JESSIE'S VEGAS

I sleep with my socks on. It reminds me of the time we visited Dodge City Kansas when I was in 3rd grade. At the cowboy grave yard, it was implicitly explained that every gunslinger was buried with their boots on. I couldn't figure out if that meant they were going to rematerialize and start a flurry of bullets around my head or that they had a happy shooting range in heaven. Nowadays,  I wonder if they just had cold feet like me. Anyways,  that was one memorable trip! My dad had turned a school bus into a motor home and painted a dragon on the side. He aptly named it the "gross dragon" and loaded his 6 kids and his best friends family up for a 21 state tour. There were some perks to having a Mormon hippie dad with ADD. I have seen all but 8 states, even if it was in the belly of a colorful purple bus dragon. Two days ago was my dad's birthday.  It took me a couple of days to call him. I was practicing up. My dad was a colorful character,  but he was never big on th...

"Sylvia, come on back!" The voice belonging to the woman behind the lab counter sounded "all business" when she called a new patient back. Her tone remained short and concise when I saw a Travis and a Paul go get their arms poked by the vampires in white coats too.  I couldn't help but chuckle a little to myself when I saw poor Juan come in with a brown paper bag.  It was obvious by his stooped stature and his unshaven face he wasn't feeling quite himself.  The contents of the bag would have remained "secret" except the woman behind the counter demanded to see the three specimen containers. Being a former ER nurse, I already knew the stool specimens the bag contained.  Juan blushed and conceded he had not been able to fill all the containers. The woman behind the counter let out a huge sigh. "Ohhh, well if you can't fill them all I don't know what we are going to do!" She stood up and looked at Juan like my mom used to look at me ...