Another Year...

I needed to get my 2nd Class Medical renewed, so after Glenndale's Fried Chicken Friday lunch, I took off in the Suburban and headed to Indianapolis. I was visiting a medical examiner that I hadn't been to since 2003. He's a very old gentlman, with a German accent, a real sweetheart. and he not only remembered me, he'd kept a thank you note that I'd written him on behalf of Kaylee when she was 2 years old and he'd given her a white teddy bear when she came to his office with me. Like I said, he's a real gentleman and sweetheart.

One of the first things he had me do was weigh in, and he had his assistant do the honors. It's one of those old scales with the slider you move until it balances. I saw what number she put it on, and she started sliding, and I laughed and said "You're going to need to start higher than that." So she keeps going, and then says "Wow! No way! You don't LOOK like you weigh nearly that much!" I see she has that great German bedside manner. :D I started laughing, I couldn't help it--you can either take that as an insult or a complement. No need to be insulted that somebody thinks you look good for what you weigh. ;) In my defense, I was wearing two layers of shirt/sweatshirt, heavy boot shoes, and I'd just come from a large lunch...that ought to account for 1.5 pounds, right? ;) It was funny.

A bit later, the doctor wanted me to squeeze his hand as hard as I could. He shouldn't put it that way, because I started to give him a big ole squeeze, and I have strong hands. I stopped early when I realized he didn't actually mean as hard as you could. He also had me push and pull against him with my arms, legs, etc. He turned to his assistant, who was in the room the whole time to make sure nothing untoward happened, and said "this is a tough lady". Oops. At least I didn't knock him over.

He said I had the blood pressure of a child, but I thought it was high. It was 108/60. I know what it was-I'd just eaten and drank a lot. That always raises my blood pressure up over the 100 mark. ;)

I didn't wear my contacts to this, just had my glasses with me. He remembered me from before when I had 20/20 vision, and didn't believe me when I said my eyes weren't as good any more. So I get up to read the chart, and I actually can still read the 20/20 line (which you have to do for 2nd Class) with both eyes. Then I do my left eye, and I'll be darned, I can still see the 20/20 line there too. We get to my right eye, and it isn't happening. I say "Nope, but that's why I brought my glasses." He practically begged me to try again, to concentrate hard, to focus. I did this, saw a letter or two, he said "keep going!" So I sighed and recited the line from memory. Near vision was the same. I was fine with both and left, but right...no. But my memory hasn't failed yet, and by that time he was all excited for me. So he removed the "glasses required" restriction off my medical today. I am a bad girl. Particularly since I'm going to be wearing contacts anyway. At least I can still see 20/20 with both eyes, so even if I didn't wear glasses, as long as nothing pokes out my left eye, I'd still be in decent shape. ;)

I got this medical when I was 39 11/12ths, because as long as you're under 40 years old, your 3rd Class Medical is good for 5 years. Once you turn 40, any 3rd Class Medical you get after that is only valid for 2 years. However, the 2nd Class Medical, which I have to have in order to get paid for flying in other than instruction, things like flying for MBros, and if I were to be given fuel for flying at a little air show or something, is only good for one year. This stinks, because here I have an option to have a valid medical until I'm 45 years old. But instead, I have to "risk" it every year to get that 2nd Class. Not that I feel like I have much to worry about yet. No medications, no health issues, low blood pressure...the biggest problem looming is having to get the glasses restriction put back on. ;) But still, honestly, I don't know any decent pilot who likes single point of failure situations in aviation, and the medical is exactly that. My entire livelihood and future hangs on that one piece of paper. I hate that, even though nothing's wrong yet. Maybe I'll get to be one of those 90 year old women still instructing and pulling out a little taildragger on a nice spring day to go for a relaxing low and slow flight. I can hope. :)

This evening Steve took Kaylee and me out to eat at Pastarrific for a delayed Valentine's Day dinner, because the actual V-Day around here has every restaurant packed out with about a 2-hour waiting list most of the time. Nah. So we waited for a nice evening to ourselves when it wouldn't be so crowded. I got this thing that Nathan & Tre introduced me to, Chef Jack's Seafood thingy. They don't have it on the menu any more with the flaky crust on top like a seafood pot pie, but the chef made it for me that way anyway, and it is killer. I only ate half of it, and saved the second half for later. Steve always eats my leftovers, and usually that's good, but this time I wrote "Leave Laura's Leftovers aLone" on my takeout box. ;)

I'm glad the weekend is here--I don't have any hard and fast plans, and Kaylee is out of school on Monday too. I'm going to enjoy relaxing a bit and spending the usual weekend day picking up the house, then see what trouble I can get myself into...