My husband Kevin brings me to tears sometimes.  He has such a good heart.  This week has been realllllyy hot here, and he works on a crew for a local utility company.  Meaning, he is outside in the heat all day long!  Monday and Tuesday really got him drained out, and yesterday was only a little better….yet last night when he arrived home, before he even asked about dinner he told me about a blood drive going on across town where he had been working.  He wanted to donate.

Now, I don’t know about you, but shoving a needle in MY arm and draining my precious blood would be the very last thing on MY mind after a hard day’s work in the heat.  In fact, giving blood is often the very last thing on my mind.  I hate needles!  And after giving birth a couple months ago, I have sworn off needles permanently.  (Well…I wish.)

So anyway, at 7:00 pm last night after supper, me, Kevin, and Jack-Evan packed ourselves up in the SUV and drove the 45 minutes across town to the blood drive.  There were many nice workers there who greeted us with smiles and exclamations of how glad they were that we came out.  It was a really happy atmosphere, actually.  Over in one corner, there were volunteers serving snacks, drinks, and pizza.  Over in the other corners, the blood drive was set up with red-cross workers in white coats doin’ their thing with the people giving blood. 

After assuring them that I was in no way about to stick a needle in my arm tonight, I was directed to a nice waiting area where people started exclaiming over Jack-Evan (that’s a huge bonus about going out with a newborn - everyone talks to you!).  Whilst I was fending off 100 people (ok, maybe only 4-5) who wanted to touch Jack’s face and toes, Kevin was signing in and doing his prep work.

From start to finish, the entire process took about 45 minutes.  During that time, Jack and I read Sinbad the Sailor (well, I read…he just coo’ed), talked to more people, drank water, played a few games, talked to even more people, and even had to take a trip outside once.  It was all I could do not to pass out as I walked past all the little baggies that were filling with blood on the way to take Jack to the car for a nursing session.  I do not do well with the sight of blood. 

Finally, it was all over.  We were one of the last of the donar people to leave since the blood drive technically ended at 8 pm (It was 8:40).  

Now here’s the blessing part…

As we were signing in, we were given 4 free tickets to our city league baseball game.  We go there all the time (Jack-Evan’s already been three times) so it was a nice surprise to score some free tickets!  What’s even better was on our way OUT, the nice volunteers (who wanted to get rid of excess tickets) gave us even more free baseball game tickets.

All in all, we ended up with 12 free adult tickets to the baseball game this Saturday night.  The lady giving them out tried to give us even more but we had to decline on the basis that we don’t even know more than 12 people.   Ok, well, yes we do, but I was starting to feel bad!

We made it back to my parent’s house at 9:22 pm…just in time to watch the Baby Borrowers, and then home at 10 pm. 

So all in all, in exchange for my husband’s good will towards humankind (and complete absence of fear towards needles), we ended up with $60.00 worth of tickets, and a good fuzzy feeling in the pits of our hearts.

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What Next?

• Time for Blood! Pre-natal Visit #2 - Sept. 26, 2007 (Viewed 0 times)
• “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” Pre-natal Visit #10 (31 Weeks) (Viewed 0 times)
• Where Jack-Evan Learns About Dating (Viewed 0 times)

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