the comfort of a good chain...

Today I found comfort in a girly drink and over-sugary grilled chicken in a chain restaurant. Sometimes it is wonderful to have mediocre food and a girly drink that tastes the same way it did 10 years ago!



I walked into TGI Fridays feeling sad and vulnerable in the unique way that you only feel after a bad pap smear. Bad results? No. Everything is healthy as far as I know. I just don't think that there is such thing as a GOOD pap smear.

Nurse:

Hello. Go to the room on your right. Okay, now if you can please take off EVERYTHING. This tiny blue piece of paper is for your chest...open in the front. This other white paper is for your lap. The doctor will be in shortly.

Now that I am in my 30's, I know that the doctor is never in "shortly." They leave you sitting on a table in a cold room wearing nothing but paper and your socks. I had my favorite childhood book in hand to keep me company while sitting naked in a tiny room that left my buttcrack exposed to the busy hall every time someone opened the door.

Today my previously kind and gentle doctor was having a bad day. He frowned a lot. Everything he did in the test department hurt. A lot. Apparently, the pain is worse when no one has been in your nether regions in almost a year.

After the gracefully short exam, I put on my clothes and went down the hall to meet with the doctor. It wasn't his normal big, warm office. We sat in a tiny space with a peanut shaped desk that had zebra-striped marble on the top. A huge painting of a swordfish filled the wall. It looked like it was a high school art project.

I sat clothed, but still aching inside where the doctor had his hands only minutes earlier. Awkward. He talked at me for a few minutes without looking away from my file.

"I recommend that you lose weight. Even just a pound a month will put you in a better place (no shit, Sherlock)."

"There are a lot of options out there for birth control...we really just have to keep experimenting randomly until we find something that solves your problems."

"Although there is contraversy, I don't think you need to be on this perscription for that ailment. I doesn't really help."



I finally talked a bit, forcing him to look at me. Even so, I left the tall medical complex wanting to find a cave where I could hid in the fetal position until the world faded away. I get that we all have bad days, but it seems wrong that an OBGYN's bad day occurs while their fingers are deep in your vagina.

Anyway. A girly drink and 1/4 of a bad meal later, I drove home feeling slightly better. Thank you, TGI Fridays. You medicated my aching soul with alcohol, starches, and sugar.