Happy Thanksgiving Everyone

Sad events at work this week has reminded me to be thankful for my friends and family. I hope you find yourselves blessed with happiness and enjoying the day with family and friends. Be thankful for everyday and enjoy it. Even if it you have to pick up the phone and give them a call to wish them a Happy Thanksgiving.

Forget about the christmas shopping to be done, black friday lines, bills to come, the cold weather outside, or the burned crust on the pie.



Enjoy this day.....

Wishing you all a Happy Thanksgiving, merry day, and bellies full of good food.

Very Powerful Video

Schmoe posted a video of a girl who had a message that was very powerful. I wanted to pass it along to you all.

Link, SCHMOE

I have been on calls dealing with families of the ones who have succeeded in their plans of suicide. I have had a hard time understanding much less explaining to them when they ask me "why?". All we could do in our job was be there and work with them in understanding what was happening with the fire department, police officers, investigators, coroners, pick the mortuary, paperwork, find family members or friends for support, and finally if none were found get social workers involved. We would be on those calls calls for at least 4 hours with the family. Working with the crisis unit was not a quick turnaround type of call like a regular fire department unit. It actually was created to help bridge a gap in community services and enabled the firefighters to concentrate on what they needed to focus on while we dealt with the family member's.

This is actually off topic but it brings up several points that I think I should bring up. I have come across several things that have created some situations that could have been prevented.

If you are in a same sex relationship and you are distanced from your family members, please have a power of attorney. We had to defer to the family members wishes despite the parters wishes because there was no power of attorney. I really felt bad for the guy.

Have a second set of ID somewhere on your person. It could be something as simple as your name written somewhere inside your shoe or inside your pants. We had to do a death notification on a missing person who had died in hospice, as a john doe, because he was mugged and never identified until weeks later. The detective was kicking himself all the way to the family's house about that one. He felt bad that the guy was never identified earlier.

If you are an officer, don't be callus when talking. Be aware of who is around you. I had a wife who was barely hanging on to her sanity. Her husband had arrived at the hospital as DOA and we were purposely not saying anything until we had gotten her to the hospital because we wanted to have proper medical people nearby. We were waiting for family to pickup her kids. She kept asking about her husband and we kept saying we didn't know and we will go as soon as her brother arrived. The dumb ass officer finally said "Oh, he is toast." She dropped to the ground in a dead faint before we could do a thing. I looked at the officer and went to kill him. My partner grabbed me before I could. Luckily her brother arrived just then and we took her to the hospital. She was basically catatonic the whole way.

This is a gross but necessary fact. If you have a family member pass away, get multiple certified copies of the death certificate. You will need every single one of them. Nobody wants photo copies. They will want original certified copies.

Now this is the end of my morbid post.

Have a great day everyone.

Intermittant posts for the near future.

Hi everyone.

I hope you are all ready for the upcoming holidays. I am. My family had agreed several years ago to only give presents to the kids because of financial issues. This was back to just before the recession was hitting. I have the presents all done with the exception of Morgan. I haven't gotten his yet. I am waiting to see if I can find a better deal on Black Friday, yep I am actually going to brave the madness of the masses and search for a deal. If there is nothing to be had then I will go with the original choice. Teenagers are expensive with their gadgets and I am giving them one big one this year for each of them instead of a bunch of little things.

Example of a boat in the parade

For Thanksgiving this year I am alone because of work. My sis is going to be in Hawaii, the brat, with her family. My mom will be in California celebrating with grandma for the last time in her house since it is for sale. Will be sad to see it go. We have spent many family celebrations in that home for many years and have tons of memories there. Plus having it so close to the beach was convenient for all of us to use for family vacations. If you are in the area, go to Newport Beach/Balboa Island for the Christmas boat parade. It is a sight to see, I have many awesome memories of them growing up. My brother's family will also be there. Should be a fun gathering for grandma. Dad's family will be at his ranch in Reno. He has a big spread there, which I have yet to go see, and all of his family get together for a big dinner there. Yeah, I am a naughty daughter and haven't made time to go check out the place. Need to do that soon. Should make that one of my new year's resolutions.

Bootcamp graduation

Max is currently in training again. He will be shipping back to Afghanistan again. I am not happy but he is a Marine and must go where he is needed. I haven't seen him since he graduated boot camp. He was supposed to come home for Christmas but that has been cancelled. They moved up the date his unit ships out. I figure I won't be seeing him till he comes home, which will be at least a year from now. Guess I know what to wish for on new years.




As for the posts, I will be intermittent in posting because I am finishing up on a project that I have been working on since my surgery. I will tell you all about it when it is done. Between the holidays coming up, work, and the project I just wanted to ask you to be patient and not forget about me.

Work, cold weather, and nuthin' much else.

Work shifts are zipping by pretty quickly here. I can say that despite being busy but not crazy busy it has made the week go by quickly. The usual stuff as expected. No crazies. Actually quieter than usual by this time of the year. We did have a statewide disaster response exercise. I was lucky and didn't have to participate in that. Heard it went great though.

The weather is cold here now. Being a coldie I am not a happy camper. I don't like it below 80 degrees. I miss the warm weather already. If you don't remember, I don't watch the news or weather report. So I was oblivious to a big storm coming my way which started a domino effect. I left for work Wednesday night and saw it was cooler than I expected when I walked out my door. As I was driving to work I was hit with driving rain. I thanked my lucky stars that I didn't have any windows open at home. We were pretty busy in the ER because of the storm. By morning time when I got off work I was stunned when I walked outside. I shivered at how cold it was and jogged to my car. Scrubs doesn't do anything for cold weather since they are paper thin. I was sitting in my car shivering and the outside temp on the dashboard read a cold 46 degrees. Brrrrr!!!!!!

When I got home I was even more surprised because Sweetpea didn't greet me at the door as usual. She was sitting on my bed in a tight ball looking at me with a very annoyed look. I quickly figured out she was not happy with me because I didn't leave the heater on for her. I have a wall mounted air conditioner/heater in the living room and one in the bedroom. I don't care for them because they don't have a thermostat. It is an older model with one of those idiot dials with a blue/red stripe. Not very efficient in trying to control my electric bills. I was enjoying the cooler temps and had the thing turned off during the night, not realizing the drastic drop it was going to take.

I quickly turned the unit on heat and realized what a big mistake that was. I have not used the heater since last winter and all the dust quickly burned off. Now the smoke alarm was screaming and Sweetpea ran under the bed, scared from the ruckus. Now she was really going to be mad at me. I didn't see her for the rest of the morning before I went to bed.

I got the place vented of the foul smelling smoke, then warmed up toasty, and then finally was able to get back to my normal morning routine. The only exception to that was I was in my closet trying to dig out my long underwear. Scrubs were not going to cut it for long at work with this weather. Everyone at work gives me a hard time about how many layers I am wearing and joke about it. I don't care. I don't like being cold and if it means wearing 3 layers beneath my scrubs then that is what I will do. Some nights I am sitting there toasty warm and they are the ones that are cold. I just sit there and smile. Hah! Jokes on them.

The rest of the week was spent working, freezing my behind (didn't wear enough layers), and lots of rain around here which we need.