Or Maybe It's Because I Just Have One of Those Faces

So the nurse came and...........................................went yesterday.  She was a very chatty lass who was all about the testifying.

Chloe, who is now home from college and has a new job waitressing at the local barbecue joint (yay!) was here, too.  To be more specific, she was working on her butt-groove in the loveseat just like she does everything else.  Driven.  Goal-oriented.  Successfully.  Let's just say if she could have a G.P.A. for butt-groove wear, she'd have a 4.0.  Her butt groove would qualify her for high honors.  Is that cum laude or the other one.  Anyway, now this just sounds like a dirty post which it is not.

So there I was trying not to make eye contact with the scales Nurse Chatty had placed without comment on my kitchen floor (good thing I mopped ten minutes before she got there or those scales may have become a permanent fixture on that sticky mess) and Nurse Chatty was opening sterile plastic packages of medical supplies with her teeth and talking to me about her ex-cheating-husband and the three guys she's met on Plenty o' Fish and Chloe was in the next room fusing with the loveseat when Nurse Chatty tells me that upon her husband's last escapade of illicit sex and such, GOD spoke to her and told her what to say to him and what to do.

I tried to maintain an air of complete ....um.........believability?  not-about-to-run-screaming-from-the-room-ility?  Criminy, is there even a word for that demeanor one tries to maintain when confronted with something just short of shocking and not exactly not amusing?  What does incredulous mean, anyway?

Okay, yes, yes, I live in the Bible Belt and should be used to this religious-speak by now, but it wasn't so much the testifying, but Nurse Chatty's complete lack of self-consciousness when talking to a stranger about intimate details of her life and then dragging her god and his voice into it.  I was knocked back a little on my heels, I suppose.  I mean, I'd apologized to her because the house still smelled of bacon from that morning's breakfast.  (Honestly, I was relieved the bacon smell masked the eau de cat)  I'd been concerned about an overpowering bacon/cat smell and she was telling me about how her husband's new woman had spurned her attempts to pray for her.

For the record, she didn't mind the bacon scent at all.  "Oh don't you worry about that.  You wouldn't believe the smells in some of the houses I go into.  It's enough to make you cry for the people who live there."  I hoped she couldn't smell those cat undertones.  Or even if she did, she certainly was gracious about it.

So anyway, there we were, her personal stuff out there for discussion, me still fretting about my little white weight lie and Chloe becoming one with the leather.

I smiled and tried to keep my blood pressure from betraying my sense of anxiety on both our behalfs.  And then Chloe got up to switch out the dvd she was watching.  I glanced at her as she walked across the living room.  Yes, you guessed it - we made eye contact.  And I sucked in my lips trying not to laugh and that's when Nurse Chatty looked right at me.  Quick!  What does one do?

I did what anyone who's been living here as long as we have would do.  I smiled, "Well, bless your heart."

It's the only proper thing one can do in that situation, of course.  And she smiled.  "Thank you for listening to me.  I haven't told anyone this stuff.  Except for my pastor."

I swear, when I was finishing college and took that What Color Is Your Parachute Test (okay, I know, that was bad timing, maybe taking that test before spending all the time and money on a degree would have made more sense) the results announced that I should be a minister, rabbi, writer (ahem), teacher, psychologist or some kind of therapist.

Silly me.  I thought it was a joke, that test, because it never did tell me what color my parachute was.