Living In the World, Not on It

For those of you who read my somewhat forgotten blog, you'll get a chuckle out of the title, as it matches the title of the blog. I haven't actually forgotten it, but it has fallen by the way side thanks to feeling crappy more often than not. However, two things have happened to suddenly bring the sun back out onto my island of writings and musings... 1. I'm in Mo'town (our EMS designation for Morristown Memorial Hospital and there is only so much to do. I have all the telly viewing I could want on my iPad, but since I'm not a telly addict, there is only so much I will watch. And I don't consider playing games to be worthwhile on a computer, so scratch that off the list. Typing extensively on an iPad is not really ideal and so I have never posted anything onto my blog from there. Which brings me to 2. Luis (how much do I love that man?) got me the one and only thing I really, really wanted for Christmas: a MacBook Air. Oh, yes. And just as I love my iPad to ...

Welcome to The Queen's Meme 7 Royal Questions on Tuesday The Queen's Meme #102 1. What do men really want in a woman? How does one answer that? All men are different. If I had to say that about Luis, I would say someone to have stimulating conversations with - he of course would give an inappropriate answer just to see me wig out and give him an appalled look! He knows how to get a rise out of me. 2. Should marijuana be legalized? Yes, and all the rest of the drugs as well. Tax them and make them all legal so that crime goes down and drug dealers won't have any market left! 3. Why did the cow jump over the moon? There was a horny bull on the other side - why else? 4. What do women really want in a man? I suspect answer No. 1 applies. I suppose most would say someone who listens to what they have to say. Hopefully - I hate to think what most women want is someone to control. 5. When you are having a really good day, what usually makes it good? I think ev...

Welcome to Saturday: 9 . What we've committed to our readers is that we will post 9 questions every Saturday. Sometimes the post will have a theme, and at other times the questions will be totally unrelated. Those weeks we do "random questions," so-to-speak. We encourage you to visit other participants posts and leave a comment. Because we don't have any rules, it is your choice. We hate rules. We love memes, however, and here is today's meme! Saturday 9: Sleeping to Dream 1. Do you ever go to sleep to simply dream? I have, usually when waking up from a dream that was so good, I never wanted it to stop! 2. When you’re having trouble staying awake, what are some things you do to make sure you don’t drift off to sleep? I try reading, watching the telly, playing music, getting up and working around the house. I'm not usually able to sleep without sleeping medication, though, so this is not a huge problem... 3. What’s most likely to cause ...

Here’s another set of six questions just in time for your weekend. There’s no real theme to this week’s set, so get ready for a little of everything. Thanks for dropping by! Be sure to check back this week and click on the links of bloggers who play along in the comments below! It’s a great way to find blogs you may not have visited and keep the conversation going! Here are this week’s “Saturday Six” questions. Either answer the questions in a comment here, or put the answers in an entry on your blog… But don’t forget to leave a link to your blog so that everyone else can visit! Permission is not granted to copy the questions to message boards for the purpose of having members answer and play along there. Enjoy! 1. What color are you least likely to wear? Bright yellow or orange. People with my colouring can't wear colours like that. (Sort of like this font...) 2. What color do you tend to wear the most? Black first and foremost, burgun...

Welcome to The Queen's Meme 7 Royal Questions on Tuesday The Random Meme is well...random. Haphazard. No synchronicity. No rhyme or reason. I'm allowed once in awhile to be random. So I looked deep into the recesses of a tired pencil brain today and wrote down the first thing that popped into my head. That's a dangerous proposition. I hope you enjoy this totally random meme. 1. What is your favorite summertime flower? One that I'm not allergic to... but I haven't found that flower yet. 2. Are you behind on your blog? Yes and no. I seem to be keeping up with some memes, but then I don't always post my usual musings. So I'm kinda sorta behind. 3. What has irritated you the most recently? My father-in-law, who lives with us, has suddenly been taking items I've put out to be picked up by the garbage men and putting them in his room. What the hell? I'm throwing out junk and he's bringing it in. It's not his garbage and if I find ...

...I had my ba nk card destroyed, found out the magic stamp was worth very little (right now), paid a summons... on and on. I was sitting here, happily posting a comment on Ted the Third's blog post about quotes from the Sunday Seven meme, when I received an e-mail from my bank. It showed a $15.00 charge from cars.com. What the f--? So I called my bank and told them that is not my charge. The woman there said they would put through paperwork regarding this. She also recommended I contact cars.com and ask them about it. After perusing the Web site and not finding a phone number, I Googled them - "cars.com phone number" - and it came right up. I was transferred to three different people before I got the right person/department. By then I was just a little peeved. But Jared was very helpful and told me that yes, they caught the transaction as fraudulent. Really...? Yes, it turns out they have software that compares the transaction to past fraudulent ones as well as gauging t...

I can't or won't speak about a lot of what happened this week. I lost a lot of things over this week, but it seems that between my making concessions to issues and talking to only the very closest to friends about it, I've managed to hold onto what was most important. Luis has his needs and I have to be more cognizant. I tend to harp on things I need not, bitch and gripe about things that I shouldn't. So I have that to work on as well as bud... budg... budgeting. (See that - I have trouble just saying that word! I hate that word. I hate money and dealing with it - mostly because I don't know how to deal with it. I'm Houdini - I only know how to make it disappear! And let's not get into my riding. I take a lot of solace in this and I will miss it. But I will be an associate member, so I can do parades, events, run for administration-type E-board positions, committees (I'm on the New Rig Committee, which will be very educational for me), etc. The cats pro...

When I first left work, I had this puzzle I was working on. At the time I left, I barely had Spring completed. It was creeping along... Notice my blog has been creeping along and suddenly this month I've posted a month's worth in a mere 14 days? That is a LOT of free time. I've actually had a lot of free time over the last three months, but I haven't really felt good about it. I figured with enough time I would reach the "I feel better about this point" and while I might still kinda get down about it, in general, I would start to feel better. (Wow. What a poorly structured sentence that is...!) Well, I have reached that point. Not that I didn't think I would. I just did not know how long it would take. It feels so much better to be more my sunny self again. Like I said, I may get down about it again, but at least it will be temporary. I suspect I'll feel it more in the winter. I thrive on sunlight. We have the longer days now, so I'm thriving. An...

If you are sitting there thinking how dull your life is, ask yourself if it really is? I think we see so much telly and/or movies where there is non-stop action - the telly detective that has cases all the time. (What they are leaving out is the days-worth of downtime where the detective is waiting on ballistics, trace, DNA and various other processes to give them (him or her) that next lead.) Since a one hour show really only gives one 41 minutes to solve a case from discovery to fruition, this is all the stuff that might (at most) be referred to in an off-hand comment. The real glory and non-stop work is not there. I shouldn't say that. It has to be imminently satisfying to know that your work mainly put someone behind bars. But non-stop is a huge fallacy. Even the men who go up in space have downtime. I've been singularly unhappy with my life since I began my "retirement". Of course, Aetna's total screw up for two weeks this month absolutely did not help; that ...

Ye gods. Normally, I don't want to post the whole thing each week when there is another two-hour episode of Celebrity Apprentice, but after this last one... well, wow . They both fell flat on their faces. Both teams did poorly and were eaten alive by the executives. They were chewed up and spit out. The mens' team had only three guys who were overworked (but still very relieved not to have Gary). But the little details, like leaving out any - ANY - kind of contact information, was a huge gaff. And while the men used to have the creative edge, they did not have it this time. They stuck to the tried and true methods of what high-end hospitality is. And then there was the womens' team. Ouch. Star Jones was the team leader and as usual she glued herself to the laptop to put it all together. The concept was to create four images that showed how high-end Trump hotels are. Star visualised four different images and there were errors. Star also put together the pitch. It was terribl...

This week was the worst week in a long time. I lost a good friend. Over the weekend, Todd went fishing, had a great time, came home, played with his kids, went to bed and did not wake up. He had a severe cardiac arrest (not sure if it was classified as a massive myocardial infarction, but those are most often the silent killers when it comes to the heart). Any way you slice it, whatever you call it, a wonderful, warm, intense person died at age 42. Death stinks. It isn't often as much for the deceased that we grieve as much as for the survivors: his wife, a sweet person who is suddenly bereft; their two kids, 5 years and 2 years; his parents and siblings; his coworkers and friends. We are all devastated and lost because someone we called friend is gone, irrevocably taken from us. It is unfair, it is wrong, it is horrible. Nothing can be painted as positive in this save for the fact that his death was a peaceful as one could want. It came 40 years too soon, but other than that, he h...

Yesterday was a very, very bad day. I find out yesterday morning that a former coworker of mine from my last job, died Monday morning of no apparent cause. (I can make a terribly educated guess, but it won't change the facts or bring the dead back to life.) I feel awful. I'm going to the wake today from 1600 to 2000 and then the funeral tomorrow at 1000. His wife, who spoke to me frequently, must be a wreck. When I looked at them each year together, I knew I was looking at two people madly in love. I know I would be destroyed by losing Luis. I also went to the pharmacy and discovered that my major medical insurance was terminated! WHAT the hell?! I realise this is an error of (to me) epic proportions, but there are few errors in the world that cannot be fixed. The free trial acupressure session I had at 1600 did help a lot, as it followed all the bad news but I still need to move through the first (as is always the case with great sadness) and try like mad to be patient until t...

Remember on 13 March I posted about looking forward to spring? Big mistake! What friggin' spring? It has been rainy and raw. Saturday we had a monsoon and now we have flooding - again. As if the first time five weeks ago wasn't enough. And then the week before last it rained five out of seven days. This week was unique - and great for me - in that between Monday and yesterday, there were eight thunderstorms! I love thunderstorms. Bring 'em on! I don't know what it was like outside today - I seem to feel poorly on Mondays more often than other days, and today was that. (For reasons passing understanding, if I eat at night - you know, night-night, after I've taken meds to go to sleep, if I eat anything, I end up vomiting. Yuck. Last night I made the huge mistake of eating around 0100. At 0130, everything came up, including and most especially the meds that keep me from being in agony. I couldn't eat or take anything until around 1100. I was a mess. And the worst...

I love spring and quite frankly after the non-stop brutality of this winter, I need spring! But with the warmer air, the flowers and the longer days comes the flood waters. And they are here. Big time here. Lake Hiawatha and lower Parsippany are under 4 to 5 feet of water and Wayne - well, damn! It is crazy how high that water gets. We had a couple of trips to St. Clares ER and the St. Clares Lake had taken over the lower parking entirely and some of the mid-level parking. Not pretty. (Just so you know, there is no such thing as St. Clares Lake - it's the Rockaway River snaking by behind and to the side of it.) New Road was closed (and smelling quite lovely with the sewage plant so close by). The wall of the Lake Hiawatha lower area was holding the river at bay but only by inches. I understand the water is receding, but April is known for its wet weather and if we get any more snow and it melts as the piles of it mostly have now, the rivers will be up again. It's always Wayne ...

It's tough to know how long this will last, although I have two weeks of the work life left... who knows how much I will be doing... and how much there will be to write about. Maybe my life will suddenly go from 65 miles an hour to zip and there won't be anything to say. Fat chance. The condition of the human race is to - in general - communicate. I am very much a communicator. So there will always be something to speak of, gripe about, rave over... etc. There is so much going on in life. OK, so I'm closing one chapter, and that is not easy. But I'm also looking forward to the next chapter, and we will see how that goes. I feel optimistic but reluctant to run into it at the same time. Been working so long, I really don't know how to do anything else. And there is that whole identity thing. So much is wrapped up in what one does rather than who one is. What's the first, maybe second, question that comes up in a conversation with a new person? "Oh, what do yo...

Carbon monoxide alarm activation. Again. This one belongs to Car 65 (we're Car 66) and District 2 (we work with Districts 4, 5 and a small portion of 6 - their territory covers a sliver of ours), so I am not going out for this one. That's fine. CO calls are usually short, but as tonight at 19:40 proved, not short enough. At least this one wasn't. We rarely see patients with CO poisoning. Anyone who has inhaled too much carbon monoxide will have a cherry red colour and while the person's blood saturation level will show 99 - 100%, the pulse oximeter cannot tell the difference between oxygen and carbon monoxide atoms - it just can read if the cell is carrying the amount of atoms it should be. (I bet you didn't know that...) EMTs are a special sort of weird. We know that this is something we shouldn't see but on the other hand, we want to see this stuff! We train for it and we are interested in it and sometimes you think it would be cool to see a gun shot wound or ...

I saw something in my People Magazine that Bret Michaels had emergency appendix surgery, just around the time he was supposed to go onstage. Good thing he did not and it hadn't ruptured in a huge arena. He was hospitalised and was in good condition. Now I found this on Yahoo! News: " Bret Michaels Remains in Critical Condition LOS ANGELES, Calif. -- Rocker and reality star Bret Michaels is still in critical condition after suffering a massive brain hemorrhage, according to the star's Facebook page. "There are several incorrect reports on Bret's condition," said a note posted to the star's official page. "Bret remains in critical condition at an undisclosed location. Further tests are being ran and information will be updated in the coming days. Thank you for your support, thoughts & concern." On Friday evening, some online reports stated that Bret had stabilized and regained consciousness - and was even talking. Radar Online reportedly spoke...

I don't know if it has been the sleeplessness of being on call 23.75 hours, the DM II, the weirdness that my life has become, but I am feeling very depressed. I have no doubt that the westerned sun at this early hour has a part in it as well, but not so much as the rest. Maybe medication adds to it. And a million other little things. I don't want to feel this way. I feel like my life doesn't have enough meaning. Like I'm just taking up space or converting oxygen into carbon dioxide. That may sound valuable, but a vegetable can do that. I don't know what to do about this. We'll be in Philadelphia on Wednesday, though to meet with the DM specialist and maybe there will be something - a new direction or insight or I don't know what - to help me deal with all of this. Well, enough for now. One hour left of covering.

I still don't feel up to par, but the fact that I am so reluctant to eat makes the healing process just a wee bit slower than it needs to be. I'm working on it. Last night, I had rice from the Afghani restaurant. I figured that while the rice was flavourful, it was still bland enough that my stomach would feel good about it. Still, one can not help but feel tired with a day of meals such as I am having: 12 spoonfuls of Cheerios in milk a small cup of pear sorbet plain rice with some raisins four bottles of [flavoured] water instead of my usual 6 - 9 bottles a day I guess after all the eating of the past three weeks on the gabapentin, this is a drastic change. This is not what I sighned up for. I suffer more than enough abuse at the hands of my own body. Why this, too? Yes, that is just me whining. I get to do that once in a while. I haven't started the Lyrica, which in some ways is fine. I have always been anti-pharmaceuticals for many, many years. As the fun bits of this a...

I awoke at 0400 (I forgot to reset the alarm clock to 0440) ad then to add to it, I'd fallen asleep on the couch for a while and it was 2000 when I awoke. So I'm an hour off anyway! My alarm going off... I hit the button to silence it and stlked into the bathroom, came out and reached the conclusion that this is too damn early and I'm going back to bed. Big mistake. BIG mistake.