How I Loathe the Cleft Clinic

The Cleft Clinic is supposed to make our lives easier. In some ways, it does. Aleks gets his hearing tested every year to make sure his tubes are working correctly, which currently, they do not seem to be. He likes the games he plays with the audiologists.Bastian had to come this year, which normally he doesn't, but the time conflicted with Jon's seminar. I brought a bag full of stuff to do. I'm not always that forward-thinking. But sometimes I am. We bought some Where's Waldo books recently and Bastian loves 'em. We spent many minutes trying to locate Waldo, the Wizard Whitebeard, Wenda, Odlaw, and Woof and all their lost objects as well, plus the usual assorted extras. We had a really hard time locating Odlaw on this page. We were supposed to find his binoculars first in order to locate the correct Odlaw, but alas, in the time allotted, we had not yet found him.
I should bring activities for me to wait with. When I have a good book, I could wait for ages.

We moved rooms to see the other specialists. This is where it gets not so helpful. i spend ten months trying to get Aleks and expander, which we were told to get a year ago and he still doesn't have it, though we did finally get his molds made for it. We're waiting for the appliance to come back. The doctor says, when I bring up the intense and extensive hassle I have faced and the lack of assistance I received from his office, that it doesn't really matter because he needed those molars to come in anyway. Well, frankly, as someone who spent ten months on the phone, it does matter to me. Ah well.

We stared out the window while waiting.
At benches all in rows. Which are never all filled up.
We can see Lake Erie from here, on clear enough days. It was clear enough.
It occurred to me then that I'd had a nightmare once with this very angle in it. Now I have a photo to remind me. It's important to include the smokestacks. They were in the dream.
Being at the doctor is such a joy!
You can tell because Aleks' face spells it out as his ears are examined again and again by a variety of specialists.
We ate lunch at the Au Bon Pain there and then got to pet the volunteer dogs, though, so it wasn't all lost. I had never seen a chocolate colored Newfoundland before. These things are huge. I was first introduced when I went to Newfoundland as a teenager. I told the boys about the frigid Atlantic waters and the rescues that these dogs were used for.