Bonus kids

So, earlier today, while Sophie and I were on one of our multiple walks, I was running some things around my brain, trying to come up with some things to write about.  I really do want to get more of my thoughts down on, well, not paper I guess but, ummm here.  You know what I mean.

And I thought about Bonus kids.

Over the course of last year I wrote about some of Caitlin's besties; Melissa, Sarah, Megan, Ashley and Dalmy.  I wrote about how important they were to me and how much I enjoyed seeing and/or chatting and/or texting and/or whatever other form of communicating we've done over the last ten or so years.

I used the phrase "bonus kids" with them at Megan's wedding last summer.  But, truth be told, these girls aren't my original "bonus kid".

Kevin and I have worked together probably four or five years, although not for the last few.  We always had a lot of fun when we worked together, and if things worked out I'd take him back on my shift in a heartbeat.  He's one of the best dudes I know, for so many reasons.  Some of which will become evident soon.

But he's not the bonus kid I'm referring to.

My first bonus kid is Kevin's wife, Courtney.

And she's a keeper.

In all honesty, I don't remember how, exactly, she got this status.  But let me tell you just a little bit about her.  In no particular order she is; among the most AMAZING bakers on the planet.  I believe I've mentioned RVCB's (Red Velvet Cake Balls) here?

You'll notice some are already missing in this picture.  That's because there is no known photograph of a full plate of RVCB's.  They are every bit as wonderful as they sound.  They come from Court, along with numerous, unprompted deliveries of homemade chocolate chip cookies so deliriously tasty I could probably be coerced into felonious activity to obtain them.  Crack?  Hah!  I laugh at you.  Courtney's baking is every bit as addictive.

Sorry (not sorry) I got a little carried away there but her baked goods will do that to me.

Court is also one of the first people to encourage me to do this blog.  I was at least a little inspired by reading one she used to do.  And she kept me afloat in constructive criticism for the first several months, to keep me on the write (sorry, couldn't help it) track.  As a former English professor I valued her assessment of my work.

But those qualities don't come close to describing who she is.

Let me try this.  Kevin and Courtney have five kids.  Three of the kids have some type of special needs.  To say that adds an element of challenge to an already hectic life is, perhaps, the ultimate understatement.  And they take on this challenge unwaveringly and they handle it remarkably well.  And without complaint.

Me?  I whine about people not knowing how to load a dishwasher.

Perhaps my favorite part of what makes Courtney Courtney is this.  She's currently in the midst of a fundraising campaign to help OTHER people's kids.  That's right.  This particular fundraiser will do nothing (other than setting a sterling example of how to adult) to help her own children, but instead will raise money to aid pediatric cancer patients.  For the second year in a row.

I'm adding a link to her fundraising page here and I'd like to encourage you to help Courtney help kids with cancer.  I will tell you here and now, and I'm sure she'd echo this if you asked her, NO amount is too small.  If you can give $5.00 or $500.00 either will be graciously accepted.  Having done W5kfC for ten years I can tell you first hand how hard it is to raise money.  It's incredibly difficult to be the one with a hand out looking for donations, no matter the cause.  So I know how hard she's working for this.  She is, I believe, in the process of raising her goal since she just reached the initial one last week.  Hopefully some of you can throw a few extra bucks her way and help reach a new goal.

Let's do some good, shall we?

Peace

V.A.C.A.T.I.O.N.

Ok, maybe that should be "staycation" since I'm not going anywhere.

potato, potatoe

I'm off of the next two shifts, three of the next four, and it was time.  I love my job, don't get me wrong, but I've been there a lot, especially over the last couple weeks.  I did, due to a trade and an overtime shift, 24 on and 24 off for eight days straight.  That's no fun.  It wiped me out more so than any 48 I've ever worked.  It usually takes me at least one day to get my sleep back to some semblance of normal after I get home from work, so, since I was working every other day that didn't happen.

I know, poor me, right?

I'm not bitching about it per se, since it was by my own doing.  I'm just saying it was time for some time off.  I found myself picking nits at work.  Getting aggravated by stupid, little stuff that I typically would let slide.

For instance.

Our dishwasher has a silverware holder along the right hand side of the bottom tray.  It goes from front to back on that side and consists of about a half dozen smaller compartments.  We usually run the dishwasher twice a day, after lunch and again after dinner.  Now, I didn't do a hard count, so the numbers I'm going to throw out here are only an approximation for the purpose of illustrating my point.  But this... oh... census, for lack of a better term, is a reasonable representation of the silverware holder.

First slot - 193 forks, 85 spoons, 64 knives.
Second slot - 76 forks, 44 spoons, 23 knives.
Third slot - 4 forks, 2 spoons, 1 peeler.
Fourth slot - 2 forks.
Fifth slot - nothing.
Sixth slot - nothing.

Insert Joel's aggravated face >here<

Now, to be clear, since I worked on each shift, this phenomenon is not exclusive to my shift.  But I did get a little tired of rearranging the silverware every. frickin. day.  And, to be fair, I do tend to rearrange the dishwasher anyway.  I don't know why, I guess it's selective OCD or something.  Btw, those numbers MAY be SLIGHTLY exaggerated.  Possibly.

I also jumped pretty hard on Shawn for something that I probably could've let slide.  My Lt. is the guy that's responsible for, among other things, our EMS reports.  Making sure they're done correctly, submitted properly, etc.  Well, one of Shawn's had an issue, I don't recall exactly what.  Didn't get posted or was showing as incomplete or some such thing.  We were standing in the BC's office and Bob asked one of Shawn's partners (who happened to be there also) to have him call the office so they could figure out what needed to be done to tidy up that small mess.  Several minutes passed between Wes telling him to call the boss and Shawn making the call.  Maybe five.  Maybe more.  The phone rang and, on speakerphone Bob and the BC talked to Shawn about the issue.  While I stood by listening.  And getting aggravated.

When business was done, before they hung up, I asked Shawn how long ago he got the message to call.  When his reply came back as I expected it to be, I launched into an expletive-laced tirade explaining to him, in no uncertain terms, that when he is asked to call the Battalion Chief, in the future, he would be wise to call him right away and not several minutes later.

Now the message was certainly correct, but the delivery was unnecessarily harsh, even for Shawn.  So, ALF*, my bad.  Still, call the Chief right away next time.  Also, fwiw, that was quite short of my personal record for "f-bombs" just so you know.  In case you've got goals or anything.

The things you learn at the coffeehouse...

Typically when I'm here, I've got my ear buds in, listening to sports talk or music.  Today, it's Tedeschi Trucks Band blaring away whilst I write.  But, during a long segue between songs I heard from the table next to me -

"So, next time you need stitches, just use Superglue instead."

Not a single disparaging word was uttered by me.

Is Christian Goth a thing?

Asking for a friend...

This time off thing is working already!

Peace

PS - *Awkward Little Fellow is a name Shawn got from one of our local psych patients.  just thought I'd put that out there...

Again,

Peace

Why'd I wait?

What do you write about when you don't know what you want to write about?

Asking for a friend...

I didn't intend to wait this long between posts, really, but you people kind of intimidated me.

A.) in a good way (I'll explain momentarily)
B.) yes, I said "you people"


When I started scribbling this humble, little, blog seven or so years ago, I did it mostly for my own enjoyment.  Quickly, howeva, I got the semi-instant gratification of seeing how many people looked at the page.  And, quite honestly, that triggered a little internal competition with myself to get more of you to read.  The more views a post gets, the better I feel about how I did on it.  The analytics that come with the platform I use (Google) are pretty bare bones and I'm too cheap to look into paying for better or more helpful information.  I see how many total views, what time of day they take place, how they found me (typically, through Facebook) and what the viewers country of origin is.  Apparently France loves me.  Ok, that's a bit of a stretch.  France has acknowledged my existence.  635 times...  But, beyond those types of numbers, I don't know much about why people read the stuff I produce.  Of course, I'd like to think it's because it's so amazing, but I'm nothing if not a realist.

And I've found I'm not a reliable indicator of what will or won't get read.  Some of the pieces I've written, I felt really good about.  Like the one I wrote to a friend of mine that lost her husband suddenly to an industrial accident (127 views).  I thought it was both heartfelt and sound advice and I was surprised and a little disappointed it didn't generate more views.  Grief posts have tended to produce some of the better numbers too.  But not that one.

Pink Heals musings have been another frequent topic over the years and they've run the gamut from top 10 views to abysmal, with all points in between.  (256 views to 10 views)

Posts about life in the firehouse have been very popular, four of the top 10, including what was, for over a year, the most popular post I've produced (370 views) when I wrote about delivering Mary in the back of Medic 2.

But the last two have kinda busted the curve.  My post about Victim Impact Panels drew 445 views.  I was stunned.  And very grateful for all of the readers.  But then, my post about visiting Caitlin's crash site generated 1233 views.  Almost triple my previous "best".

Even now, almost three weeks after the fact, that still blows my mind.  I mean, I felt good about the post when I wrote it, but, like I said, that doesn't always mean anything.  Once I hit "post" I check back from time to time to see how the piece is doing.  When I saw how that one took off, I couldn't stop looking at it.  And trying to figure out how and why.  Which, of course, I was unable to do.  And that brings me to the intimidated part.

I spent several days trying to figure out what I could write about to top those numbers.

And, obvs, drawing a big fat zero.

But I missed writing, it's more or less a part of my routine plus I enjoy doing it.  So, I decided to "let it rip".  This is the result.  #sorrynotsorry

I appreciate each and every viewer, each and every time you view.  Just so you know, I've resisted doing things to make the "viewing experience" less pleasant.  I thought about (and quickly discarded said thought) placing ads on the site.  And again, due to my being cheap, I won't pay to push the site.  It feels too artificial and I'd rather earn your views by my own merits rather than because I've got an extra $20 in my pocket.

Before you go thinking "gee whiz, he's so noble" (but if you want to think that, I won't stop you) (just sayin) I will ask that, if you get to this through a social media platform, whichever it may be, take a second to react to it by "like or 💗" or whatever method there may be to do so.  You also have my permission to "share" anything I post if you see fit.  Thanks in advance.  Don't get me wrong either.  If you think it's crap so be it.  But if it made you laugh or cry or think or any combination of those, hook a brother up.

Now that I've gotten this out of the way, I'm hopeful I'll be producing a little more on the regular.  The most I've written in one year was 40 posts, back in 2013.  My goal is to hit 50 this year.  Two down, 48 to go.

Peace

Crash Site

I've had this one percolating in my brain for the last few days.  See, that's the thing with the way I deal with grief.  Even though I don't need triggers to take me back to when Caitlin was killed or when Diane died, they still exist and they still take me right back to those events.  And I work through whatever I need to work through in my brain to get some equilibrium back.

This particular trigger came a few days back when this news broke, at least locally, since I never saw it mentioned on TV or in the Chicago papers.  And I thought about doing something with it yesterday, but I didn't want it to get lost in the crush of "it's New Year's Eve so don't drink and drive" posts.  And believe me, I don't mean to denigrate those posts, I think every single one of them helps.  Or at least they don't hurt.

And before you start with the "OMG he's a cop, he should know better" just stop yourself.  Instead, tell me who DOESN'T know better?  I mean yeah, I get it, but c'mon.  Look at who gets DUI's let alone who kills someone driving drunk?  Athletes, actors, politicians, blue-collar types, captains of industry, young, old, black, white, men, women, you name the demographic and it's full of people that have done it.  So spare me the faux outrage because, in this case, it was a cop.

Instead, let's see some real outrage that it happened period.

Due to this latest event, I've spent a lot of time thinking, not only about my own family, but also the family of the 29 year-old woman that was killed.

Happy freakin Holiday.

They're going to be dealing with these memories for the rest of their lives.  Every December, when most of us merrily turn our thoughts to whatever family tradition we may celebrate, they'll be mourning.

So do this.  Pick some family member at random (as opposed to some random family member) and picture your most recent family gathering without them.

And picture every future family gathering without them.

And think about how, because of some completely preventable act by some person, with no sense of anything beyond their own self-importance, took them from you.

And think about how you would cope with that absence.

Because I guarantee you, it's what we do in one manner or another.  Try celebrating the first birthday of a granddaughter that will never know two amazing women.  Or maybe celebrating the wedding day of one of your daughters besties, knowing full well she would have been a part of the day if only...

I could go on and on but you get the picture.  I hope.

So, today, I did something I haven't done in a long time.  Frankly I don't remember the last time I went to the crash site, but I needed to do it today.

I just felt like taking Caitlin some flowers was the right thing to do to get through the burden I've been feeling the last few days.  And when I walked in to the local Jewels the pink bouquet you see kind of jumped out at me.

I'll always remember the first time we went there, even though I'm not certain of the date.  Since we never left the hospital after the crash, until the transplant team came to "harvest her organs" a truly tasteless albeit accurate phrase btw, I'm pretty sure it was four or five days after the crash.  We met Diane's middle brother and a family friend who also happened to be an Elgin cop.  We combed the ditch, picking through the crash debris, looking for Caitlin's class ring.  It wasn't at the hospital but we knew she had it with her.  I remember Tom explaining the crash reconstruction to us by the markings on the roadway.  And I remember when we finally found the ring.  At the Kane County Sheriff's impound lot, where both vehicles were taken to be held as evidence until after the trial.  Two friends of mine from the fire department I started out with brought some extrication tools with in case we needed to open up Caitlin's little Pontiac Sunfire to find the ring.  As it turned out, we didn't need to tear the car apart, the ring was on the floor on the passenger side in, almost, plain view.  Or at least reachable from outside the door.  That ring brought great comfort to Diane, like a tangible piece of Caitlin was back with her.

Those are just some of the memories that have come flooding back to me since I read the article I linked to up top.  I'm choosing to leave it at that because, even though I'm writing this from home today, I'm making the conscious decision not to turn myself in to a blubbering mass right now.  I was teetering on the brink the last few days, but I feel better just having put this much out here.

Sometimes that's all it takes.

Sometimes it takes more.

Peace