Well, that was an educational experience.
Marie did not go to work on Tuesday; she was out sick with some sort of virus. By that evening, she was feeling better, but I was coming down with the same thing. It’s the sort of virus that makes you unwilling to travel more than six feet from a bathroom. It pretty much turns you inside out for a day, then goes away. I was ill with it all Tuesday night and most of Wednesday.
The first symptom to manifest itself was severe abdominal cramps. It felt like someone was grabbing handfuls of my guts and twisting them in opposite directions. When I described the sensation to Marie and Ruth, they confirmed my worst suspicion: this is what they go through every month. It is a credit to their compassionate nature that they actually listened sympathetically to my groans of agony and pleas that they find some quick and effective means of killing me. The temptation to laugh their heads off must have been considerable.
I don’t think I’ll ever laugh at a PMS joke again as long as I live.

I gave blood today, my 34th time since I first donated on November 5, 1979. (Why do I remember the date? Because it was the same day that Jack the Ripper and H.G. Wells arrived in San Francisco via time machine in Time After Time. Bleeding was, I think, a highly appropriate way to commemorate the occasion. I’m sure the Ripper would have approved.)

Afterward, I followed standard Red Cross procedure by sitting in the canteen area for at least ten minutes, eating snacks and drinking Diet Coke. I followed my standard procedure by not recording those snacks in my Weight Watchers journal. This is the only time I ever eat anything off-budget. I figure the caloric loss of a pint of blood entitles me to some extra intake. Maybe this is cheating, but since I can only do it once every two months, the potential damage to my diet is pretty slight.

It would be nice to know whether I’m overcompensating (is a blood donation worth one Little Debbie cake or two? Can I also have a packet of peanuts?), but I don’t see any way to be sure. The Weight Watchers Food Companion lists some pretty obscure foods (cooked armadillo is 1 WW point per ounce, the same as a cup of loganberries), but nothing about human blood. And somehow I can’t bring myself to call my local Weight Watchers office and ask.

Surely this question has come up before. What happens when vampires need to lose weight? Some of them must end up joining Weight Watchers (attending meetings at night, of course), but when they bite someone, how do they record the point value of the, er, meal? Perhaps a future episode of Buffy will address this issue.

UPDATE: Addressed, but not by Buffy.