What an honor.

It's not something that happens very often. To most people, we're a vague memory on one of the worst days of your life. We don't often get to find out the outcome of the time we spend with you. Was our diagnosis correct? Did we do everything right? Did we make you better? Did you have any idea how much we cared?

However, last Tuesday, we had the honor of meeting a patient who, over the past year, we've thought of often. She was 10 weeks pregnant and had announced to her Latin Impact exercise class that this would be her last night teaching... when the lights went out, and the gunfire began. In the aftermath, she lay on the floor, bleeding from two gunshot wounds, wondering if she and her baby would survive.

It was a story the media loved. Pregnant fitness instructor shot, survives, has healthy baby boy 7 months later. She graciously gave countless interviews, bouncing the curly-haired cherub on her knee, her expression clearly saying, "Screw you, coward. We're still here." In one last media blitz on the incident, just following the one-year anniversary, a local trauma center honored the EMS crews who responded on that night, and 2 (well, really 3) of the survivors. It was very touching that a former co-worker actually flew back from his new home and job in Florida, to meet a patient he cared for over a year ago, shake her husband's hand, and lay eyes on the baby who made every bit of painful physical therapy worth it.

From tragedy, one happy ending.

Story here.

I'm not dead, just... floating

Geez, where does one begin when so much time has passed? There's been fun. There's been love. There's been birth. There's been death. There's been a lot of work and daily life and monotony in between. Let's see if I can condense it into one of my beloved bulleted lists, and promise never, ever, ever to be gone this long again.

• Married my soulmate in April, on the day in between our two birthdays. Sweet, huh? I've known him for 16, almost 17 years, and we were engaged 2 years before we took the leap. Needless to say, I was damn sure of what I wanted from life by then, and I'm so freaking happy these days you'd want to slap me. Really. It gets obnoxious, all that gushing about how wonderful my husband is. He makes me laugh until I wheeze like Muttley, he gives me goosebumps, he gives me comfort and he loves my dimply sarcastic ass.
• Just prior to that, we spent 2 heartbreaking weeks apart, as he sat by his mother's side; first in a hospital, then in a hospice, watching her slowly slip away.
• Seeing my best friend hold a newborn (hers!) was the most surreal experience of my life. She's a crazy dog lady like me. Well, now she's a crazy baby lady who sings and coos and turns all mama bear, and I still can't quite wrap my mind around the new her. And I love it for her.
• I got a new car.
• I wrecked my new car.
• I cried off and on for 2 weeks.
• I got my car back from the shop and it completes me.  Every time I see a deer, I fucking cringe and swear out loud, because avoiding one of those idiot creatures in favor of a guide rail is how I did almost $8,000 worth of damage to my baby. Not to mention the damage to my once-brazen confidence.
• I'm learning how to golf and I am pleasantly surprised that I am enjoying the hell out of the whole experience. Hell, I'm not getting any younger. I might as well learn something I can do in my old age.
• That picture above? That was today. There were so many things I saw out there that took my breath away: swarms of tiny turquoise-blue dragonflies alighting on my blue Dragonfly (yeah, I named my kayak, big woop. Wanna fight about it?), tiny birds suddenly in a feeding frenzy over me and the water, some flying by so closely I could hear whiffwhiffwhiffwhiff as they dive-bombed on by. The lady swimming her dog and talking to her just like I talk to mine "Good girl, good little swimmer you are!", said with such love that I had a sudden pang of guilt for not having my sweet little shadow with me - then remembering that this was the first time since last summer I had been to the lake without her.

I can't think of anything else major to report now. Life is good, often too good. I look around and wonder when I'm going to wake up from this wonderful dream, then I do wake up, and it's even better. Obnoxious, huh?

Life is good.

See this movie!

Temple Grandin, currently showing on HBO channels. Claire Danes is nothing short of fantastic, and Temple herself is a fascinating person.

I've watched it 3 times in 2 days and I'm not even close to tiring of it.

It's been confirmed.

My beloved just confirmed to me today (very tactfully, as is his way), that I am a much easier person to be around when I get my workout in every day.

It's been a rough couple of weeks... I've been sort of tied to the house while he goes to work and a guy with long legs, a comically short torso and hilarious eyebrows shows up and hangs out in the basement for several hours, muttering. He's not a long-legged troll, he's our HVAC guy, and he's been installing a new furnace and water heater.

Anyway, I don't have any qualms about leaving him alone in the house - we've been using the guy for 10+ years and trust him. However... what to do, what to do with the "security system", as he calls my beloved sweet puppy. My sweet little fuzzy puppy who turns into a whirl of teeth, fur and noise when there's a knock at the door. My lovey little angel, who, as long as she has her training collar and a leash on in the house, is the perfect hostess; remove those and you might as well yell, "Chopper, sic BALLS!" 

So, stuck at the house, I was.

I have a very small window of time tomorrow that I can go to the gym during non-obnoxiously-busy-time. If I can get motivated enough after working a 12 hour night shift, I'm going. If not... sigh... back at it 5am Monday.

It's not normal.

How much I love this dog.

What is it? Is it the expectation of nothing more than a couple of meals and a couple of trips outside a day? The sheer jubilation when I have more to offer?

Maybe it's the way she stands there looking at me with those eyes of molten chocolate, then - so as to further cause my heart to melt - rests her chin on my knee, or the chair, or the side of the bed... just staring up in ... what? Adulation? Pity? Hunger? Who knows? All I know is that when she does that, my heart feels like it might burst.

Maybe it's the fact that with her, there are no bills. No laundry. No discussions. No wedding guest-lists to discuss, no job stress. No arguments - none that can't be won with an all-natural peanut butter biscuit, anyway. There are only walks, and play, and kisses. And leans. I don't know why, but when she walks over to me and simply leans herself against my legs, I feel like I own the world. The complete lack of barriers, the trust it takes for an animal to want to come to you, and then lean its body completely against yours... I can't describe the calm that overtakes me when there is a dog leaning against my legs. No words are necessary. They should give dogs out in pharmacies instead of statins and antihypertensive medications.

It seems like with each dog I've been privileged to know, the bond becomes stronger. Exponentially so, if I may hyperbolize.

They all have a special place in my heart, as if each one gets their own chamber in which to reside forever. This one, however, seems to want to take up the whole damn thing, and I'm inclined to let her. Wherever I go, she follows. If I shut the door behind me, she'll wait outside for as long as she needs to. If I stop, she stops. If I sit, she sits, or she leans. Leans on me like I'm the only thing that can hold her up.

Little does she know how she holds me up.

The struggle.

This is the struggle.

I can work out for 2 1/2 hours (like I did today), and eat right all day, fighting cravings at home tooth and nail, with only my careful planning to rely upon...

Only to come to work, to this.

It's like saying to a crackhead, "I'm just going to put these rocks here on the counter... you don't have to smoke them. In fact, feel free to ignore them." It's like buying an alcoholic a shot and expecting them to pour it on the floor themselves and order themselves a Coke or water with a lemon wedge.

Had enough analogies?

Apparently that was brought in by some well-meaning family member of a patient we took care of.

Funny, I was extremely pissed off when I thought my co-workers (especially Dan, who knows first-hand of the fight I fight every day) bought this stuff. There was already junk lying around from the blizzard the other day, when Dan went out and cleared store shelves of seemingly every bit of chips and salsa

and bananas and oranges in the South Hills, for the crews who were working and didn't have any restaurants open from which to choose.

Cinnamon rolls, though... really? I've only been craving those fucking things for what.. 2 weeks now? I would like to thank my partner, who related to me that they were dry, and to my beloved, who reacted to my tirade as I walked into work ("Why don't you just paste that fucking crap directly onto my gut and ass?" - delivered with a scowl) by moving them to an undisclosed location - hopefully not our home.

So, faced with all of that, this is what I took with me on an extended standby we had to do.

So glad I come to work prepared. We had no idea how long we'd be standing by, as the state police methodically suited up, then took pictures, and finally disassembled and bagged up a meth lab.

Of all of that, I ate 1 string cheese and the banana and the orange.

I can't stress this enough: Those flaky, new-agey, whatever you want to call them - positive things I've been telling myself when I'm sweating it out at the gym - THEY did this for me.

I could not have done this on my own.

Why?

Why.

When we have days and days advance notice, do you, the public, insist upon getting into your vehicles and venturing out into a blizzard? I know you have food in your houses, because I saw you ALL at the grocery store Thursday night. Every damn one of you.

I will give you a pass on being out until evening rush hour Friday; the weather had not yet started when you left for work in the morning, and there have been countless times we've had significant snow forecast and have gotten an inch. Or none. Or rain.

However. Friday night. about a foot of snow on the ground already, and the road crews can't keep up, it's falling so fast.

There is absolutely NO excuse for those of you who felt the need to get in your cars and occupy roadways that were already becoming impassable. You got stuck. You blocked roads. You slowed down emergency vehicles, who had to dodge your vehicles stranded all cattywompus. As if that wasn't bad enough, once you beach your car, you decide it's a good idea to get out, in the middle of a road, and stand out there waving people by, or - even better - try and push your car uphill on a slippery road. So you couldn't control your car on this snowy, slippery road... but you're going to go stand in the road and trust that everyone else can. I don't give a shit about your four wheel drive or all wheel drive or how big your goddamned Hummer is. Stay home.

You are on notice now. There is snow coming tomorrow. Stay home, or face my wrath.

Catch us next week for: "You're 50 and out of shape and wouldn't do 15 minutes of cardio if I signed my paycheck over to you. Why the hell are you shoveling snow??!"