Have you checked your SUBLUXATIONS recently?

A week dominated by medical  issues and competitive seven- year-olds !

Cargo ships (the like of which will be carrying me from Houston to Felixstowe shortly) do not carry Doctors.  Therefore passengers must be certified in advance - along the lines of "Are you alive now and are you likely to stay so for the next three weeks?" (The voyage, beginning 20 September will take approximately 21 days).

Obviously, I wanted to have this done as reasonably cheaply as possible.  I guess I should have realised that I wasn't going to get all the "bells and whistles" when I found the $20 "bargain buy" at this local medical centre! 

 

To cut a very long and time consuming story short (two hours total), I attended a very old, dirty, dusty suite of offices, with no air conditioning (it was 103F on the day) on a very busy road. 

Everything moved in slow, slow time; interminable form filling and weight and height measuring by a recalcitrant nurse in a treatment room that looked like, felt and smelled as if it were from the 1960s, including the  "intercom" and somewhat stained, nylon carpet.  The best was yet to come... 



The intercom!

I was called in for my "physical" with said seven-year-old boy and his non-English speaking Hispanic Mum and babe-in-arms brother.  What followed next had a slightly surreal air as we (boy, 7 and I together) jumped in the air, touched our toes, listened to whispers and read eye-ball charts. Rather an unfair competition I thought, seeing as boy, 7 had at least 43 years on me! To be fair (although why ruin a good story with the truth?), the Doctor was very charming and have to assume well qualified.  A chiropractor no less - hence the very scary signs.  Supremely grateful that I was able to answer a big fat "no" to all the slightly more intrusive (aka embarrassing) questions such as "Do you have excellent bowel movements", "Do you have any urinary tract issues".  Slightly cringe making as Doctor had to explain these in very simple terms for boy, 7 - given he was main translator for his Mum!  On balance - all very entertaining! 

Kindle cute!



 

Dutch liquorice (procured courtesy http://www.amazon.com/).

Looks like dog biscuits, but tastes DEE-licious! 

You can take the girl out of Amsterdam, but ...



Spent the week preparing for my total absence from cyberspace while "tripping the light Atlantic"!  IE ensuring that finances and personal supplies are in place!

As they say at Budget time "Use it or lose it", so have treated self to a little reading material and - shall we call them "amuse-bouche"? 

Also a set of shiny new nails (more of which later) - very fitting to "Life on the ocean wave", I thought! 

Otherwise the week was very relaxing and domestic...

watching the HUGE telly -------------->

<-------------- sorting out the linen cupboard (where I unearthed Kathia's embroidery from the 90s!)

..and playing in the pool with yet another competitive 7-year-old! (Kathia's elder granddaughter).

Winner takes all lilo! 

 "OK, OK - I give in!"

We finished the day with a little homework, although I think Kayla would rather be playing football (soccer)!

Remember the "nail job?", well the week ended much as it started - on a medical note.

In all the excitement above...I was a little too enthusiastic in running around the pool and crashed one of my new "shiny's" straight into a random piece of pool concrete! 

As you can see - a nice "shiner" (rather than shiny!) is growing.

But I rather impressed myself with my inadvertent advance planning on the colour coordination!