4-16-09

A quick trip to the doctor’s office; how to get in and out STAT

I recently told you about my long overdue, run-in with pink eye. It lasted about a week and was a pretty bad case. I had to see my family doctor to get a prescription for some eye drops that would knock out the infection.
I waited until 8:30 a.m. before I called my doctor’s office. Calling first thing in the morning would assure me the first open slot that they might have free.
Fran, at the front desk, answered the phone and told me, “Your doctor is off today. I can get you in to see another one at 10:45.”
“I’ll take it,” I quickly responded and made a mental note of the time knowing that I would forget and have to call back about an hour and a half later to confirm.
Now for the record, I love my doctor. Not in the run off and elope kind of way, I just mean that she is a great person who I feel comfortable talking to and not only trust, but also value her opinions and suggestions.
So, I didn’t really want to see another doctor, but this was something that was textbook so I didn’t care too much.
While I was waiting for the “new” doctor to come into my room, I thought this would be a great time to catch up on some rest. My eyes were sore and felt like they would enjoy being shut for ten or fifteen minutes.
Reclining back onto the crinkly white paper that covered my exam bed and airline style pillow, I quickly found myself drifting off into a nice little nap.
Some time must have passed because I was awakened by another patient opening his exam room door and calling down the hallway. “Mam, how much longer is it going to be until the doctor comes in?”
A nurse answered back, ”Sir, when was your appointment?”
“11:30,” The male patient quickly barked.
What the what? I shook the cobwebs out of my head and I realized that I had been waiting for at least 45 minutes! Now, I might be from out of town, but that seems a little long.
There wasn’t much that I could do. I had to get my eye drops and they did squeeze me in. All I could do is sit and wait... and think up funny scenarios about people waiting for their doctor to see them.
Imagine this. Doctor comes in the door, “How are you doing, Mr. Pinkey?”
“Good, but something doesn’t taste right with those marshmellows over there in the jar on your counter.”
I thought about running out of my door and screaming that I used my cell phone and it caused a pacemaker explosion in the exam room next to me.... Get the doctor here STAT.
How about this, Simply call the front desk and ask them if they have forgot about you. I am sure they would find that real funny.
I was thinking about ripping off a piece of the crinkly white paper from the table that I was resting on and writing out a bill for the doctor for every fifteen minutes that I had been waiting past my appointment time. After all, I did take off from work.
Now I know my doctor is reading this right now and picking up her cell phone to call the head doctor. “Tomorrow, can I drop Mr. Pinkey as my patient?”
So, in all fairness, the “new” doctor did apologize and told me that they were trying some new set-up or something and that he appreciated my patience.
Doesn’t mean that I can’t think up great ways to laugh about the situation.
Next time you find yourself waiting for a long time, try this.
Lean your head out the door and loudly ask “The bottle of pills and the morphine drip bag in here, are they free samples?” I bet that “The doctor will be right in.”
Bryan Pinkey can be found picking his medical file up off of the ground outside of his doctor’s office or at bpinkey@nccox.com.

4-9-09

A house of pink-eyed Pinkeys, Wal-Mart and daycare provide family fun

I joke around with my wife about the fact that she brings home all kinds of germs from teaching all of her elementary school kids. I like to call them a bunch of germ-carrying window lickers.
I owe this in part to the fact that one of my memories of elementary school consists of kids riding the school bus with their heads resting on the glass of the windows and their tongues slowly cleaning the grime off of the bottom pane of glass.
Window Licker.
Now that I have children of my own and can actually watch my daughter rest her head on the front window of our den and run her tongue across the glass, I have the authority to use the said title.
I am digressing a bit.
About a week ago, my daughter came home from day care not only with a bag of soiled clothing and empty sippy cups, she came home covered in an invisible layer of pink eye covering her cute little outfit, hands and face.
We have had numerous run-ins with pink eye. It seems like every time we come home from Wal-Mart, one of our kids wakes up the next morning with crusty red eyes.
I truly think that Wal-Mart is just a 30,000 square foot petri dish. If you want to catch something that will put you out of commission for a few days, take a quick stroll down the toy aisle with your hand out, gently brushing against a few colorful boxed items as you walk. If you want to make sure you walk out of there with something extra, just touch a few shopping carts and door handles.
Throughout all of the cases, I have never come down with it. I don’t think that I have had pink eye since I was a child. Leigh gets mad because she thinks I have some sort of immunity to the infection.
Not this time.
Wednesday morning at about three a.m., I woke to Nash crying and my eyes were crusted shut.
Son of a ....gun!
I finally got it.
When we all got up at six thirty, I told Leigh, “I got it. My eyes are slam shut.”
“It’s about time, but I’m sorry,” she said with a little bit of reassurance because now she knew she wasn’t crazy.
As soon as the doctor’s office opened, I made an appointment. I got my eye drops from our family pharmacy
By the end of the day, both eyes were red and burning. Leigh, who has lots of experience with getting the infection, stepped back when I walked into the house from being at work all day.
“Whoa, you got it bad. You caught up for never getting it in the past. DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING!”
It has now been a solid week. I have had this annoying infection for seven days. I have avoided the public and coworkers as much as possible and have been washing my hands about every ten minutes.
Everyone in the house came down with the infection throughout the course of the week. Everyone’s hands are as dry and cracked as can be from washing and the house smells of bleach thanks to a germ-a-phobic wife.
Leigh had the bathtub filled with bleach water and all of the children’s toys that could handle drowning in the toxic bath. At first glance, I thought a Toys-R-Us tanker ship had been T-boned by a torpedo in the kids’ bathtub.
I think that we have officially eradicated the Wal-Mart /daycare / window licking infection from our house. It was just in time, too. I saw a C.D.C. truck driving by our house a few days ago. Our house is no longer a petri dish and my hands can start to mend.
I think that the next time we go to Wal-Mart, I will disburse rubber gloves and some respirators that I have stored down in my shop. I might even consider installing a contamination bath for the kids to walk through when they get home from daycare.
If I don’t get that infection for another thirty years, it will still be too soon.
Bryan Pinkey can be found coating his hands in Neosporin or at bpinkey@nccox.com.

4-2-09

Stock broker, dinner guest, and taxi driver; the best Boston friend around

I have used so much of Cox Communication ink to print stories about my hardships, good times and family life. We all know each other well enough for me to tell you some stories of my unusual friends.
I would not be the man (most would still say I’m a kid) that I am if it wasn’t for my friends. Combined, they have taught me so much and have helped to mold me into the strange and politically incorrect person I am today.
Robert Nagel is in the top five of my list of best friends. An odd person that part of me wishes I could be, he reminds me of a cross between Seth Myers from Saturday Night Live and, sadly, was a spitting image of Daniel Pearl, the journalist that was killed overseas by terrorists in February ‘02.
Anyhow.
Robert, Leigh and I all lived in the same pink-painted building on Michelangelo St. in Boston’s historic North End. The first time I met him was at 1:30 in the morning on a Tuesday. I stomped down a flight of stairs to the “New Guy’s” apartment who thought it was appropriate to blast the Red Hot Chili Peppers after coming home from an evening out with his friends. With a tight fist, I tried to bang a hole through his apartment door. The volume on the radio went down and he opened the door.
“What the h*!!’s wrong with you, I’m trying to sleep up there,” I yelled and pointed towards my apartment door. I could tell right away that he was upset that he had upset a fellow neighbor and responded, “I am so sorry, we just got back from a party and had a bit too much to drink. I am so sorry, I’ll turn it down. Sorry.”
I turned and walked away without saying another word. I laid back down in my bed and felt bad now because I just yelled at a very nice, polite neighbor.
I’m unsure of how the next few weeks unfolded, but somehow we ended up spending a lot of time together on the roof of our six story apartment building. We would sit up there drinking beer, talking, and watching the lights of Boston. We just hit it off famously.
Robert was a stock broker by day and worked in the financial district in town. He loved making money. Robert was good at it. All day long he would be on the phone with clients, trading information, stocks and a ton of money. Funny thing is, he couldn’t do it for himself. He lived off of commission. Some weeks he was living high on the hog, dropping by with Chinese food for all of us and other times he would poke his head in our door and ask what WE were having for dinner. Leigh and I didn’t mind, he had turned into the best friend anyone could ask for.
When the 9/11 stuff happened, he was having a hard time making money during the day, so he decided to find another way to make ends meet. Robert had a friend that owned a cab company and said the he would give Robert a route if he got his license.
He did and got his route.
Now, Robert wasn’t happy with just making the normal fares like every other cabbie. He decided that there was more money working the late night / early morning shift. Robert would catch the “T” (Boston’s subway) to the cab station, get his car and drive to the “packie” (package store, liquor store). Robert filled his trunk with beer and liquor.
He would drive by all of the high end clubs and hang outs around closing time to find his fares. When driving them to their end-of-the-night destination he would remind them that all of the beer stores were closed. Once he hooked them, Robert told them that he could get them whatever they wanted. Pulling over in the next parking lot, he would open his trunk and sell them whatever they wanted to drink to finish off their evening at an inflated cost. Supply and demand. A man after my own heart.
One of the advantages of having Robert as a friend was that we had a free cab ride anytime, anywhere during the weekend. Leigh and I would call him on his cell and he would answer on the first ring. “Where you at?” I would give him my location and in about fifteen minutes he was screeching to a halt in front of us.
When Leigh and I left Boston, Robert was the only friend that showed up to help us load the moving truck. Jessica, my sister, did fly up to help us and I need to say that or else she would hit me next time I saw her.
Robert drove his cab to our house at eight in the morning after driving all night long. He made sure we were all set, loaded up, hugged us good bye and drove his cab back to the shop.
That was the last time I saw him.
I have exhausted every avenue that I can think of to find him. Google, Facebook, calling mutual friends, I can’t find the man anywhere.
During one of our late night conversations on the roof overlooking the “Old North Church,” (the tower that Paul Revere hung his lanterns in at the beginning of the Revolutionary War) he told me about his sister who was married to a man in Mexico that owned a copper mine. He said that the living was good down there and the copper industry was lucrative.
After all of these years of looking for him, I think that Mexico may be the last stop in my quest for contact with Robert Nagel. The only problem with this is that I don’t plan on heading down there anytime soon.
I don’t do the “Spring Break” stuff anymore, I don’t surf and I refuse to travel farther than Food Lion for a good price on alcohol.
The only way, I think, that you will find me driving fast across the border into Mexico is if I am running from the law in a ‘62 Caddy, and I don’t plan on doing that... anytime soon.
Bryan Pinkey can always be found searching for a ‘62 Caddy or at bpinkey@nccox.com. You can also read an archive of his past articles at www.jbryanpinkey.blogspot.com.

3-26-09

What a wonderful world we live in, I just can’t seem to see it on TV

Not to long ago, people didn’t have running water or electricity in their houses. Personally, I would go absolutely crazy.
Not too long ago, we didn’t have telephones, much less cell phones that fit into the small right side pocket of our jeans. I could do without the phone, but it’s important and most everyone couldn’t live without theirs.
We all know how our vehicles have evolved over the past 106 years since the day that Henry Ford rolled the first black, hand-cranked car out of his shop. I don’t know a person that wouldn’t want a car.
The world has launched numerous astronauts into space and actually had them return to earth. THAT is amazing.
We have thousands of satellites that circle the earth at thousands of miles per hour that help us watch our TVs, make our calls, and help us direct our cars in the right direction when we are traveling or lost and refuse to ask for directions.
America, alone, is full of technology and promise. When you add all of the other countries in the world that are contributing to our global progression, one would think that there is nothing we can’t accomplish.
Then how is that after my kids get hold of my remote control, I can’t find it?
Days will pass until I can change the channel on my TV while sitting on my couch.
Military missiles have laser tracking built in so that you can see where they are going and remotely steer them to their target. Why then doesn’t my remote have some sort of locating device? Something that at least beeps. How hard would that be?
I have tried to place them in areas of the living room that I can easily get to them, but the kids can’t. They somehow always find them and want to use them.
Nash, my one-and-a-half year old, likes to get her hands on it and run around the house pointing it at everything that has a little power light. She has stood in front of the TV pushing buttons and has recorded shows and almost signed us up for some unwanted channels.
I’m not sure what it would take to change a remote’s design in order to have a device in there that will allow us to find it when it is “lost.”
It can’t be that hard. There are devices that allow a person to walk into a room, clap their hands, and watch their lights turn on. Let me do that with my remote.
Maybe I just want it all or maybe I just hate getting off of the couch when I have to change the station.
I think that one of these guys that can figure the trajectory of a space probe that is going to travel halfway across the galaxy and land on a planet that has the opposite rotation than the earth and also account for daylight savings time and leap year should be able to devise something for a remote on his lunch break.
Ultimately, I think it is up to me to just find a better hiding place. After all, I would probably also need a key fob that I would have to find and push a button to make my lost remote “beep.”
On the other hand, maybe, just maybe, my daughter can figure it all out, well, after she is done ordering all of the movie channels on Direct TV.
Bryan Pinkey can be found searching through toy boxes and under beds for his remote or at bpinkey@nccox.com.

3-19-09

Leave me alone, or I‘ll sic my little sister on you

Jessica Pinkey has been my sister and personal bodyguard for the last 30 years. I have never paid her and have never been asked to.
I was taught at a young age to never pick a fight, never hit girls and unless your life depends upon it, walk away. The latter was always easier said than done.
When my sister came along, I think my young frame of mind changed. I was told to always take care of and watch out for my sister.
I didn’t ask for her. Why was I responsible for her well-being? Didn’t she have parents?
As we grew up, I learned to care for her, keep her safe and make her get me things that I was too lazy to get for myself.
My mother and father say that I let her get away with anything. She would hit me, climb on me, take my stuff and generally treat me like a human trampoline.
I guess as I got older, I learned to let things roll off my back a lot easier. Friends would argue with me and it didn’t bother me. Neighborhood kids would want to play with something of mine, take it, and I would usually let it slide.
It just wasn’t worth it to get into a fight over something dumb and I knew that if I got into a fight with a girl, my tail would be lit. As I said, Dad had made it clear to me that there was no excuse for hitting girls.
One day, the relationship between my sister and me changed. It was a change that would be a turning point for the both of us for the rest of our lives.
Lisa Fowler was a tiny, short, super small, little girl that lived next door to us in Clinton, Maryland. I think I was about eight or so and had a group of about seven friends, including Lisa, that I ran with non-stop. We did everything and there always seemed to be one or two of us fighting on any given day.
One day, Lisa was mad at me. I’m sure I did something to start the fight, as this is still a curse that has been cast upon me to this day. I made her mad but I think her mom didn’t have the “don’t hit boys” talk with her.
Lisa found the biggest pieces of driveway blue-stone that would fit in her tiny, little fists.
I began dodging rocks as my tail went between my legs and I made a bee-line for my front door as I yelled for my mom.
Mom asked what was wrong and I told her about the events and how they unfolded. I am sure I spun it in my favor but that didn’t matter.
Jessica was standing there and was listening intently. The next thing I remember and Mom says she remembers is that Jess went storming out of the glass and galvanized metal storm door with a letter “P” in the middle. (Don’t ask how I remember that)
By the time we got outside and found Jess, she was ringing the doorbell on Lisa’s house. By the time we made it halfway across the front lawn, Lisa had opened her front door. By the time Mom and I made it to the edge of Lisa’s lawn, Jess had her hands on Lisa and was dragging her from the front door and had laid her out with a few swift punches to the face and trunk.
Did I mention that Jessica was only about five years old and Lisa was seven?
Now, I don’t condone fighting, but I am all for sticking up for someone, especially family. Jessica showed her true colors that day like a gangster with her first “job.” This loyalty has been a binder between my sister and I to this day.
When Jess met Leigh for the first time, the three of us were out for lunch. When I left to visit the rest-room, Jess put her drink down and calmly asked Leigh, “What are your intentions with my brother?”
Leigh couldn’t wait for me to get back.
Jess is getting married this summer. She has a family of her own now and takes great care of her fiance and her son Justin. Note: She loves me so much that she named her son after me; my first name is Justin.
Jessica, to this day still looks after me and my brother Josh. She has always been there for us and stuck up for us. She has interrogated all of our girlfriends and tried to hit on all of our “cute” friends.
Now that we are older and don’t get into many fights, we just reminisce about the past when we get together.
Jess reminds me of beating up Lisa and she reminds Josh of the time that she beat the school bus bully that was tormenting him and his friend on a daily basis. She waited at his bus stop and when the bus driver opened the double hinged yellow doors, she went running on. The person she was after knew it and took off out the back fire escape door. I won’t bore you with what happened after that.
We owe her big and she makes sure that we know it. She can take both my brother and I in arm wrestling and has pinned us down during all-out wrestling matches that seem to take place around Christmas time late in the evening after a few to many cups of eggnog.
Things like this have a way of repeating themselves.
Now that I have a little boy and he now has a little sister, I try to teach him the same lessons that I was taught at his age. Don’t pick fights, never hit girls and walk away when it isn’t important.
Nash climbs all over Ethan, pushes him off of toys and chairs, hits him and snatches stuff left and right. He takes it on the chin and continues to look after her and love on her whenever she lets him.
He makes me proud but I know that one day he may get a “fist-full of rocks” thrown at him but I am sure he will be quickly vindicated by his little sister, Just like I was.

3-12-09

My wife is doing dishes, the recession is officially here

Money is tighter than ever, now. We have been in a recession ever since Leigh and I moved to North Carolina.
I have talked about our life in Maryland before, and how we sold our house there right before the housing bubble burst and quickly switched to a buyer’s market.
We were building our house over the course of a year and a half. During this time, the recession kept creeping up on us and everyone else in America.
So far, we have made it through, but things are always tight. We have always tried to save and make things stretch as far as we can.
Eating out has been put on the back burner as well as taking trips up to Maryland to visit with our friends. Lights get turned off behind me by Leigh sometimes before I even make it out of the room I am leaving.
I give her a hard time, all in good fun, but she and I both know that she is the major reason that we are able to save money. This isn’t because I waste money, she just has a knack for making sure every dollar works as hard as it can.
A good example of this was when she heard about turning off items in the house that consume needless power. I think it was from an episode of a morning talk show or something. We tried to unplug all the appliances in the house that used power even while they were not in use. The TVs, DVD player, and home stereo. During that two month period, we were even turning off the hot water heater at night and during the day while we were at work.
After two months, we reviewed our electric bills, there was no savings that we could find.
We now live like normal people once again. We can just walk into the room and hit “Power” on the remote and see a show instantly instead of plugging in hard to reach cords and bringing our house back onto the Duplin County power grid.
Recently, I have been feeling like we had things under control in our household. We just make it through each month but we are not going hungry and every once in a while, we can squeeze in a family dinner out. I even get to have my “midnight snack” on the weekends.
My “snacking” consists of frozen food. I have a soft spot for frozen burritos, seasoned french fries, or chicken patties. Anything frozen, pre-cooked and has the potential to raise my cholesterol level, I love it.
A normal Saturday night for me, consists of me covering my trusty baking sheet with a layer of tin foil, throw a few snacks on for a 12 to 18 minute baking session. I, then, get my plate, fork and seat ready and tune the TV in for Saturday Night Live or the History Channel.
The great thing about frozen food, baking sheet and tin foil is that you can eat with your hands and when you are done, you just throw away the mess. There is nothing to clean.
A few nights ago, I was on my Saturday night auto pilot mode and Leigh told me to “Stop.”
“Just use the baking pan. Save the tin foil.” She instructed.
I quickly told her that “I don’t want to clean dishes. This is why I have always used tin foil.”
“We need to start saving a little more money,” Leigh informed.
“It is just a small piece of tin foil,” I interjected.
“But it adds up.”
“Not that much.”
“Yes it will.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“I will do the dishes.” Leigh finished and I am sure mentally stomped her foot. “Just cut back on the tin foil.”
I now sound like I’m struggling with a junk food addiction and need an intervention. Maybe I do, but that’s for a later story.
A side note: When Leigh and I first started dating, I went to visit her in Boston for the first time. I remember her having a mound of something under a kitchen towel in the extra small sink in her extra small North End apartment. Tucked in, was a pile of dishes that were supposed to be hidden so well that I would not notice that she absolutely hated doing dishes.
“Deal.” I agreed.
As I said, Leigh hates doing dishes. She hates doing dishes like I hate a broken arm. If she says that she will do dishes, then I can’t say anything to cutting back on foil. I don’t see where a Sam’s Club size box of tin foil that costs $11.98 and lasts us about... oh.... a year, will make that much difference.
I think this cutting back will do a lot of good, probably as much as taking our house off of the power grid, but part of me is wondering if our water bill will increase more than $11.98 over the course of... oh... a year?

2-26-09

Creativity comes in all shapes and sizes; mine is a triangle

I had a column for the paper all worked out in my head about this past weekend.
Friday night, after work, I left for a weekend with my longtime friend Matt Brozey who lives in Myrtle Beach.
This was a weekend that had been in the making for about 2 months. We had a full weekend planned out to utilize every hour to its fullest.
We were to shoot pool on Friday night, ride motorcycles and four-wheelers at an ATV park all day Saturday and see a live boxing match Saturday night.
Sunday, I was served a great blueberry pancake breakfast, packed my bags, and started back home.
That story was trumped by a surprise from my son.
On the way out of North Myrtle Beach, I stopped at a large gift shop to find a little surprise for my two children.
Whenever I travel somewhere I try to bring home a gift for them. I bribe my son into being a good boy for Mommy by telling him that, “If you take care of Nash and Mommy and go to bed on time, I will bring home something special for you.”
This seems to work and every time I call home to check on the family, Ethan asks, “Whad’ja get me, Daddy?”
As always, he was a wonderful boy for Leigh and helped out with turning out the lights at night and reminding Mommy to turn on the alarm before they went to bed.
So I got him a present. I was going to get him one anyway.
As I pulled under the carport, I was getting excited to open the door and hear the kids yell, “DADDY.”
I love that.
I asked Ethan to give me a report on the weekend and quizzed him on whether he did his “man-of-the-house” duties like I asked.
He informed my that he did everything and even ate all of his dinner and played with his sister.
“Good job son, I am proud of you,” I commended him.
“Whad’ja get me, Daddy?” Ethan quickly asked.
I gave him his surprises and he was excited and proud that he had done a good job.
All of the sudden he dropped everything and looked at me and smiled.
“I have a surprise for you, Daddy. I made you something.”
He ran back to his room and after some shuffling of papers and moving of some toys, he came running back down the hallway yelling, “Close your eyes, Daddy.”
I closed them and held out my hands.
Something that was heaver than one piece of paper was in my hands.
“Open them.” Ethan shouted while doing a quick jump in the air from the balls of his feet.
In my hands was a triangular shaped piece of tan construction paper. Crayon-drawn shapes were adorning the front and they were all meticulously laid out and colored in the lines.
“Why thank you, Bud. This is a great picture.”
“It’s a hat, Daddy. It’s a Creativity Hat. Put it on.”
Opening up the triangle-shaped construction paper “hat”, he continued, “When you have a hard time thinking of something to draw or color, you can put the hat on and it helps you think. You can take it to work and wear it.”
I wore the hat all night. We played video games and he kept telling me that the hat was making me think better and that is why we were winning.
I am going to take it to work. When ever I have a hard time designing an ad or laying out the paper, I am going to put it on. It might even help me come up with a subject for a column.
After all, it helped us win at Mario Kart.
Bryan Pinkey can be found under the “Hat of Creativity” or at bpinkey@nccox.com and now all of his stories are archived at jbryanpinkey.blogspot.com.