I hate Ty Pennington

I hate Ty Pennington. He resembles Bon Jovi but hasn't created anything but tears on his emotionally-laden home makeover shows. He was born Gary Tygert Burton but that didn't get him laid so he changed it to be one of the cool kids. You know 'em, the kids in high school that you knew were cool cause their names were Stoner, Aspen, Lyf, Forrest and Ty. I would like for the media to get wind of an arrest where he was found with an underage girl all coked out in a bathtub of a house that he was renovating, for a family that took in abandoned deaf children. I am a horrible person for wanting this, considering he is an all-American model, spokesperson and philanthropist. But the only thing I ever got was a DUI arrest in 2007 where he apologized profusely, attended MADD meetings and basically retained his saintly status. It makes me nauseous to see his spray tanned face all crinkly when he intently listens to a family cry about how thankful they are that a TV network is there to fix their house. His hair has it's own airspace. Just once I want TMZ to show a photo of Ty with his goofy ass smile smeared with the candy in his boxers (you know he is a boxer guy) getting shoved in a cop car yelling "I didn't know!!" to the minor covering herself with his flannel.

Reinvention

Throughout one’s lifetime, one constant besides change presents itself. That constant is occasionally a direct result of change, and other times it is a result of no change. When life is stagnant and unchanging, it is drawn up from a need to change, to challenge one’s own preconceived notions of what should be and/or is.

Reinvention.

My 27th year was the most profound reinvention. I knew it as it was happening, which is as many religions refer to as a blessing, consciousness. I was aware of my own transformation as I was transforming, in a sense allowing me to see into the future, while completely living in the present. I was walking in a whole new way, seeing new cracks in the pavement, catching old wonders in new nets, and laughing as it poured over the sides of my cup. The numerous reasons, the things that happened TO me are of slight consequence, as they are external factors that I believe occurred because of the choices I made IN me. For an entire year I was daydreaming my life as I lived it.

Now I am everything that goes wrong. Kittens and rainbows piss me off. I am in debt and indebted to people, it was a shitty fire season, my house remains unfinished and I have no energy, money or time to get any semblance of work done. Even a side construction job has become smaller and smaller. I tested out a new theory which did nothing but postpone the inevitable. I stopped being true to myself and am so far off track that this bushwhacking is producing nothing but exhaustion. I know that these circumstances are not the reason I am here, but they are preventing me from the rediscovery, the reinvention I desire.

My 30th year is around the bend, big fucking deal. A third of this life is memory, and I find myself fighting the adult in me. I don’t want to grow up, but the responsibilities I took on to make my life comfortable will not release their teeth without drawing blood. I am never quite safe, never quite free, we can sometimes be our own oppression. I find being unable to jump more discouraging and scary than peering off the edge. It is not the world that shuts us out, it is we who shut out the world and are unable to drink it in after we disconnect. A wave needs to come in and slap us in the face, so we can paddle out, out to sea.

Scrap Metal and Shards of Glass

Last night was eventful to say the least. Two cars were racing up Big Cottonwood, which is innocuous in of itself, but they were a Porsche and a Lotus. Stereo's are apparently not usually in a Lotus, because of weight, they are designed to be light and fast. Well, this one was fast, and seemingly light too, because when it rounded one of the sharp curves in the canyon it lost control and t-boned a SUV coming down canyon. The racer in the BMW kept on driving, I am assuming to celebrate the checkered flag. After triaging the patients another company arrived and asked me who their patient was, and in which car. I said the driver of the Lotus, you can't miss it. "Why, because it's a Lotus?" He asked, to which I responded, "Yeah, and that the front end is down canyon 50 feet." We had to remove the passenger door and windshield and use the KED on both patients to get them out of the sport bucket seats, which looked great for racing, not so great for pulling people out of. The teenager was flown and driver driven to surrounding hospitals, and should recover.

Not too long after the accident, a young woman was arguing with a friend and chose to punch out a window. In the movies the sugar windows break apart like windshields, small pieces with blunt edges. In reality, they break with large sharp, jagged, pieces and when we arrived about a liter of blood was smeared on the deck and she was pale and in shock. The window had sliced a scythe shaped laceration in her forearm, exposing tendons, fatty tissue and cut into an artery, which spurted blood every pump of the heart. The medics quickly started an IV while I bandaged the gaping hole in her arm, avoiding the bellagio of blood, sans the 1812 overture and transported to the hospital.

I suppose the moral is don't race if you suck at driving, and punch something soft, like the friend your arguing with. Oh yeah, and don't race with your kids.

Check it here

Remember the Fallen

Today Blaine Walsh was laid to rest and reunited with his wife.

http://www.pbase.com/unifiedfire/walsh

R.I.P

Two amazing moments

The other day at work we went to a ward function where we give a little speech to kids about safety and then spray them with water in the hot summer sun from the fire engine. They love it, screaming and running around as kids do. After it was over a boy no more than 3 years old came up to me, visibly nervous. I knelt down so we could see eye to eye and he stood there, fumbling his hands. I said hello and he stuttered "umm, umm, umm, umm, umm umm, I love you," and ran away back to his mom. My heart melted and I stayed there in awe of what it took for this kid to say such a thing. I watched him hug his mom and then she said something and he waddled back over to me. "Are you a superhero?" he asked. I said no I'm not while my captain told him otherwise, to josh me of course.

This reminded me of another moment in my career when I was taken back by the honor it is to be a firefighter and the seemingly undeserved respect I get while our soldiers don't. We had a talking demo at a preschool and we were showing the kids the engine when a little girl in a sun dress bends down and picks a dandelion up from the school grass. She comes up to me, and sticks it up as high as she can while her other hand is behind her back and she rotates back and forth. "I picked this for you," she says. I graciously accept it as I am filled with an unknown source of pride and joy. I thank her as I slide the stem of the flower into a button hole in my shirt. Upon seeing this, a handful of other kids, both girls and boys start picking flowers and giving them to me.

I give my thanks and respect to those who have come before me in this profession. Those who have given me the opportunity to walk into this career and have the love and respect of total strangers. I hope I am able to continue their legacy and carry myself in a manner that befits their memory.

I don't know the dead.

We responded to a man unconscious seen through a manhole cover. We arrived and peered 14 feet down to the man, who appeared to not be breathing and pale. The readings on our sensor read 18.6% oxygen in the hole. A firefighter was already suited up and squeezed herself through the hole. No carotid pulse, eyes fixed and dilated, gray and ashen. A bystander said the cover had been removed for the last two hours. The rescue had turned to recovery and while we waited for heavy rescue to arrive the victims wife arrived. Then his son, who upon learning the news fell to his knees, and vomited.

In recruit school, they teach you to climb ladders, cut holes in roofs, cut into cars, run into burning buildings and drag people out. They teach you to eat healthy, talk through difficult calls, and how you are perceived by the public. They fail however to teach you how to react and deal with the people the victims we work on leave behind. It is all on the job training. Do we try to console them, do we act sad? Do we comfort them with a well-placed hand on the shoulder? Do we say they are in a better place, bring out the religion card? Can we say everything will be okay? Do we stand there and stare off into space, attempting to ignore the fact that a human being is breaking into shards of their former selves right there in front of our eyes? How do they look and view us there, unable to save the ones they love? Do they see us at all?

I don't know the dead. I was not and will no longer be a part of their life or circumstance. We were brought together by their road and my road. 4 days out of the week I don't meet the dead. 3 days a week I might. Purely based on choice. Their choice to head back to check on a water main alone. My choice to sign up for an overtime shift. The regular firefighter's choice to take a vacation or call in sick. The Battalion Chief's choice to assign me in that station. My choice to follow this career. I don't know the dead, but sometimes they haunt me.

Quote of the Day

Funny things come out of unfunny situations. Went on an assault today. The woman had a swollen bruised eye that was black, blue, lavander and other shades of purple a man has no business knowing. I genuinly felt for this girl, she said she was duct taped in a basement and two guys wailed on her. She seemed rather calm, which was my first sign of fishiness. She didn't want the cops to come, number two, tilapia. She knew the guys and didn't want to press charges, number three, salmon. Turns out she has had run-ins with the law before. Just a few weeks ago she was connected with the string of counterfeiting that occurred in our area. She also has ties to drugs. I began to feel less sorry for her. In the back of the ambulance she was rambling on and on about something until we arrived at the quote of the day.

"I'm not like those other bitches. I don't fuck and suck my way to the top."

Where is the COPS camera crew when you need 'em?