Friday, June 15, 2007

It Takes a Cat

...to remind me of what's essential.

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Rags to Riches

She's a Beauty!
One in a million girl! Look at her fly! She stumbled at the gate and just kept going, with 4 to 1 odds she wasn't expected to win the Belmont Stakes yesterday. But she's got a reputation for looking you straight in the eye, kicking up a fit whenever she feels like it and standing as proud as any stallion. I loveher!

Saturday, June 09, 2007

Comfort Food

There's nothing like comfort food to chase the blues away. In this case, the Black and Blues!

Ix-Nay on the Onor-Day!

That's pig-Latin for SHOOT ME IF I SAY I WANT TO DONATE BLOOD AGAIN. I donated blood yesterday and I will never, never, never, never, never do it again. Not even if I was the last O+ on the planet and tiny cute baby apes needed my blood in order to survive.

Since the last time, when my best shirt got totally splattered with blood, you think I would have learned my lesson, but apparently I didn't. Maybe it's like childbirth? Where you swear you will never go through that again but then you forget? Maybe I just have blood donor amnesia?

Well, I popped in there because they had called and asked me to donate. I figured it would take about an hour and then I could eat the hot nachos that I love so much and be on my way. I had people to see, places to be.

I requested that she try to get blood out of my left arm this time because my right one is tired, but she punctured the vein and had to start over. Then, after taking about 1/4 of a bag full she noticed I was bruising really badly so she pulled it and started over on my right arm. I don't know if that attributed to what happened, if that just put me over the limit of too much blood loss, but as soon as she got the pint of blood and I went over to the snack bar, I noticed I wasn't feeling so well. I felt way too drained and kind of disassociated from the world.

I was sitting between two burly men who were talking WAY too loudly about how tough they were and I just wanted them to SHUT UP! SHUT UP I SAY! But rather than make a scene I just got up from the snack bar and headed for the door.

I remember walking past the receptionist area, and realizing that I needed to sit down. Always the polite Midwesterner, I said chattily to the girls standing there, "Oh, I think I'll just sit down for a minute." But by then the entire world went away. It just went away.

I became aware of someone saying, "cough!" Can you Cough? I didn't know who there were addressing and I didn't think it was me. What would I need to cough for? It dawned on me that my forehead was being slapped with wet towels and about 4 or 5 people were hovering over me asking me my name and trying to get me to wake up.

they got me onto this chair that then reclined into a gurney, and I was whisked into the little emergency room they have right there at the blood bank. The next hour and a half I spent with my feet higher than my head, with ice packs on my neck and forehead, and hot packs on my feet and abdomen, with my vital signs being taken every fifteen minutes. They couldn't read my pulse and they couldn't get a blood pressure reading, either. They kept pouring water and juice down my throat and talking to me like crazy.

Since I have a cast iron stomach I never felt the least bit nauseous, but I was so ill feeling in general it was an AWFUL experience to black out like that. I just kept thinking about how it must feel to die, with your whole life draining away from blood loss until your heart can't handle it and it explodes.

Cheery, huh?

I told those women I was going to blog about this and they begged me not to tell the part where they tried to sit me up but the chair hadn't latched and I went slamming back down into the reclining position. Lucky for them I am totally mellow and not one to fuss and throw hissy fits while half dead on a gurney.

Finally, the Head Honcho Nurse came in and said, "This is taking too long! She should have been gone by now! Either start saline solution RIGHT NOW or call 911!" Oh, THAT made my heart race, let me tell you! I thought, SHEESH! I COULD JUST GO INTO CARDIAC ARREST, HERE, AND NEVER LEARN THE FATE OF PARIS HILTON!

So my pulse went from 58 right up to 80 and then they were worried some more. But eventually they let me sit up, use the restroom, walk around the facility a little bit, and finally I was released to come home.

So that was Miss Pink Ponsonby's Freaky Friday adventure.

Friday, June 08, 2007

Pissed about Paris!

Really! I couldn't believe my ears yesterday when found out that Paris Hilton was released from jail because of a hissy fit and sent home with an ankle bracelet instead! She'll serve out her sentence confined to her 3500 foot Beverly Hills mansion. She can order take out, (she already got her favorite cupcakes brought to the house! Poor Girl! Hasn't eaten in days and the moment she gets home she gets a tray of special order cupcakes!) have all her friends over, drink and dance to her hearts content, and lay in bed with her cushions and pillows and snort coke all day long if she wants to.

I think of a recent letter from a friend incarcerated at the county jail who was without his psyche meds for 3 days because there are not enough doctors to go around, so how is it that Paris as supervised by a 'team of medical doctors'?

Jail is a rough place, but she was given the best privacy and security. All she had to do was sit and do her time, and she couldn't hack it. So she threw a fit and they let her out. In jail, in the 'gen-pop' area, (general population) there are women going through detox, screaming and crying, angry and bored, and none of them get out of jail because they can't hack it.

I am disgusted with the Sheriff's department who caved to a Princess Pouting.

Friday, June 01, 2007

Joggers

Well I had a few moments while my nectarine applesauce cake is baking, so I thought I'd write a post. I was out and about today, to the primary care clinic to drop off a prescription and to the food bank for this months' supply of already-perished perishables.

Along with the 4 cans of pork and beans in the government surplus label, and the obligatory multi-packs of Raman Noodles, I got a bag of nectarines that were so far past ripe they had turned to rotted mush.

Anytime I see fruit that far past its prime I am reminded of my backyard at home where I grew up. It had an apple tree, a peach tree, a plum tree and a scupernong vine. None of them bore edible fruit. What they did bear, was a two inch thick carpet of squashed fruit that made running through the back yard while barefooted worse than running the gamut through hot coals. I can still feel squishy plums oozing between my toes when I think about it or when I smell too-ripe fruit.

Some of the nectarines were worth salvaging so I quickly gave them a bleach bath and cut up the pieces to keep. I ended up with about a cup of fruit and so I decided to bake a cake.

While I was heading up J Street today I got stopped by a murderous flock of Joggers. Now, for those of you who've read my blog for a while, you know that I dislike large blocks of charity joggers ALMOST as much as I dislike Her Unctuousness Rachael Ray and her Garbage Bowl.

That garbage bowl, or GB as she likes to call it for short, is what we called a Slops when I was growing up. And it always made me gag to have to empty the slops to the pigs, because my Aunts were determined to kick the City Kid out of me so they always made me scrape that bowl over the pig pen with my bare hands. Which was way, way, way worse than running barefoot through a yard full of rotting, slimy plums, I guarantee you! Once I got old enough I demanded a big serving spoon to scrape the bowl, but the damage was done. I just cannot handle that bowl of slops that RR has so proudly on her counter. She just thinks she's soooo down-homey!

So today's joggers clotting up the street with their huffing and puffing, required 2 police cars in front, 2 police cars behind as well as 3 vehicles marked "Volunteers" and 5, yes 5 motorcycle cops. Somehow I just don't understand why that kind of manpower is needed to escort those idiots through the streets of Sacramento. Do the cops expect them to get robbed or pelted with rotted plums? Honestly, I thought it must be the Governator or the President passing by when I first saw all the hoopla.

I wanted to roll down my window and yell abuse at them, plus a few helpful suggestions like, "Why not run on the SIDEWALK you morons? That's what sidewalks are FOR!!!!" Really, why can't they run single file on the sidewalk? Why do they have to run down the middle of the street in large, straggling clumps? What is UP with that?

I want to know the person who first came up with the whole concept of charity jogging and throw the slops on him! It just makes no SENSE to me! What does running have to do with anything? Why didn't they invent an event like a 'charity day in the park' or 'reading for charity' or something QUIET and non-traffic clogging? Jogging for charity doesn't call attention to anything except the fact that you've just made dozens of people late for work.

Oh, good! I finished venting about joggers just as the oven timer dinged! I'm going to frost this cake with maple frosting. This cake turned out really dense and flat, so I'll refrain from sharing the recipe with you until I get that little glitch out of it. But why the 4 cupcakes you ask? Ahhh! That's my little baker's secret! I always bake a cupcake or two first, so I can see how the recipe bakes up, and so that I can always have my cake and eat it, too!