Blood Donations

I started donating blood in college when I realized they gave out free t-shirts. I hate needles, but I'm a sucker for freebies. I've got more blood donor shirts than I need, and they never fit anyway, but I've kept giving whenever I have the time and opportunity. My distaste for needles has lessened over time, especially when weighed against the benefit. I suppose I give blood for the same reason I stop for stray dogs...I hope that if my dog were wandering beside the road, someone would stop for her. I realize there isn't a direct correlation between me doing the right thing and someone else doing the right thing for me in the future, but I can hope.

You can't donate blood when you're pregnant, so I haven't given in almost a year. Yesterday I got a card in the mail from the red cross notifying me of an upcoming blood drive in my area. I get these periodically, but the text on this one was amusing enough that I thought I would share. I won't post the whole thing, just a couple of sentences to sum it up:

"You may have struggled with many fears the first time you donated blood. You may still struggle with those fears each time you donate. While you might be afraid of needles, someone else might be afraid of dying."

I guess they needed a nice way of saying, "Hey wuss....SUCK IT UP!!!"

The "Old Lady Paper" Revisited

I cancelled my newspaper subscription yesterday. As you might recall (but probably not), I've written here before that one of my main reasons for subscribing in the first place was to get the weekly tv schedule. Daniel thinks it's funny that I use the printed tv schedule at all and always refers to it as the "old lady paper". I've never quite understood this moniker. Are old women the only ones who want to save time in finding a tv program to watch? Do all young people these days have digital cable and satellite tv, therefor granting them access to on screen programming guides? In any case, I've always thought his depiction of my need for a printed tv guide was unfounded. At least, that's how I felt until last Sunday. That was the day I happened to be at my grandma's house for a family event. I was sitting in the living room when grandma came walking out of the front room* carrying the tv schedule. There is no tv in the front room, so I wondered why she'd bothered to take the schedule back there in the first place. As it turns out, she'd taken it back there because that's where her sewing machine is. What is the connection, you might ask? Well, before I tell you, let me remind you that the newspaper changed the format of the tv paper a while back and it no longer comes stapled together. This adds the weekly annoyance of me having to staple it together myself, which is a small inconvience, but an inconvienence none the less. As it turns out, my grandmother finds this lack of staples equally annoying, so each week, she goes to her sewing machine, and sews a line down the middle of the tv schedule. When I found this out, I enjoyed a moment of blissful validation in knowing that I was not alone in my distaste for what the newspaper was putting me through. However, this moment was quickly followed by the realization that I was sharing this moment with my 90 year old grandmother, which means that perhaps Daniel isn't completely unfounded in his characterization of my printed tv schedule.

*I have never understood why the "front room" was called the "front room" as it is actually located at the very back of the house.

Wanna hear a secret? Being a new mom is hard, ya'll! I can think of other life changing situations that are probably a lot more emotionally draining, but for sheer exhaustion and stress, this has to be up there. Keep in mind that I'm not feeling that at the moment or I probably wouldn't feel like updating this outdated blog, but there have been some rough days the last few weeks. Everyone says parenthood is so rewarding, and I'm sure it will be soon, but for now, it's more like being a personal assistant to someone who's demanding and insists you be on call all hours of the day. Then makes you get up and do things for them all hours of the day. Then forgets your birthday and doesn't even recognize you when they see you in the store. I know the day is fast approaching when that little face will look up at me and smile and it will all change. Even now, at 5 weeks, Emily can hold her focus on things, so during the short spurts when she's awake and active, she'll look with those big eyes and just stare at me for a minute.

For about a week there, Emily wasn't sleeping very well at night. Or at least, she wasn't sleeping in her crib very well. She'd fall asleep with me holding her, but would wake up as soon as I set her down. Now if it takes me more than about 30 minutes to get her to sleep in the middle of the night, I just plop down on the sofa and we sleep there for a few hours until she gets hungry again. The last week or so has been much better though. Last night, she went down at about 10:30, then woke up at 12:30, 4:45, and again at 6. Each time, she ate and went right back to sleep. It's amazing how that four hour stretch makes such a huge difference.

We've at least gotten in enough of a routine that I can get out to run errands to the grocery store or the library. We just head out after she eats and she usually falls asleep in the car then stays asleep in her seat for the duration of the trip.

I'll try to make future posts a bit more riveting, or at least have them include some cute photos. For now, I hear someone calling me....