Time

Time, why you punish me?
Like a wave bashing into the shore
You wash away my dreams.
-Hootie and the Blowfish

If it's one thing I hate, it's having my time wasted.

It's kind of like going to the doctor for your annual appointment. You go in, wait an hour to see the doctor, spend thirty seconds with a plastic object cranking open your insides, another two and a half minutes letting them swab whatever it is they swab, and another hour waiting for the doctor to come back in to discuss any other questions you may have. That's not even considering that you may be requesting a prescription refill or a referral, or wait time in the pharmacy line (don't even get me started on that). By the time you're done responsibly preventing cervical cancer, you've wasted a whole work day for a three minute time slot, spreading your legs for a man (or woman) who didn't even buy you dinner first. (Why do you think I stretch my "annual" appointments to, oh, I'd say eighteen to twenty four months? And why do you think I didn't go to the doctor during or after my miscarriage - despite many family members and friends begging me to? A precious little thing called time, my friends.)

Now I hate complaining about the perks we get as military families, because quite frankly, we wouldn't get them anywhere else. However, it seems like the system could use some tweaking. Every time that paperwork is involved, something seems to get screwed up.

We went to enroll Tucker in DEERS, the database that shows him as our dependent and allows him to have medical benefits. Being the good husband that Scout is, he called ahead to see what we would need, seeing as our case is a little bit different than someone who may have had a child naturally. They told him that the birth mother would have to disenroll him first, and that we would need a court order stating we were the adoptive parents. Tucker had never been enrolled in the first place, and we had all of the court documents they were referring to.

So we went in at 0715 in the morning to avoid the lines, and the place didn't open until 0730. I'm only slightly exaggerating when I tell you the line was a mile long.

We finally got up to the counter and the lady told us that we needed a verification of live birth, or some nonsense like that. Sometimes I wish I could actually say the words that circulate loudly in my brain. What came to mind at the time was, "Lady, do you see this live child in my arms? What other verification do you need?"

But instead, I asked her, "So what you're telling me is that we have to go to Labor and Delivery for a copy of the verification of his birth and then come back and stand in this line?" Argh.

Because Scout was misinformed on the telephone (or the lady helping us at the desk didn't know what she was talking about), our time was wasted.

Needless to say, DEERS will have to wait until I have a cocktail of anti-psychotics in my system.