How many times in my life am I going to end up on my hands and knees scrapping dimes off the floor??

So my sister landed at the hospital on Saturday. Something about rocks in her head which doesn't come as much of a surprise since I've known her to be a lot on the crazy side. Oh, Andy just said she has stones in her gall. Me? I just think she wanted a mini vacation since her room looks something like this:

Man! I'm seriously thinking about swallowing the pebbles in the fish tank so that I can have some peace and quiet too! Okay, I know one of the side effects is extreme pain but you've got to break some eggs if you wantta make an omelette, right?

It turns out she's going to need her gallbladder taken out either Monday or Tuesday so in the meantime I've had to ferry my niece Natalia to her luxury suite so that she could have a nice visit with her mommy. While they were bonding, I went to the hospital cafeteria to get a little snack and maybe a juice. Little did I know that the rise of the machines was going to be taking place on a quiet Sunday afternoon.

It all started when I had to make a mad dash for the elevators because it just so happenes that the floor my sister is on, is also the Ortho floor where OZ has his patients. The last thing I wanted to do was bump into him while wearing my "daisy duke" shorts (as Andy called them) and my gardening shirt (I'm all about class, you guys). I found the vending machines and carefully made my decision. Chocolate chip cookies and powdered donuts. Mmmmm!

I put in Nancy's first paper dollar, yeah that's right, she gave me money for snacks, and the donut transaction went through without a hitch. I then put another dollar in and hit C8 which is code for *chocolate chip cookies* but nothing happened. I did it again because I thought maybe I had entered my social security number by mistake but nothing happened. I carefully read the machine's instructions, just in case they stated to push the buttons with a 10 second pause or some shit and they said "COINS ONLY" but I was like "uhhhh I just put in a dollar and got donuts YOU STUPID MACHINE Now give me my cookies!!" so I pressed C and then 8 again but the thing just flashed "COINS ONLY!!!" at me over and over again. ::sigh:: Now I had to make a decision, on the one hand, my sister would be out an extra dollar if I put another one in to get the cookies. On the other hand, my sister would be out an extra dollar if I out another one in to get the cookies. But! I wasn't stupid enough to put another paper dollar in the machine so I moseyed over to the soda machine to get an Orange Fanta. Dontcha wanna wanna.

According to my math, the Orange Fanta was $1.25 and the cookies were $0.75, pay attention now because math is confusing, so I figured that the machine would spit out $.075 in change and I'd get those damn cookies. I smoothed out 2 one dollar bills and carefully inserted them into the soda machine. It read one and said I had *One dollar credit* it read the second one and said I had *Two dollar credit* so I entered D 0 (zero) and waited. And waited. AND WAITED! In the meantime, the machine is going like this PUFFTMUSHPFFTPUUUUUCKKKK! And I'm like "Shhhhh! You are in a freaking hospital!" but it continued its noise and so I gently gave it a whack and it stopped. I was instantly relieved because there was this one old guy on the phone and I think he was calling security. Unfortunately for me, my relief was short lived because the machine then started spitting out dimes at me with the same intensity the people in olden times would stone whores.

I ran for cover and stood on the other side of a nicely padded chair while this thing just kept pinging dimes at me! When it was done, I started picking up dimes that had landed everywhere.  I counted $.10, .20, .40, .80, 1.20, 1.60 and 1.80. I crawled all over the place looking for the last remaining 2 dimes (after I counted 3 times and figured out I was missing 2 dimes) and nothing! I stuck my finger in the machine's change hole and found one standing up against the hole's wall. I found the last one stuck in a crevice on the side of the machine. I tried my hardest to pull it out but my nails were useless! Then! Then I remembered all my years training for this specific moment! I took another dime and used it to tiddlywinks it out of the crevice!

Success! I now had 20 little dimes in my hands! Woohoo! I did a little celebration dance and then I realized I had no Orange Fanta and no cookies! Damn. Not all was lost though because I was able to put 8 dimes into the *COINS ONLY* machine, get the cookies, get a nickel back in change and be on my way before security tackled me.

And so my adventure at the hospital ended with me walking into the sunset with a bag of cookies and my donuts, sure I was still thirsty but you can't have everything. ::shrug::

P.S.

I forgot to mention that my bad ass sister drove herself to the emergency room after she dropped off her daughters at my mom's house. I know only one other woman who has her strength and that is my momma. I keep telling them how alike they are but they never believe me.     

P.P.S

Thanks for the emails supporting the cause in the previous post. Your names are entered to win the Huge Bag of Peanuts and the journal.