April 13th, 2023

I had all but forgotten that I used to write about my day-to-day life after moving to Hawaii from Seattle in 2013. It has been nearly 6 years since my last post, and a lot has changed. In 2017 my son was born, some stuff happened, some people started getting sick, and during the second day of the “2 week lockdown” my daughter was born in 2020.

I am still an EMT, though I did try my hand at being a firefighter. I was accepted into the academy and made it 3 months before I realized that an overweight, out of shape asthmatic is not a good fit for the fire department. I came crawling back to the ambulance, and they accepted me. I am gearing up and getting ready for Paramedic school, which I will start once my daughter starts preschool. My days off consist of her and I playing dress up, going for walks, having tea parties, making silly faces at each other, and making up songs. I am not willing to give that up to sit in some classroom all day.

In the year and a half in which I have been working as an EMT…..again, I have been on calls which shook me to the core, and possibly changed the way I look at the world. Stuff, which makes me think my therapist starts getting ideas for home renovations every time I call.

I woke up at 08:27, I set my alarm to odd numbers. I made breakfast, got ready for work and headed out the door. I arrived at the station at 11:30 and began checking out the ambulance and equipment. There are two new hires working with us, so I mostly supervised and checked the stuff they missed. Our first call came in at 12:30. We ran some calls and I decided to go for a walk while everyone had dinner. During the walk, a lady who appeared to be a stimulant enthusiast came bumbling towards me, accompanied by two dogs. One of the aforementioned dogs came at me like I was a honey baked ham and I instinctively grabbed my trauma shears from my hip to even the odds. The dog had three legs, and I liked my chances, but before I knew what was happening, the dog sat down at my feet, begging for a scratch and a pat on the head. I stepped around it and kept walking.

I spent the rest of the night teaching the new guys and cleaning the ambulance and station. I arrived home around 1 and found the crew who has been making repairs to the carport in our parking lot added florescent lights to the back of the carport, which point at my children’s bedroom windows with approximately 10 billion lumens. I took a picture of the side of my house and sent off a strongly worded email to the resident manager. After unpacking my lunch bag and taking a shower, I was in bed by 1:30, ready to be up by 6 tomorrow morning to take the guy to kindergarten.

May 6th, 2017

I woke up at 10 and felt awful. I had a headache, dry hacking cough, sinus pain and chest congestion so bad I could hear myself wheezing when I took a breath in and out. If I were at work, and we came  upon a patient with the same symptoms, they would be rushed to the hospital recieving high flow oxygen and breathing treatments through both a nebulizer and I.V. treatment. I however, spent the morning shivering under my blanket, drinking coconut water and getting ready.

We drove into town so Rebecca could pick up her reading glasses and I remembered I had to change my appointment which was scheduled for Thursday. 

We drove to a restaurant 1/2 a mile from our old apartment to meet up with one of my bartender friends who just had a baby. Once Rebecca told me she was pregnant, I decided they needed to be best friends. We’ve met up with her and her husband a few times to watch football games at restaurants, or UH baseball games. 

After lunch we went to the pharmacy where I bought all the cold medicine I would need to function over the next week.  I then went home and took a nap.

At 5:00 we went to a well known steak house near by which is suposed to be amazing. I was less than impressed.  The salad bar had weird old-people food like beets, spinach, tofu, and prunes. The salad dressing was watery and lacking flavor. The 10 ounce sirloin I had ordered “Medium” came out well done with about 3 ounces of gristle. The vegetables that came with the steak were the same thing you buy in the frozen foods section of a grocery store. This is the restsurant our former President visits when he comes to the island, yet I have had a better steak from a street vendor in Honduras. Our lending company had given us a $100 gift card to any restaurant we chose for making us come in to sign paperwork they forgot about when we bought our condo. Rebecca suggested we get the gift card for that restaurant because it was allegedly nice, and she knew our anniversary was coming up. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention today is my and my wife’s 5 year wedding anniversary. 

After dinner, we drove to the mall to see a movie about a group of people guarding the galaxy from bad things.  We drove home and Rebecca went to bed while I stayed up coughing on the couch. 

 

May 1st, 2017

After work last night I drove into town and met up with Jeremy the lead bartender, and Sean, one of our regulars. I got to the restaurant right as Jeremy was finishing up and we went to his house for cigars. I got home around 4 and fell asleep on the couch.

I woke up at 11 and started getting ready for my bar shift. I realized I have only worked behind the bar 6 times since the beginning of the year. 

The shift went well, but I’m glad I only have to work there when I want to. I spent the night entertaining tourists and showing ultrasound pictures of the baby to anyone who would look at them.

I am excited and terrified to become a father. Someone is going to depend on me to survive. I realize as an EMT, most of my patients depend on me to keep them alive, but having a baby seems like so much more than transporting sick or injured people.

We finished around 02:00 and I drove home and spent a few hours pacing around the condo. My feet, legs, knees, and back are killing me  from running around for 9 hours, but I’m still not tired. 

April 28th, 2017

I woke up, made breakfast, drove to work, ran calls that i can’t talk about on the online, drove home, and went to sleep.

April 25th, 2017

I woke up at 08:30 and got ready for work, I drove 45 minutes to my station and checked out the ambulance and got ready for my shift. we had 6 calls before 18;00 all of which I had to write reports for. The rest of the night was quiet until 00:00 when I got to go home

One of the first  fights Rebecca and I got into as a married couple came dring our first week back from out honeymoon. We were at the grocery store and I wanted to buy corn dogs. Her reply was “you don’t’ need corn dogs, you are an adult” flash forward almost 5 years and she seent me a text asking what I want for the store Corn dogs was at the top of my list, and once I got home… there was a box of corn dogs waiting for me in the freezer. I guess I won that battle.

April 26th, 2017

I awoke promptly at noon and rushed to get ready to pick up Rebecca at school because she had taken the white car in to get the oil changed. The car wasn’t read so I dropped her off at school and took the blue car into town to work my shift behind the bar.

I got to the mall 2 hours early, so I got a sandwich and hung out. Once my shift started, everything was ok until a customer ordered a drink I didn’t know, a slight panic began to overwhelm me until the other night bartender showed up and started making drinks.

Most of the shift was not worth remembering until Rebecca showed up. She ordered food to go, but I was too busy to talk to her, even though I haven’t seen her since Sunday evening.

Around 8, I sent a text to one of the managers from the other bartender’s phone stating that I had forgot to ID a customer and that I had been busted by the liquor commission. The Manager on duty was in on the joke, so we played along for about an hour until I let him know that I wasn’t really busted for forgeting to ID a minor (which would have caused our restaurant and the bar next door to loose their liquor license). The manager applauded me for fooling him with such a clever ruse.

I got home around 1:30 and stayed up way too late trying to get the kittens to eat the food I left out so they would trust me. 

April 24th, 2017

I woke up at 08:30 and got ready for work. The night crew was still out on a call and my partner and I were so busy talking that we forgot to clock in. We had to call the district chief to let her know that we were in fact at work. 

The night crew came in and I did the rig check and then sat down to check my email. I awoke 30 minutes later with my hands still on the key board and “jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjkjjkjjjjjjjjjjkkjjjjj” typed across 45 lines of an e-mail to which I was replying.

We went to a pizza place for lunch and I got a slice with pepperoni, pineapple, garlic, and jalepeños. 

The rest of the night went by and I drove home at midnight.

April 23rd, 2017

Rebecca tried to wake me up for about 45 minutes starting at 10. I got off the couch, went to the bed, but she was persistant. I ate a quick breakfast and we were off to church.

We went home, ate lunch and I took a bunch of cat naps until I had to get ready for work. I was called in for a special assignment at 20:30. I finished at 02:00 and drove home and was asleep at 03:30.

April 22nd, 2017

I went to sleep around 5 and woke up at noon. Rebecca came home from someplace at 2. She had told me where she went, but I don’t remember.

Around 5 we went to Target and bought a stroler and went home and made dinner. We watched movies until she went to sleep at 9, so I managed to entertain myself quietly until I fell asleep on the couch at 3.

April 21st, 2017

After gong to bed around 04:00 last night, I awoke promptly at 10:45. Last night I had sent a text to a coworker asking her if I could pick up her shift at the bar. She agreed, it wasn’t a hard sell. I just mentioned that she could stay home on a Friday night and spend time with her husband and kids.

I puttered around the condo for the rest of the afternoon and at 16:00, I drove to town. I got to the mall way earlier than I had expected, so I wandered around the book store, got a burger and took the food to the restaurant to eat before work.

I like bartending so much more now that it is not my only source of income. Everyone who remembers me is always really excited to see me, there is almost no stress because nobody is going to die if I mess up, and customer service is a big part of my EMT job, so I jut turn on the charm and people love me.

I had a couple sit at the bar and order drinks, when I was taking the food order, the wife asked me “What comes with the fish and chips?” I looked at her and said “fish and chips”. Her husband nearly spit his drink all over the bar trying not to laugh.

There was a trainee tonight, so we had 4 people behind the bar instead of the usual 3, I told one of the bartenders that I have forgotten all of the drink recipes, but I still had the charm which is why they still let me work. Tonight is probably only the 10th shift I have worked since June, but management still lets me pick up shifts because I know what I am doing, I work hard, and the customers love me.

After work, the lead bartender and I hung out in the parking lot with a couple of cigars and talked story until 03:00. I drove over the mountain and found that Rebecca had parked on the street, leaving our parking spot open and saving me from having to park a quarter mile away from the building. I stayed up for a while, looking for the kittens, but never saw them…I hope nothing happened to them. I have already named them “Meatball” and ” Ssal 2 beon” which is Korean for “Number Two with Rice”.