A list of instructions

So yesterday I looked at my phone after school and had four (yes 4!) missed phone calls from Winter Haven Hospital!  That was  a little scary – and they were all just a few minutes apart. So I listened to my voice mail and realized that DUH, since I’m going “under the knife” (or laser or whatever) early Monday morning they had some Pre-Op instructions for me.  I answered all the questions

1. Have you been exposed to anyone with tuberculosis in the last 10 days?

2.  Do you smoke?

3. Have you ever had cancer?

Some of them made sense. Some, not so much – like this one – have you used any illegal drugs in the last 10 days? Seriously?  Who answers that “YES, actually, I have?”  Do you have any piercings we need to know about?   Just my ears, just my ears.

Then, the very nice lady proceeded to give me  a list of things to do and/or not do.  Now, please understand, this whole phone call only took about 15 minutes, so she was rattling off stuff like nobody's business.  Here is what I can remember.

No vitamins, minerals, herbal supplements from yesterday on.  (No fish oil!)

No aspirin.

Bring your medicines with you.

Pack an overnight bag, just in case.

You do have somebody to drive you home, right?

Nothing to eat after midnight, only enough water to wash down the blood pressure pill. 

NO Aspirin.

Leave all your valuables at home.

Bring your drivers license and insurance card.

You may bathe before either the night before or in the morning before you come.

Use antibacterial soap, like  Zest or Dial.

NO ASPIRIN!

Wear something loose and comfortable.

Be here at 7:00.  Yes, that’s AM, even though your procedure is at 9. 

NO ASPIRIN!!!!!!!

The Perfection of a Pecan Log Roll

Oh. My. Word.  Is there anything in the world as good as a pecan log roll? Yesterday, I had the pleasure of meeting some long-time friends at the Cracker Barrel for lunch. Of course, we wandered around the little store for a a while, after we sat for almost two and a half hours eating and chatting.  I bought myself a pecan log roll and just took a bite. 

It’s hard to describe how much I love a pecan log roll.  (BTW, I say pee-can, not pee-CAHN, or pe-CAHN.)  I don’t know if it’s the crunchy outside or the soft, gooey inside, but I just love it.  I think it may be a memory sense thing. 

When I was little,  during a couple of summers, my mom would drive my granny somewhere – and of course, we all went with her.  My granny always had a newer car than we did, so Mom would drive Granny’s car, and we’d have Mom and Granny in the front seats, and three little girls in the back seat. 

I remember one day, Patti’s door wasn’t closed properly and this car of very nice people kept trying to tell us, and Granny just kept saying to ignore them.

I remember always having to sit on the “HUMP” in the back seat, because I was the smallest.  Occasionally, much to the dismay of my sisters, I would lay in the back window.

There are pictures somewhere of the three of us wearing sombreros on one of those trips. I don’t know why we were wearing sombreros, or how they even fit in the car, but we were. One time our Aunt Julia, Granny’s sister, got us scrub suits.  There are pictures of that too! I remember they smelled funny to us.

This is why I think I love pecan log rolls.  My mom would stop at Stuckey’s. Remember Stuckey’s?? You could get a bag of “oranges”  - horribly orange gumballs, packed in a net to look like fresh picked oranges. They tasted a lot like orange Tic-Tacs, which taste a lot like baby aspirin, but they were sort of pretty.  I think the reason we stopped at Stuckey’s was always to use the bathroom, of course! With five of us in the car, we stopped a LOT!   Mom would buy a pecan log roll, then when we got in the car, she’d pull out the tiny knife she always kept in her purse and slice it up into tiny, thin slices.  She’d pass them around, and we’d eat them up like crazy. 

So, as I took the first bite of that pecan log roll, all those memories flooded into my head.   Do I really love the pecan log rolls so much or is it the memories that make the candy so sweet?