So, I can’t give blood. I spent the night and morning worrying about it only to be told I can’t. My iron is too low. This comes as no surprise either. I’ve had too low iron lots of times. During every pregnancy and various times between. In fact I should have thought this might happen. My iron was low as a child even. I don’t think my mind and body work together well. My body can’t keep up with my mind sometimes and sometimes my body works too fast for my mind. I don’t think I metabolize like some. I wonder if iron in our bodies is like iron in soils. Clingy. That it can’t be absorbed well in heavy dense clay soils. Plants can’t get it. It’s too clingy and binds to clay. It messes with the other nutrients in soils to make plants not be able to adequately get them either. Then plants look pale and yellow. Is my iron clinging to something in my body? Is it clinging to my grief? Am I that dense? That heavy?
I burst into tears when the lady told me. She checked one hand then tried the other hand. I find it interesting that one side was significantly lower than the other. My left hand was lower. Why? Is it because I’m right hand dominant? I felt the need to have her prick every finger and see how different each finger was. Except I really don’t like a finger prick. I would rather be stabbed. Which is exactly what it is. On my finger tip. I use my finger tips. When I returned to work my two finger tips burnt when fertilizer got on them from being stabbed. I also would rather not be stabbed. But had someone said. They will need to prick your finger to check your hemoglobin I wouldn’t have gone.
It’s hard to cry in a mask. She asked if I was ok. I said no. My dad died and I needed to do this because I can’t do anything else. Couldn’t do anything else. She said it’s not uncommon to feel you want to give to save lives when one is gone. Then told me all the statistics of how many lives I could save when giving blood. It was 3. That’s a lot of people to keep alive potentially. Except I can’t help keep anyone alive, just me. Her eyes were kind. I wish I could have seen the slight twist of her mouth when she said this. That little move that it makes when you relate. She related. She understood that my grief took me all the way to here. To give. Because I lost. And it felt taken.
When in doubt we give. When you give the universe gives back. You don’t know it’s coming. Or that was my plan. To plan to give so I receive. Because I have a very heavy solid dense void right now. From something being taken. An empty feeling that is really very full and heavy. My iron should have been high. I feel full of heavy iron. And empty all at the same time. The universe took from me. I should be given something back. Or maybe I have and I can’t see it or feel it. I’m still kind of mad. That’s how a relationship works. I have to be mad. So I can be not mad again. That’s where love comes from. Resolved anger. And vice versa. It’s give and take.
So I left with a goal to increase my iron. Which will increase my lack of bowel movement. I intentionally avoid foods high in iron as they don’t seem to want to move through me right. Hence the low iron. Even when I increase it it doesn’t change. To make a change I will also need a supplement. With a stool softener in it. But I don’t have general feelings of low iron like fatigue or a metal taste or a craving to eat laundry soap, so I likely won’t do it. Just to give blood. Or, I will over do it and get so constipated I will require an enema. Been there.
So I’m back to square one. In the giving area. Without it being money and plain old kindness, or a cup of coffee from behind me in line I am running out of ideas. I don’t have much time to volunteer. But maybe could except when I think of volunteering I think of not being able to. I don’t like just a few random hours of helping an organization. I want to control the entire program. I’m a terrible volunteer or an amazing one. I will work from free.
I still haven’t gone to the store for cream. I just am not in the mood to go I to a place so full of fear for one item. I used to. Now I would probably pay extra to have someone else do it for me. I stopped in the gas station and bought whipped cream for 5 dollars for cream for my coffee. I was thinking of getting a few little creamers from their coffee station but they don’t have a coffee station anymore. I had not been in a gas station yet to learn this. We can no longer get a fountain soda and coffee from them. But can touch everything else in the store. Add this to my thorough confusion of the rules of covid.
The whipped cream makes my coffee quite fancy. Foamy. Like I paid 5 dollars for one at Starbucks because I did pay 5 dollars. Just for cream.
I felt free yesterday after letting go of the business Facebook page. Just one day of it and I felt liberated. Same as I did from when I attempted it personally. Which I only did to make my ex mad. Who wasn’t my ex yet. I knew he was doing things he wanted to find himself so I started caring about myself. I signed up and found out exactly who I am not. Which is the best lesson to learn.
In some free time. Yes I had a little. I researched Roly polies. Just for fun. In this free time before I would have gone online to see what everyone thinks of us. Now I don’t care. If you want to see my cat come see it. If you want to see my beautiful greenhouse and plants come see me. Life online isn’t solid proof of life.
Anyway, Roly polies are interesting little crustaceans. More related to a shrimp than an ant. After that they have a small list of things they do that is not just rolling up into a small ball which is called conglobate. They eat their feces. Which has a fancy word of coprophagy. No one knows why they do this. It doesn’t seem like something to understand why anyone would do this let alone that it has its own word. It’s just known. Sometimes we just need to know and accept not understand. They don’t have to pee either. Their little Roly bodies don’t need to eliminate ammonia. They drink from both ends of their bodies. They have gills but can’t breath underwater. They eat decayed material and deposit it back as a nutrient to the soil. I wonder if they can be anemic?
See I have so much time now. To learn things.
If life hadn’t happened I would have been a forest entomologist. I would have kept going to study the bugs of the forests. Life happened. Because life happens. I couldn’t stop it. It’s also still happening so technically I could still make this happen. College would be easier for me as a single mother if it went only remote for awhile. I wouldn’t need much more. I applied and went through the process a couple years ago but then life kept happening so I kept letting it happen and not this. It’s a simple matter of prioritizing. Life will always present something to happen.
Because life is happening.
Aspenleaf 