The holidays were/are pretty busy for me, especially with Axel under our toes and requiring a constant eye.  I managed to get all of my christmas shopping done in 1 day and from the comfort of my couch.  Now that is the kind of shopping I most truly love.  Only 1 thing didn’t arrive because of back order and it was a pair of "Pink" sweatpants and top for my daughter.  Otherwise everything came in on time, even some Ebay items did.  Curtis got a Flowmaster exhaust system for his pick up truck, custom sub-woofer box for the truck and some cologne and clothes and Guitar Hero II/III.  Jess got clothes, clothes and more clothes plus $300 in gift cards.  She also got the 7 season set of "Gilmore Girls". lol she loves that show.  She was so happy. haha She’s so easy.  :)  I got Gary "Scene it" for xbox, that is loads of fun. I kick ass everytime. heh and some slippers.  I got a new wedding set and a martini set with a chocolatini glass and a bottle of Godiva Chocolate Liquor. MMMM my new favorite drink!  ;)  The new wedding set is to replace the wedding set from my mother that had to be cut off after I had surgery in 2005.  My husband wanted me to look married again and decided that Christmas was as good a time as any.  I got to pick it out, it is a sapphire and diamond set.  Just beautiful.  I love it.  We had a great Christmas.  Unfortunately, Curtis had to work from 7am Christmas eve till 7am Christmas morning, but that’s ok.  He came home and opened gifts. He never managed to get to bed that day, cause after opening gifts he went outside to start putting on his exhaust system. lol  I cooked Christmas breakfast and then began dinner.  We finally ate dinner at 5:30.  I was hoping more for 4pm, but the turkey wasn’t cooking fast enough.

Initially I was not going to put up the Christmas tree because of the puppy.  He was chewing everything when we brought him home.  After about a week, he was doing better and I thought, let me at least try and see what happens, worst case, I have to put the tree (fake) up on a table or just not have one this year.  I was amazed that he only sniffed it, licked a branch and left it alone.  He was under my feet while I was putting it up but he did amazingly well.  Because our house is so small, we decided on a small tree, 4′.  It works out great, but my son’s gift was larger than the tree, but that’s ok.

Axel seems to go through phases of being perfect to being a terror.  Training starts on Jan 5.  We have been trying to work with him on things like sit, stay, down, off, in, out, "NO", paw.  He does 4 of those commands well. lol

I’m sure you can guess which one’s he chooses to ignore.  Paw he does as soon as he is in front of us now when he sits. lol it’s so cute.  We had started to walk him every day using his regular nylon leash and collar, but going down our street one day was such a chore and by the time I got back to the house my hands were swollen and sore from the leash.  They were ‘leash burned’.  He pulled and tugged, it was awful.  So we decided he will need the choke chain for leash training.  He’s just too powerful to not use one and he learned pretty darn quick what was proper and what was not.  We take him out to the school parking lot and walk him there for 3 laps.  It totals around 1/2 mile I think. He does really well.

 

At 18 weeks old now, he is growing like a weed.  He is losing some of his puppy look and starting to look like an adolescent.  Kind of awkward in some areas, like his back legs are a little longer than his front so it gives him an awkward stance. When we brough him home November 30, he weighed 42 pounds… as of yesterday he weighs 56.8 pounds. He is also 4" taller. 

I’m coming to a close on my EMT training.  January 3rd is my class final exam.  The 5th is my class final practicles testing. Then on the 10th is the State certification exam and practicles.  To say that I’m nervous is an understatement.  I don’t think I am ready yet.  We had a mock mass causualty event on the 15th of December.  We had 40 people come and get made up to look like they were burned, cut or whatever.  The "incident" was a building collapse.  I don’t have much confidence in my partner.  She has done pretty bad on most of her tests and her and I don’t work well together as a ‘team’.  We usually try to decided before entering into a scenerio who is lead and who is assist… but she doesn’t seem to get it.  If I’m taking lead, she decides during the scenerio to start doing what I am doing.  If I’m assist and taking vitals, next thing I know, she is doing that too.  It is frustrating as hell and I have talked to her about it over and over without being mean.  I just hope she doesn’t cause us to fail the Classroom practicles or the State. 

Part of getting ready for my EMT certification required me to do 10 hours on the ambulance and 10 hours in ER at the hospital.  I completed my 10 on the ambulance in October/November after running 5 calls, first one was a little girl (1 year old) who fell off the couch onto the hard floor.  Father thought that she went unconscious for a moment, when we got there she was laughing and smiling.  We transported her anyway and she was awesome.  The next call was for a lady with difficulty breathing, that one wasn’t too bad.  Give some oxygen, check vitals every 5 minutes, talk to her and make sure she is doing alright… and go.  The third call was a shock (for me).  Suicide attempt, a 64 year old man shot himself in the head.  He survived for 24 hours after we got him to medivac.  You think, how in the hell am I supposed to deal with this emotionally, when on scene, it is like you have to just remove the emotion from your mind and deal with that later, on your own or with your team.  If you don’t, you won’t be any help to the patient.  I was surprised, for as emotional as I am, I did very very well and was able to help control the bleeding and provide oxygen using the bag-valve mask.  After that call, the other two were pretty minimal.  70 year old man with chest pains and a woman with difficulty breathing. 

I completed my 10 hours in the ER on the 22nd of December.  I arrived at 7am and worked until 5pm.  It was a long day and my legs and feet were killing me.  It was exhausting but it was a lot of fun.  I really enjoyed it.  It’s amazing how many people are so rude to the medical staff though.  It is a shame, considering that they are there for help and they are being mean to  you when you are trying to help them.  I just don’t understand that mentality.  I had one guy tell me in a rude manner to "get this shit out of my face!"  he was talking about the bedside commode that his wife moved from down by the end of the bed against the wall, up closer to where his pillow was.  Of course it was full of crap, and needed to be emptied, but he didnt’ have to be ugly about it.  So I smiled and said "No problem", and moved the bedside commode to where it was to begin with.  We had a lot of patients that day, though never full.  I had to change a lot of beds, disinfect rooms, take vitals on all patients when they were brought in, hook them up to the monitors, ekg’s, BP and pulse-ox.   Provide warm blanks and some reassuring comfort.  It was an awesome day.

Work is going ok. I still don’t like what I do but it will have to suffice until I can change my career path.  I might see about starting as a "tech" in the ER after I get my EMT cert.  The hospital only requires 16 hours a month and maybe I can start slow and ease my way in to a fulll time position there.  They pay rate is low, but if you work weekends and nights, you get additional pay on top of your regular hourly pay.  So what starts out as 10/hr you can end up with between 15-18/hr.  They provide a lot of inhouse training so that you can move up, so I think this is really something that I want to do for the time being. I’m continuing my forensic training and I’m going to work towards my paramedic certification.  I found out that SWAT has their own EMT team and that sounds like a pretty cool possibility.  But anyway, I got side tracked, back to work… My annual review was on Dec 1 and I got a decent raise.  I have to get my CISSP certification and then I was told I’d get another good sized raise next December.  These raises make it hard for me to want to change my career path for less pay… but I have to do what is going to make me happy and yes, the money makes me happy but the job sucks.  It is mindless and boring.  There is so much about the job that I know people would love to have it, but I like to be busy and feel useful. 

Usually we have a party for New Years but not this year.  We are just going to spend the evening together, watch the ball drop (if we can stay up late enough) on TV and go to bed.  I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas with their families and loved one and I wish you all a happy and healthy 2008!