My secret hope for this weekend was to run to Washington DC and visit my traveling companion M. He has to work this weekend, so I ended up chatting with him briefly on the phone and accompanying The Teenager to Quest for bloodwork.

Like me, The Teenager has difficult veins, but I’ve had good luck with one particular Quest office I book for all my blood draw needs.

Apparently in addition to being tiny, The Teenager’s veins like to hide. They did manage to extract the goods, but it took a heat pack, some patience and some trial and error.

Since the bloodwork required fasting, we stopped at Sheetz where The Teen loaded up at carbohydrates so I swung by Dunkin for an egg wrap to balance her choices. She had a client meeting at 10 and at 9:45 the employees at Dunkin couldn’t find our order.

I told the Teen to leave me and I’d read a book in the lobby until her return. So here I am.

I’m reading The Last Train to Key West by Chanel Cleeton that I ordered through Bookshop.org. The book is the next selection for the book club at Mary Meuser Memorial Library where I serve as a trustee.

In the lobby with me, there sits three men of “Middle Eastern” descent, probably Lebanese or Syrian, all jabbering away in Arabic, one of whom The Teenager and I recently met in our local CVS.

Shortly after I arrived, the woman with two toddlers whom I saw at Quest came in. She treated her kids to donuts, probably as a bribe after sitting in their collapsible wagon at Quest.