thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!

Looks like they are hard at work. This is the 10 minutes they spent in there,
I spent 4 hours cooking to get it to this point.

So I worked this Thanksgiving. I bought a spiral cut ham, pre-made some pies, armed myself with ingredients for man-n-cheese, and headed into work at 6am. The day started out okay, I knew I was on the Medic Unit because our other Medic was off for the day. I figured we would hang out, watch tv, cook, eat and occasionally head out for an emergency (last time we worked t-giving it was a relatively slow day call-wise).

Blow to my day #1. We had an EMT-P student ride along. She has been here before. She is not good (especially considering she is already an Intermediate and is upgrading to Paramedic so she should already know this stuff). She cannot start an IV to save her life and her assessment skills are sub-par. But worst of all, she talks in a baby voice and tries to flirt with the boys. Super annoying. So her showing up (unexpected, she wasn't on the schedule) in the morning threw me off. All day. I was a terrible Medic today. I didn't kill anybody, but I was off my game. I forgot to give Benadryl to a patient who had an allergic reaction. That is like Mom 101 stuff! I was retarded.

Joe carving the turkey, Sully cutting the ham, and Mike making his favorite mashed potatoes from a powder - note the hand print on his pants.

So in addition to the things I brought, Mike brought in stuffing and a Turkey (that his Mom had made). Also it was Mike's Birthday so I had Joe bring in an ice-cream cake. Mike is a simple country boy and does not appreciate pretty cakes, he only likes the simple from your grocer's freezer kind. With one oven containing only one shelf, I went to work trying to figure out how to orchestrate the meal to all come out hot and at the same time. By some miracle it worked out. It was much more stressful than I had imagined, and I wasn't trying to impress anybody. Imagine if you had in-laws or something - yikes! I can now understand why the women of the household get stressed out during holiday gatherings.

At one point in time I asked Joe to do something. He looked at me and cupped his hands together as if he was holding something. He then said "Do you know what this is? It is your attitude. And do you know what you need to do?" He then looked down at his hands and pulled his them apart. With his head followed the invisible something as it fell to the floor, for emphasis I suppose, and said "Drop it." It was actually kind of funny. [Sidenote: I was not giving him attitude, I was merely asking him to do something. And by asking, I mean requesting. And by requesting, I mean telling.]

This is where I spent most of my Thanksgiving Day.

Blow to my day #2. We were super busy. Like we ran more calls today than in the last three days combined. It started at 0830 and didn't end until just after midnight. Every hour or two someone else would call! I was in the middle of making the mac & cheese, call for a diabetic. Just as the meat had been carved and we had all sat down and filled our plates to eat, call for an allergic reaction. It was so cliche! We got back and everyone else had eaten, we re-heated our plates and ate the micro-nuked food. And then, we got another call. I finally went to bed at 2am. I still had four reports to do, but I could barely function, so I just didn't do them.

Anyhow. That was my happy Thanksgiving day.

On the up side: I made fantastic mac & cheese. But more on that tomorrow.