I'm keeping the bag; it's pretty sweet.

Today I had to get a plethora of immunizations in order to go to New Orleans, and I felt like the doctor was sending me on a wild goose chase for things that wouldn't even help me, while I just needed to buy presents for my family!

I was so frustrated after visiting the pharmacy and not being able to get what I needed that I just broke down sobbing. It may also have been because I was tired due to the fact that Jennifer came into my house and woke me up at 8 am to make pancakes after Kirsten and I stayed up til the wee hours of the morning amusing ourselves with word association games (apparently everything makes me think of the word "lamp" or various words for "butt"). But I digress. So I was flipping out, feeling like a 3 year old who can't control her emotions, and we have to tell them, "use your words; I can't understand you right now." So I used my words and told myself to pull myself together. So I did, and I decided to get the bloodwork done, and worry about the effectiveness of it later.

I was doing fine, being an adult, and getting things accomplished. Besides, I really like needles, so things were looking up. I sat down in the chair at the lab where they were going to draw my blood and took off my sweatshirt so that the lady could get to my vein. As I took it off, I heard a clunk.

My glasses had fallen off, since they were hanging from the neck of my sweatshirt. And, as luck would have it, they landed right in the biohazard trash can.

oh. crap.

I could see them, sitting there on top of everything. I could quick, just reach in and pull them out, and no one would ever have to know. However, when I got stuck with someone's needle and developed AIDS, I would probably look back on that as a dumb move. So, I waited til the lady came into the room.

me: I dropped my glasses in there. Is that the biohazard trash can with all the syringes in it?
blood lady: Oh no! No, the syringes go in that container, but that trash can does have bloody gauze and urine cups in it. I would not take that out of there! Seriously.
me: Oh...that sucks.
blood lady: Yeah, don't reach in there. I'm really sorry about the glasses.

Who drops their glasses directly into a can of hazardous waste? Honestly!

As I drove home, unable to read the street signs, I realized that I could have just asked her to let me use a glove to pick them out and sanitize them with something. But I wasn't gonna make a fuss about something that was my fault in the first place. True, there was no turning back now. The glasses were gone forever. They had a good run - 3 1/2 years. I started thinking of all the good times we had together, and the only things that came to mind were all the times I had left them places. Man, I do not take good care of my glasses.

So I got home and told my mom the sob story of the untimely demise of the glasses. She, however, was not so much sad as upset that Blood Lady wouldn't let me reach in and get them. So then, my mommy called the mean Blood Lady and told her I needed those glasses back, and she said I could come back and dig for them.

Everyone needs a humiliating dig through a pile of hazardous waste at their mom's request every now and then.

When I got there, they gave me a hanger, gloves, and a giant bag that said BIOHAZARD on it. Blood Lady informed me that she was "not trying to be funny, but anything that happened would be on me." So I plucked the glasses out of the can with the hanger, plopped them in the giant bag, sealed it, and went on my way.

They're totally clean. I even wiped them down with alcohol when I got back. If I get any type of communicable disease within the next few months, you will know it was not because I did reconstruction in abandoned houses without adequate immunization, but because my glasses once touched a piece of gauze.