Blood Donation Gone Wrong

I got up very early this morning to head out to the blood drive at Veldman's Service Center in South Bend.

They were offering a free oil change and car wash to everyone who donated blood.

Since they are my regular mechanics, and I haven't donated blood in a while, I thought it would be a worth the 30 mile drive out to the west side of South Bend.

They had quite a lot of people turn out for the blood drive so I was there from 7:30-9:30am.

The first nurse had some trouble finding a vein in my left arm and when she finally found it, she turned the needle to get a better flow and the needle must have pushed up against a nerve because it hurt A LOT!

She pulled out the needle and patched up the hole while I offered up my other arm for a try. She called in another nurse because she didn't want to hurt me again.

The second nurse found a vein in my right arm right away and blood was flowing pretty good, but all of a sudden, it stopped.

She called over another nurse to see what was causing the problem and it turned out that there was a knot in the tube. With no way to get the knot out, with the needle in my arm, she had no choice but to remove the needle.

I guess they have a limit of two needle sticks per blood donor because she didn't want to attempt it again.

The bad part was that my donation attempt wasted two blood bags. The good part was they still gave me a free oil change and car wash. Plus, they gave me a t-shirt. Normally I don't wear t-shirts with writing on the front, but since I really need more t-shirts for working out at Curves, I happily accepted it.

New Coat Rack (exercise machine)

I stopped by Cheryl's garage sale Saturday morning since I was already on that end of town and wanted to see her lilacs and potted flowers.

I ended up buying her elliptical machine. I was just playing on it as it sat in her garage but then I thought it might be nice to have at home to help me with my goal of losing weight and getting in shape.

Here, our friend Rick tries it out. He had it up to 16mph for about 3 seconds... then he had to sit down and pant for a couple of minutes. I think I'll take it a bit slower.

Right now it is sitting in our garage. My thought is that when I let Spike outside in the morning I can jump on the machine and work off a few calories while he does his business.


I just need to get a pair of slip on tennis shoes to keep in the garage so I don't try to use the machine in my slippers. I saw a really cute pair of such shoes on a girl who was in line behind me to give blood. I asked her about them and she said they were actually Mary Jane water shoes from LL Bean, but she uses them for every-day.

Veggie Garden Good to Go

I had a doctor's appointment Friday morning and a hair appointment in the evening so I went ahead and took the whole day off as a vacation day (or Paid Time Off) as it's referred to now.

Since the weather was pretty nice, I took the opportunity, between appointments, to clean out the veggie garden.








We were going to plant the vegetables this weekend, but the weather man is calling for a chance of frost so we'll wait until later next week do do that.






Last year I had a water feature in the center of the garden. It was a whiskey barrel with a plastic insert. I added water plants and a solar-powered fountain.


It turned out to be a real hassle. The plants kept floating to the top and it turned into a mosquito breading tank.

This year I turned the whiskey barrel into a planter. It has a bag of mulch in the bottom so it's not too heavy and I added some salvia and purple wave petunias.

Front Yard Landscaping Ideas

I've been waiting on Susan from Trinity Gardens to come over and do our free landscape plan. She's stood us up twice so far. I guess just having one landscape designer at their business and advertising a free landscape design to anyone who asks, has put her behind schedule.

We'll be renting a stump grinder soon to remove all of the stumps from the front yard. And, I've been thinking about different ways to re-do the front, in case the landscape lady never shows up.

I've been thinking about getting a wacky wavy inflatable arm flailing tube man.

I laugh out loud every time I see one of these things.

Getting My Heart Pumping

I joined Curves today with my friend Cheryl. My goal is to lose 20 pounds by July 4.

I pre-paid for the entire year for two reasons:
1) incentive to keep going
2) they waive the $140 sign-up charge if you commit to 12 months

It's not an incredibly hard workout, but it's enough to get me sweating and it gets my heart rate up for a full 30 minutes. That's much more than I've been doing for the past several months.

New Bird Bath

I took a drive up to Rural King on my lunch hour today. It's just north of the state line in Niles, Michigan.

I bought some tomato cages there last year and they gave me a $10 gift card with the purchase.
So, my goal was to buy something useful for $10.

I don't really need anything new for the veggie garden, and I've already bought my annuals and veggies so I bought a new bird bath.

A raccoon tipped over our ceramic bird bath last fall and the top of it cracked. This new bird bath is plastic so, although it might easily tip if a squirrel or raccoon jumps on it, it shouldn't break.

Turned out the base of the ceramic bird bath was also cracked so I kept the bottom part of it to help weigh down the plastic bird bath's base.

Cost after gift card applied: $2.75

Trip Down Memory Lane

After I left my brother's house on Mother's Day, I drove through downtown Lafayette on my way to the cemetery to visit with my dad and leave flowers on his grave.

I took the opportunity to snap some photos of some places that were part of my day-to-day life, when I was much younger.

The original home of Gillis Tile. The building was just a few blocks from our house and it had an office in the front and lots of storage space in the back for Dad's tile and supplies. I know it had an upstairs, but I can't recall what it looked like.

St. Boniface School has changed a bit since I attended. They've added landscaping where there used to be concrete. I went to St. Boniface from first through eight grade. For most of those years my class was a tight-knit group of 13 kids.

Mrs. Ross was my favorite teacher. I had her for both 7th and 8th grade. Ms. Bates was my least favorite teacher. She was somewhat radical and supported McGovern for president -- the entire class rooted for Nixon even though we were much too young to vote. Thinking back on that 5th grade year, I have to give Ms. Bates credit for getting the students interested in government. Sandy, Theresa and I lived closest to the school so on the last day, Ms. Bates asked us if we'd stay late and help her clean up the classroom. Afterward, she took us to the Frozen Custard for a treat of our choice. I ordered a 7-dip ice cream cone. She didn't even flinch at my greediness. It sort of made me feel guilty for being so mean to her the whole year.

We lived about four blocks from school so we walked to and from each day. I gave my little sister the nickname "Poke-Along Peanut" because she always lagged behind as we all walked to school together.



St. Boniface Church is where I received my first communion, was crowned May Queen, celebrated my confirmation and went to mass for nine years. Ft. Ray was my favorite priest. He came to St. Boniface, as Friar Ray, when I was in the sixth or seventh grade. He started a guitar mass and most of the girls in my class were in the band -- Martha May, Sandy Hinton, Theresa Baker and I all played guitar.


O'Rear's Pastry Shop is right across the street from St. Boniface Church. My Mom and Dad would give us money on Sunday morning to get treats for the family. And, my brother and I often stopped there after we were finished with our paper routes.

There were quite a few incredible donuts and pastries at O'Rears that I've not come across anywhere else. My favorites were butterscotch brownies, cherry turnovers, long horns, Bavarian creme donuts, tractor tire donuts and their glazed donuts were even better than Krispy Kremes.



The Lafayette Theater looks exactly the same now as it did when I went there as a child -- on the outside that is. On their website, you can see the inside has been renovated. I remember seeing most every James Bond movie and all of the Disney movies here. It was just around the corner from the Mars Theater which is now the Long Center. I saw my first rock concert at the Mars Theater -- it was Cheap Trick on their In Color In Black and White tour.





McCord Candies was a great place to satisfy a sweet tooth -- and what kid doesn't have a giant sweet tooth. McCord's has a soda fountain and not sure if they still have the same counters, but when I was a kid, the counters were higher than I was tall. They were glassed-front and full of all sorts of chocolates and penny candy.