The only thing I had on my calendar Thursday was a 9 a.m. appointment to give blood. Why do I still donate, knowing that the Red Cross emphasizes the “donor” part and never, ever talks about how they sell this donation? Eh, because people still need blood, and because I’m an adult enough to know that fresh blood is a commodity, and it would be foolish not to handle it as such. And the donation is at my gym, and the owner likes a good showing by members. People-pleasing is my business. Also, I’m HIV-negative and healthy, so: Shrug.
On the way over I drove past a few of the big trend in mid-level holiday decorations this year: The enormous inflatable. Regular inflatables have been around for a while, of course, but the enormous inflatable — big enough to approach the roofline on a two-story house — are new, the Christmas equivalent of the 12-foot skeleton. They’re sort of festively terrifying. I wonder what it must be like for a kid to look out the window and see a Rudolph or Frosty the size of a dinosaur swaying in the yard. But they’re catching on.
The problem, with it and all inflatables, is what to do in the daytime, the downtime for holiday decorations. Most people seem to turn the blowers off when the sun’s up, which leaves yards covered by what looks like holiday-colored parachutes, or maybe just dead snowmen and reindeer.
I got to the gym, spotted the blood crew on the basketball court, and started the routine. There’s always a lot of warnings and concerns about fainting, but I’ve never seen it happen. “So does anybody really faint?” I asked the phlebotomist.
“High-school kids. They go down all the time. And once one falls, they all do,” she said.
“But they’re young and healthy,” I said.
“And they never eat breakfast. Then they lie to us about how they ate breakfast. I asked one girl, ‘I thought you said you had a big breakfast. What did you eat?’ and she said, ‘Fruit snacks.’ I told her to eat a big lunch, and she came back and said she still felt sick. ‘What did you have for lunch?’ I asked. ‘A bag of apple slices.'” Damn, kids these days. I finished my bloodletting, drank a bottle of water, chose Cheez-its for my snack and headed out.
OK, Cheez-its AND mini Oreos. I wanted both salt and sweet.
It was a good Christmas hereabouts. I got many gifts, both thoughtful and practical, and Alan gave us a bike rack for our cars, one that slips into the trailer hitch and carries them on the outside, bus rack-style. That’ll be nice for exploring some car-free trails in the warm weather, maybe heading up north. I had a dream once of spending a big chunk of winter in a warm climate, taking both bikes and dog along, but after checking out seasonal rental rates for the Florida Keys (the only part of Florida I think I could tolerate), eh, maybe not.
Another thing I did over the last few days was watch a documentary — on Hulu, I believe — called “The Disappearance of Shere Hite.” Having remembered how “The Hite Report” on female sexuality rocked the usual suspects, it seemed worth a trot down memory lane. Hard to imagine her most newsworthy finding — the most women need more than PIV to reach orgasm — landed as hard as it did. But it did. And I came away thinking that younger women seem to have benefited from this. Far fewer men have Soprano-level opinions about oral sex, and thanks to Hite and many other people willing to talk about sex frankly, in general I think younger women might have an easier time of it than their grandmother’s generation did.
Then the Matt Gaetz report dropped, and: Nah.
Gaetz is a sleazebag of the first order, but we already knew that. I came away from it feeling for the girls who partied with him and his terrible friends. There’s always a lot of loose talk when something like this happens, that so-and-so “raped a child.” We can quibble over whether a 17-year-old is a child, and whether having consensual sex with a 17-year-old is rape. Personally, I don’t think it is, but I do think it’s fucking gross, and I wonder why there are so many girls that age willing to put themselves on websites like Seeking Arrangement and accept $400 to have sex with people like Gaetz and his friends at parties. They’ve been desensitized by porn, yes, but it takes more than that to turn a junior in high school into a prostitute. I suspect it takes lots of mom’s boyfriends, virtually no life of the mind beyond wondering what the Kardashians will be up to next, an obsession with social media and a few other poisons in the cultural stew to do it. (Although I also acknowledge there have always been girls like this, and likely always will.) Soon enough she’ll show up in porn loops with her hair in pigtails, pretending to be 15 again. She won’t fool anyone.
Gaetz, for his part, should be tarred and feathered. Failsons like him never are.
Don’t mean to bring you down this near-holiday weekend! It’s a unique liminal space, the only one of the year. Enjoy it.
ROGirl said on December 27, 2024 at 9:37 am
There’s an inflatable Christmas display decoration on the front lawn of a house in my neighborhood that features a snowman with a dachshund at his side, except that the dachshund is on his hind feet with his front paws on the snowman’s back, so it looks like he’s humping the snowman.
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David C said on December 27, 2024 at 9:43 am
Don’t ever agree to give platelets. You can give those once a week and once you give they’ll never stop hounding you to come in every week for the two-ish hour process. I donate platelets once a month. I’ve told them that and they still called me to give once a week. I had to block them on my phone.
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Suzanne said on December 27, 2024 at 10:15 am
As someone who has been through blood cancer treatments, I applaud all of you blood and platelet donors. Without you, I would be dead. According to my oncologist, in the course of treatment, I had at least 25 blood and/or platelet transfusions. I obviously can’t donate and regret that over the years I didn’t much. You save lives, including mine.
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Mark P said on December 27, 2024 at 10:27 am
I don’t know where Gaetz’s shenanigans took place, but I just googled the age of consent in Florida. According to what I found, it’s 18. If’s that’s true, and if Gaetz did his dirty in Florida, then having consensual sex with a 17-year-old is rape. Maybe he went to Georgia or Alabama. The age of consent there is 16. That would make him legally not a rapist, but a disgusting pervert who would probably have sex with someone younger if he could get away with it. In any case, back in the bad old days that the MAGAts long for, the police would have ways of dealing with someone not legally a rapist who pays teenagers for sex.
If I see a cute teenager, or in some cases a cute 25-year-old, I might think that I wish I were their age. But now, at my age, JFC, they’re children!
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Jeff Gill said on December 27, 2024 at 11:17 am
Being O- gets you plenty of attention, too. I do think it unfair to those more around 125 pounds that at 250 I only give one pint, just as they do. Shouldn’t they take two from me, by proportion? Eh, maybe it doesn’t work that way. 130 some donations, haven’t fainted yet, but I don’t give myself much credit for it.
I do like it when the volunteer at the departure station says “go on, take two” though. The mini-Nutter Butters I love; can’t buy them for at home, I’d have no self-control at all. So they’re a blood donation treat for me.
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Sherri said on December 27, 2024 at 11:48 am
When I was in high school, there was a blood donation right across the street, and my math teacher donated and came and got me out of school to drive my mother home because she had fainted trying to give blood. My father, who is O-, was a prolific donor, and she wanted to try, but she has a vasovagal reaction.
I’m A-, but I also am highly vasovagal. I can manage during a blood draw as long as I’m careful never to look, but I have fainted during a blood draw. I’ve fainted during coughing fits. I’ve fainted just from a friend describing her husband’s injury a little too graphically. It’s not because I haven’t eaten, it’s not because I’m not healthy, and I wish I knew a way to control it.
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Julie Robinson said on December 27, 2024 at 12:23 pm
And if you’re O- and haven’t had CMV, they bring out the teeny-tiny bags and tell you about the babies you will receive it. Which they repeat on the phone, constantly.
We’ve had church services and family gatherings and other family visiting, and I’ve mostly stayed off social media, which has been a good thing. But someone let a cold hitchhike along with them and one by one we’ve fallen sick. This morning it’s my turn.
Mark P, according to our local newspapers Gaetz did commit his crimes in Florida. But investigations have brought no indictments because, Florida.
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Mark P said on December 27, 2024 at 12:35 pm
I have a friend who has to tell doctors all the time that he will faint and they will have a cardiac emergency unless they are very careful with needles.
I am ok with the routine blood draws at my doctor’s, but I never look. Way back when I was in my 20’s, I was watching a program about blood banks on a black and white TV. They showed a vat of slushy blood plasma being stirred by a machine, and I had to go lie down.
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Sherri said on December 27, 2024 at 1:50 pm
I have mixed experiences with warning doctors that I will faint unless I take precautions. Some doctors get annoyed, like I’m just doing this to inconvenience them. Others are great, like the hand surgeon who realized even before I did that I was not okay and got me laid down on the table before I started fainting. He had been explaining in great detail about the plate and ten screws he had used to repair my shattered wrist, and saw me start to go pale.
It’s embarrassing, but also out of my control. As the hand surgeon reminded me then, it’s not something I can will my way out of.
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Heather said on December 27, 2024 at 2:46 pm
I should give blood more often. They’re always calling me. I don’t get faint or have issues with seeing a needle in my arm either. The one thing I do get kind of phobic about is general anesthesia, but luckily I have only needed that once.
I’m actually trying to get some work done today for a client and it’s slow going. Once this is done I can start focusing on some projects I always put off when I’m busy, like updating my website and various things around the house.
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Jeff Borden said on December 27, 2024 at 2:50 pm
Our Christmas was spent at Swedish Covenant Hospital, when the pain my wife was experiencing required a call to 911. We’re still there,but at least we have a diagnosis. Johanna has spondylitis. This is a result of osteoporosis arthritis and old age. The path forward is pain management and physical therapy, but so far, none of the painkillers have worked. It’s life altering, not life threatening. I hope I can rise to the challenge of being a kind caregiver. Right now, I’m just exhausted from worrying and stress.
Luckily, a new year will be dawning and…oh, wait. That’s no solace.
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Mark P said on December 27, 2024 at 4:49 pm
My friend also has mixed results with warning the medical staff about his condition. Sometimes they ignore him because obviously he can’t possibly know what he’s talking about, and then they have to deal with an emergency situation.
Jeff, I understand a little about having a spouse with chronic pain. It’s no fun for them, and it’s no fun for the caretaker. She has gone to pain specialists, but the results are not satisfactory. And when she takes her medicine and it doesn’t work,I have to tell her that there isn’t anything else I can do.
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Bitter Scribe said on December 27, 2024 at 4:54 pm
When it comes to the question of why young girls go in for transactional sex, don’t discount the prevalence of club culture. When I was married and my stepdaughter was in her late teens, she and her hard-partying friends had no trouble at all getting into clubs that were supposed to keep out everyone under 21. The clubs like having lots of hot girls around, and aren’t particularly fussy about checking IDs.
Now I’m not saying that every girl who goes to a club becomes a sex worker, of course. But club life contributes to the anything-goes attitude that can lead down that path.
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Deborah said on December 27, 2024 at 11:42 pm
Jeff B, isn’t spondylitis what Luigi mangione has/had? Not to make light of it at all. I understand that it is horribly painful, so sorry your wife has to go through that.
Car is still in the shop going on day 17. I also had to call to get someone out to look at our new dryer because of the way they hooked up the vent, it was squished and crimped and is making the dryer not work optimally plus it’s dangerous. They’re coming out to look at it on Sunday, again weird that they are making appointments on Sunday. They delivered it last Sunday, so it’s a thing.
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