Blood and other necessasry things

Every 112 days, I'm eligible to donate blood. I'm tall enough, heavy enough, and A-negative enough to qualify to donate Double Red cells. This is not a regular blood donation. It's the super robot high tech blood donation. And it makes me LOOPY. I apologize in advance if this blog entry is less-than-sane.

They hook me up to an apheresis machine, which sucks out a regular unit of blood, spins out all the red blood cells, mixes the leftover bits (plasma, white cells, etc.) with some bizarro chemical, and then shoots the liquidy bits back into me. Then it repeats the entire process (draw out a unit of blood, spin, mix, return the dregs). It takes about an hour, makes my lips and nose tingle (that bizarro chemical's reaction), drops the body temperature (it's COLD in the Red Cross, and having two pints of 60-degree plasma shot into you in under an hour is chilling), and makes me woozy for a few days.

I hate feeling short of breath from climbing a single flight of stairs. I'm not fond of the lethargy. But then again, the person or people who benefit from my blood probably aren't fond of being in a hospital fighting for their lives. I figure my day or two of wooziness is a fair trade for someone's life. Especially knowing that my blood is usually used for premature babies and infants with chronic illnesses. Definitely worth the wooziness. And I got free cookies!

So if you aren't a regular blood donor, please think about going out this week to give a pint. It takes less than an hour, and you'll get free cookies. Oh, and you might save someone's life.

Only 5% of the eligible population actually donates regularly, and the donor center I went to today was deserted. It kind of makes me nervous to think if my life were on the line, there might not be any blood for me. My blood type is rare enough that I do worry about it once in a while... So if you're one of the rarer blood types, especially, please think about making donation a regular part of your life.

Plus, doesn't this look awesome? (squeamish people, please hit "page down" a couple of times right now)

Going Out

Coming back

Thanks for listening, or reading. Whatever. Loopy, remember?
END PSA.

So I finally managed to buy a ton of food that pleases both the Helper Monkey and Lulu. I was all set to put a roast in the crock pot this morning before going off to get loopy. But apparently I started out pre-loopified this morning, and I totally forgot. So, tomorrow we have the roast. Last night we had salmon steaks, corn on the cob, and taters. Starch city, but it was good.

Tonight, I was absolutely too whacked to cook, so we had pizza. The loopy continued, with Mr. Happy Sriracha Sauce Pizza Face Man.

Doesn't he look happy? He did, until I ate his face. Tasty!

Okay, where was I? Right. I've been Writing Actual New Words! Hooray! I hope they're not as kooky as I feel, but they actually exist, which is more than I can say about most of the week's writing progress.

Helper Monkey now has a new alert function: The Warning Siren of Distraction. Next time someone offers me a lovely gift that will clearly become an obsession, he's supposed to slap me on the back of the head like Gibbs on NCIS. Hopefully this tactic will work.

I'm not sure if it's a function of the bipolar disorder, or if I'm just a smidge OCD as well, but when I'm presented with a project that has a definite structure (such as a scarf to crochet, or a book to read), I tend to drop EVERYTHING ELSE, nearly to the point of forgetting to eat and sleep, until said project is complete. It's a Bad Thing. It's probably the Worst Thing, in fact. Anything that keeps me from writing regularly causes a backlog of the kinds of obsessive mental problems writing helps me deal with every day.

As much fun as it was to do something different for a few days, I'm suffering all around for not writing. But now I'm back at it. And oddly, I have a new idea for a new book, completely unrelated to the series I'm working on right now. We'll have to see if it goes anywhere, and I really have to get the first draft of the WIP done before I start anything new. Otherwise, I'll be stuck in a much larger version of the cycle of distraction I was trapped in for most of the week. Finish one project, then start the next. It's the only way I can work.

I'm completely envious of people who can work on two separate novels at the same time, but I just can't handle it.

Does anyone out there currently have two Works in Progress? I'd love to know how you juggle them both, or if you have a schedule for writing two works at a time. How do you balance it? How do you keep everything straight in your head? Just wondering. If you have a good strategy for managing it all, I'd be willing to give it a try... *frantic scanning of the room, waiting for the Gibbs Head Slap*

So that's it. Back to work! And it's now far enough out from the blood donation that I'm allowed A Happy-Ass Drink.

Progress-O-Meter:

Words: 52,458
Pages: 174