What a week

Yes, I know this week was Thanksgiving and all the family stuff that goes along with it, but more importantly, this week was EMS Conference. The time of year when flashy lights and sirens and all the accompanying toys are celebrated en force. The Texas per capita consumption of beer and other intoxicating beverages increases ten-fold, and sleepless nights are accompanied by hazey memories. This year it was in Dallas, allowing me the opportunity to work as necessary, and still attend most of the conference. It was not as great as it is in Austin, but at least I didn't have to rent a hotel room. I hung out mostly with all my MedStar peoples, but I also got to see old Ags, new Ags, and others from EMS days gone by. I bought my new stethoscope, which strangely enough, makes me want to take blood pressures on my pts myself.

While hanging out with the MedStar people, I had a conversation with Jon, the education guy at Medstar. He hadn't realized that they had fired me for that stupid tardy policy that changed two months later. He thought I had just moved on to greener pastures. He said it was stupid to have fired me for that, and that I should go to HR to appeal my termination and be reinstated, considering that the policy that got me fired was so short-lived. The HR lady told me to send her an email detailing what had happened and she would see what she could do to get me my job back, so I think I will. I won't leave CareFlite; they are too good to me. But I would like to be part-time at MedStar. Get my 911 fix and all of that. And I miss my friends there. I feel like and outsider because I don't know what's going on over there anymore.

I also decided that I will be taking the Critical Care class next semester, assuming I can get the money saved up for the tuition. It's only on Fridays, and they said they would work with my shift and not count off for being gone every third day. That will get me back into the habit of studying and learning on someone else's schedule, which should prepare me for my plans to do the RN completer online with Excelsior. I would never make it at a self-pace without practice first. I am excited about my prospective return to education, and the furthering of my career. That's the good thing about EMS conference, it is full of motivators and motivation to learn more and do more.

Now I am off to work my shift.

Oh what a season

So Blogger decides that it is going to change its stuff. I finally had a chance to sit down at the comptuer last night, and I couldn't log onto Blogger because it had to transfer everything over to the Google beta version. So that leaves me posting at work, which I never usually have a chance to do. On my last post, I had just gotten my new shift after the shift bids. Well, a couple weeks later I had to opportunity to move onto a 24 hr shift out of Garland. So I am only required to work 2 days a week now, but I work much more than that for the benefit of the OT. I love OT pay. And I also love not working OT and having all that time at home. I am working today, and I had the last two days off, and I truly enjoyed sitting at home, watching TV and getting my apartment cleaned up. The cleanliness of my apartment had been declining gradually since I was never home, and I am fighting an uphill battle trying to keep it clean.

I am still engaged to Jeremy, which may seem obvious, but we have had a couple of fights lately, and considering how I feel after those fights, it is still a testament to our commitment that we are still together. We went away together last weekend to Fredricksburg, Tx. It was a trip for his Texas history class, but it was also a nice opportunity to leave our families and all their drama behind, get away from our lives, and just to be together having fun. It was great fun. We went to the Admiral Nimitz museum (National museum for the War in the Pacific), the Pioneer Museum, and the Living history museum (nearer to Johnson City). Of course, we couldn't skip Enchanted Rock. It wasn't a difficult climb, but it sure does wind you if you aren't used to walking up a 30-45 degree incline. We also had time to just be with each other and talk; time which seems to be rare.

I feel like I should apologize for being an absentee blogger. My life has been hectic and emotionally unstable for the last couple of months. I have been working lots and lots of overtime, and on top of that, Jeremy's mom just lost her job, and my parents are getting divorced. In the divorce, I can't help but side with Jerry (obvious to anyone who knows my relationship with my mother) but my mother has been trying to manipulate me in the meantime, and I have just decided to discontinue my relationship with her and cut off all contact (actually that was HER idea) until such a time as she can fix her problems and apoligize for what she has most recently done to me. I find myself playing more of a mother role to Rachael and Joey since they too have decided they want nothing to do with my mom. So yeah, things are crazy and tumultuous. But I am persevering.

With Thanksgiving coming up, I am being forced to face my mother again. We decided not to let her host dinner this time. The last time we trusted her to host a family meal was Rosh Hashanah, and she decided to ruin it. We were all going to be about 15 minutes late (me because i was getting out of work late) so she threw a fit and said we were ruining dinner so she cancelled it. We decided this time it would be better for Jerry's mother to host it. I was under the impression that she would not be coming, considering the court injunction about her not being allowed to see Rachael and Joey, but Jerry invited her anyways. So now I have spend the day with her. Against my will. I have decided that since she told me that she did not ever want to see or speak to me again, I would honor her wishes and ignore her until such a time as she decided to apologize and decide she wanted to have contact with me. Jerry says she is doing better now that she is taking anti-depressants, but I don't expect much of a sincere change. I suppose we will have to see how it will go.

I don't like to work.

I got my new shift at work. We had shift bids on the 20th, and I sat around all day, waiting for my turn to call the shift scheduler to take my pick of shifts. I was hoping to be able to land a 24 hour shift, but being at the bottom of 18 full time paramedics, with only 13 24-hr shifts, I knew my chances weren't good. There would have to be 5 paramedics who did not want a 24. Fat chance. I would have been nice though. I would have really enjoyed only working 2 days a week. Instead, I got a 12 hour shift with a rotating schedule. I am working out of the Frisco station, from 8a-8p. The rotating schedule means I work different days each week. If the week is from Monday to Sunday, then one week I work every day but Wednesday and Thursday; then the next week I work only Wednesday and Thursday. It's not so bad, though. If I want to take vacation, I only have to take two days off to get a whole week. And it gives me overtime on one week, while still averaging 40 hours a week. I hope to not be doing this much longer. EMS, I mean. I'm getting bored with it. It would be nice to have a boring desk job that I can leave a 5pm every day. And have an hour lunch break, and a little cubicle to decorate. And then I can go home and have time to do things. That's what I want.

Sometimes I wonder if I just have a bad work ethic. My mom and Jerry have been training me to do Integrated Circuit layout, and they seem to love it so much. And while learning it, it really doesn't seem that hard, but it is a great paying job with awesome benefits. And yet I have no desire to ever go home and practice or work on the work that they assign me to do for the next lesson. I don't think that I have ever sat down and started to draw stuff since we moved off of paper drawings and progressed to drawing on the computer. And while I don't mind doing my job at work, and I take what I do seriously, I don't think I actually enjoy it or look forward to going to work. I worry that if I ever actually get hired at TI for this layout job, that I will dislike it at much as my EMS job. I worry that I will have no motivation to accomplish something. I am not a self-starter. I need immediate and desperate deadlines hanging over my head in order to hustle and get work done. What's wrong with me. I don't have a problem getting things done around my house when I am home a lot. I can do chores and clean all day so long as I actually start doing something. Maybe that's what it is: I don't have issues with the doing, I have issues with the starting. How do I fix that?

For lack of a better way to ease into this subject, I am just going to jump right in and get to the climax of the post, so just imagine that I said something philosophical and intelligent that eases into the subject and doesn't startle anyone. My mom and step dad are separated and they are most likely getting divorced, unless otherworldly forces intervene and change everything. Jerry finally got fed up and moved out last weekend. He and Rachael and Joey are living a cute, very nice apartment down the street from their former residence where my mom is still residing and they had lived their entire lives heretofore. The thing that surprises me is that Joey's Bar Mitzvah was the weekend before and everything seemed fine. They looked happy and like they liked each other. They danced together at the party and I was under the impression that my mom had changed her behavior and all was good. Apparently not.

The last straw was Thursday when Mom found out Rachael wasn't doing well in her math class, and then she grounded her when she asked to be allowed to switch from Pre-AP Math into the regular math class. Mom destroyed Rachael's room looking for her cell phone, threw Rachael's books off her shelf at her, then threw her bookbag at her. When Jerry found out that Rachael had done all of her assignments on time, contrary to Mom telling him that she hadn't, he decided that this was the last straw.

I spent all last week being furious with my mother. She messed up bad, and she is incapable of owning up to her faults and making any efforts to fix them. Now I just have a huge load of pity for her. She doesn't even know how badly she has lost her family. She still thinks they will come back to her eventually. She is still telling Jerry that he is messing up her finances by pulling this stunt. She thinks she didn't do anything wrong. Why won't they just let her be herself. But that is exactly what they are doing. They are letting her be herself, all by herself. The friends have been divided, and all of "their" friends are now "his" friends. She only has her few friends from other places, most of whom aren't very involved in her life. So she is all alone. She is depressed, and I am worried that she might try to kill herself, if only as an attention stunt. But I can tell you that if she ever says that she is going to kill herself, I am having her committed. Even if I only get the mandatory 72 hours in the psych ward of the hospital.

Jerry is doing a fine job of providing for them, even on the limited funds he has until payday. R and J are happy and doing well in school. R's math grades are up. And Jerry said that she hasn't gone to hide in the closet since they left the house. I wasn't even aware that she would do that, but I guess that was the only place to get away. Jerry is planning on buying a new house in the next six months near their highschool and his parents.

This all sucks. This isn't how things were supposed to be. I'm sure things are going to be settled down by my wedding, but now we will all have to walk on egg shells when they are in the same room, and things will be awkward. R and J are supposed to have a mom that loves them and helps them grow into adults. I'm supposed to have kids and be able to drop them off with both of them. Not him or her. Now I have three parents and they are all separated. I have three parents to divide time and holidays and vacations with. Ug, my mom is so stupid.

Anyways, thanks for the therapy session. Let me know how much I owe you.

Update on the new job

So I have completed my first week working at CareFlite. It has been all classroom, which is kinda boring, and my butt hurts at the end of the day, but I really am digging the 8a-5p thing. I have had plenty of time in the evening to hang out with Jeremy and relax at home. I feel like I have a life. Its great. And it's nice having a little refresher. The classes are really good, and I'm getting CE hours that I can apply to my recertification. We also did a bit of driving, and I had to sit through Defensive Driving with videos that are 15-30 years old. Boooring. We also got to play with sheep guts on Thursday. They had a complete sheep airway, epiglottis, trachea, lungs, and also the heart. So we "intubated" the trachea and got to watch the lungs reinflate. It was cool. Lung tissue is incredibly lighter that it looks like it should be for it's size. I got to perform a crichothyrotomy on the trachea. It was interesting, but I wasn't feeling well that day and the plastic gowns and smelly guts didn't help much.

The guys in my orientation are pretty cool too. Most of them are 21-24 years old, and they are hilarious. They sit through the entire day, talking shit to each other and making snide comments to each other. It's great.

Next week we start what is called 'boot camp.' It is all day classroom stuff to make sure we know how to do stuff, and then tests. We have standing orders for Rapid Sequence Induction. It's cool, but if they test us over it and we don't get 100% on the test, or random retests while we are working, then our primary status gets pulled. I'm not too worried about it, though.

I think I am going to like working here. They have several 24 hour shifts, and one of them is in Irving, about half a mile from my apartment. Acutally, they have an apartment rented in a complex on the same street as my complex, that they use for their 24 hour station. Shannon, the guy who hired me, says that because I am a paramedic, I have a good shot at getting a 24 hour shift because my seniority will rise quickly and there aren't enough paramedics yet. That would be so cool to have a 24 hour shift right next to my apartment.

Anyways, I am happy.

I have been emailing my dad since I have had a hard time communicating with him by phone due to weird schedules/business. I sent him the pic of me and my honey that I just posted, and he sent this one back. I think I was 10 or 11 or something. But notice the t-shirt I'm wearing is New Kids on the Block. Awesome! And, of course, I am with my dad. This was taken on July 4th when we had gone to see the fireworks and were eagerly awaiting their start time. I think I have his nose and chin. What do you think? Wasn't I a cute kid? My hair was crappy, but I think everyone says that. Besides, this is from when my mom used to cut it for me. So it does not necessarily reflect on my taste. I am much more fashionalbe now. My dad asked me when I started to look grown up. It's a good question.

Hey look! It worked! This is Jeremy! Isn't he cute? I think it's a rather fabulous picture. This was taken at Jeremy's brother Jared's wedding. Notice my hair is brown. It has faded a bit since this picture, but it is still darker than any of you have seen.





And this is the fabulous ring he got me. It's huge. Neither of these pics is really clear, but you get the point about what it looks like. Here's the specs in case you are interested: the sapphire is just under 3 carats and it has 14 diamonds around it totaling just under 1 carat, with white gold. Ain't it special...





Well, I finally managed to post a picture to my blog. It's actually really easy, once you get past the website screwing up and being uncooperative. I will be posting more pics of us and of other things. I have no more excuses.