a moment

[dragonlady7]

Being unemployed and poor, I have little access to health care. The one part of my health care I have kept up with I have done so through the well-organized auspices of Planned Parenthood: through them I can get very inexpensive women's health checkups and care, and cheap birth control. I like this mostly because it means I have seen a doctor at some point in the last calendar year, and they have taken my blood pressure and the like (125 over 75 today) and can assure me that I do not have cancer, at least in any of the reproductive areas. My teeth and, say, stomach, or eyes, can all go hang, but at least my reproductive system is checked up.
So, the fornication is really not part of the equation; I just like to see doctors sometimes. It means I have to pass through security checkpoints, but it's a friendly place with absolutely no men in it (I saw a man once-- he was the mailman) and they give me cheap and free things and reassure me that my body's not falling apart.

But I digress.

Anyhow, I went there this morning for a very minor thing, one thing they hadn't gotten in my initial visit, and to get refills on my birth control (which they told me there was no charge for-- ten months and no charge? Holy cow).

To my immense pride, I managed to navigate the public transport system sufficiently to get there (though Dave had already explained it all to me in detail...), taking a bus and the metro rail and arriving 20 minutes early.

I passed the time in the waiting room watching a woman there with her two small children (who were very cute little curly-headed girls), and watching TV.

The TV was tuned to Regis & Kelly or whatever that show is. I've never watched it before, though I've seen plenty of clips where they make fun of what a ditz the girl is. Still, she has an engaging manner, which is I suppose what has gotten her this far.

Their first guest was none other than Senator John Edwards, which is why I recount this at all. So there I sat in the waiting room of what is actually an abortion clinic, surrounded by women of all different colors and backgrounds (some were leafing through children's books, some reading Russian literature they'd brought with them, some gazing disinterestedly at a 4-years-out-of-date People magazine), watching Regis and Kelly cheerfully talking fluff with John Edwards. (Kelly continually called him, very earnestly, "Senator".)

And they addressed issues, and complimented him on his smile, and asked him where he took his wife for their anniversary (Wendy's, every year, with the whole family), and decided that in a movie of his life he'd be played by Tom Cruise (at which point Edwards began doing impressions from A Few Good Men: "Cheney, you need me on that wall!"). And then they complimented him on his performance at the debate.

Edwards then recounted that, after the debate was over, but he was still sitting up on the stage, his four-year-old (?) son had come up to talk to him. The boy, he said (doing an impression), looked around with fiercely narrowed eyes, and asked him, in almost a growl, "Which one's Cheney?"