yay weekend
My Friday was busy. I got out of school at 3:45ish, ran home to pick up baby stuff (for my very small visitor that is coming to hang out next week), made it south to Richmond and to Doc's new office by 5:15. An hour's worth of appointment later we had talked about setting boundaries with my mother (which I've been attempting to do for, oh, about 12 years now). Left to go to my parents' house, dropped off baby stuff, talked them into going out for subs, ate with them, called Richmond peeps, caught up with Allison first and showed off bridesmaid's jewelry that I made for Meg's June wedding. Left their house around 9:30, went to pick up Willard. We drove with the windows down and sang which felt so damn good. It's amazing what just driving and singing does to make me feel peaceful and happy and free. We decided to re-live old times and go hang out at the park. Parked outside the gates and hiked in, found the pier, and sat, and breathed night air, and listened to the river, and identified each object floating by (must have been alligators and snakes, and the loch ness monster). It felt really good to curl up in someone's arms without ulterior motives or complication. We were both just soaking up the simplicity of sitting on the pier and being surrounded by a beautiful night. Brought him home around 12:30, began driving towards the highway, repeatedly fell asleep at the wheel, and stopped at Carytown to park and sleep. Woke up around 3, and drove on home. My Saturday was busy. I got home from Richmond around 4am Saturday morning, slept until 9ish, cooked and packed a big breakfast, showered, got into uniform, packed beverages, folding chairs, and stopped at Wawa to get cash. Made it to the station around 10:30, had breakfast with squad boys (who were in withdrawal from not having my muffins in so long), threw everything into the unit and went to school. The health fair was okay, kinda small, most of it was inside. We were outside along with the old folks running the Lions Club screening van. FD didn't show up until noonish from what I thought was an MVA turned fly-out in downtown, so it was just us, hangin out. We showed the unit to a bunch of my school kids, they all seemed impressed with the roller blading skills I showed off on Thursday at the school's skate night, and they all were kind of surprised to see me there with an ambulance. I think I'm scoring cool points with the 10 year old crowd. lol. Anyway, the health fair wrapped up about two (a good amount of time for an almost-tan), we went to put gas in the truck before coming back to the station, made it back there about 2:30, i had an hour and a half to shop for a gift, make it home, wrap the gift, make fruit salad, de-uniform, and get to Em and Mina's place. Well I did my shopping at Wal Mart (in uniform, always a thrill), got halfway home when my gas light came on, so I stopped at Wawa again (still in uniform), I'm halfway through filling up my tank when a jeep backs up, squeals his tires, and shuts off his engine, and I laughed thinking he stalled it, then when he got out and walked around the back of his car I peeked around the gas pump to see somebody's head behind the Jeep and thought 'oh shit, here we go'. Put gas nozzle back in pump, run across parking lot, yell at people to get on the phone with dispatch/find this dude's wife/get my bag out of my trunk. I hold C-spine and try to talk to this old guy, who is almost deaf especially without one of his now-broken hearing aids. He has a huge goose egg on the back of his head from hitting the pavement, and upon rapid trauma assessment I find that he's messed up his elbow too and it's bleeding like crazy, and all the while he's saying "I'm fine, I'm a marine, I'm fine, you leave me alone". I wanted to tell him 'you were a marine 50 years ago and you'd better lay down', but I took the sweet talking route instead which is almost invariably more effective. Some high school ROTC pain in the ass decided he knew all about everything and repeatedly tried to tell me how to treat/assess this guy and I finally had to tell him to get away from my patient because he was wrecking my groove. Anyway, I had someone else take over C-spine and I finished assessing, and by that time Spotsy showed up and took over, and I happily paid for my gas, washed my hands up to the elbows and hauled ass home (at this point I'm late and bloody). So I called Em, told her that lateness was unavoidable, added a shower to my list of things to do, ran around the house doing things like a chicken, and finally got everything done and made it to the party, where I sat and drank and chilled and had a lovely time. And today, aside from cleaning the house and lounging on the patio with the dog, I am happily doing nothing. =) Tomorrow is IEP writing day. I am looking forward to things being a thousand times easier than they were last year. Starting with the fact that they give me an IEP writing day, how great is that. I get a day off to fill out these ~250 pages of paperwork. Totally cool of them. I love my job.