I nearly missed the one appointment that actually mattered because of the twelve smaller things on the calendar that didn't. I'd forgotten it entirely until daycare rang to remind me they were closing early due to staff being away sick and Lou was waiting for me. I ran up the hill and made it 12 minutes late, and with the crime of having no snack hidden in my pockets.
The room was small and fluorescent, and the chart on the doctor's desk had one number on it and not much else. Somewhere in a conversation that was mostly about dosages I said the thing I actually thought: "I don't think there's anything wrong or anything to fix. I think Dot is great." Then I took her for McDonald's, her choice, because that felt like the correct way to end a morning like that.
The rest of September kept doing what months do around something like that: it stayed ordinary, almost defiantly. I went to a record shop for a free gig and came home having bought a 75 inch television I never planned on, talked into it by a salesman whose bluntness I respected more than I should have, and only laughed at myself once I was driving and remembered we barely even watched the one we already owned. A couple of weeks later Fox's phone fell into the harbour off a diving board, and I paid up for a replacement instead of a lecture, because being 13 is hard enough without me making it harder.
By the last night of the month my own head was doing what it always does once everything else has been handled: it went and had 11 ideas at once, most of which will sit exactly where I left them until I get back to them. That part, at least, I can rely on.
