These shots better work!

Today was one of the few days that the H1N1 vaccine was available in our county. They were going with high risk populations first - pregnant women and very small children, health care workers, people 6-24, and teachers/day care workers. Three out of four of us fit those categories, so we left Dad at home and headed off to one of the clinics offering the shots.

I went early, because in the only other shot day I'd heard about, my cousin waited for 1 1/2 hours to get his daughter the vaccine, and they ran out of shots by the time their turn came (luckily they had flu mist left, so his daughter got that). But apparently, not early enough!

I should have realized when I couldn't get through the intersection without waiting through several lights that we needed to get up a lot earlier, but I thought maybe there was an accident. when we passed the clinic, we could see that the line was very long, but it wasn't until we parked quite a ways away and hiked over that I realized that the line was many, many lines that snaked and doubled back and twisted all around the building. They'd used yellow "caution" tape to create the Disney rollercoaster type paths to keep everyone in order. There were hundreds of people.

Three hours and 45 minutes later (!) the three of us got through the doors and then soon after were rubbing our sore arms/thighs.

Next plaue scare, I come more prepared - lawn chairs, a lot more toys than the wimpy two I had, the stroller for napping and a food cooler. We were lucky that the woman in front of us had family to call to bring snacks and she shared the goldfish with us. Then Joey found left-over grapes from yesterday's lunch in my bag, which kept us from full meltdown.

The kids did really well for a very long time, and it wasn't until the last hour that I had to threaten to take away Halloween or switch carrying them on a five minute rotation. And we were even luckier that it didn't rain until we were coming out of the building!

And now we won't die, so that's good too.