The Firefightrix

Tennis Anxiety

2010-01-07T10:17:00.000-05:00

A tennis ball dribbled against the court
My words in silent solitude bounce
Back and forth in my head

The serve is considered
The angle
The curve

How much force is required to clear the net
Which way is the wind blowing
Will I be blinded when I launch the ball

considerations reconsidered
I am just wasting time
Afraid

Up to the sky and strike
The ball passes out of my view
And out of my control

I don’t know which I fear more
The ball’s return
Or the lack thereof

How many balls do I have left?

Michelle Jan 2010

Natural Dishwasher Soap Recipe

2009-02-02T20:35:00.001-05:00

1/2 CUP LIQUID CASTILLE SOAP do NOT use regular liquid soap!
1/2 CUP WATER
1 TEASPOON FRESH LEMON JUICE
3 DROPS OF TEA TREE EXTRACT
1/2 CUP WHITE VINEGAR

COMBINE WATER AND LIQUID CASTILLE SOAP. STIR.
ADD LEMON JUICE, TEA TREE EXTRACT AND VINEGAR.
STIR UNTIL EVENLY BLENDED.
STORE IN A SQUIRT TOP BOTTLE.
USE 2 TABLESPOONS PER DISHWASHER LOAD.

CAUTION! DO NOT USE REGULAR SOAP IN PLACE OF CASTILLE, UNLESS IT IS LOW SUDSING SOAP..... OTHERWISE, YOUR DISHWASHER WILL OVERFLOW!

Put white vinegar in the jet dry to prevent streaks.

My Family by Joan Armatrading

2009-01-28T10:37:00.001-05:00

Have you met my family
Wouldn't take long to know them well
Though they number from one to a million
In this house we all dwell

Say hello to Jo, she's a goddess
And to Paul, he is a saint
And Adam, he's from the forest
And to Jane, all day she paints

You ask me how I feel now
Well I will tell you no lie
Jessie, you bring the sunshine
And you can see it in her eyes

Johnny tends the garden
And little David sows the seeds
Our manna is from heaven

He gives us all we need

He is Peter
He's a piper, yeah
And they will never grow old
So I bid you welcome
Welcome brothers, yeah
Welcome to the fold

You ask me how I feel now
Well I will tell you no lie
Jessie, you bring the sunshine
And you can see it in her eyes

Johnny tends the garden
And little David sows the seeds
Our manna is from heaven
He gives us all we need

More Pagan News

2009-01-21T06:48:00.001-05:00

http://www.greenvilleonline.com/article/20090120/OPINION05/901200345/1068/YOURUPSTATE01

Maybe One Day

2009-01-15T07:42:00.001-05:00

World Of Warcraft

2009-01-12T09:12:00.003-05:00

Ok. I don't play this game, but I have to admit I have been considering it for a while. My two main reasons for not getting this game are: #1 I have an addictive personality. #2 I actually have goals I would like to accomplish before I die.

However, I can allow myself to enjoy a little humor at the commercials Wizard of the Coast has made to advertise. I will admit that it was Mr. T and his Night Elf Mohawk that first perked my interest. Enjoy!

Here we have Ozzy Osbourne

Jean Claude Van Dame

Mini Me

Mr. T

William Shatner

Yay!

Painful Irony

2009-01-06T11:52:00.001-05:00

http://blog.nola.com/updates/2009/01/mothers_colorful_memorial_to_h.html

Backpacking trips with Sean

2008-12-31T09:25:00.003-05:00

I have been pouring through a hiking book we have on the shelf : 50 Hikes in North Florida. And I have come up with a list of overnight hiking trips I would like to take my stepson on.

Black Creek Ravines

J P Hall Nature Preserve

The Yearling Trail

Welaka State Forest

Oleno State Park

Ralph E. Simmons Memorial State Forest

Jennings State Forest

Note: A ranger from Jennings reminded me to be careful of hunting seasons!

New Years Eve

2008-12-31T08:50:00.002-05:00

Too much has happened this year that I never took the time to blog about. My mother died about 6 days after the falling leaves post. I have much to say about that, but I wont say it right now. I still think about her almost constantly. I don't know if I thought about her that much when she was still alive or if I have grown obsessed with her since her death. I'll let you know when I figure it out.

In anticipation of the new year, I will post my new years resolution's here.

1. My first and foremost resolution is to spend the first month of the year studying for the engineer's exam. In my job, you have to test to promote and the rank immediately above me is engineer. After the test, they form a list of candidates ranked by test score. The better you do, the higher on the list you are. When a position opens, the person at the top of the list is promoted. This promotion comes with a significant pay increase. This will let me quit my second job which will grant me more free time to pursue the rest of these resolutions!

2. Write more (Both on my blog and on a book I am working on)

3. Spend more time working on my music. (guitar, singing, now playing the piano)

4. Spend more time with my step-son. Okay, not more time, I want to spend better time. I spent too much time just existing in his presence, not really interatcting with him. I always said it was because I didn't really enjoy the things he enjoyed. I want to see if we can find some common ground before he is all grown up. I want to teach him piano and guitar and teach him to love hiking and camping and kayaking.

5. Spend at least some time each week working on the house or yard. I have let the fact that I am working two jobs decrease the amount of time I spend on chores instead of the amount of time I spend on fun me time.

6. Improve my cardiovascular fitness. My strength and muscle tone is not bad, but my cardio is not up to par. I don't really enjoy many cardiovascular activities, so I have slacked off since I quit going to the gym years ago.

7. Find time to paint at least once a month and designate the paintings as gifts so that I can actually give them to my family at Yule next year.

There are many more things I can put up here, but I think this is enough for one year. :) Hopefully there will be more blog posts from me this year, but probably not til february.

I wish you all a safe and happy new year!

Villano Beach Fire 12-9-08

2008-12-10T19:29:00.001-05:00

Still fightin' fire. That is me recovering after the majority of the work is done.

Support Our Troops

2008-11-12T11:19:00.001-05:00

www.anysoldier.com

http://www.hickoryfarms.com/category.asp?c=600&campaignType=Google&campaignName=CPC&gclid=CNm-5qir7pYCFRJxxwodFmFMAQ

http://www.treatsfortroops.com/

http://www.minimus.biz/SearchResult.aspx?CategoryID=63&gclid=CN-d4KWs7pYCFRJuxwodxyI__w

http://booksforsoldiers.com/

http://militarycarepackages.net/

Excellent Short Story

2008-09-30T22:17:00.001-04:00

http://www.strangehorizons.com/2008/20080929/duray-f.shtml

A Break from Working

2008-06-10T10:36:00.007-04:00

It has been ages since I took off from work with no real plans on what to do. Usually, I go camping whenever I can and leave is usually occupied with packing, driving, camping, packing back up, driving again, unpacking, then back to work. I don't know if I have ever taken more than just a day off without some major event going on in my life.

This time is a little different.

I mentioned a few times this year to my step-daughter that I would love to keep the grandbaby for a few days or so sometime this summer. She took me up on the offer. SO... this week I have the little monster and she is off camping.

The wheel turns! I can remember loving the escape of leaving the children with their birth mother while Robbie and I went off into the wild. Their birth parents have had a great relationship since the divorce. Normal kid custody was split down the middle. We would keep the kids when she needed and vice versa.

Maybe we did it the wrong way. I know lots of people take their kids off with them camping. It always seemed to me as if the kids never enjoyed nature the way adults did. Too many changes in the daily routine, too much free time without favorite toys, shows, books, etc. I am not saying that we NEVER took the kids camping. We just learned early on that we weren't going to enjoy any trip we took the kids on. :) Every year or so we would drag them off into the wild for a night or two. Totally in parent mode. That means that you know your purpose in the grand scheme of things and having fun is something the kids do. You work!

But back to this week. I am enjoying playing with a little monster. Sean is staying all week to help distract him. I am doing my best to make sure that they both have fun.

I now realize I am old. As a kid I used to think it was bizzarre that old people enjoyed watching kids play. Well, now I get it. Here are a few pictures of the craziness we have been getting up to. Click on the picture to get them all.

Family Photos

Wilbur Pictures

2008-05-16T20:51:00.000-04:00

http://picasaweb.google.com/Firefightrix/Willbur

For your viewing pleasure.

A Return Of Posting

2008-05-15T16:07:00.003-04:00

So my day begins with a call even before shift change starts. I have
arrived early, like usual, so that the off-going crew member that I am
relieving isn't stuck on a call for half of the morning. It pretty
much sucks to be stuck transporting a patient to the hospital at 9
because a call came in 15 minutes before you were supposed to end your
shift. Last shift was non-stop running during the day. I wonder if
today will be the same.

I really dislike getting calls first thing in the morning. Every
morning, I have a list of duties I have to do. If I get interrupted, I
get off track and it takes me all day what it usually only takes a
hour to accomplish.

The call is a MVA (motor vehicle accident) with possible entrapment,
two vehicles involved. The dispatcher lets us know that an ATU has
been put on standby. (An ATU is an air transport unit, a helicopter.)
Its beginning to sound like an interesting call. So we hop into our
bunker pants and jump into the truck. The accident is close by. I was
just there minutes before on my way into work.

When we get there, we find two vehicles on opposite sides of the road.
One is a SUV the other a Doritos truck. The Doritos driver is standing
next to his truck and one of the engine guys is checking him out. The
SUV driver is still in his car. The Captain that arrived before us
tells me that he is the most injured.

A quick scan of the patient shows that he is pretty injured, but not
critical. He has neck pain and his hands are covered in lacerations. A
shortened bloody stump on one hand fools me for a moment, but then it
becomes evident that he lost that piece of his finger a long time ago.

As we backboard him and get him into the rescue, it becomes apparent
that he is very confused. This is pretty common after a bad accident.
He can't remember the accident or what happened before it. He keeps
asking me the same question over and over again. I am real familiar
with this drill by now. A captain on scene asks me if I thought we
should fly him up to the trauma center. On the one hand, I am
flattered that he asked me. On the other hand, I am a little dismayed
because he should know these things better than I. I tell him no, I
don't think so. He is confused, but he knows his name and what town he
is in. He can follow directions. He is doing pretty okay considering.

So we load him into the truck and off we go. In route to the hospital,
he starts remembering the answers I give him to his questions and
quits repeating them. Slowly, memories of events that happened before
the accident start to return to him. He keeps obsessing over the
details, trying to regain the memories the impact has temporarily
stolen from him. This is normal too.

In the hospital room, during the transfer of care to the nurse, he
suddenly asks, "Do I smell like I defecated on myself?"

I am a little shocked by his question, but I am able to keep my cool
and straight face. "Not that I can tell," I reply. "Do you think you
did?"

"Yes," he says. "I know I did. I was at work talking to a friend when
I suddenly had to go to the bathroom. I didn't make it and I defecated
on myself. I was on my way home to change my pants."

And I thought my morning started out badly...

Falling Leaves

2008-03-06T09:54:00.003-05:00

My mother is dying.

And yes, to those that know these sorts of things. This is the same mother who sexually abused me, who attempted to kill herself after I moved out, who slept with (or tried to) every girlfriend I brought home, who made a psychotic mess of her life and out of the lives of every one who ever tried to care for her. The same mother who was manic and scary and out of control more times than I can remember. And she is also the mother who could never say no to a stray dog, or cat, or kid that wandered up to our door. The same woman who paraded birds and possums and iguanas and gerbils and squirrels (and a tarantula once) through my life. The same woman who shared my love of music and of singing. The same woman who taught me we are all equal, that nobody was better than anyone else no matter what society might say. The mother who taught me that everyone deserved love and that all forms of love were beautiful. The same mother who I cut out of my life over a decade ago.

She has small cell carcinoma in her lungs. We found out a month ago. My brother called me.

"If you want to make peace with our mother before she dies, you had better do it soon."

She is too weak for the chemotherapy treatment that might prolong her life for up to a year. Without it, the doctor says that it will go "pretty quick".

So I called her.

Over the past few years, every now and then she has contacted me with a request to let her back in my life. To just spend some time with her. She has made it clear that she is willing to forgive me for cutting her out of my life and for being crazy enough to believe that she would do the things I have accused her of doing. Once it even included the offer of going to counseling together. I actually considered that one until she let it slip that she was only doing it so that her therapist could straighten me out. Um... no thank you.

So here I am, on the phone, waiting for her to answer. I am thinking that the least I can do for her is call her. A kindness... a decency... and I am terrified.

In my heart I don't want to see her; I don't even want to speak to her. I have built a safe, calm, happy life with out her in it and I know that her life has continued in the same miserable drama and heartache (my brother gave me constant unwanted updates on So Go The Days of Our Mother until sometime last year when I begged him not to anymore). I feel selfish. She is a sick woman and always has been. The one thing she has been good at in this existence is hurting the ones that love her until they fall away, one by one. Even though she made her life the way it is, she is still alone and unhappy. And now she is afraid. And I am afraid to hear of her pain and loneliness and suffering. If she had been any of those things when she answered to phone, I would have been totally and completely undone.

But, she made it easy for me. The woman who picked up that phone was angry. Angry at life, angry at the world, and angry at me. She doesn't want to see me. I missed my chance she says. All those wasted years. I can hear in her voice that bitter happiness she feels over getting to hurt me back. She likes to hurt people. She goes on for some time in the vein of "too bad you want your mother now, you can't have her and you never will." I even had the presence of mind not to deny her a little joy. I never let her know that I was glad that she didn't want to see me. Only one little comment slipped out before I could stop it, "Thank you for making this easy for me."

And so now I wait. I get the updates still from my brother. In the hospital, out of the hospital, in a hospice facility, out of a hospice facility, having to fill out paperwork for a nursing home, still not filling out the paperwork, acting out, acting up, acting normal, getting a little better, getting a little worse, getting evicted, not paying bills, asking for help, not letting people help and so on. Only this time, I need the updates from my brother instead of dreading them. I hang on the line instead of look for excuses to hang up.

What am I feeling? Good question. What do you think I should feel? I wish I knew. I go through so many emotions on a daily basis that it seems as if I can barely function. You name an emotion and I guarantee that I have felt it at least once every day since I found out. In between emotional swings I mostly feel numb. When Lynn or Robbie ask how am I doing... I usually say fine or okay. After all, I am not the one who is dying. But sometimes I say depressed. Not usually though. Too often I am too tired to talk about it. I feel weary and worn out. I am tired of my emotional mess.

I can't tell you how many years I have spent raking this yard. I can't even remember how many leaves I have burned or how many have been thrown in the compost pile hoping to grow into something new. I thought it was spring. I thought the last leaf had fallen and all that was left was to find the ones I had overlooked before. But the wind is blowing hard again, and the leaves they trickle down, drift into my reality, demanding attention. It seems that there are many more, still on the tree.

The Hardest Part of My Job

2007-04-26T12:56:00.003-04:00

I finally discovered the hardest part of my job yesterday. I watched
as a 46 year old man died in front of me and I could do nothing to
make any difference. This is the first time I have seen someone die.
Usually when I get to a call, they are either already dead or far
enough from death that there little risk of them getting anywhere near
it. It seems like less that 10% of the medical calls I have gone on
are even life threatening.

I knew that this was one of the life threatening ones. This guy was
obviously having a heart attack. He was in severe chest pain, sweaty,
afraid he was going to die. We did everything we know to do. Treated
him on scene, moved him to the stretcher and then to the rescue. Got a
driver from the Engine so both of us could be in the back with him. We
continued to treat him with more and more medicine, each dose lowering
his pain just a little bit. As we neared the hospital, he was nearly
pain free. He was smiling and asking us what station we worked at. I
complimented his guitar that I had noticed walking in the door. I
invited him to come up to the station and play guitars with us when he
was feeling better. He laughed and said he just might.

After we pulled into the driveway, he said his pain was coming back.
We gave him some more medicine. As we wheeled him in the doors, he
said it was getting worse. When we wheeled him into the ER room, he
said it was really getting bad now. When we bent to lift him onto the
hospital bed, he went into what looked like a seizure. It wasn't. He
had gone into what is called V-fib arrest. His heart was twitching,
but it wasn't pumping blood anymore. The hospital staff took over and
treated him the way we would have in the field with more medicines. I
saw them shock him at least 7 times. Once or twice the monitor showed
that his heart started working again after a shock but after a beat or
two it just went right back into V-Fib. His wife was led in to the
room by a nurse in the middle of this and cried out to him. "Honey,
I'm hear. I'm right hear." She looked totally lost. I had noticed as
we were wheeling him out of the bedroom that they had framed an old
piece of cardboard in a beautiful frame and hung it on the wall. The
cardboard was large and had "Just Married" printed on it in large
marker. It had to be the one from their car. Their daughter was in
high school so I can't imagine how long they treasured that old
cardboard sign. She was following us to the hospital so I told her
that we would be speeding and going through red lights but she
shouldn't follow directly behind. I told her that I knew it was hard
but try not to worry and drive safely. He was already receiving
medical attention. He was in good hands. When he finally went in to
asystole (flat-line) I left the room and went and hid outside in the
back of the rescue. It was the words that I said to her and the words
she said to him that haunted me as I cried. My lieutenant let me
continue my nervous breakdown in the back as he and Pete drove us back
to the station.

Since then I have been a mess. I keep playing the "what if" game. I
was sitting in the hospital typing a report when the Lt. came and got
me and told me that we had a call. I joked with him and we casually
walked out to the rescue. It was in the morning and was the end of a
24 hour shift. We were already working past the time I was supposed to
be getting off work. We had run calls most of the night and previous
day. I was tired. I had a bad headache and I had not had coffee yet.
So I wasn't in a hurry. If I was, I could maybe have got to the rescue
a minute faster. If I had been able to finish the report from the call
before faster, then maybe we would have already been heading that way
when the call came, and the Lt. wouldn't have had to waste time to
come fetch me. That could have been 2 or 3 minutes. If we had made the
decision to load him in the rescue and treat him in route, maybe we
could have saved 5 minutes. I keep playing over how long it took me to
disconnect him from the monitor and oxygen as we got him out of the
rescue. All of the cables and hoses were tangled with the stretcher
belts. Total, if we had been more on the ball, we might (I stress
might) have been able to get him to the hospital 7-8 minutes before we
did. Would that have been enough time to save his life? What makes
this especially hard to determine is that the biggest eater of time
was the decision to treat him on scene before transport. The treatment
included medication that helps the heart and even can stop an attack
in many circumstances. If we hadn't of treated him as soon as we did,
he might have gone into v-fib arrest earlier, maybe while we still had
him in the back of the rescue.

When he was feeling better, I had started to get that high you get
when you feel like you have done some good. The shift had been long
and hard and full of a lot of BS calls. The kind of stuff that makes
you wonder why you signed up for this in the first place. When he said
he was pain free, I thought "This is why. Calls like this where you
can really make a difference, really help people."

I have never seen someone going from talking to me to dead. This is
the first time I have had to deal with this and I am not doing a good
job of it. I have cried most of yesterday and a good bit of today. I
can barely get motivated to get out of bed. I wonder if I hadn't have
gotten my hopes up if it would have made a difference in my reaction.
I have met people who were dying and I have seen people die. Usually
you know, you start preparing yourself for their death even as you
work the call. You tell your self in your head, "This person's going
to die and chances are I can't stop that". If you do make a difference
it is a wonderful feeling that lifts you up for days. We call that a
"good save" or just a "save". A "save" means that someone went from no
heart beat to having a heart beat during your call. I have had one
"good save". Many people haven't had any. Statistically they are rare.
I had better learn how to deal with this.

Though for the Day

2007-03-29T10:25:00.001-04:00

Here is an excellent sentiment from an email list "goals are fine, but since we may not reach all of them or find we don't even want thme when we get there or close to them, we better be enjoying the process."

Free learning

2007-03-08T19:07:00.000-05:00

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/index.htm

--
Michelle

Sublime is the dominion of the mind over the body, that, for a time, can make flesh and nerve impregnable, and string the sinews like steel, so that the weak become so mighty.

Harriet Breecher Stowe
Life Among the Lowly

Hoo Rahh!

2006-02-27T17:51:00.000-05:00

Nothing in the world is sexier than a man in a kilt. For your viewing pleasure, this is my librarily divine hobbit in his brand new kilt from Utilikilts. I must confess that even after almost 10 years of knowing what must be underneath that kilt, seeing him in one makes me want to check again to be sure ;)

I suppose it does't help that the snap pattern on the front seems to point to his ... um... prize.

Ahem... Alriighty then... Time for a nice ~~hot~~ COLD shower so I can go back to studying.

Necrophilia

2006-02-21T18:57:00.001-05:00

I love dead people.

At first, I was quite afraid of them. Before my first DOA call I would often wonder how well I would handle seeing a corpse. I am a sensitive girl. I often cry at Disney movies and occasionally at McDonald's commercials when the time of month is right. I really care about people and get off on the ~~conceited validation of self worth~~ feeling I get from helping them. I truly wondered if I would be able to deal with seeing lives lost.

Turns out... I handled it just fine.

I really attribute this to my first dead person. The call came across the overhead speaker, first thing in the morning, as a possible hanging. As the dispatcher repeated the address, I felt my heart leap into my throat and the pit of my stomach try to fall out of my rear end. (This condition is commonly called the pucker factor because you have to squeeze your sphincter keep your intestines where they belong.)

I had heard a great many war stories about hangings gone bad. The real problem with suicide is that it often doesn't go according to plan. Often people fail to kill themselves and wind up living a life far more horrible than the one they are trying to end. With a failed hanging worst case scenario you get a person who has broken their neck, crushed their windpipe, bled into their lungs, suffered brain damage from oxygen deprivation and is STILL ALIVE. What this means to the rescue personnel who show up is that this persons life is hanging on by a thread that you can now very easily break by just moving them the wrong way. OOOPS! Sorry! My hand slipped while I was moving you and the sharp broken edge of your vertebra just sawed all the way through your spinal column and now your dead. AAAAAGHHHHHHH! Needless to say, this can be a real stressful situation for people who got in the profession to save lives.

All of this ran through my mind as we sped to her house. Every possibility about what condition the patient might be in when we got there danced in my brain. We jumped off the engine, grabbed ALL the medical equipment, and followed the police to the back yard where she lay.... dead... No doubt, no question, no chance of resuscitation. From 30 feet away it was apparent that the body I was looking at was unoccupied and had been for some time.

We came closer to the corpse and I stared at her, carefully examining both her and my reaction to her. The only feeling I had as I looked at her corpse was.... relief. All the damage that could be done to her was done already. I couldn't accidentally kill her.... or paralyze her... or commit her to life as a vegetable. My hands were clean. I took a big sigh and let out all of the anxiety I had felt up to that moment.

My second dead person really thickened my skin. I could tell this guy was dead before I even walked into his apartment from the smell. It became immediately apparent that he had died from a GI bleed, probably in his stomach. There was blood everywhere. The guy was laying on his back in his bedroom. There was a small garbage can near him filled to the brim with blood and vomit. There was blood all over the bed and the floor. There were spray patterns of blood along the walls leading from his bedroom to the bathroom as if he had tried to hold the vomited blood in his mouth with his hands and it had gushed out the sides. The toilet was covered in blood. And (this is the part that really got me) there were bottles of antacid EVERYWHERE. He didn't die rapidly. He knew he was sick. Why didn't he call 911? I respond to so many calls where the patients condition is shall we say... less than severe, and then there is this guy... bleeding to death and throwing Rolaids at it.

Despite the OBVIOUS cause of death, the rookie cop assigned to the case wanted us to turn him over to look for a gun shot wound. Well I guess his roommate (who hadn't been in the apartment for a week) COULD have gotten tired of him throwing blood up everywhere and shot the patient in the back. Anything is possible. So we didn't protest and rolled the not-so-recently deceased on to his side. At this point, his tongue must have released the seal it had been holding because the most unrighteous stench I have ever smelled filled the room and the remaining blood poured out of his mouth and onto the bed.... But we didn't find a bullet hole.

The upshot of this is that no DOA call I have been on has been as disgusting as the second. That means at every DOA I get I feel only relief. First, that I can't hurt them by some error or accident and second that they aren't as gross as that guy.

So I will continue to love dead people as long as they continue to have the decency to get it all done long before I get there. I can't say that the ones that die AFTER I get there are as easy to deal with emotionally... but that is another story.

Mobile Home Stairs

2006-02-09T14:05:00.000-05:00

My home station is in the not-so-fancy end of a middle-sized tourist-heavy city in Florida. In my territory there are an amazing amount of extremely expensive real estate lots with dilapidated mobile homes stuck on them. The residents of these mobile homes don't have 2 nickels to rub together. I know that every one has a different story and there is no telling how some of them got into the mess they are in, but I think that a small number of them may have eaten their way into the poor house. I am constantly amazed by the immense size of some of these poverty stricken people. And some live in such squalor that it brings tears to your eyes.

I can understand the poor housekeeping though. I know that the heavier you are the more energy it takes to just get around. I am sure that most of them are to tired to tidy up, let alone try for the good housekeeping seal of approval. There is a vicious cycle of inactivity and weight gain that spirals further into obesity. I feel for these people who are forced to live in such states because they are not physically able to do anything about it. Its not the messiness that gets to me. Its not even the size. I know that depression and illness can do terrible things to lots of people.

Its the stairs.

I think there is a law in my county that forces obese (we are talking 300-400 lbs here) people who live in mobile homes to have rickety, slick, wooden stairs that wobble when anyone uses them. You know the kind of stairs that you instinctively grab the rail as you ascend them? Try and imagine carrying a stretcher down them.... backwards... at night... in the rain.

I am not certain if its a law that the mobile homes must have narrow, winding hallways that it is next to impossible to get a stretcher down. But it might be.

If this hits too close to home, I apologize. I don't want to rain on anyone's parade or hurt anyone's feelings. But please consider... could you replace those slick wooden stairs with concrete? ...... Please?

Bushisms

2006-02-06T21:04:00.000-05:00

While visiting a NOW website that has made a collection of Old Bush's verbal whoopsies, I discovered these to gems:

"By making the right choices, we can make the right choice for our future."
—Bush, sharing insights into improving Americans' health and fitness
Source: The White House, "President Bush Highlights Health and Fitness Initiative: Remarks by the President on Fitness," July 18, 2003

"See, free nations do not develop weapons of mass destruction."
—So W., does this mean the U.S. is not a free nation?...
Source: The Chicago Sun-Times, Oct. 13, 2003

For more fun quotes go here http://www.thetruthaboutgeorge.com

EMT-Basic school

2006-02-06T15:58:00.001-05:00

During my EMT-Basic school, we were required to ride along on rescue units so that we could practice essential EMT skills such as getting thrown up on in a moving vehicle. The irony is that all students are followed by a "white cloud". I know this is true now that I am working as a firefighter/emt. Whenever a student shows up to ride a few hours on the rescue or engine, normally busy stations will slow to a crawl and slow stations won't even turn a wheel. The end result is that students get a lot of practice in looking busy. When students are not running calls, they are supposed to be studying. However, I found that I was not able to concentrate. I kept wondering when the bells would go off and what the next call would be. My excitement level would be totally disproportionate to the task at hand. I spent hours sitting on edge, feeling like an evil person because I kept hoping something bad would happen.

I didn't get a lot of good calls during those ride times, but one stands out. It wouldn't be memorable to most people. Just an old black woman in her 90's who was having an "altered mental status". This phrase means that you aren't operating on all the pistons that you normally do. If you normally think that you are Napoleon and that the invisible people hiding under your bed are trying to kill you, the best medical care that EMS workers can give you is to look under your bed and give those people a stern talking to. But if you normally think that you are Napoleon and today you think that you are five years old, we get a lot more concerned and take you to the doctor to have your noggin examined. This woman would look at you, but wouldn't talk to you. Instead, she would clap her hands and sing unrecognizable words that reminded me of old gospel songs sung in baby talk. She would raise her hands in the air and wave them about, tears of joy in her eyes. Her family insisted that she was normally a lot more responsive and that she need to go to the hospital. The paramedics on the rescue that day had been there many times before for this woman. They told me that this old lady was always this way, but the family sometimes needed a break from her constant prayer revival.

In the back of the rescue, the gospel session continued. She would clap and laugh and pray while we bounced around on the broken up pavement of the poorly maintained Springfield roads. Her nonsense words were even less comprehensible over the sirens. She didn't need any immediate medical care so I spent my time trying to keep her hands down. Each time she raised them, her hands would hit back and forth on the walls of the rescue. Old people are fragile. We couldn't restrain her because she might break her own arm struggling to lift it. I would hold her wrist down and she would look in my eyes knowingly. I could almost hear her voice in my head. "Jesus loves you, child. Even if you won't let me pray."

Inspiration hit me and I took her hand in mine. She reached over with her other hand and patted the back of my mine to the rhythm of her private choir. For the rest of the ride, we continued this way, holding hands like old friends. After we got to the hospital, the paramedic asked me if I enjoyed our little prayer session. My blood boiled. This woman had lived 90 plus years. She was about the same age as Rosa Parks. She probably watched Martin Luther King speak and wondered if his dream really could come true. She had seen wars come and go and people come and go and laws come and go. She had experienced a near century full of joys and sorrows that I could never even comprehend.

Did I enjoy our little prayer session? Yes, I did. And I was grateful that she let me into her own private world for just a little while. I had nothing in common with this woman. Not race, not age, not religion, not class, but for just a little while, none of those things mattered. And the truth is... none of those things really ever matter.

tell me are you a christian child....Ma'am I am tonight...

Raccoonicus

2006-02-06T14:44:00.000-05:00

Meeko is getting pretty big these days. I hope that he is near adult size, or it will prove difficult to pick him up. He is a good raccoon (as raccoons go). This means that the damage that he causes is minimal and largely unintentional. It is not his fault that I insist on putting yummies in the garbage. Similarly, it is not his fault that I try to hide everything from him or selfishly insist on keeping all the yarn for myself. He tries to tell me that my life would be easier if I put all the yarn and other interesting things right where he could find them. Then he wouldn't have to pull each and everything out of each and every closet in a systematic search for the fun and interesting things that I insist on hiding. "And by the way" he says, "I see you going into the closets and cabinets ALL THE TIME, so I have to re-investigate them whenever the opportunity presents itself. You sneaky b*#@h."

Despite my devious ways, he continues to allow me to love him and will even tolerate a maranthon petting session of 40 to 50 seconds inbetween cabinet expeditions. I remain grateful for his patience with my selfishness.

MyGrandson

2006-02-06T13:26:00.000-05:00

This is my most recent picture of my grandson. He is almost 3 months old. He is no longer sleeping all of the time. My step-daughter discovered an new and inventive technique for staying relaxed during the first few month of the child's life. If you smoke pot while you are breast feeding, you are relaxed AND the child sleeps for the ENTIRE TIME. Someone should tell Dr. Spock.

However it seems that a contact high just results in a mellow relaxed kid who is hungry all the time. Now that she stopped breastfeeding, he is awake more often, but feeds constantly. This is not the technique I would have employed to foster a healthy appetite, but no one asked me.

Cute kid though. I hope he survives infancy with enough brain cells to finish school. If I choked my step-daughter to death, anyone out there interested in a slightly brain damaged, destined to drug use baby?

My Intro

2006-01-20T22:22:00.000-05:00

Greetings! I plan to post on this blog stories about the different fire/rescue calls that I have been on, the current status of my knitting projects, stories about my freaky family and even stranger pets, my expeditions into the wild, and my skewed view of the world. However, I currently have more going on in my life than I can shake a stick at, so please forgive me if the posts are few and far between.

I am a knitting, hiking, kayaking, guitar playing, song-writing, singing, tarot card reading, book reading, video game playing, coffee drinking, movie watching, fire-dancing, drum playing, nature worshiping, firefighting, paramedic school attending, incest surviving, pet loving, yarn shopping, grandkid spoiling, snake keeping, bad spelling, constantly forgetting, sexually deviant, fiber freak. I am 34 years old and I am very, very, very happily married to a librarily divine hobbit who lets me do bad things to him on a regular basis and is my willing stalkee. I am in my first year on the job as a firefighter. I have a pet raccoon, a great Dane and several snakes. I am blessed with many friends, a 9 year old step-son, a 17 year old step-daughter, and a 3 month old grandson.

Welcome to my weird little world.