Yes, I'll admit it, I'm a big faker........

Today was the blood drive at Kempton Elementary where Blake and Abbey go to school. Abbey has been especially looking forward to this day. She has been asking for weeks, "Is it the blood drive yet? Is it? Huh? Is it?" The students, being too young to donate, are "sent forth" into their homes and neighborhoods to try and wrangle up some legal doners. I am not sure what her fascination is with it. Could it be the cheap-o Jr. Blood Donor ruler she was promised, the potential pizza party or was she really concerned for her fellow man? (My money's on the ruler) My first response had been, "Can't I just buy a candybar or something?" But no, they wanted blood..... o.k. then...ROB!!!!

So, when Rob got off of work he came by and picked up the twins and they headed over to the school to donate. After filling out a number of forms and answering some questions, it was decided that he was inelligible to donate. Something to do with his recent trip to Africa.

Well, this brought Abbey to tears. She came home and was sobbing...I couldn't make out all the words, but I know I heard, "blood, pizza, and ruler" amidst the blubbering (told ya!) So what does any good mommy do in this situation? That's right ,I popped a banana, guzzled a soda and took my cryin' kids right back over to that school!

Then it was my turn to fill out all the forms and answer the questions....where it was determined that I too was inelligible to donate....indefinetly....something about living in the UK in the early 80's and Mad Cow Disease. I swore to them that I hadn't eaten a hamburger between 1980 and 1985, but that didn't matter to them. I was inelligible...disaster.....Fortunately, all of this transpired behind the "privacy" screen so the kids didn't know what was going on yet. Even more fortunately, I possess both a flair for the dramatic AND absolutely no shame, so I was able to talk a couple of nurses into staging a "fake" donation for the twins' benefit. When everything was in place and the kids were anxiously awaiting "the draw", the nurses brought me out to the table, layed me down, swabbed me, put out a number of vials and some tubing, waved a needle at me and then produced a vial of some stranger's blood for the kids to "ooh" and "ahh" over. We topped it off with a band-aid, and I even complained of a little light-headedness when I sat up..... just for effect.....