Sad Friday.....

....every year I know it's coming. The day we have to close the pool for the winter. I think hubby tries to get it closed earlier and earlier every year. Not that he doesn't love it....it's a close race between the two of us. But just let that one random rogue leaf fall in early September, and he's looking for the cover. Me, I would swim into October (and we did one year, just so we could say we had). But I have to admit that once school starts, the time factor keeps us from spending any time at all in it. And it was a little "refreshing" the last time I got in it, which was last weekend. So I have to put on my big girl panties and face the fact that summer is really, really over.


On another sad note.....

.......it has to rank up there with spectacular failure when you suck at GIVING BLOOD. Oftentimes the technicians (is that what they're called?) have trouble sticking my veins, because the little suckers tend to roll around and hide once it gets down to business. I'm not squeamish.....I watch while they put the needle in. So I don't think it's a psychological shut-down or anything. My veins just want to be left alone to do their blood-pumping business without the rude intrusiveness of needles.

It's rare that they can get a good stick with the first try. Sometimes they switch arms. (No, they don't switch with me....they try the other one.) Sometimes they stick the needle under the skin and then just go digging around for a nearby vein. It really doesn't bother me.....much. There isn't much pain, and if I bruise the next day, it's just a badge of honor.

I was just about to praise the girl today for getting blood on the first try when she shook her head and said, "Uh oh." She picked up the bag of blood (what little there was) and shook it back and forth, as if that would help the blood that hadn't flowed yet. I didn't quite get that. Then she told me to keep wiggling my fingers around the little squeezey thing they give you, because that might "fool the body." Whatever. My blood just clotted, first around the cavernous hole she had managed to create, and then in the tubing itself.

I know it's not my fault. The only other time I was unsuccessful at donating blood, I had just started taking some potent diet pills that were evidently loaded with a truckload of caffeine, and my blood just wouldn't flow. That was my last day on those damn pills. I will accept the blame for that particular failure. Today, however, was just a fluke. I drank water all day long, as I do almost every day, so I know I wasn't dehydrated.


Still, I feel terrible that someone may not get a blood transfusion that he or she desperately needs because my veins/blood/technician suffered from incompetence.

But since it's Friday, I refuse to leave on a negative note. Tomorrow I should have something super duper, amazing, wonderful, happy, terrific, exciting to share. I'm afraid to say what it is lest I somehow jinx it. And it doesn't have a thing to do with college football.