January 21, 2004

bleeding in different ways

I never even met Stacey-Dawg and yet href="http://sixweasels.diaryland.com">Six and href="http://zencelt.diaryland.com">Zen at me sniffling over her. At work,
dammit. At least I have a door in case the mascara smears really badly. I've never
had to deal with the death of any pet but a hamster or goldfish, and some how
those are hard to bond to. My parents got their dog the year before I moved out to
college, rather than any time in the previous *sixteen years* I spent begging for
a dog.

Yup, still a little bitter. Plus he was definitely a Daddy's
dog. So not only did we not really bond much, but I got a bit annoyed at the
'rents referring to him as my "brother". Though possibly not as annoyed as my
actual brother got at being mistakenly referred to by the dog's name. (Both names
begin with a vowel, both are male, so he got it a lot more than I
did.)

But this is something I'll be facing sooner than later; my cats
are in very good shape now, but one is almost fifteen and the other is only two
years younger. I don't know how long their good health will last. We will get more
kittens when they leave us, though, not because a pet can really be replaced but
because a house without children or pets and with only two residents seems
unbearably sterile. I want life around me.

To go from metaphorical
emotional bleeding to the real physical kind (how's that for a really stretched
segue??) I actually gave blood today, for only about the third time ever. It's not
that I'm not willing to give, but that they reject me for low blood iron 9 times
out of 10. (Low by their standards - it appears to be comepletely normal for me.)
Today the iron count was for once above where they want it, surprising the hell
out of me.

No wonder there are chronic blood shortages though. They
rule out so many people: people who weigh a pound too little (why not just take
half a pint?), people whose iron is one point low (would you rather die from lack
of blood than just be a little less energetic from the blood you're given?), and
not only anyone who is a hemophiliac, which does make sense, but anyone who sleeps
with one, which seems excessive. Anyone who has spent 3 months in the UK or 6
months in the rest of Europe is also ruled out. If it's a matter of dying quickly
for lack of blood, I'll take my chances on mad cow disease, which hasn't even been
shown to have been transmitted to humans. A while back, I couldn't donate for a
year because I had spent approximately three hours in the Korean DMZ. This time
they let me give blood but first spent twenty minutes checking that it was OK that
I had been in Ushuaia (which has a climate considerably cooler than, say,
Portland) and Antarctica. This was because they had to make sure there was no risk
of malaria. Note to the Red Cross: there are not a whole lot of malaria-carrying
mosquitoes in Antarctice. Mosquitoes are not fond of ice.

Anyway, I
gave. So there's my act of civic responsibility for January. Come back in two
weeks when we have voting, primary elections style.

Posted by dichroic at January 21, 2004 04:59 PM
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