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... but at the same time I find it a bit of a struggle to come up with stuff to talk about. My life is so mundane - not a complaint, I certainly like it the way it is - and the things that cross my mind as potential posts/updates throughout the day are either completely forgotten by the time I get home or defeated by my exhaustion and desire to do nothing but sit and surf my tablet/watch TV.
Speaking of the exhaustion, a couple of things that have come up over the past few years during my on-again, off-again relationship with LJ that you may not be privy to - I'm iron-deficient most of the time, so I suspect I'm borderline anemic most days. Presumably this is part of the reason I have a lot less energy than I used to (the others are an ongoing vitamin B deficiency and, as always, lack of adequate sleep). I'm not terribly good about keeping up with my vitamins - or, more like, I'm really good about them for a few months and then forget they exist for another few months, and then the cycle begins anew - and I'm constantly trying to work on the sleep thing.
There's other minor inconveniences with the iron deficiency/borderline anemia - if I'm not careful, it can prevent me from donating blood. Which I decided to make "a thing" for me starting last year - I decided to start donating blood regularly because, well, I can always make more. And I donated pretty consistently all throughout last year - probably 5 times, total? Today I made my first donation of 2014.
The actual donation part wasn't one of my better experiences, despite the fact that I really liked the (what would you call them? Let's go with technician, I guess) technician that handled me. He was an older black man who was very friendly and kept cracking jokes - in the past I've almost exclusively been handled by women, and usually it's pretty clinical. Not that I'm there to make friends anyway; I'm realizing the older I get the more I'm gravitating towards introversion, but that's another post, and we're talking about blood here.
They were kind of disorganized - apparently there were some volunteers that didn't show up, and I was the first donor that arrived. I wandered around confused for awhile; they usually have a table set up to greet people with the stickers and incentives (free comedy club tickets, discounted tickets for athletic events, etc.), as well as the documentation they want you to read and some water to hydrate, but I didn't see anything but the truck (hereafter referred to as the Bloodmobile) when I got to the site. I finally sat down where they'd set up the chairs and someone in the Bloodmobile spotted me pretty quickly. For the better part of an hour I was the only person there, which was very different from all my previous experiences donating - usually there's a few other donors present.
Their disorganization resulted in an over-long donation process - I was there for a full hour, thus abusing my lunch break to the fullest extent and then some - which wasn't a huge problem, but the Production side of me prefers it when things move a little more efficiently. (On the plus side, I didn't wind up with free/discounted tickets to a bunch of stuff I'll never go do or see. Hooray, lack of more clutter in my life!) The other marker of what makes a donation experience good or bad for me is how much the needle hurts when it goes in. I've had experiences where I didn't even feel it. Today was not one of those days. OW. Not sure if I'll bruise or not, but it's been about 8 hours and the fucker's definitely sore. My friend must've hit a nerve.
I also was not bleeding easily today. I was laying there for a while waiting for the bags to fill, and it took a lot of squeezing to get enough blood out of the finger prick to adequately test my iron levels (.5 above the minimum level - living dangerously, that I am). Blessedly, the needle itself didn't hurt during the bloodletting. (I've had an experience like that before, and that was utter agony. I still haven't gone back to that particular site thanks to my trauma.)
I did enjoy the technicians working there today, even if they needed a little help getting their shit together. While I was sucking down a bottle of water in the "recovery" area, I decided to ask them about specifics of the blood distribution. Apparently every pint of blood that's donated in SoCal stays in SoCal because the need for blood is so great. In fact, even with the donations, they still don't get enough blood. The largest amount of blood donations come from the Midwest. They mentioned Michigan, too, but that was as specific as they got. Blood trivia: Type O- is the most in demand.
There were two blood donors who had shown up by the time I left, so at least they were getting some more traffic in there. I made a FB post encouraging fellow co-workers (since it was right down the street from work) to go donate, but perhaps I worded it too neutrally? What a weird way to describe a post. Neutrally. I'm really hating FB these days - all those impersonal microblogging sites, actually. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr. I only got the Facebook account because my brother made me one. Still have avoided Twitter and Tumblr, and I intend to keep it that way. I guess I'm just an old internet bitch, updating her LJ. HA.
... I actually like the relative anonymity of this, though. Everyone's migrated over to greener internet pastures. I like feeling kind of invisible. (There goes that introvert again.)
Speaking of the exhaustion, a couple of things that have come up over the past few years during my on-again, off-again relationship with LJ that you may not be privy to - I'm iron-deficient most of the time, so I suspect I'm borderline anemic most days. Presumably this is part of the reason I have a lot less energy than I used to (the others are an ongoing vitamin B deficiency and, as always, lack of adequate sleep). I'm not terribly good about keeping up with my vitamins - or, more like, I'm really good about them for a few months and then forget they exist for another few months, and then the cycle begins anew - and I'm constantly trying to work on the sleep thing.
There's other minor inconveniences with the iron deficiency/borderline anemia - if I'm not careful, it can prevent me from donating blood. Which I decided to make "a thing" for me starting last year - I decided to start donating blood regularly because, well, I can always make more. And I donated pretty consistently all throughout last year - probably 5 times, total? Today I made my first donation of 2014.
The actual donation part wasn't one of my better experiences, despite the fact that I really liked the (what would you call them? Let's go with technician, I guess) technician that handled me. He was an older black man who was very friendly and kept cracking jokes - in the past I've almost exclusively been handled by women, and usually it's pretty clinical. Not that I'm there to make friends anyway; I'm realizing the older I get the more I'm gravitating towards introversion, but that's another post, and we're talking about blood here.
They were kind of disorganized - apparently there were some volunteers that didn't show up, and I was the first donor that arrived. I wandered around confused for awhile; they usually have a table set up to greet people with the stickers and incentives (free comedy club tickets, discounted tickets for athletic events, etc.), as well as the documentation they want you to read and some water to hydrate, but I didn't see anything but the truck (hereafter referred to as the Bloodmobile) when I got to the site. I finally sat down where they'd set up the chairs and someone in the Bloodmobile spotted me pretty quickly. For the better part of an hour I was the only person there, which was very different from all my previous experiences donating - usually there's a few other donors present.
Their disorganization resulted in an over-long donation process - I was there for a full hour, thus abusing my lunch break to the fullest extent and then some - which wasn't a huge problem, but the Production side of me prefers it when things move a little more efficiently. (On the plus side, I didn't wind up with free/discounted tickets to a bunch of stuff I'll never go do or see. Hooray, lack of more clutter in my life!) The other marker of what makes a donation experience good or bad for me is how much the needle hurts when it goes in. I've had experiences where I didn't even feel it. Today was not one of those days. OW. Not sure if I'll bruise or not, but it's been about 8 hours and the fucker's definitely sore. My friend must've hit a nerve.
I also was not bleeding easily today. I was laying there for a while waiting for the bags to fill, and it took a lot of squeezing to get enough blood out of the finger prick to adequately test my iron levels (.5 above the minimum level - living dangerously, that I am). Blessedly, the needle itself didn't hurt during the bloodletting. (I've had an experience like that before, and that was utter agony. I still haven't gone back to that particular site thanks to my trauma.)
I did enjoy the technicians working there today, even if they needed a little help getting their shit together. While I was sucking down a bottle of water in the "recovery" area, I decided to ask them about specifics of the blood distribution. Apparently every pint of blood that's donated in SoCal stays in SoCal because the need for blood is so great. In fact, even with the donations, they still don't get enough blood. The largest amount of blood donations come from the Midwest. They mentioned Michigan, too, but that was as specific as they got. Blood trivia: Type O- is the most in demand.
There were two blood donors who had shown up by the time I left, so at least they were getting some more traffic in there. I made a FB post encouraging fellow co-workers (since it was right down the street from work) to go donate, but perhaps I worded it too neutrally? What a weird way to describe a post. Neutrally. I'm really hating FB these days - all those impersonal microblogging sites, actually. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr. I only got the Facebook account because my brother made me one. Still have avoided Twitter and Tumblr, and I intend to keep it that way. I guess I'm just an old internet bitch, updating her LJ. HA.
... I actually like the relative anonymity of this, though. Everyone's migrated over to greener internet pastures. I like feeling kind of invisible. (There goes that introvert again.)
