I am going to do something a little different with my blog today….The other day when I had to go to the doctor and so did my mother and grandmother, I took a camera with me.  I thought it would be fun to blog about the day and have pictures with it. Enjoy!!

In my opinion, my family is special.  I know many people think this about their families, but mine really is.  Just extending from my branch of the family tree, we have four generations of beautiful, bold, intelligent, and strong southern women.  At times our strong personality traits cause us to clash, but we all truly love each other.  The older I get the more I realize, despite the past rockiness of our relationships, how deeply that love runs.  

Today (January 26, 2010) was treat.  For the first time in a long time, my grandmother, mother, me and my daughter all got to spend the whole day together.  For me, it will be a wonderful memory to add to our family’s story. 

The Cast Of Characters

Grandma-Chris Ingram                Mom-Regena Shell        Me-Melissa Mashburn      Daughter – Anna

Some how, my grandmother, my mother, me and even my dad all ended up seeing the same pulmonologist, Dr. Szumstein at Georgia Lung Associates.  He also treats me and my mother for Restless Leg Syndrome.  Dr. Szumstein appears to think it is interesting and rather neat that he treats four generations of one family.  

Georgia Lung Associates has two offices.  The largest one that offers a great many services is further away from us than the smaller location is.  It so happened that my grandmother, my mother and I all needed to go to Georgia Lung Associates around the same time this month.  My grandmother needed to go to the larger office for a test and my mother and I needed to go to the smaller office to see Dr. Szumstein.  We decided it would be easiest if we all went down together. 






Grandma’s appointment was in the morning and mine and mom’s appointments were in the afternoon.  We knew we would be gone all day.  This is the type of day I normally would have hated.  To be that far away from my house for that huge amount of time would have triggered my anxiety. Instead of being the awful day that it would have been in the past, it was a good day with amusing moments that happened all day long.

The plan was for me to meet my grandmother and mother at my grandmother’s house and we all would leave from there.  My mother very specifically told me that she would be leaving Grandma’s house at eight in the morning, giving us two hours to get to where we needed to go for Grandma’s appointment.  Translated that means, I needed to get to Grandma’s house before eight in the morning so we could leave on time. 

The night before we were to have this adventure my mother called.  I assumed she was calling to remind me about our departure time. 

Sometimes I live in my very own time zone, making it difficult to get to where I need to be at the time I am supposed to be there.  My family realizes this fact, so they always make sure I am extremely aware about what time we will be leaving.  

Not only was she calling to remind me when we would be leaving, she also was calling to let me know that after my grandmother’s appointment and before ours we would eating lunch at Gabriel’s .  It is a restaurant owned and operated by Paula Dean’s Cousin.  

Mom seemed very excited about the prospect that we would all be eating there.  She said the lunch food was very good, however, the desserts rocked.  I also got very excited, seeing as how I love good food. 

The morning of all of our appointments went smoothly for me.  I got up and did my usual morning stuff…coffee, computer breakfast, computer, shower, computer…you get the picture.  My daughter is a little difficult to get up in the mornings, so I told her she could have coke for breakfast if she would just get up without arguing.  She actually posted on facebook that she was having coke for breakfast.

All this computer time, led to us leaving the house a little late.  I was not concerned, I figured I could make up our late departure on the dirt road that I take to get to my grandmother’s house. Unfortunately, not only do I live in my own time zone, I am also not the most organized person.  I knew it was cold outside, but it did not even occur to me to warm the truck up before we left. 

When we walked out the door to get into the truck, I began to wish I had taken the time to warm it up.  There was a layer off ice all over the wind shield.  I started the truck and was actually going to drive it to Grandma’s house, icy wind shield and all, but I quickly realized that I could not see anything.  Anna was very nice and let me use her Subway Restaurant gift card to scrape a small section of ice away so I could drive.  

Dealing with the icy truck cost me some more time, so we we were definitely running late by that point.  I had already decided that I would blame our lateness on the icy truck and just leave out the part where we kept getting on our computers.  

At one minute past eight, my mother calls us on my cell phone.  Anna answered it and the gist of it was that it was after eight and where were we.  We happened to be at the end of the long drive way that goes to my grandmother’s house, so we were not going to be super late.  When we pulled into Grandma’s yard, I saw that not only had my mother been more organized than me, by heating up her car before it was time to go, but she also had it turned around, pointing toward the end of the driveway.  I got my late excuse ready.

I never had a chance to use my carefully thought out, “The ice made me late” excuse.  My mother held up her fancy phone and said she knew we had been on the computer, because she had seen that we had been posting stuff on facebook.  The only thing I could say after that was “Anna, we got busted”.  I had to laugh and say to myself, “You have to be careful of what you put on facebook”

It was a rather long ride to Grandma’s appointment, but everyone was in a good mood and chatting so the time seemed to go by quickly.  It was not until we had been on the road for a while that we ran into our first bit of traffic.

Despite my tardiness earlier in the morning, we were running ahead of schedule.  Which was good when we encountered the traffic, because no one got stressed out about  being late for anything.

I have this strange habit of collecting bits of miscellaneous information in my head.  Once my brother told me I would make a good librarian because of it.  That very morning, way early in the morning, I happened to watch a show on Animal Planet that was about mysteries in nature.  One segment in particular caught my attention.  I decided that this car ride would be a great time to share the information I learned.  I do not think the other people in the car agreed with me.  

The first segment of this television show was about some birds on an island in Scotland.  I cannot remember the name of the birds, but they make their nests in holes in the ground.  Near the time the babies are able to fly, they start coming out of the nests and wandering around some.  On many mornings, people would find lots of those baby birds, dead with no apparent injuries, except that they would be missing their heads.  Researchers discovered that the deer on this island were eating the heads off of the young birds.  Carnivorous deer!  See, that is interesting. 

 

You can read about these meat eating deer here

Rum health diet drives deer to snack on chicks

Because we were doing so good on our time management that morning, obviously someone else was in charge of the schedule, we arrived at the office for Grandma’s appointment pretty early.  We decided to go ahead and park, and go inside, hoping that maybe Grandma would be seen early for her test.


 

A cool thing about going anywhere with my mother and grandmother is that they have those handicap signs that are hung on the rear view mirror.  So there are no long walks from the very back of the parking lot.

We went to the waiting room that Grandma needed to be in.  She filled out her paper work and we made ourselves comfortable in case it turned out to be a long wait.

I am not really a baseball fan, but even I was impressed with some of the baseball memorabilia that the founder of the practice had placed in the waiting room.

Grandma was finished with her test in record time.  We were running even further ahead on our schedule now.  We decided to go ahead and head over to PaulaDean’sCounsin’sRestaurant (this must be said all as one word and very fast).  We were not sure if they would be serving lunch yet, we were hoping they would be.  However, none of us would have been horribly disappointed if we had been forced to eat dessert for lunch.

We ended up only having to wait ten minutes for lunch to be served at PaulaDean’sCousin’sRestaurant/ Gabriels .  

  

We decided to spend those ten minutes looking at all our dessert options.  You can never put too much time in deciding what dessert you want, it is an important decision.

 

When we were able to order our lunches, I got a blackened shrimp po’boy, my mother got a roasted garden vegetable sandwich, my grandmother got a plate full of their lunch vegetables and Anna got a ham and cheese sandwich (boring!)

I got a very big thrill when I went to get mine and my grandmother’s tea.  There was this boss looking lady who was near the ice machine, talking to one of the staff members. She sounded just like Paula Dean!  I am convinced that she was Paula Dean’s cousin.  I wanted to just reach out and touch her so I could say I had touched greatness, but then I thought I might freak her out in a weird kind of stalker way.  

Our lunch food was very, very good.  I shared some of my blacked shrimp po’boy with mom and she shared some of her roasted garden vegetable sandwich with me. 

After we ate all that wonderful food, it was time for dessert.  Yes, I did have dessert.&nb
sp; I had to adjust my insulin amounts to account for it, but those desserts looked too good to pass up.  Anna had a strawberry chantilly, my mother had a slice of fudge pie, and I had a small canolli.  That was good stuff!

  
Anna must have really enjoyed her dessert, because while she was eating it she was absolutely silent and this is all she left on her plate.

With full tummies we all got back into the car to head to our next destination.  We were still way ahead of our schedule.  After all that good food, and being in the warmth of the car, I got very sleepy.  I guess I fell asleep and there was some snoring involved.  The next thing I am aware of, is waking up in the parking lot of the Animal Hospital where my brother works.  It seems while I was sleeping other people in the car decided to kill some time since we had a long while until mine and my mother’s appointments.  

Besides being at an unplanned stop the other thing I noticed is my mother had a bag full of Krystal Burgers.  I wondered where these mysterious burgers came from.  It seems I was sleeping so soundly, that my mother called my brother and found out what he wanted for lunch, and drove through the Krystal drive thru, without me even waking up.  My mother stopped by his work to deliver his Krystal burger lunch.  What a nice mom she was for doing that!

My brother was very busy with surgeries when we got there.  He did stop long enough to shove the bag full of Krystal burgers into his mouth.

I am sure my brother appreciated the fortitude that the Krystal burgers brought him on his busy day, and it was a nice treat to see him at work.  

Due to how tired I am and how I keep dozing off, I am going to stop here tonight, I will finish everything up tomorrow.