Susan's Scribblings the Blog

There is something about going to have lab work done that puts a lot of us off our game. It’s a part of being healthy, of course, but it’s a complicated process to submit bodily fluid samples or–horrors!!!–let somebody poke your veins with a needle.

People who are on cholesterol medication, for example, know that it’s important to take your statin every day to keep the bad LDL cholesterol down and promote good HDL cholesterol. They need testing to check liver function. People on blood thinners need to get checked regularly to make sure they have a good circulatory system (though new medications are making that more rare).

So when my supply of medication started to run low, I called for a refill and found out they wouldn’t send any more until I had my lab work done to make sure my body was functioning.

Guys, if my body was not functioning, could I put in a request for a medication refill? I’d be un-functioning, as in dead.

Still, the unsympathetic guardians of whole body health demanded I go bleed into a tube for the cause. So I went early one morning and sat in the waiting room at the local lab. Cell phones were forbidden (no email or gaming) and the magazines were from 1997. I was hungry because I had to fast for the lab work, and the program they had on the lobby TV monitor was doing a segment on cookout food. Since all the other patients appeared to have needed to fast before visiting the lab, we were averting our eyes from the rack of ribs. They looked great at 7 AM.

When I got to my assigned drawing station (or cubicle of torment), a sign read “NOTE: Students in training. Your sample may be drawn by one of these students.” Sure students have to learn somewhere, but hire some practice subjects with gigantic, juicy vessels from which they can jab at will, not my petite tertiary roads on the blood vessel highway. I hate coming out of a lab looking like a junkie. Once I was poked four times before a spot yielded results, and I had bruises the size of Rhode Island for a week. Prior to a procedure on another occasion I had four technicians with warm towels and relaxing music trying and failing to get anywhere. If somebody knows what works like Barry White for veins, let me know.

Fortunately I did not get a student; the phlebotomist did admit she was getting over a cold, but she got lucky on the first try, and I didn’t get a bruise.

My pills were ready the next day. So I’ll be good to go for a little while. Also, I went out for some good cookout food.

I’ve been playing around with digital photography (but not on my phone, because I can’t figure out how). Back in the good old days before digital photography, taking pictures was a matter of good focus and what speed of film you used. Now the camera is so smart that it knows the speed without a roll of film, but the rest of the playing field is now complicated by rules which would fill a professional sports manual.

Before getting off a single shot, I’m tasked with learning what environment I’m in, what the conditions are, what might move in the shot, what objects from far away need to be sharp and what objects in the foreground could be a bit fuzzy, what special effect(s) I might want and how much control I want over my camera. With manual cameras, I focused and clicked; now I have a checklist as tall as Shaquille O’Neal. How does a pro get a decent Pulitzer winner of a shot if he has to go through all that rigmarole?

The saving grace of a digital camera, for those of us who might want to shorten that checklist to, say, Verne Troyer size (with all due respect, Mr. Troyer), one can use various degrees of automatic control features that let the camera decide some, most or all of the actions to take to get a good photo. This works well when learning, except for one minor detail: the shutter button.

In the old days, one click did the trick. Now the shutter presses halfway to “compose” the shot, then all the way to capture the image. By that time, your subject has packed up and gone home, and you wind up with a blurry, jumpy photo. Also you realize you should have mounted the camera on a tripod.

The process of learning the finer arts of digital photography won’t deter me, since I have no desire to stop learning. However, cameras may go further into high tech by the time I think I’ve learned it all. Sad that progress always seem to go faster than we do.

We don’t often stop to appreciate nature’s gifts of plants, flowers and trees. They’re all around us, and we don’t always notice them until they interfere with us or we with them. Some trees have grown for ages and have outlived generations. On my block only a few trees are left, but on a smaller scale there are smaller milestones right in the neighborhood. An old friend who lived on my block until 1980 had prized roses around the outside of the house. The new owner has kept them up since then, and the other day she brought some over for my mother.

They are the most beautiful and fragrant roses, and their scent takes me back 35 years with every breath.

Sometimes it’s not the best idea to rip out all the landscaping and start again; some things are best left to their own way of life, like roses and trees. They aren’t a roadblock to progress, but markers of where life has been and will go on.

It looks like a virus or other boo-boo has caught up with my tablet, so my time online is limited to when I have my laptop available. My friend the tech maharajah is going to pull his hair out while he fixes my non-techie mistakes, and I’ll be back next week.

On Mother’s Day we remember that we all have one. Somebody had to carry us around, at an increasingly uncomfortable weight, for nine months and then go through the process of getting us into the outside world. It’s a feat of nature that never loses its fascination.

Normally a doctor is standing by to catch human babies at birth. Giraffe babies have to survive a drop of several feet to the hard ground, because their mothers give birth standing up. Kangaroo babies crawl into their mother’s pouch by themselves immediately after birth, and it’s like a half marathon to get there. Turtles come out of the sand and head for the water and never see who brought them into the world. Seahorse mothers let the father carry the pregnancy (all women in favor of this for us, give a “whoop!” right now).

And then there are human babies, who get caught in somebody’s hands and. . .well, are just there. We don’t do any amazing feats like crawl into a pouch or stand up after a great fall. Some babies are born in water if their mothers prefer that unique birthing method, but they don’t cross sandy beaches to get there; we lift them right out of the pool and swaddle them. Some babies’ first word is “daddy,” but not because dad was a seahorse and lost his six-pack during pregnancy.

It just seems that the wrong parent gets the credit at strange moments in our lives.

Mothers should have our thanks for just doing the nine month thing if nothing else. Sure they may be the best on earth or not so hot at parenting, but they did do the first step in motherhood. Here is a shout out to mothers. All of them.

Of two things I am certain when it comes to criminals and police officers: nobody says one day, “I’m going to become a cop so I can kill bad guys,” or “I want to break the law and take a chance that nothing bad can happen to me.” Considering what has happened lately between cops and suspects, that might be important to note.

Cops don’t want to kill bad guys or any guys: they just want potentially dangerous people off the streets so the rest of us can lead civil lives. It’s sad when somebody dies because of a circumstance related to crime, and I’m certainly not trying to downplay what has happened recently to a few people who died on camera during police interactions. Death is tragic however it happens.

Not all bad guys want to live fast and die hard; the smaller scale criminals are about as similar to Public Enemy Number One as Casper Milquetoast. The little criminal, unfortunately, is the one most likely to get panicked and run, or they may have health problems or family problems (and that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to a personal backstory). The cops will still chase a runner down with everything they have.

It doesn’t matter if you habitually knock off jewelry stores, rob convenience store checkers at gunpoint, or just commit insurance fraud or miss an alimony payment or two; when you join the ranks of the law-breaking establishment, you’re signing a contract with no guarantees or assurances of a good, happy or long life. Handcuffs don’t come color coded to suit the level of your misbehavior, but if you’re hard to detain, the shackles may come out.

Your fellow criminals may not have half your conscience or an iota of common sense, and these guys have worn the police departments of our country down to a nub of sanity. These are the guys who sneer, “You can’t get me, copper; I know my rights” and get off on technicalities because they have well-seasoned lawyers in their corners. Your career hardened criminal knows his trade chapter and verse and can recite policy and procedure in his sleep (when he gets it).

When you, the little guy criminal, comes up against a police officer, they don’t know you from Adam; they’re not sure if it will take six men at 200 pounds each to subdue you when you try to run (you might be on some heavy drugs and go psychotic when restrained), and they’re not sure if a Taser will even break your stride. They don’t know that you would simply go home and try to catch some sleep, should you escape their grasp; they assume you’re going to head straight to your arsenal and go on a civilian shooting spree. Your more knowledgeable crime savvy friends have put the cops in this frame of mind, and officers don’t have the time or luxury of asking questions first.

Don’t become a criminal in the first place. If you obey the law, you have nothing to fear. The cops won’t know you from Adam, and that will ensure you (and the officers who risk–and regret–the actions they take in their lives daily) a better outcome.

Hello Kitty scoped me out and pounced on me in Times Square yesterday, and it kind of creeped me out. Some people have a fear of clowns (coulrophobia); I don’t fear people in character costumes, but it’s tough to figure out what to do when accosted by one, and lately Times Square has a ton of them.

The main drag of the most recognized city landmark in the world has been closed off to traffic, and it has become populated by tables for al fresco snacking, prime spots for photo ops, and every possible character in costume you can name. I saw Buzz Lightyear, Mickey and Minnie, Spiderman and SpongeBob Squarepants. The characters pose for pictures with tourists, but I’m really not that type of visitor. I go to New York a few times a year to check out a show or opera. That’s it.

But Hello Kitty was sure I was the big catch of the day.

I told the truth: I was on my way to an appointment (with a nice seat in Lincoln Center), and I was running behind schedule, and I made my escape. This requires dodging tour bus operators on every corner and comedy club barkers carefully positioned halfway on every block. The Rockettes were even out in force to promote their current show. The whole area was an obstacle course through which I had to weave and duck.

I admit, most Saturday shows in NYC start at 2:00, and mine was at noon, so I was fair game as far as the income seeking crowd was concerned. Still I don’t go to the Big Apple considering myself a tourist after all these years

So I guess the best thing to do is steer clear of that area and make my way down another street to get to my destination. Fortunately there are quiet streets away from the hubbub, where real folks try to get through the weekend. I passed one woman who had made her way to a local Subway for a hoagie on a motorized scooter; she left the gizmo outside and painfully took the steps from the front door down into the restaurant just below street level, where a quiet bunch of franchise employees served subs in the shadow of Columbus Circle. I enjoyed a peaceful lunch there as well, while she slowly made her way back up the steps with her foot long and putted her way home, which I assume is one of the many high rises nearby.

She doesn’t get a pickup line for a photo from Hello Kitty. She just lives there.

I suppose the person inside Hello Kitty lives in the city, too, and is trying to make a living. More power to all those folks, because that can’t be an easy job, especially when folks like me aren’t cooperating. The tourists make up for me, I’m sure, the city gets my meal money, and I enjoy the entertainment for the day. For me, it was a longer ride home than a high rise off Columbus Circle, and I didn’t have to find a place to stow a big cat head and costume.

I travel light, because I’m no tourist.