Some people think it's funny to tell booger jokes, but it'snot.

Today I was poised for victory. I cleaned the house this weekend and prepared detailed lesson plans. Today I was all set to kick off a productive week of homeschooling. With all of the laundry done, the house tidy and the refrigerator stocked there was nothing to get in the way of having a super productive homeschooling week.

You can guess what happened right?

Rebecca got a sinus/ear infection.

I thought that I would be clever and go to the CVS Minute Clinic to avoid the swine flu ridden Monday morning waiting room at the pediatricians.

We walked in and signed in on the computerized kiosk.

Then we waited. Three patients went in for flu shots. Each shot took about 15 minutes which completely baffled me. I kept thinking that the line would move faster and yet it did not. I had already invested 45 minutes into my wait when the nurse practitioner came out of the examination room announcing that there were no more flu shots. Then she spent 10 minutes taping signs to the walls and the front of the store announcing that there were no more flu shots.

It would have been silly to ask one of the people stocking shelves to hang signs so that she could see patients.

Can you tell that I am still not over it?

Finally it was our turn. She looked in Rebecca's ears and said that though there was fluid in them they were not infected yet. She suggested that we come back when they were.

I told her all about Rebecca's background with her ears. Chronic ear infections starting at age six months followed by seven years of ear tubes, adenoidectomy and finally a tonsillectomy. She has never had ear fluid resolve itself. I mentioned that our pediatrician will often give us a prescription to take home in these sorts of cases. If/when the ears get worse we can start the antibiotics.

This nurse practitioner was unable to do this. Finally I told her that Rebecca's face hurt and that her snot was green.

The nurse began to think. I mean she literally sat there and thought.

She hemmed.

She hawed.

When Rebecca blew her nose the nurse asked to see the snot. I was so proud. It was green.

The nurse started to enter information on her computer. When she asked for the name of our pharmacy I got excited. I eagerly told her that we usually use a pharmacy in our town but that I'd be happy to use the CVS pharmacy.

Then she had to consider the dosage. This required the consultations of charts, a call to another nurse practitioner and finally a call to the pharmacy.

By now we had been in the examination room for 45 minutes. And then just as I was paying and getting ready to leave she apologized. She had sent the prescription to our usual pharmacy in our town.

Good god.

So off we went to Walgreens, where Pierre, sweet blessed Pierre, our pharmacist who understands me like no other filled our prescription right away.

Then we went home, had lunch and got some work done before it was time for Lily's acting class and plans with friends in the afternoon.

Rebecca just finished her work at 7:30. Sigh.

We did not get to our animal project. We may still get to history since I can read that aloud to the kids and have that be our bedtime story.

Because nothing gets you ready for sleep better than learning about disease and death aboard the Mayflower.

The greatest lesson of the day? CVS= fail.