Being 35 hurts...

I don't mean to sound like I am complaining, but boy am I sore. I got off my 72 hour shift and went home to more work needing done than I had done the whole time I was at work! I had to pack up several items and ship them out, then I spent the rest of the afternoon getting set up for the big garage sale. Went to bed late, got up early Saturday and had the sale all day till around 2. It did not go as well as I had hoped. But all in all it was a decent take. Sunday came and we went to church as always. I played electric guitar and it was fun. Doug preached a great message but a hard one. We needed it. Sunday afternoon the kids had their annual carnival fund raiser and we went to that. It was great fun too. Then my friend Josh came down for some repo work. Boy, what a mess that was. The first one we found disabled and nobody home. Just before leaving to look for the owner, he showed up. After about 1/2 an hour of talking, he decided to give it up. Not only did he give it up, he actually delivered it for me! HAHA. That is a first. The second one we found with only 1 wheel. The other wheels were gone and it was on blocks. We had to get a rollback to come and haul it to the bank. We had to drag it off with my truck into the parking lot. What a hoot. We got home at around 2am. Got up Monday at 7:30 and helped a friend move some heavy furniture. I am at work now and glad to have a break! I look forward to the end of May when the overtime slows down some. Having more time off with the kids will be great. - DJ

Almost done!

I am on the last 12 hours of a 72 hour shift. So far NO CALLS! Incredible. 32 hours of over time in 3 days. Whew...Looking forward to my 4 days off. Today in the quiet of the station I had some thoughts....

As I prepare to turn 36, I suddenly find myself getting re-acquainted with people I knew from high school. Some I liked, like Kim Nelson. She was one of the "pretty girls" who was down to earth and not stuck up to guys like me. You see, I had a chip on both shoulders back then and did not make many friends. She always had something nice to say and I think it gave me hope for people. She married Kevin McIntosh, the football player/basketball star. they now have 3 children. She found me on myspace.com. That is pretty cool. I began to do one of those "where are they now" searches. I found several HS friends and foes from back in the day. My 20th reunion is coming up in 2 years. I wonder what has become of some of those people. Sometimes I wish my life had been different as far as what I do. I wish I could have gone on to Chiropractic school, but then again, I get bored very quickly. Doing the same thing day in and day out would suck! They make mad bank though... I often wonder what turns life could have taken and where I would be if they had. What if I had gotten into the military in 1990? Well, I would have gone to the first Iraq war and would likely have been involved in some sort of missions. Special forces of course. Na, I would have been discharged for striking an officer. I really hated authority then. I guess God had His plan for my life and it is going according to it. I love my life as is, but do tend to wonder the what if's - DJ

A visior from the past

I am at work once again. I am on a 72 hour stretch. Only 32 hours to go! Yesterday I got a call from a fellow paramedic that I helped train. He was in LaCygne and wanted to swing by. He and his wife did so and we had a nice visit. He said that I seemed happier than the last time I had seen him. He and I worked at Crawford County EMS together. He was there during the last 2 years of my employment there. He remembered how stressed I was and how irritated with the politics I was as well. He is tired of them too, but needs the call volume that working in Pittsburg can give a new medic. I on the other hand, have done most everything at this point and like the low key tempo around here. We had a great visit and then they left. We have yet to have any calls in the past 38 hours. We lost power due to severe storms fro about 2 hours. We finally got TV. After almost 2 months they got us a satellite dish. We get about 40 channels and they are all junky! Oh well, at least we can watch the news.

This weekend is my big garage sale. Friday is prep day and setup day. I am hoping to get all the work done. I have a ton to do... Saturday is the sale and I am on my own as the kids have a track meet. I am hoping to make enough to pay for our vacation in late may. Fuel will be $4 a gallon by then and my truck gets about 8mpg pulling the camper. Pray for a profitable weekend. Gunna go to bed now. I have another 24 hr shift tomorrow down in Pleasanton. They moved into a new building and now are getting things settled in. Should be a hoot. -DJ

Coming and going

I came into work yesterday and I could have sworn I passed myself on my way home! But I called my wife and she said that I was not there....I am all worked out. I have been in a uniform for way too long. I am off tomorrow, but have to pull 96 hours. I really miss my kids. It seems they are an inch taller every time I see them. In may AMR will be hiring 2 new medics. After some orientation time they will hit the street in mid may thus ending the overtime frenzy. I welcome it. Not that I do not like a little over time from time to time, but this is getting crazy. We are down 3 EMT's as well, so the ones we have are pulling 4-5 days in a row to cover the deficit. That really sucks. Still looking forward to that long 10 day camping trip in late may. It will be a great relief from all the time away. - DJ

Thoughts of the day

Today I am back at work. I was psudo drafted to come in. I picked up this shift to avoid another one. I am off tomorrow and come back on Thursday and Friday. Only 70 hours this week. Short week....HAHA!

Sunday brought with it some new friends. Rick, Mandy and Kristian. A family from Web City, MO. who are all musicians in their own way. Rick is a tremendous vocalist with real connections in Nashville who is in hopes of collaborating on songwriting with me for possible national distribution. In other words, we can write songs, producers can hear them and market them to singers in need of material. Thus, royalties from said material would begin to come in. Writing songs comes naturally to me, writing country music (which I cannot stand) is very easy to do. Hopefully there will be takers. Rick's daughter Mandy is a singer as well with a real talent. Rough, but easily trained. She hopes to sing for a living. I am not entirely in agreement with this goal, but she has that right to try. Kristian is an 18 year old kid who has an amazing gift to be able to learn guitar chords and rhythm. He is eager and a quick study. I look forward to working with him again.

We jammed for about 3 hours, my daughter Shelden joined us and wowed everyone with her mad skills on the bass. She also helped with harmony parts. It was great. I also look forward to jamming again. -DJ

Overtime and more overtime

There comes a point when most people get 5 or 6 hours of overtime and they are quite glad to get it. Overtime of course is when you work more than the alloted 40 hours per week that the government says is average. 5 days a week, 8 hours a day. The average work week. This week I have put in 96 hours not counting other projects at home and on repo jobs. I found out today that due to what they call a draft at work, that I will likely have forced overtime next week too. I had planned on NOT working much, only my assigned shifts, but that is not going to happen. I am not complaining, overtime is paid out at 1.5X your normal hourly rate, so it makes your paycheck a bit higher. We are short handed so medics and EMT's alike are being pinched to work extra shifts. It kinda sucks, but I am willing to do it while the kids are in school. This summer will be a different story. They are looking at 2 medics to hire which will fill up the schedule and decrease the overtime requirements to only 8 hours a week. When you are used to getting 30-40 hours of OT, that is a big hit to the checkbook. I welcome the time off though, this first 6 months of employment with AMR have been long ones, but good.

We have not run any calls today and I am catching up on my rest. I have needed it. I am looking forward to tomorrow as I am going to meet up with a friend from Web City whom I met through craigslist.com. I was looking around for any local music festivals to go to so I could jam with some new people and learn new stuff on my guitar and found a Christian guy looking to collaborate on some new songs and jam with someone. What he described in his post was me. So we are getting together tomorrow night for a couple of hours to put our heads together. His 18 year old son is coming too, he plays guitar and wants to become a paramedic! How funny is that? It should be fun. When I told him that my 11 year old daughter will be joining us on the bass, he freaked out! My daughter Shelden has been coming out to the studio and learning some songs and playing with me when I give drum lessons to a couple of local boys. She is getting better. She has a great practice ethic once she finds the time. I love playing music with her. Before she was even born I had a vision of us playing music together. She has written several songs and they are actually good! This is not just a dad's proud voice either. She has a gift. God will use her in a mighty way. My little girl Molly loves to come and sing too. She is honing her craft too. I am very excited as to what the future holds for my kids and their musical interests. I want them to feel free to go out to the studio and create. I am sure they will. - DJ

Day off? Whatever...

I had the day off yesterday from work, but wound up working much harder that when I am at work! I had 7 packages to pack, build boxes for and ship from eBay stuff, then ran local errands all afternoon and then we had homegroup. Bear in mind that I did not get to bed until 3am the night before. After home group, I had an urgent repo to work. Here is how that went....

My friend Josh from Linn County has been bugging me for weeks about calling him to help on a repo job. He lives an hour and 15 minutes north of Pittsburg. I called him and he jumped at the chance. So Josh drove his 14 mpg Ford pickup down from Linn Valley to help out....HAHA!! Anyway, we left promptly after he arrived for Independence, KS. The banker had stashed the keys behind the bank for me to find. I found them there and we went on the hunt for the truck. They told me this dude was "unstable", to which I replied "so am I". We were driving into town and spotted what we thought was our target leaving a bar. Turns out it was not the right truck. However, once we stopped the chase on the first one, we spotted another truck matching the description of the truck we were looking for and low and behold it was the one! I just about freaked! We were able to then tail the guy for over a 1/2 an hour until he stopped at McDonalds for a quick bite. I approached him and gave him the bad news. He was quite cordial and allowed me to drive the truck from there to where he could unload all of his tools. He and a friend did so and things were good. Even his dog "buddy" was cool with me. It was a bit dark where we did the unload, but I was not afraid. I knew that he was cooperating. Josh however, was clueless, he was freaking out thinking we were about to get into some trouble. Picture it, he is in the van watching from a safe distance, but close enough to see everything. Here I am alone with the 2 of them, they have tools, shovels, saws, big blades for trimming sheet rock and many other menacing things that could be construed as weapons, a huge boxer dog jumps out of the truck.......you get the idea. His heart rate was juking! All went well and we got the truck. We did not get back till after 1am. That is my story and I am sticking to it. - DJ

What a Job!

Sometimes I love my job for different reasons. Most of the time, it is because where I work it is slow and I get a lot of down time to read, watch movies, play video games or just goof around on the internet. Case in point, yesterday, we ran "0" calls. None! We hung out, talked, watched several movies as we still have no cable. Pretty much a lazy day. At shift change, 0800, we were toned out on a lady who's husband could not wake her... We arrived to find his wife unresponsive and with a blood pressure too low to palpate. We started working on her and once we got into the ambulance, she stopped breathing. We were able to revive her after about 5 minutes. With medicine and advanced airway management, we got her back. Sadly her condition did not allow her to fully recover. She is still alive but has a long way to go. Sometimes I get the chance to make a difference, sometimes the people comeback and live long lives, sometimes they live long enough to say goodbye. Either way, I get to help in the process. Who gets to say that about their job! - DJ

Thinning down

With summer upon us, many people begin to think about their figures, how they might look in a bathing suit. While I am not too concerned about how my bikini will fit me, I am thinking a lot about how my weight has effected me. I am 6' 2" and weigh 260lbs. I am about 50 pounds over weight. I love a good meal as you can tell. However, 2 years ago I was diagnosed with adult onset type 2 diabetes. My Dr. put me on some meds and told me to loose weight. I did so. I lost almost 60lbs. But.....over time, my habits returned and I put some of it back on. I went to see the Dr. again this week and got into some trouble. My glucose levels have come up and it would seem I am beyond what pills can do. I am now taking injections twice a day. The meds make me feel a bit sick, but I think they are working. My sugars are lower already. Please pray for me as I work on my eating habits and change my lifestyle. Also pray for my family as they will be be changing theirs as well to prevent it from happening to them. If I can get down to 210 or under and maintain that, I can come off of the meds entirely. But I have to seriously limit my glucose intake for the rest of my life. 1500 calories a day. That is it. That is like 2 double cheeseburgers at McDonalds. So far so good, I have already lost 4 pounds this week. The meds cause that. If anyone in interested in shedding a few pounds with me, let me know as I could use the support. Have a great day. --DJ

Food for thought

On the road that we call life
It is imperative that men know,
The importance of a good wife,
through all it's ebbs and flows.

To look upon her is grand,
To hear her speak is bliss,
But nothing can compare
to the softness of her lips.

When all is said and done
and the kids have all moved out,
She will be the one
to pick you up when you are down.

-D. Jamison