Reading: The fine print on the package inserts from the rest of the prescription medicines.

Watching again: The montage of rapidly-edited clips shown at the end of the series finale of Homicide, which we had taped a few weeks ago. I didn't care for the episode itself; but before we erased the tape, I wanted to see the montage again frame by frame, as a way of paying my respects to a once-great series.

Frustration

11:35 a.m. Stephen has worn a hole right through the side of his left shoe because he scrapes the sides of his feet along the sidewalk when he rides his Little Tikes ride-on car. Matthew's shoes have worn thin, too. The truly irksome thing about this is that these shoes are still relatively new, purchased only six weeks ago. So off we went to the shoe store where I spent $70 for two new pairs of shoes. From now on, though, the boys will have to wear their old shoes when they want to play with their ride-on cars. I'm not replacing these shoes until they've outgrown them.

I had all kinds of great plans for today, including getting caught up on one of the major items on my list (to which I've added a few tasks suggested by Tab, by the way). My plans fell by the wayside, though, because Daniel needs to go to the doctor again. He's been coughing a lot, and his appetite is practically nil. He's eaten hardly anything since breakfast yesterday. Tab and I are both wondering if he has another case of strep throat. He's not complaining of throat pain, but then he didn't have a sore throat the last time, either.

So instead of getting caught up on my big tasks, I barely had time this morning to wash the dishes. Stephanie will be coming over around 1 so that I can pick Daniel up at school and get him to the pediatrician's office for a 2:15 appointment. I hate to have unwashed dishes sitting around when she's here because she will go ahead and wash them. Now, my mother washes dishes for me all the time when she visits from Maine and it never bothers me at all. But whenever Stephanie cleans up around here, I always feel like it is an unspoken criticism of what she perceives as my slipshod housekeeping. I know I am being overly sensitive, not to mention highly ungrateful, but there it is.

10:45 p.m. Daniel and I made it to the doctor's office with plenty of time to spare. I brought the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly with me, which was just as well since we had to wait until 2:30 until we were called into an examining room. Then we had to wait another fifteen minutes before we saw Dr. J., the same doctor who examined Daniel on our last visit. Dr. J. listened to Daniel's chest and said he heard some wheezing but no real congestion. He noticed Daniel's puffy eyes and asked if Daniel rubbed them a lot. I answered that Daniel's Claritin prescription was helping a little with his allergies but that his eyes were still itchy.

I also told Dr. J. that Daniel's symptoms reminded me of his symptoms last month before he was diagnosed with strep. Dr. J. checked Daniel's throat and said that it looked fine, but that he would do a throat culture just to be sure. He probably thought I was some kooky, overprotective mother and ordered the test just to humor me. To his (admitted) surprise, the test came back positive.

I left the pediatrician's office with a fistful of prescriptions to be filled: amoxicillin for the strep, albuterol syrup for the wheezing, Zyrtec syrup to try for his allergies instead of Claritin, and Patanol eye drops for his itchy eyes.

We dropped off the prescriptions at CVS on the way to pick up Tab. There was a line of people seven deep at the pickup counter, and I didn't recognize any of the people at work in the pharmacy. Valerie and Alpana, the usual pharmacists, must be on vacation.

We picked the prescriptions up on our way back from Princeton, and it wasn't until I took them out of the bag that I noticed that the pharmacist had given me Zantac (the acid-reducing medication) instead of Zyrtec. I called CVS immediately to find out what had happened, and the pharmacist (who turned out to be a floater, according to the CVS manager) apologized and said he'd have the Zyrtec ready for me immediately.

So I had to go back to CVS to return the wrong medication and get the right kind. I was livid about the entire mixup, though I forbore to vent my spleen on the substitute pharmacist. As soon as I came in, he scurried over and held up the two labels in front of me. "See, Zantac and Zyrtec. They look alike, see?"

I didn't say anything, but simply took the bottle of Zyrtec and left. I intend to write a scathing letter to Alpana, the pharmacy manager, however. There should be zero tolerance for errors in a pharmacy, of all places, where a mistake could cost someone's life. While the Zantac probably wouldn't have hurt Daniel, it wouldn't have helped his allergies either. And what if this pharmacist had given me something that could have harmed a 6-year-old? It also made me question the value of the other prescriptions he filled. How do I know he mixed the proper amount of amoxicillin in the suspension?

Tab commented, "It was kind of like that scene in the first part of It's a Wonderful Life."

I answered, "Yeah, but there was no young George Bailey on hand to stop the careless druggist. 'It's poison, I tell, ya! Poison!!' "

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