She's No Skater, But the Girl Can Shred

Kate had a mid-morning doctor appointment near my office, so I planned to bring her to work with me early, then go to the appointment, then take her to daycare and work the remainder of the day from home. It all seemed sensible to me.

Knowing Kate would be joining us, my very helpful co-workers started saving stuff for her to put in the shredder. I brought the portable DVD player just in case. Kate was thrilled not to be going to daycare. She talked about everything she saw along the way to my office. When we got there she said "let's go say hello to everyone!" but I get to work very early and at that hour "everyone" is me and maybe 3 other people. So I showed her the shredder. She loved it. Before we left for the doctor, we did go say hello to everyone.

This was our first trip to the allergist. I'd been told they wouldn't do any testing this go-round, that it was just a consultation. I'd made the appointment for us both for various reasons and the doctor decided to test us both right then and there. "Do you have time?" he asked. Reasoning that I didn't really want to come back again later and said I did. What I did not realize was that this would mean we'd spend a total of three hours at the allergist's office.

Kate did not enjoy the skin prick tests. She cried a lot but sat very still and as soon as the actual skin pricking portion of the show was over, she was as cheerful as ever. She was so good, and I hate so much to see her cry and not be able to do a thing about it, that I told her she could have a treat when we were all done. "I want to go back to your office and shred more paper!" she requested without hesitation. We had scheduled a mini-celebration of a co-worker's grad school graduation that would involve some cupcakes I made, so I told Kate we'd go back, she could shred more paper, have a cupcake and I'd just take half a sick-day from there.



When we got back she went right back to Glynnis's desk where she knew the big box of shreddable documents sat and pulled it out to the shredder. She fed that thing every bit of paper available, having only once to be stopped from shredding the financial reconciliation I was working on, one page at a time.

Jeremiah called on my office line to ask how she was doing. At that moment she was sitting on my lap while I returned email messages. She took the phone from me to speak to her father. After about a minute of answering his questions about the doctor she told him "I have to get back to work, I'm very busy bossing people around."

When I arrived at work Friday morning I was relieved to be able to get something done, but I missed having Kate around.