Fuck you, United Blood Services

Fuck you. Seriously.

I understand that I have a special blood type. I understand that while it is not the rarest, it is the most demended. I also understand that being CMV negative means that you can give my blood to babies and cancer patients, because it won't kill them.

That kind of makes me warm and squishy inside, so I don't mind (so much) being harassed about where I travel besides the US (nowhere, for the record), my sex life (non-existent, by the way), my recent tattoos and piercings (still only the ears!), and of course, whether I'm feeling well and healthy today. NEWSFLASH: If I feel crappy, do you really think I'm going to ask to be stuck with a needle and give the little asshole microbes another point of entry into my body? No!

Back to having that O-/CMV- blood. This means you should be treating me like a princess, not a peon.

To be clear, I fucking hate donating blood. It makes me feel like shit, the interview and paperwork takes at least as long the actual donation, and I feel like I've been ran over for the next day and a half. I have to keep thinking about poor little babies with parents that are too dumb to get pre-natal care until they actually pop, and I'm not sure how this causes babies to need blood, but I'm sure the root cause is stupidity. It helps if I think of soft little bunnies, too. They generally smell better.

What I really can't stand is doing a donation, and then being told "Don't donate any components for X weeks." Two days later, I get a phone call telling me there's a blood shortage, and asking if I could "come down and help".

Fuck you.

Ok, for starters, I can almost never just "come down and help". I get up either at 4:00 or 5:30, depending on whether or not I'm going to the gym, I get dressed, and be in my advisor's office by 7:30, but if I have any questions at all, I need to be there by 7:00 so that she has time to answer them and then prepare for the classes she's teaching. Then I do research until about 4:30. Sometimes, like today, I get to take a lunch break and go eat lunch with Lacie, but generally, I bring lunch or grab something, and continue working whilst I eat. At 4:30, I walk over to another building for class, and try to a little time to look over my notes, so that I might have a clue as to what's going on. At 6:30, when class is over, I drive home, which generally takes until 7:30, and I am usually exhausted enough to be in bed by 8:30. When the hell am I supposed to just "come down and help".

Another thing: I don't like you people; you're falsely nice, and that's obnoxious. I don't want to get a phone call at 8:46 on a Friday night to ask if I "can come down and help" when I'm scheduled to donate the next morning. Another thing, you notice I made that appointment online? It's because I don't like talking to you people. I am anti-social, or maybe I just don't like self-righteous dumb shits.

Here's my real rage: Why the hell are you calling me at 8:46 on a Friday night? I know I didn't have plans tonight, but there is a small possibility that I could have been busy, and that your interruption is very much unwanted. Just because I didn't go out somewhere, doesn't mean that I want the movie I'm watching at home to be interrupted by your inane, fake, drivel.

Leave me alone. I give you my blood. I'm not going to pretend to be nice to you.

*snap*

That is the noise that something--which runs from 1.5 inches below the lowest point of my left shoulder, across my spine, up the right side of neck and threads through my earlobe--made a few hours ago. Physiologists, please don't bother telling me that there is no such tendon, ligament, or nerve. I felt and heard it. Something snapped.

Maybe you've already listen to me complain about, but I'm under some stress right now, and I don't really have any remedies for it, since working out stopped killing my stress back in high school. I had an opportunity to go shooting a few weeks back, and I'm starting to wonder if I should have taken Josh up on his offer. There is something inately relaxing about holding a very big gun, point, and click, and boom, and something is now powder. I find it...empowering. (Sorry, I don't have any better jokes tonight.)

So, I'm saying to hell with it all. I'm already going on a few trips this fall, but I am way too stressed out. As I was washing my face to go to bed, I stopped and really looked at myself. And I realized something. Somewhere in the past two years, I really got old-looking. It's one thing when people tell you you look older than you do, but when you're objectively analyzing yourself, and realize that without makeup, you look 35+, it's pretty disheartening. For the record, I am 22.

I'm too on-edge, and I need a break. So I think that I am going to just deal with being poor and broke for the fall, cut out all of my extras, and take a small vacation where I don't have to deal with anyone. Preferably, I would go somewhere where no one spoke English, so that no one has a chance of saying anything to me to push me any further, but I don't like LA, and I don't have a passport, so I'll have to settle for 'accidentally' leaving my phone at home.

But seriously, I am determined to take a real vacation, with no point or purpose other than relaxation. I honestly think I need it at this point, before something else snaps...like the necks of (edited so as not be considered pre-meditation).

As for the anger sermon that I never got around to posting, I thought about it, and realized that it is part of a larger group of meditations I've been meaning to write. Don't worry, they'll be pre-fixed in the title as something obvious so that those who don't want to won't even be exposed to it. I'm even planning on looking up the Bible verses that I'll be referencing, and citing them more specifically than "somewhere in Matthew".

Until then, faithful (I'm pretending you find me interesting, instead of just slightly less boring than work) (also, another pun. Hah!) readers, good night, and may your sheets be cool and comfortable, and may you never wake with half a spider of your face.

Crazy ghost

I have decided it is not my computer that is possessed, but my office. I left the talk and type software on by accident while I went for water. When I came back, this gem was waiting for me.

"if I was a new and leave and do lose him as will pool in the is in a movie is a little and so if you know him or her her her her her her her her her her her her her I up"

I wonder where this is going. It would be interesting to know what sort of person would haunt a chemistry office in the afterlife. Just saying.