Hide and Seek

I lost my mother today. I found her again, but it was strange to get to her apartment mid-morning, long after she would have finished breakfast and to have the apartment empty.  I wasn't sure where to look for her, but hoped that maybe she had gone to my friend Peg's apartment to see it.  

I waited for about half an hour.  Tried to take a nap (unsuccessfully), watched a bit of TV and checked to make sure she wasn't passed out on the floor in the bedroom.  Finally I left her a note saying I was going to Costco and would stop by later.  I also reminded her about her hair appointment at 1:15, and I left.

When I got home from Costco, I called her and she was there.   She said she had gone down to the game area to work a puzzle.  Another Yay from me....she is finding things to do that don't involve just sitting in her apartment.   This is very good.  I told her it was too late to visit her right then, because her hair appointment was in 20 minutes and that I decided I would skip coming to see her today but would see her tomorrow.

She is settling in.

Before stopping by Atria, I went to Blood Source for my regular blood donation.  What a disaster.

First, I think the girl who checked me in had never done it before.   She started out asking me for my birthdate because she couldn't read it clearly on my driver's license.  I gave her the date and the very next question she asked was "what is your birth date?"

She handed me a two-sided list of medications and instructions I should read, even though I've been donating blood for >10 years and the list hasn't changed.  Then she left me to answer all those questions that would disqualify you.   Everyone else who checks that list does it in about 2 minutes, stopping to ask me where I have been out of the country.  She read every question and checked my answer to see if I had answered properly.  

When she got to the travel question, she had to check every single country (Russia, China, Germany, Hungary, Austria, Slovakia, Netherlands) in a book to see if, for example, Germany was an OK country to visit and still give blood!  When I told her I had been to Hungary, she asked which country Hungary was in.  When I told her that Hungary was a country, she asked me how to spell it.

I had to remind her to take my pulse and my temperature

Either she was extremely annoying or I was just in a bad mood and not ready to help someone trying to learn her job.

Then we moved on to the actual blood donation area and she turned me over to the staff there.  About five years ago, the regular staff at this location started to rotate.  It used to be everybody knew me by name when I walked in the door and we got caught up over the needle.  There was never a problem drawing blood, and my blood flowed so fast that I filled a bag in about 5-10 minutes.  They say that the blood flows faster if you drink a lot of water, but I drink gallons of water, so I never go on a "force water" program before I give blood.

Once again, the woman taking my blood was someone I had never seen before.  She kept up reassuring talk, as if to calm me down, as if I'd never done this before.  I could tell just from looking at the needle when she stuck it in that she had not done it right.  It always goes right in, the blood starts flowing immediately, and in no time at all, I'm munching cookies and drinking more water.   But she had to wiggle this one around (which stung) and eventually got the blood to start to flow, but she couldn't let go of the needle or it would stop again.  Each time she moved it just a little, I winced.  She had to get someone else to come and take blood samples to submit with the bag of blood.

The blood slowed and then, when it had reached the maximum time allowed for them to take your blood, she had to stop with only a partially filled bag.   This is the second time this has happened, both times with someone who was a new face to me and who had difficulty hitting the vein properly.

I'm actually considering whether I want to take a break from donating blood for awhile.  I will next be eligible when we are in Ukraine, so I could not make a future appoiintment today, but given the bad experiences I have had the past two years with people I don't recognize and who always have problems taking blood, where the old crew never had a problem, I am more reluctant to try again.

It's very depressing to watch her pack up a bag of my blood and tell me it would be discarded.  What's the point of that?

But the day wasn't a total loss.  I picked up the jerky treats that our dogs like at Cosco.  They cost $6+ a box and until next month they are on sale for $4 off, which means I got each for $2+ (limit of five per customer).  I may go back in a week or so and buy 5 more....  (or send Walt so there won't be any impulse buys on the bill!!)

Never Too Old

You are never too old to learn something new, they say.  I've been giving blood since Walt and I were first married, yet today I learned something I never knew before.

I got all dressed in red, since this is Wear Red Day, celebrating women's heart health.  I figured that it was appropriate to go and give blood wearing red.  

I arrived at BloodSource a little early, so settled in to wait my turn.  The receptionist, seeing my red jacket and red shirt asked if I was a 49er fan.  I told her that this was "wear red day," but we did talk about the SuperBowl and our mutual support of the 49ers.  

Eventually, however, she had other things to do so I took out my Kindle and settled in to read "My Antonia," our next book club selection.  

Right away, my cough kicked in. (My doctor is going to change my cardiac medication to something that won't make me cough, but she wants to see me first, and I haven't made an appointment yet.) I figured people at BloodSource weren't going to be happy to hear me coughing away like a TB patient, so I popped a cough lozenge.   Those sugar-free Ricola cough drops that Cindy gave me are really good, and every effective. My cough stopped almost immediately.

In short order, the nurse called my name and I sat down for the usual interview.  She looked at me and asked if I were eating candy or chewing gum.  I told her about the lozenge.  She told me that I would have to wait 15 minutes, after finishing the lozenge, before she could take my temperature, since sucking on something could raise your body temperature a bit.  In more than 40 years I had never heard that before.  I threw away the lozenge and by the time I had finished the paper work, had my hemaglobin checked (it was OK this time) and blood pressure checked (wonderfully low...as was my pulse, which has been a problem at Kaiser in the past).  

She eventually took me to the blood-letting chair and kept an eye on the clock.  She literally counted down the last 10 seconds to 15 minutes so she could take my temperature, which was normal, of course.

Then there was the search for the perfect vein.  The vein in my right arm has been Old Faithful for more than 40 years, but the last 3 times it has caused problems and they decided they wanted to use the left arm this time.  Only the vein in the left arm is more difficult to find.  The nurse must have spent 10 minutes checking both arms trying to find out where she wanted to plunge the needle.

She finally marked a vein in my left arm with marking pen and then, when she went to sterilize the area by rubbing it with alcohol for a minute, the whole inside of my arm turned purple from her rubbing out the marks.

But ultimately the needle went right into the vein.  Only it wasn't that easy.  It bubbled nice red blood immediately, but then wouldn't start down the tube to the collecting bag.  She moved it a bit and it did finally start flowing, but then stopped again twice.  But finally it started behaving itself and in short order I had finished filling my bag.

I love it that they send you to the snack table and encourage you to eat.  I do miss the days of fresh donuts, but they have a nice supply of snacks and I sat there eating Ritz peanut butter crackers and reading someone's old copy of "Southern Living," a magazine with which I cannot identify at all.   Except for the recipes for gooey comfort foods, of course.

I drove to Trader Joe's after giving blood.  I'm learning to like this rental Ford that we have.  The iPod goes inside the console in between the front seats, so when I get to my destination I don't have to unplug it and take it with me.  It's nicely hidden away.

The afternoon was a quiet one, but I sat here getting more and more sleepy, so ultimately gave in and took a nap.

Dontcha hate it when you are deeply, deeply asleep and the phone rings?  I was so deeply asleep that I made the decision not to answer the phone (turns out it was from Emily's List, I learned later) and was halfway to getting back to sleep again when the phone rang again.  I finally struggled to my feet and answered it without checking the caller ID--it was the San Francisco Symphony, and I hung up on them.  

But the damage was done and I was awake now, though groggy for a good half hour or more before I had rebooted all of my systems.

All in all, it wasn't a necessarily a great day...just what happened.   But at least I learned not to suck on a cough lozenge before donating blood again!

Best Laid Plans

Those who have known me for any length of time are going to be shocked at what I'm about to confess.

My plan today was to have lunch with a good friend I hadn't seen in four years, and I made sure I packed my camera to record the lunch...or at least the food (which was beautiful).  But in the end, I never took the camera out of my purse and didn't even think about it until I'd said goodbye to her and was getting back into my car.

So the Photo of the Day is from the first part of this very weird day, which definitely did not go according to plan.

 The PLAN was to go to Bloodsource for my usual blood donation, then go to the store to get just a couple of things, stop by Verizon, which is near the supermarket, and if there was nobody in there ask the guy about a couple of niggling problems I'm having with my phone, maybe stop and get my hair cut, come home, take a shower, and get on the road for the drive to Dixon, where I was meeting Lisa.

What could go wrong?

Well, first of all, there was a new phlebotomist and that almost always spells trouble.  She inserted the needle and sprayed me with blood in the process (but had covered me up, first, so it didn't get on my clothes) but then the blood did not flow. She poked and moved the needle around and could get the blood started, but it was going VERY slowly.  She called for help and a woman who usually does it without problem came to help, said my vein was "tricky" and she managed to get the blood flowing but still slowly.  Finally I had reached "the point of no return" (not quite sure what that means) and the blood was starting to clot in my arm and they had to give it up.  I'm now not able to donate again for 8 weeks because of the computer system recording that I actually gave blood today.
I was kind of disappointed.  This would have been my 40th donation and I'm not sure but I think on the books I get credit for donating today.  We'll see when I go back in December.

So then I went down to the supermarket, checked Verizon and found the shop empty.   Whew.  That NEVER happens.  I explained my problems, which have to do with the phone not consistently connecting to wifi, even here in the house, and the phone not turning off when I turn it off which runs the battery down.  The battery went from fully charged to fully empty in a matter of about 4 hours the other day.  Other times it will stay fully charged for a whole day.

Well, first of all, he told me he was removing this app from my phone because it was a real energy suck.  Now, I never knew what that app did because the OTHER guy who works in the store put it on for me last time I had a problem and told me it would help keep my phone from using so much battery so quickly.  Go figure.

But the guy couldn't figure out my other problems, so he called tech.  Turns out I couldn't talk with tech because the account is in Walt's name and I'm not listed as a valid user on the account.  Sheesh.  Damn male chauvenists!   But they agreed that the only possible solution, before considering giving me a replacement phone, was to completely reinstall the operating system.  That meant losing all of my apps and all of the information stored on those apps.  If I had been thinking clearly, I would have come home, copied down all the information I needed and taken the phone back tomorrow, but he told me the whole process would only take about 10 minutes, so I just went ahead and did it.  Figured it might be a nice way to clear out all the superfluous apps I had.

Nearly an hour later, he was still trying to finish it, but I had to leave, so he just gave me back the phone to let it continue updating.  By the time I got home, there was no time for a shower, and barely enough time to change clothes.  My hair (as you can see from the Photo of the Day) was pretty much a lost cause.  While changing clothes, I removed the bandage they put on at Bloodsource and blood started spurting out all over the place.  Scared Walt, for sure!  But I managed to get it stopped and a bandaid took care of it.  I figured heck, I was having lunch with a nurse.  If I started to bleed again, it would be no big deal.

I actually got to the tea room about 10 minutes early, and Lisa was already there.   Oh, man, was it good to see her!  She was always one of my favorite people when I worked for Women's Health.  We had such a close-knit family there until Sutter Medical Foundation came along and ruined everything.  Now we are scattered to the four winds and I almost never see anybody and I miss them all!

As we were settling in, we were doing the "what's new with you?" game and I said "how are the kids?"  I remembered the last time I saw her two boys they were very young...the oldest was maybe 7...?  I felt like I'd been punched in the stomach when she told me her oldest son, age 19, was killed in an accident a year and a half ago.  Oh I felt so bad I hadn't known.  She uses her family name professionally, and I didn't remember her husband's last name, so even if I'd seen the obituary, it wouldn't have struck me.  But I should have been there.   Those of us who belong to that club that nobody wants to join are a comfort when something like this happens.  I remember the couple that we relied on right after David died.  Their daughter had been gone many years, but I remember clearly the day she died...the first (of far too many) children from Davis that I knew who died.

So we chatted as only two grieving mothers can about the grieving process, about our kids, about their deaths, and about "how we are doing."  I think it was helpful because I could say the things that people who have not gone through this wouldn't think to say and know that she understood.

The lunch wasn't all sadness.  I had purchased a Groupon for the Linde Lane Tea Room (the link takes you to someone's blog with great photos of the place), where I had been for a birthday party a year or so ago.  When I bought the Groupon it was with the idea of having a nice high tea with Jeri when she was here in August, but her schedule was so fulll, there was never any time, so then I had to find someone to invite to join me.  Since I have no close friends in Davis, it really took me a long time to think of someone, but I'm so glad that I asked Lisa.  I hope it won't be another 4 years before we do this again!

I spent the afternoon starting to reinstall all the apps that I want to keep on my phone.  It's going to take awhile before I get it back to what it was before, but I have Word with Friends and Instagram back anyway, and those are the most important ones!

Jesus at the Door

The dogs barked and barked and barked, only instead of barking at the window, they barked at the door and then they ran outside, which is a little unusual for them. It was a bit early for the mailman but miracles do happen, so I went to the door and a shaky hand was holding this right in front of my face.

The old woman looked terrified that I might sic all those dogs on her so she kind of threw her brochure at me and hurried down the driveway. (I love that Jesus is wearing flip flops!)

This was the second time this morning that I had been shunned, with a look of terror.

I had an appointment to donate blood at 9:30 and was fairly confident that I would pass the hemoglobin test this time, and I did...with flying colors (red, of course). That cleared the way for blood donation and we went out into the donating part of Blood Source, where she handed me over to a young woman I hadn't seen before. I suspected she was new because she must have taken 10 minutes getting ready for the needle stick. She prodded the vein they always use for at least 3 minutes, marked it with a pen and then got her bags all ready, checking a list as she went along.

Finally came the time to stick the needle. This is never ever a problem for me. She stuck it right where she'd marked, but nothing happened (except, of course, that the needle went in). No blood. She began to move the needle around all over the place but got no blood. She was getting nervous. Finally she went to get someone to help her. The other woman was able to get the blood flowing, but very slowly, and with clots because, she said, they had been mucking around in the vein for so long.

Nothing left to do but remove the needle, bandage the arm and try the other arm. More poking and proding (this time by the more experienced phlebotomist) and finally got the blood flowing all right. It had taken about 20 minutes to get it started and, by the clock, it took me 8 minutes to fill the bag. My other arm was bandaged.

I was then directed to the food area. The quality of food has gone waaaay down, in this economic downturn. No more donuts, only a couple of snack choices and they were almost out of bottled water. But I had a snack and then went to Save Mart to get food for our high tea tomorroow. (This is going to be the most expensive non-royal high tea in the history of high teas, I think!)

When I got to the check-out stand I pushed all of my food to the front of the belt, leaving lots of space for the person behind me. the woman left at least a foot, if not more, between her food and mine and she stood as far from the belt as she could, leaning over to place her food on the belt and leaving a shopping cart's distance between her body and mine. I couldn't figure out why and turned around to look at her, a look of shock on her face as I did so.

That's when I realized I looked like this...

...and she probably didn't want to catch whatever horrible communicable disease I must have!

However, when BloodSource "does" something to you (squirt you with your own blood, keep you waiting too long, or dig around in your arms too long), they give you a free t-shirt, so I now have a new t-shirt, I've donated blood, and I'm ready to get started baking for the tea tomorrow.

A fairly decent list of accomplishments for 2-1/2 hours of my time.

#29

Apparently this was the 29th time I have donated blood at Bloodsource in Davis.

It wasn't the 29th time I'd shown up to donate blood. I have lost count of the many times I have been turned away because of a low hematocrit. Each time I'd watch that little drop of blood sit, stubbornly suspended in the liquid and hear that they would have to run a sample through the centrifuge, and then half the time being told that it didn't quite make the grade. I always miss by just a point, but they send me back to try, try again. They would send me off with a package of oatmeal, and tell me to eat iron-rich foods.

Last time I donated blood, we agreed to set my next appointment two weeks past the date when I was eligible to donate again, figuring that my system needs an additional two weeks to recover.

I also helped it along this time by eating beans, spinach, and oatmeal (not together, of course) over the past week.

Well, it worked. That little drop of blood in the solution sank to the bottom immediately and stayed there and I was good to go.

I've always given blood when I could, starting back when we lived in Berkeley many years ago, before Jeri was born. I gave regularly until I tested positive for HIV. It didn't send me into any panic because I knew about false positives and, of course, a second testing came back negative. But the fact that I'd tested positive once meant I couldn't donate again for several years. I also was not permitted to donate blood for a year or two after I spent a month in Houston helping with my friend Bill, who ultimately died of AIDS, but also had Hepatitis-C.

But I haven't had any limiting factors (other than low hematocrit) for several years now and in the meantime Bloodsource opened a facility very close to our house (and recently moved it even closer to our house), so I didn't have to wait for a blood drive to park a truck somewhere in town, or drive into Sacramento to donate.

I love Bloodsource. Everybody is so friendly. I always go on a Friday morning at 9 a.m., so I watch Regis and Kelly while I'm eating my donut and drinking my water after my donation. Twice they have accidentally squirted blood on me and I got a free t-shirt and a big apology. The facility has the feel of my dentist's office (which I have always described as being like going to the hairdresser), with the casual atmosphere, the joking that goes on, and the patients, many of whom greet each other because they've run into each other here before.

I thought I would try donating platelets once because you can do that every two weeks. I wasn't sure how it all worked, but they remove your blood, strip it of the components they need, and then return it to you. The process takes about an hour (I can fill a bag of whole blood in 10 minutes), but with me they had difficulty getting the blood back in, so we decided I would just stick with whole blood instead of trying to donate platelets.

I really like donating blood. It seems such a simple thing to do, yet we are always being told that the need is great. And, besides, you get a free donut when it's all over!

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There is no mistaking Higgins. You can find him in the dark because he's so much bigger than the other puppies. I don't worry too much about Higgins.

But I worry about the others. They are all gaining, they are having normal bodily functions, but having raised so many orphans, I know that a day can make a difference, especially at this young age. Though all four puppies ate very well for two feedings in a row (the mid-night feeding, for some reason, always seems to be the best one), where each took 1-1/2 to 2 oz of formula, when I fed them mid-day, three of them ate well, but Alfie wouldn't open his mouth and seemed a bit "floppy." He just would not wake up. I set about feeding Freddie and having Walt hold Alphie, hoping to get him to wake up. I still couldn't get him to open his mouth and when I finally managed to get it open, he wouldn't suck from the bottle. I managed to get an ounce in him with the good ol' syringe.

This is not the first time this has happened, and usually what happens is that the puppy who wouldn't eat at one feeding chows down at the next one, but not Alfie. I couldn't get him to take anything at the second feeding. I finally had to call Ashley and ask her to come and check him, while we were out reviewing a show.

When we got home, Alfie was gone. Ashley sent a note saying they had given him fluids (they inject it under his skin), but were going to take him home to the mother to see if he would do better. Keep your fingers crossed.

My 26th Time

They tell you not to exercise, to go home and take it easy, to eat more than your usual amount of food, and then they give you a donut, some other snack foods, a t-shirt, and send you on your way.

What's not to like about donating blood?

OK, yeah...some people don't like that moment when they insert a needle in your arm, but it's not all that bad and just think about the people that you may be saving by spending a few minutes giving up a pint of your blood.

This was my 26th time to donate blood through Bloodsource here in Davis, though I started donating blood regularly when we still lived in Oakland, some 35 years ago.

When we moved to Davis, donating blood involved traveling distances and I had small children, so I didn't give for several years. Then, when I started working for Sutter Medical Foundation, they would have a mobile unit that came and I was able to give blood that way.

Then Bloodsource opened an office just a mile from home. I don't remember what brought me there to donate the first time, but these guys are so organized that they make your follow-up donation appointment while you're sitting there bleeding into a bag. Their staff is extra friendly and make it a point to greet you by name whenever you walk in the door. And they were situated right next door to a donut shop, which means that they had fresh donuts in the snack area afterwards.

Could they possibly make it more appealing?

They also make it rewarding for reaching milestones. I don't need the gifts they give, but I now have a keychain, an acryllic star, and a couple of t-shirts. (The t-shirts were for times when they managed to squirt blood onto whatever I was wearing at the time)

It's always an adventure when I go to give blood, only because the iron in my blood is always iffy. They think it may take me longer than most people to rebuild it up after a donation. Usually they like to spread the appointments 8 weeks apart, but I frequently am rejected the first time and end up donating again two weeks later.

I was always intrigued by donating platelets, which you can do more frequently. It's a longer process, but you watch videos while they are removing the platelets. I always watch these people sitting in comfortable chairs, covered with blankets, watching TV and thought "Hey, I can do that!"

It's a two step process, which involves taking the blood out, running it through a centrifuge, removing the platelets, and putting the rest of it back. It's that "putting it back" part that is tricky because when you have a hole in your veins, the blood wants to go out so you're essentially trying to pump it upstream and encountering resistance from the blood coming downstream.

I thought there was nothing to it, but apparently it's quite complicated and my veins wouldn't handle it. After about 5 minutes, the blood wasn't going back into me through the vein that they were trying to use. They tried to find a good vein in the other arm, but were unsuccessful so we decided that my intentions were good, but that I should just stick to giving whole blood.

So now instead of relaxing in the chair at Bloodsource and watching movies, I donate blood (which I can do in 5 minutes), and then climb into my recliner and take a nap, with a puppy (which they don't let you bring into Bloodsource!).

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Having a "senior moment"? You might want to check out this entry from Time Goes By by Ronni Bennett, who quotes some interesting research from The New York Times to explain those moments when the word/name we're search for eludes us.

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Note to Olbermann and O'Reilly. Please get a room and settle this thing. Countdown is turning into the anti-Fox show most of the time, and O'Reilly fights back with anti-NBC rhetoric. Olbermann is so good think how much more hard news he could cover if he weren't so obsessed with O'Reilly and Rupert Murdock. Didn't realize until tonight that he once worked for Murdock, which may explain why the exhausting diatribes against Fox and O'Reilly. But, really, Keith--this is getting v-e-r-y old.

Life, Such as It Is

I made no progress on the "Road to Nowhere" today. But I have a legitimate excuse! Really!

I gave blood this morning and they tell you "no strenuous exercise" for a couple of days. I figure that the way I walk on the treadmill is hardly "strenuous," but the idea is to get the heart pumping and I suspect that was precisely what the blood people DON'T want you to do, so I decided to give myself a one day vacation after a whopping three days of religious exercise.

However, it was kind of cool at Blood Source this morning because they gave me a lovely acrylic paperweight to commemorate my having donated 3 gallons of blood.

Not today, of course, but cumulatively.

So I spent a good portion of the day under puppies again. These little guys go way beyond "craving" attention.

Russell isn't so bad. Maybe he's the calmer of the two normally, or maybe he's under the influence of the pain medication I'm giving him for his hernia operation, but you can actually put him down somewhere and walk away and not have him follow you.

Jack is just insane. He must. be. with. me. at. all. times.

I tried using the gate across my office, but he learned to climb it.

Figuring it was because he could get toeholds in the mesh of the gate, I tried putting a wooden barricade across the living room so I could look at a book I had just received that I couldn't read while he was leaping about in my lap.

I use this barricade to keep Sheila and Lizzie out of the living room. Lizzie can jump three times its height, but has never figured that if she put some forward motion into her jumps she could easily get over the barricade. Jack got in the living room within 10 seconds, without toe holds.

I fixed up the cage so that they could get into the cage to sleep on the soft bed and could get out the door into the back yard, but could not get into the house.

It took Jack about 5 minutes to figure out the dog door into my office so there went that idea.

I blocked the dog door the way that I do when I'm trying to keep Lizzie and Sheila in, by putting a large container in front of the door so that you can't get in and I saw Jack balanced on all four feet pushing against the container trying to push it out of the way. I gave up and let him in.

As long as I sit in the recliner, with Russell asleep on my right arm and Jack finally asleep on my left arm (after he's licked me and licked me and licked me and licked me), they will stay quiet for more than an hour. I can either nap with them or watch TV, but little else.

Looking at the two bodies lying on either side of me so much of the time today I thought better names for them might have been "Romulus" and "Remus."

They are sweethearts, to be sure, and I do love cuddling with them, but I just never get anything DONE with them around. Which, today, wasn't such a bad thing. Not that giving blood ever really wears me out, but it was a handy excuse.

On the computer scene, things are coming along. I have had wonderful help from many sources. I discovered, for example, Open Writer, which is freeware which mimicks Word. Sooner or later I will find my word perfect disks, which are "around here somewhere," but in the interim, Open Writer is wonderful.

Several people also recommended some non-Microsoft web design software for me and I think that it's going to work very well. I am thinking of changing the look of Funny the World, so between now and the first of the month, I will get to know the new software (I have three options to try out) and maybe feel comfortable with one by the time it's time to start the new look (in the meantime, I am doing the journal on the laptop!)

But one fabulous thing that happened is that I found and purchased a mailing label program which was one that I had used before. I had borrowed the program (it's one of those cheapie programs) from someone and installed it, but then returned the program disk, so when the computer crashed several months ago, I couldn't reinstall it. In preparation for losing all of my addresses, I had efficiently printed the file, but it was so wide that each page took three pages to print and it was later impossible to tell which page went with which other page, so the print-out became essentially useless.

BUT, when I reinstalled the program from my brand new paid-for disk (which I have filed in my new "programs to reinstall when the computer crashes next time" binder), I discovered that I still had all the original files and they called up beautifully once I got the program running. At least SOMETHING has gone right with this "clean reinstall" of XP.

Tomorrow Russell is going off to the newspaper to be photographed to be Pet of the Week (I predict he will be adopted almost immediately, he's so darn cute), I'll get back on the treadmill, for 5 minute spurts instead of ten and then ten minutes the next day, and life continues moving on.

I Flunk "Bleeding"

The last time I gave blood, I expressed a passing interest in platelet donation and asked what the process was. It's a longer procedure. You're hooked up to a machine for a little over an hour. It takes your blood, strips the platelets from it, and then returns the red blood cells back to your body. While this is going on, they also hook you up to a DVD player and you watch a movie from a list of DVDs that they give you.

Sounded good to me. A noble reason to sit and watch TV for an hour and a half, and a donut when it's all over. What's not to like?

The intake procedure is the same except they weigh you. This is when I found out that I'm not dying of some strange wasting disease. My bathroom scale has shown a steady loss of weight over the past two months, despite no change in my bad eating habits. I didn't mind, of course, losing 12 lbs in 2 months, but it did worry me a bit. However, I found those 12 lbs on the Blood Source scale, so I guess I'm not going to be collapsing because of rapid weight loss soon.

After the intake, you get a nice truffle to take home with you, and when you come back for the 6th time you get a licenseplate holder. Cool. I was already envisioning it on the car.

You get into a chair similar to the whole blood donation chair and they give you something to read that lists all the possible bad things that can happen to you during the procedure. But I am invincible. I knew nothing like that would happen to me. They said that you often feel cold when the blood is being returned to you, so they covered me up with a thick blanket, though I was already warm.

I chose Dreamgirls to watch on my personal DVD player and settled back while they poked and prodded and stuck me with a needle, took blood samples and set up the machine to strip my blood of all of its platelets.

I was into the movie, so I wasn't aware that the machine was beeping and flashing a red light. A nurse came over and punched buttons and got another small blanket to cover my arm so that it would stay warm, though it didn't feel cold at all. She also gave me Tums in a cup in case I felt any of a number of symptoms (none of which I did. I am invincible, remember?)

The machine started beeping again and someone plopped one of those heat-in-the-microwave pads down on my chest. It was Very. Hot. but they said they needed to warm my body up. Strange, since I didn't feel any sensation of cold.
Soon the machine was beeping angrily again and this time I had a team of people working over me. Checking the needle, checking the machine, and having a big High Level discussion about whether my vein was about to "blow" or not.

They finally decided that my vein had started leaking and I was developing a bruise. This is Not Good. So the only thing they could do was to remove the needle and use my other arm instead.

I've been poked and prodded a lot in my lifetime and have always been rather proud of my good veins. But, on reflection, I realize that it was always the same vein. Apparently my one good vein. Singular. When they tried to find a suitable vein in my left arm, though they punched and poked and had me squeeze something and used the sphygmomanometer (blood pressure cuff), they still could only find a small vein that they figured would "blow" if they attempted to use it for the procedure.

Ultimately, they decided that today was not my day to donate platelets. I felt like I had failed veins or something. They assured me it wasn't my fault, thanked me for coming in, suggested I continue to donate whole blood instead of platelets and directed me to the donut table for my snack.

Owell. I gave it the old college try. But now I have to go out and get Dreamgirls because I was just starting to get into the story! But at least I got donut (and a truffle)...and a nice nap in the afternoon.


If you want to hear something funny, go to this page, scroll down to where it says "Not My Job: Kevin Clash and Elmo" and click on it to play the audio. This was my favorite guest on "Wait, Wait." It's 12 minutes and very funny, especially toward the end. Clash is amazing.