« two old poems and some miscellaneous stuff | Main | maybe tomorrow will be better »
Friday, October 24, 2003
giving platelets... or not
Well, what a waste of an afternoon. For the most part. I zipped into Barnes and Noble on the way to the blood bank, and bought four nice matching Austen books (thereby finishing my collection of her novels in nice matching paperbacks), as well as a Maeve Binchy, and, on impulse, Lois Lowry's Gathering Blue, so that I would have a couple of options to get me through the two hours sitting still with needles in my arms. I negotiated the dreadful Fresno freeway traffic (uurrrggghg), got to the blood center, did my little "have you had sex with any prostitutes in the last two years" survey (I wonder, does anyone ever answer yes on that question? probably), got my finger poked... and got sent away because my iron is too low. Damn. I had forgotten about that -- not that they told me it would be checked -- they just said no alcohol, no caffeine, no this, no that, when I made the appointment on the phone. But I do have low iron. I'm not sure if it's because of my horrific periods or not. Anyway, I was so depressed for a few minutes -- I felt like I let Conor and Jared and Kayli down (all kids with this rare and vicious form of leukemia -- I'm friends with Conor's mom and it's through her that I learned about the importance of giving blood products, and found out about the other kids). I felt like I let the blood bank down, and I felt absurd for having stressed so much about getting there on time, pawned my kids off on my parents, etc., all so that I could go do this, and then I couldn't. I got over that -- after all, I tried, and after I work on getting my iron to normal levels I can try again. But I do feel kind of silly having scheduled this whole trip down there around that and then having the main event fall through.
I did get a lot of cool books though. So all was not lost.
I also went to Borders after the blood bank, returned a book T had given me (bless his heart, I love Jane Austen, and he got me a Jane Austen biography, but not one I'm interested in), and got three books: one with Jane Austen's and Charlotte Brontė's juvenalia, one with four of Shakespeare's comedies, and My Antonia. I did a little bit of necessary shopping (and got some surprises for the kids; they were gratifyingly pleased about that when I went to pick them up) and went to the Olive Garden, where I was treated rudely and the food was not as good as usual and I just generally wished I hadn't gone there. So. On the plus side, snazzy new books. On the minus side... almost everything else. sigh.
Good news though -- T just called and it looks like he'll probably be home by Tuesday. yippee!
--------
