I Almost Get Stabbed

I called the Octapharma plasma donation center at around noon to ask them when the latest that a new donor could show up and expect to get in, any given day.

"Be here by two," said the lady on the other end; then reminded me to bring my ID and social security card and a piece of mail with my current address on it.

I had messed up my sleep schedule so much that I had the feeling of having been up all night.

Finding clean clothes that didn't smell too much like mildew, had been a challenge. The last time I washed a load in my bathtub, I had bitten off more than I could chew and didn't spend the needed amount of time wringing water out of everything and then hanging it all separately. The result was that my stuff got that smell that clothes that are damp too long get.

The day wound up being a dress rehearsal for the trip over to Gretna. After putting air in the front tire of the bike, which takes about a week to go soft, I decided to pop in on my friend Patrick, where I hung out until the point that 2 o' clock was too near, for me to want to take the chance of having to rush to get to the plasma place, racing against the clock.

If I just barely missed a bus and had to wait for the next one, I would be cutting it close. Plus I thought about other things like traffic holding up the bus, or the driver parking near Burger King for ten minutes to eat; which is something that happened once.

Plus, other things that could go wrong like them having an influx of new donors come in so there might be a few ahead of me when I got there right before the cutoff time, prompting the nurse to tell me to come back the next day; or the nurse having left because of a family emergency, or whatever.

So, I instead made a run to the Fresh Market to get Patrick his whiskey and Coke, and a 24 ounce Budweiser for myself, and I soon annoyed him after we had smoked a bowl, by asking him questions about cockatiels, after he mentioned wanting to get one, to go with the one canary type bird he already has.

I was asking him if one could teach such a bird to recite the Gettysburg Address, or something.

He said that that would take a lot of time and seemed annoyed that I would even consider such a thing.

All this procrastinating has meant that I have missed what looked like a very good Thursday out on Bourbon Street with the temperature at 61 with no rain and a good amount of tourists out there. In hindsight, it would have been good if I had been able to get the 100 bucks during the day, and then made it out to play at night. But, then I wouldn't have been able to get the 6 hours or so of sleep that I just got.

But now I'm in the same boat of trying to stay up all night so as to be at Octapharma bright and early. It was the "bright" part that had been a problem this morning. I might have to try to force myself to sleep again so that when the sun comes up it won't be a harsh alien type of light and make me feel like I haven't slept at all.

I guess it had been a mistake to drop in on Patrick; I should have just kept going on to Gretna. It seems like I don't even have room enough for the error of having drank the 24 ounce Budweiser.

I need to act like I'm in boot camp these days; getting 8 hours of sleep, plenty of exercise, sunning myself for 45 minutes every morning, while doing a couple rounds of Wim Hof breathing; and then basically keep my energy levels high enough to do stuff like donate plasma for 100 bucks in the afternoon and then go out and busk for another 50 at night. A few rounds of that could right the ship and have Harold back to eating 2 cans a day and having a pristine litter box...