know, it wouldn't be nearly as funny if I explained her to you. One of those "you had to be there" things.