bloody hell

Yesterday I found my mind wandering to the last tattoo parlor I visited.  Of course, by "visited" I mean stared at from afar, half-wishing that I were still  in the age range where an impulsive tattoo would not be unanimously mocked by my peers.  And of course by "parlor" I mean the folding table and chairs set up at the top of the stairwell of Senor Frog's in Cancun, perfect for tempting drunken teens into capping off their evening's streak of poor judgment with permanent body art.

I remember thinking then how great it was that even the rare fastidious holidaymaker who had ridden neither a skanky one-night-stand nor a mechanical bull could still have one last chance to bring a bodily-fluid-borne disease home as a souvenir.

So yesterday I wondered: where do the artists who are insufficiently skilled with needles to work at makeshift nightclub tattoo setups go to seek employment?  Apparently, they work for my doctor.

Yesterday I suffered through what should have been a non-sensational annual physical.  Unfortunately, the nurse drawing my blood couldn't find a good vein.  For ten minutes she poked and prodded my arms, tied and retied a tourniquet, and still nothing.  If I were ever to consider smuggling some heavy duty contraband goods into the country on my person, I would want this chick heading up the body-search division at Customs.

She ended up pricking my right arm three times, including once into a vein that yielded nary half a vial of blood despite her fiddling in vain with the needle for another ten minutes while it was in my arm.  It was like watching a really stupid child play "pin the tail on the donkey," and even after they take off the blindfold he's still trying to stick the damn thing to the animal's eye. 

I was beginning to freak out that they'd have to draw the blood from my hand or foot like when I was a kid, when she finally switched to my left arm, and, on the second try, managed to collect her vials. 

So this morning I woke up to see that both crooks of my arms are covered with erratically spaced puncture spots and track marks.  It looks like the work of a vampire with a bad overbite.  Or a heroin addict with Parkinson's Disease.

I wonder if today will be a better day...