Control

I have been told for years that fire and EMS is full of type A people. I would agree but always thought I was an exception. Still do for the most part but am seeing more of it in recent days. For the past 20 weeks or so (ok, maybe not quite that long) I have been discovering that I have a control issue. I like it. Some control makes sense. If you are in my squad and stop breathing I take over control of that for you. Good thing. Your house is on fire? We take control of the situation and fire and put it out. See control is a good thing. I think that all homeschool parents are guilty of this to some extent. After all isn't that why we are beating our brains out with the Rainbow Resource catalog?? Because we want to CONTROL what our children learn?? Please tell me that is not just me!! :D I always thought that I did pretty well with the "this is out of my control" situations. Until now. We go in to the doctor today and find out what Baby B is, assuming there is cooperation on it's part. If they are in any way like their big brother there will be no problem. :) This is driving me nuts!! No it's not just the "I can't wait till we know so I can shop accordingly" thing, although that is part of it. It's more of a "What if it's a girl? Then what?" kind of thing. You see I grew up an only child. I never had to share my room with ANYBODY until college and then my roommate was hardly there and I even had a private room for half of it. So realistically I started sharing when I got married. My brain is having problems figuring out where we will put this new person and all the stuff they come with. How do I make a 5 year old suddenly give up part of "his" room? Would I really have to do dance class and stuff like that??!?!?! I lived in that world as a nanny and NEVER want to deal with dance moms again!! I have NO control over what we find out today.... I'm just not sure how to handle that. 

Soap Box

I am going to warn you now that I am getting on my soap box and if you continue to read you are going to have to put up with my ranting and raving. Ok here we go. I do not know if this is happening in your area but it is becoming a national problem. In these economic times many cities and governments are looking for ways to cut their budgets. That is a good thing. However HOW they are doing it is NOT a good thing. Many cities are deciding that they do not need to employe as many firefighters. In some cases they take a 4 man engine company and reduce it to 3. In other cases they are closing entire fire stations and having other stations cover that area. The state of Arizona has even gone so far as to stop all state funded training and certifications. Some of you may be thinking so what?? All firefighters do is sit at the station and cook and hang out most of the time so what could it hurt to reduce their crew size or close a station house. I am not making this up. I have heard people voice these very opinions and worse. On paper this may seem like a good idea. It is not. Lets start with the most obvious one; cutting all firefighter training. Most people can see the flaws in this but apparently not all since it has become fact in one state already. Most people can see that you can not just take someone off the street, put them in some gear, hand them a hose line and tell them to go into a burning building. :) It may feel like that but most departments require that you go through at least a year of training before you can do anything other than just watch or help on the outside. This is the program that has been eliminated.  Training is one of the best ways to reduce line of duty deaths. Ok next on the list is closing some of the station houses. Ok so this means that the other stations pick up that area. Depending on the city how big that area is. Most stations are fairly busy and I am assuming that when they do this they close the slowest one but I do not know. Ok so if they close the slow one what is the problem? So two other stations pick up that stations calls. Lets say they got 12 calls a day. That means each station picks up 6 new calls. For those of you outside the fire service you may not realize that most of these calls are during the night and when you get one call you get at least one more. Ok so say the first call was for a 45 year old with difficulty breathing and chest pain at 3 am. We will say that this is squad #1. When they get on scene they discover that she is breathing just fine and is yelling at the police and paramedics. A little oxygen "magically" solves her problem and her chest pain is probably from the pepper poppers that she ate in large quantities at the bar. Her heart rhythm looks completely normal. She insists that she HAS to go to the hospital. While on this call another call is received for a man lying unconscious in a parking lot near a neighborhood bar. Ok the remaining members at the station can respond to that call. They get the job of checking multiple medical conditions and trying to determine if the man is drunk or if he had a medical condition causing the problem. The man does not regain consciousness and is placed on a back board and c collar and taken to the hospital for them to figure out what is going on. We have our suspicions but you can't leave an unconscious man in a parking lot. Ok so squad #1 and squad #2 are both transporting patients to the hospital. Squad #2 has to go to the trauma center which is farther away. Most calls in my area from when the call comes in to when we return to the station are around 1 hour. Squad 1 is on the way to the hospital and squad 2 is loading the patient into the squad when call #3 comes in. This call would have been the station that closed's call and is therefore farther away. Neither squad can respond to this call and all of the crew members are being used in the first 2 calls. Dispatch calls the other station. They are able to send a squad. The third call is for a vehicle rollover on the local highway. The squad gets there in 8 minutes and discovers a minivan laying on its top. Upon further investigation they discover the van has a family in it. There are 2 adults and 3 small children. Are you beginning to see the problem. I guarantee that the people who called will not understand that the government did not think that it was a priority!! If the mayor or city council members were in the same spot they would be asking "What took you so long?" upon your arrival on scene!! Just recently a town decided that their city library was more important than keeping their fire dept. REALLY?!?!??!?! I know I am a little biased but REALLY?!!?!? I love to read but having shorter hours or less books NEVER killed anyone and I fully believe that they are living on borrowed time before they realize they made a major mistake!!

Picture of the Month

Ok so it's not from this week but I think it will still count...

Baby B week 8 

Making an appearance in November

Meeska, Mooska, Mickey Mouse!

I can sing the Mickey Mouse song. Both of them actually. The one that is currently on Disney channel and the one where you spell out his name from when I was little. That being said I have never been a huge Mickey Mouse fan. You know like the people who send their Christmas cards with a family picture from Disney world every  year. Or the people who have Mickey Mouse on every piece of clothing that they own. I guess I always just had cartoons that I liked better. I am also a tom boy. I know, shocker right? I would so much rather wear jeans than dresses or skirts and really don't care if my hair is perfect or if I get dirty. I guess thats a good thing since I'm on a fire department. :) And I do occasionally wear skirts, like on Christmas and Easter. Anyhow I have always been the kind of girl who liked frogs, turtles, and even snakes. I have always told C that I am fine with any pet as long as it doesn't require live crickets for food or is a tarantula. (I despise crickets, not sure why.) Ok so all of that back story to tell you this one. A couple weeks ago I got a new nickname at the fire station. I acted like a girl and will not live it down for awhile. We were getting ready for our weekly training in which we were going to spend the night cutting up cars and blowing off air bags. Fun huh? Nothing like making a van into a convertible. In order to do this we wear all of our gear including goggles because of flying glass and metal. Anyhow we all went out to put on our gear around 7. Now our lockers are along the wall just like in high school. They are about the same size but don't have doors on them. So we are all standing there taking off our shoes and talking when we smell this really funky smell. The guy next to me blames it on his feet. We had had a fire earlier in the day and that always makes your feet funky, especially if you put them right back into leather shoes. Which he had done. So we all told him he stunk and kept getting ready. I was feeling kinda icky that day and so thought I might end up cutting drill short if it was going to be a late night. (It was the guys got done about 11 pm) Anyhow about 9 I went back over to the station to pee and I remember thinking that my bunker pants smelled musty or something and that I should throw them in the washer after drill. I spent the next couple minutes trying to figure out when they would have gotten wet and I had not dried them properly. I then went back to drill. Around 10 I decided that I was done and needed to go to bed due to having to be up at 6 the next day.  Anyhow I walked back over to the station and started taking off my gear. Thankfully only a handful of the guys were over there. So I took off my helmet, eye wear, hood, helmet and coat and hung them up. Then I took off my bunker pants. Now the next part is a little fuzzy because it happened so fast. I pulled my leg out of my boot and then the other one. Upon pulling my other leg out a mouse landed on the floor. A dead mouse. I'm not sure where he was other than somewhere in my bunker pants. I know he wasn't in my boot I would have felt that. Anyhow, apparently I shrieked and danced around the station saying things like "Ewww, gross" and "Ick".  My bunker pants went directly into the washer and I found my back up scrubs in my locker to put on. I also simple greened my jeans and calves. It's an anti bacterial right?? Then it hits me. I bought new leather boots last year at fire school. Our rubber boots that you get when you get on are similar to muck boots or rain boots. You can just power wash them out. My previous pair had been power washed at least 4 times. Leather boots are different. They are way more comfy but more expensive and have some strange things in order to care for them. I know from my Haz-mat training that I can not expose them to certain chemicals or they will not protect me during a fire. SOOOO how am I going to clean them? I decided that I should go ask the chief before I ruin a $300+ pair of boots. Now apparently even with jaws, saws, and spreaders running if you come out in scrubs and pull the chief aside everyones ears work great. So I casually ask the chief how I would disinfect my boots if I had to. He gives me a strange look and asks why. I then tell him what happened. At this point half of the dept. is listening and keeps asking if I'm crying. I wasn't but if they kept asking I would have started.  I was having an emotional day to start with.  I get sent back over to look for spray lysol to take to my boots. After an extensive dept. wide search there is none in the station. At this point I went home to shower with anti bacterial soap for a LONG time. Needless to say there is now 4 Sam's size cans of lysol in the station and one in my locker. My bunker pants came out ok after 2 washes and my boots still smell. They have been lysoled so many times that they wont have germs for years! Friday morning the assistant chief greeted me with "Hi Minnie Mouse". I now have a new nick name. It has taken me a couple weeks but now I can laugh about it and share. It was traumatic though. And I'm pretty sure that I won't even get asked this year before banquet what my most memorable fire dept. memory is. Although now I have two, and the other is just as traumatic. :) Like I told my assistant chief, you put a girl on the dept. and sometime we will act like it. 

Follow You

You know how you get a song stuck in your head and you find yourself singing it all the time? I have one stuck in my head. It started in February when a couple of my friends went down to Haiti. I would have loved to have gone with them and done medical on the ground but it just wasn't possible. So I stayed here and prayed for them. During that time I started hearing "Follow You" by Leeland on a regular basis and thought it would be a really neat song to use for a slide show with their pictures when they got back. Yes I am a tech dork and think of things like that. :) They have since then put together a "Haiti mix" of the song. You know how sometimes God does things that you don't see coming? Well He did it. I was in the back of the squad going to a call one night and this song was again playing in my head. "And I´ll... follow You into the homes of the broken" and  then it hit me like a ton of bricks. That was exactly what we do as EMT/ Firefighters!

I have long felt that God put me on the fire department and I have been able to minister to so many people because of it. Whether it's the 80 year old lady whose family never visits and just needs her hand held and someone to talk to or the kid who watched us cut his parents out of their car and put them in a helicopter and take them away. I can't even count the times that I have been able to pray with a patient or for a patient. Sometimes its requested and sometimes it's just a silent prayer while pulling up on scene. But a lot of the time we are working with people who society has forgotten or chooses not to see. The lady at the nursing home; the truck driver at the truck stop; the hooker at the shady motel; and the homeless man. These are my patients.  So I am thankful for the reminder that I get to be His hands and feet, and I am reminded that these where the people that he ministered to while He was here as well. The woman at the well? 

Leeland - Follow You

From the album Love Is On The Move

You live among the least of these

The weary and the weak

And it would be a tragedy

For me to turn away

All my needs You have supplied

When I was dead You gave me life

So how could I not give it away so freely?

And I´ll...

Follow You into the homes of the broken

Follow You into the world

Meet the needs for the poor and the needy God

Follow You into the world

Use my hands use my feet

To make Your kingdom come

To the corners of the earth

Until Your work is done

Faith without works is dead

On the cross Your blood was shed

So how could we not give it away so freely?

And I give all myself

I give all myself

I give all myself to You

Choices

It has been ages since I have blogged. For some reason I can't seem to get any thoughts out. Tonight while we caught up on Chuck I had a realization. While I watched Chuck struggle to realize who he is I  realized that is exactly where I am at. I am at one of those cross roads in life where you know that you must make a choice. Who am I? Am I a mommy? A teacher? A firefighter?  I feel like Robert Frost. You know, "two roads diverge in a yellow wood".

Ok so I am not having a total identity crisis. But I feel like I am being pulled in so many directions and have no idea where to go. So tonight I put my Ipod on and am listening to Natalie Cole, Frank Sinatra, and Dean Martin. I have not lost all of myself. ;) In all practicality I have two families. My "real" family and my "family" at the FD. This sounds really odd but at times the FD family is more like my family than my real family. We are probably going to homeschool C next year and I think that has caused some of the identity crisis. I am going to have to become a teacher and I have no idea how to do that!! I have been very selective with who we have mentioned this to. With all of the other drama I just didn't feel like fighting about something else with people. The people that I have mentioned that we are considering it to have all been very positive. Now I know that will not always be the case. But I guess the snide comment from that lady at Walmart really didn't concern me. Then last week something was said at the station and I admitted to one of the guys that we were considering homeschooling C. I was totally taken back by the comments and questions that followed. And this coming from someone who I not only "work" with but I truly consider to be like a big brother! Someone who is encouraging me to go back to school and become a Paramedic. So now I am trying to balance my families once again. I think I would really like to look into going back to school but think that right now it is "the road not taken".  I have no doubts that I will never regret homeschooling even if it is for only a year. But part of me wonders if I will never get the chance to pursue this. It was kinda scary too. You know in the old western movies where someone would say something and the cowboy would say "Them's fightin words, pardner"? Well that's what happened. I was suddenly like a mama bear and got totally upset about totally legitimate questions (ok, most of them) that I am SURE I will have to answer many more times. Why? Maybe because I had not answered some of them myself. I'm not sure on this yet. And what happens when my real family asks the same questions? Because the guys at the station will not get offended if I yell or walk off or what ever but my other family will. Guys are so much easier to talk to than girls! ;) Just a side note- I did not do any of those things, I'm just saying that I could have. So I guess I am not any closer to answering any of these questions but feel better for having ranted and raved for awhile. :D  I will leave you with something from Paul Combs.

Going around AGAIN

There is a quote from Mother Teresa that I have always liked. "I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much." I feel that way right now. Although I KNOW that I can't handle it. At least not on my own. I need His strength and power.  Part of me wonders if that is the point in all of this. My learning to rely on Him in EVERYTHING. Sunday was the one year mark of loosing my Dad. I was feeling pretty proud of myself during the week before. I was doing ok. I still have days but I no longer cry at Walmart while grocery shopping and walking down the chip isle. I felt I had made progress and that I was dealing with it. Big mistake. We found out friday night that something was going on. Mom called us saturday night and let us know that she was diagnosed with leukemia. SATURDAY NIGHT!! As if I wasn't going to be an emotional wreck on Sunday anyhow!! (note: I was glad she called and told us but the overall timing was not great) I was reminded yet again that I can't do this! I actually remember telling God on the way to the hospital last year that He couldn't take my Dad because I couldn't handle it! There was a song in the early 90's and the chorus went "go on and take another walk around Mt. Sinai till you learn your lesson; till you stop your whining and you quit your rebelling; till you learn to stand in your day of testing; by trusting and obeying the Lord"  I have no idea who sang it or even the name of the song, but I remember the chorus. I feel I am walking around again. I have grown closer to God and am relying on Him more and more for the day to day stuff but I still mess it up. Apparently I need to work on this area again. Some people have a life verse. I am beginning to believe that I have a life chapter. Over and over again I am brought back to Ephesians 6. I can trace it back as far as 2nd grade.  So I will end with this.

Ephesians 6:10-18  from the Message

A Fight to the Finish

 ^10-12And that about wraps it up. God is strong, and he wants you strong. So take everything the Master has set out for you, well-made weapons of the best materials. And put them to use so you will be able to stand up to everything the Devil throws your way. This is no afternoon athletic contest that we'll walk away from and forget about in a couple of hours. This is for keeps, a life-or-death fight to the finish against the Devil and all his angels. ^13-18Be prepared. You're up against far more than you can handle on your own. Take all the help you can get, every weapon God has issued, so that when it's all over but the shouting you'll still be on your feet. Truth, righteousness, peace, faith, and salvation are more than words. Learn how to apply them. You'll need them throughout your life. God's Word is an indispensable weapon. In the same way, prayer is essential in this ongoing warfare. Pray hard and long. Pray for your brothers and sisters. Keep your eyes open. Keep each other's spirits up so that no one falls behind or drops out.

It has been awhile since the last blog. I feel like someone who was swimming underwater and has finally been allowed to come up for air. I say this in a hypothetical way since I can not swim. I am just assuming what that would feel like. It has been a week of lots of deep though and searching for answers. Nights where you don't sleep because your brain is thinking too much. God has finally given me a peace and we seem to be close to a decision about school for next year. During all of this I also tried to distract my brain with other projects. I spent one night untill 3 am designing and researching our "garden" for this summer and finding places to order seeds from.  I say "garden" since we do not have a yard and all plants must be able to live in a pot, on the deck, three stories in the air. This is a challenge to say the least. I go for plants that say "hearty" and "drought tolerant" in the description. I watched a show on Iowa public tv the other day about a really cool place that sells and grow heirloom plants. http://www.seedsavers.org/  It got me thinking and  I really like the idea of planting heirloom seeds. I am a history nut and think it is cool to be able to plant seeds that are descendants from seeds brought over on the Mayflower etc. Also with heirlooms there is no genetic engineering so you can save seed and plant them the next year.  This means that hopefully what I plant this year I will also be able to plant for many years to come with out buying seeds again. Woohoo!! Besides, I figure if the plant can survive all this time and live native in a prairie it should be able to survive my deck! :)  I have also decided that I would like to learn to knit.  For some reason that I have yet to explain I really want to learn to knit my own socks. If my knitting ability is anything like my crocheting....This goal may not be as attainable as growing veggies and herbs. :)  There is just something exhilarating about making or growing it yourself.  This is probably the same reason that I now make our own bread, laundry soap, and dishwashing soap. Part of me just thinks it would be cool to have purple basil.....

 

Our Christmas card...in January! :)

Make a Smilebox slideshow

It's FRIDAY!!!

As seems to be the tradition, it is once again late at night. I have been inspired by the weather as of late and have been taking lots of pictures of pretty winter scenes. This is really odd when you consider that I do NOT like winter!! Oh well! So tonight's post will be short and we will just enjoy pictures from today and the "freezing fog" that we had. Now if only I had a digital camera body to go with all of those lenses...... :) I am thinking that there will be a picture of the week and maybe a recipe of the week feature too.

( Note: these pictures were taken with my iPhone and so not the best but ya gotta work with what ya got. :) )

It's a sickness...

Another weekend is down the drain. Where did it go?? What did I do?? I spent friday picking up stuff for C's birthday party, price matching groceries and dealing with herds of non friendly, non customer service oriented people. Yes I am aware that C's birthday is in April. It's a sickness... I do this every year and my husband just humors my midnight questions like which plates do you think 5 year olds will like better? :) This might be a direct result of only having one child...... Just maybe. ;) We are going for a Buzz Lightyear/ Space theme this year. So I have now started hoarding things to make cool space decorations out of and planning how to paint 3 foot tall cut outs of toy story characters.....

          

After all the shopping we got home around 8:00 at night and needed to eat supper and haul all of the groceries for the next two weeks up the three flights of stairs and into the house. Woohoo!!! Did I mention that is was like -10 when we got home?? Anyhow the pager then went off for 3 consecutive calls. Supper tastes really yummy if you don't eat it until after midnight. You should try it sometime. ;) On a side note- If you decide to hide from the EMT's, hide somewhere REALLY good!! ( I love my job! I love my job! I love....) All in all it was another sleep deprived night. I tried to get some extra sleep but this was my single parent weekend so that only lasted until around 8 or so. I'm pretty sure I spent that day doing mountains of laundry and other fun mommy jobs. Then on Sunday I was on sound duty and there early. All of that is probably leading to me starting to freak out about C being in school next year. We met with the first school for an interview today (Monday). Being a girl I changed clothes about 8 times before we finally left and even totally changed outfits because J said that my shoes looked funny with what I had on. :) Note I did not just change my shoes!! 

 

THAT would be silly!! We all really liked the school but I am still not sure what we are supposed to do. So for now I am just praying that God will show us where C is supposed to be and if that's private school, how we are going to pay for it. I realized today that I feel like I am loosing my job. Like how employees must feel who are working for a company that they know is going to close down in a few months. Yes I know that Mommies never really loose their jobs and that he WILL still need me even when he is a school aged kid but this is how I FEEL so it doesn't have to be rational. :) Today I feel like being a girl and that does not require me to be rational and even lets me cry for no apparent reason at all. ;)

Beginning....

It's 2 am. I am wide awake and decided that after 4 weeks of being almost completely snowed in by two blizzards that I am in desperate need of an adult conversation. Sadly, this is as close as I am getting for awhile. :) Don't get me wrong I love the little guy but I can now sing my ABC's forward AND backwards and in two languages. I bet that looks good on a job application! On a positive note we have got a lot of "preschool" done in the past month even with Christmas. Now on to the next big hurdle. Kindergarten. Where do we send him to school? Do we send him to school or do we home school? We have our first school tour next week and I am not sure what to think. More on this subject next week. ;) They are talking like we will get another 6 inches of snow this week.... Why is it always on the week that I go to the grocery store that we get "blizzard like conditions"?? Oh well I guess we will just dig our way into town. After living out of the pantry for a month we NEED to go to the store!

(This is outside our house after the ice before the second blizzard. Dec 24)