I vant to suck your blooood
[Count Chocula voice]I donated blood.
I almost backed out of it, but I didn’t.
It took two HOURS.
After a full 30 minutes of screening questions (have you ever had sex with/been friends with/visited with anyone who had [condition/condition/condition] since 1977), I was finally shown to a reclining chair, prepped and stuck. Less than 30 seconds after the blood started to flow, I started to see that “off-air TV snow” I always see, peripherally, right before I faint.
I walked in there with a blood pressure of 124/72 and managed to crash to 71/40. It took me two hours to recover enough that they would let me leave.
Has anyone else ever had trouble like this when donating blood? Or is this just me?
Goodbye Old Man
Rest in Peace,
Old Man. You can now play fetch to your heart’s content in a place where “hunting season” is
every season.
Cysco
Faithful friend and hunting partner
September 21, 1994 - August 30, 2006.
Hummingbird
Outside with the dogs just after sunrise the other morning, I stood, yawning and stretching, in front of my house where a brick planter runs half the length of the house. This spring, my mother-in-law came over with ‘extra’ impatient flowers and helped me plant them. Surprisingly, they have survived the hot, dry summer; thriving in spite of my obvious neglect.
I stood there astonished at the vigorous yet fragile blossoms of pink, white, and red and the thick dark-green foliage, when I saw what I thought was a dragon fly hovering at the far end of the planter.
I looked again; it was a tiny hummingbird.
I held my breath as the creature hovered over selected blooms and sampling each, as if at a buffet. Her spastic, but precise, flight pattern brought her to within two feet of where I stood. I cursed to myself that I didn’t have my camera when she landed on the planter, seemingly resting. She looked up at me and continued to rest.
One of the dogs barked, startled us both, and she hummed off in a flash of glittery green to another buffet somewhere.
Tag...you're it
So yeah. It is late and here I am at HOME. Posting. On a Friday night.
(Wow. I need to get out more.)
Nevertheless, the big news is that I'm at HOME
and POSTING. Um...live. Which is going to have to explain all the ... and incomplete sentences/fragments. Sorry.
Anyway, after three hours puttering around with wires and switches and cursing like a sailor behind the closed door of our home office, I managed to get my home computer to talk nicely with the brand new Wild Blue satellite modem and the Linksys wireless router. If I were not so damn tired I’d come up with something
far more entertaining. But I’m too tired.
But everything is playing nice and getting along, which is why I'm now LIVE from my kitchen counter...on my work computer...um...blogging. Exciting. I know.
During those three hours of puttering and cursing, I called Wild Blue twice, got cut off once and waited about 45 minutes on hold before the polite, but absolutely monotoned, kid on the other end told me - 30 seconds into the conversation - that Wild Blue does not "troubleshoot anyone else’s hardware including routers." Nice. Ok.
So the next two hours were spent on the phone to India – I mean – Linksys. The first person I talked to had a fabulous grasp of the English language, but helpful? Not so much. I called back a few minutes later and got an engineer who could barely speak English – but – man – he had everything working in less than 15 minutes. It would probably have been less than five minutes, but I kept asking him to repeat himself.
Sorry, dude. And yes, North Dakota really is a state and yes, we really are technically savvy to the 21st century up here –
but don’t use me as a measuring stick for moderness, for Chrissakes. Really.
And again, if I were not so damn tired I’d give you scraps of dialogue to laugh at. I laughed. The Indian engineer even laughed. He must have been tired, too.
Anyway, everything works. For now.
And because of all that and a box of Junior Mints, I can participate in a game of Tag.
Naynay over at
“I still miss you baby, but my aim’s getting’ better” tagged me. I have never been tagged – officially called out – before. And with a formal invitation, one must participate. I think.
So – Naynay gave me five random words and I was instructed to post what I think of first.
My words:
Lawyer: "First, let's kill all the lawyers." Dad will understand.
Girl: my daughters Banana and Muffin
Arrow: Bow season for deer started today. (Shit. Here we go again.)
Breast: Breast? What breast? I ain’t got no stink’n breast!
Hairspray: only when I have to
And now it is my turn to TAG:
Rootie: watch, bowl, magnet, pie, umbrella
Bonanza: frame, cabinet, drapes, stove, door
Average Mom: sink, apple, remote, stool, tire
ThatEdeGuy: garbage, carpet, pencil, teapot, red
Hoppers (Is that you Frog?): dress, marker, candy, sleep, dirt
Would you believe I came up with all of those words by looking around the kitchen? Scary. I know.
Go to bed, self.
Ok.
Summer’s end
About four families started with places at the landing where my parents have had a cabin for nearly 40 years. The neighborhood has grown from the original four to about 15 clans now – all with extended families that descend upon the clustered cabins tucked into the treed hills that skirt the edge of the tiny lake where I spent most of my childhood summers.
The Sunday of Labor Day weekend of my 13th year was like any other. We played hard: water skiing, tubing, water volleyball playing, sandcastle making. When the sun finally started to sink and adult conversations turned from the latest scandal to what everyone still had in their cabin’s iceboxes, a community potluck picnic was brewing.
Women trotted home to throw together salads and side dishes, while the men argued over which grill to use. On this occasion, “Johnny’s” family hosted. Johnny was a farm kid – skin the color of tanned leather and hair bleached beyond blonde to transparency by the sun. A wiry little scrapper, he followed my brother, who was older than he was, around like a shadow.
By the time everything was organized for the meal, the sun was just about down and the mosquitoes were finding us. Burgers and dogs were cooking and the old charcoal grill was offering curled smoky shapes to the little wind that blew.
The buffet table was heaped with salads, beans, chips, cookies, brownies, buns, watermelon – picnic fare – double the amount of food really needed. Of course.
According to tradition – or a bald-faced survival tactic on the part of the adults trying to deal with over-tired kids at the end of the day – the children ate first. Being 13, I wasn’t a kid, nor was I an adult. So I helped the littlest ones fill their plates and get settled at the old wooden picnic table someone must have salvaged from a park somewhere. I helped Johnny into his seat at the head of the table. He was maybe three or four and determined to “do it myself.” I did not want to argue, as he wasn’t my little brother to boss around, so I got him set up and left him to his own devices.
He was doing fine, really, except he had played so hard that day trying to keep up with my brother that he was beyond exhausted. I filled a plate of food for myself, sat at the opposite end of the table, and watched him while I ate.
Johnny took a forkful of beans and started to chew. Mmm. Good stuff. His eyes closed and his head lolled backwards slightly before he caught himself and swung forward in one fluid motion, his open mouth meeting the next forkful of food as if he choreographed it.
As he chewed his second bite of food, his eyes rolled back in his head. Still chewing, eyes unfocused, he wrenched his body around in his chair and tried to talk to my brother who was sitting next to him.
Then he took a bite of his hamburger. His head bobbed, nearly hitting the plate before he caught himself, jerking himself upright.
He paused, stopped chewing, and blinked. The second half of that ‘blink’ took a full thirty seconds. He put forth Olympian effort but he could not re-open his eyes beyond half.
Succumbing to exhaustion, hamburger still in one hand, fork in the other, he sighed and slowly lowered his head to the table into the plate of food in front of him.
Out. Cold.
I will probably see Johnny (now Jonathan) this weekend. And no, he has yet to live that one down.
