Ireland 2011

I've gotten quite the travel bug over the last few years and have made it a habit to go out of the country every year. I didn't after my surgery but I did spend that fall visiting relatives while I couldn't work. One of my best friends, Corey, had an aching to go see Ireland, the Mother Land. She's got quite a bit of Irish in her and while I've only got a wee bit, I had always wanted to see Ireland. So Ireland it was.

It was Corey's first trip out of the United States and it would be a doozy of a time change. Ireland was 8 hours ahead of California and we'd be arriving at 7am Ireland time. I briefed Corey on how to best go about dealing with it and we wondered how well we'd do. I figured with enough coffee I could handle anything. We debated who would be the worst at it.

We had driven down to Corey's house to fly out of LAX. On the way home, I would fly back to Medford and she would fly back to LAX. Of course we hit LA traffic and were late. The lady at the counter let us know it too. She stamped "Late" on our baggage and said she'd do what she could to get it there. I never expect my luggage to make it where I'm going, so I didn't care... except that I hadn't packed my toothbrush in my carry-on like I had suggested to Corey. We rushed off to our gate and made it in plenty of time.

Our next travel snafu was that we were not seated together for the first leg of our flight. I'm not sure how this happened since we had booked the tickets together and chosen seats. In any case, we met back up again in Atlanta for lunch and had seats together for the flight to Dublin. We both tried to sleep on the plane, but even after passing around sleeping pills, we both hardly nodded off.

We arrived early to Dublin at about 6:30am. The plan was to drop off our luggage at the Hostel and then go sight-see. We weren't allowed to sleep during the day because we had to reset our internal clocks. We did fairly well until Corey crashed and begged me for a small nap. She laid in bed while I showered and checked out the hostel. I don't think she slept much. Then we got back up to see the town. I took over 500 pictures throughout the trip but will not post nearly that much.

This is Christ Church Cathedral, one of Ireland's most important churches. We toured the cathedral and came back later to see the college orchestra play.

On the left you can see Dublinia and on the right, across the footbridge is Christ Church Cathedral. Dublinia is a pretty cool viking exhibit that shows the early inhabitants of Dublin. Bet you didn't know Dublin was founded by Vikings. Corey and I tried on some traditional viking garb. Not really all that flattering.



This is a statue of Molly Malone. There's a famous song about her, she was a fishmonger who pushed her cart through streets wide and narrow shouting cockles and mussels, alive alive-oh!

Corey having a local brew.


Dublin and the River Liffey.


These are statues in honor of the potato famine. I was quite moved by them and took some really good pictures. This one just shows the group of them better than the others I took.

We also toured a replica of a famine ship.

Our tour guide schooled us on US History. It was embarrassing. He was really nice though.


Of course we had to tour the Guinness Storefront. It's quite impressive. A whole city block is covered (and owned by) the Guinness Brewery and Storefront.

After a really cool tour of all the behind the scenes stuff, Corey and I got a free (included in the price of admission) Guinness. It was Corey's first. We enjoyed them on top of the Sky Bar which gave us a 360 degree view of Dublin.



We toured Dublin Castle and the art museum they had there.


We shopped around in Temple Bar, one of the more hip and college student/touristy areas. We must've walked miles, especially after I got us completely turned around one night.

After Dublin we took a bus to Kilkenny which is a smaller town with some cute shops and cobblestone streets. We toured the Kilkenny Castle.


At St. Canice's Cathedral, we climbed the 7 story tower to look out over Kilkenny.


The steps were more like ladders.




Our only night in Kilkenny, we went to a wine bar called The Hole in the Wall. It was a tiny little cluttered wine bar that had a choice of a few wines. The owner was a big US History buff and talked to us about the conspiracy surrounding the Kennedy assassination. He had it down to a science. Then we discussed George Clooney and how his ancestors are from Ireland and they will be filming a documentary there about it. We went upstairs to see Karrie, a local singer. She's the aunt of Mick Flannery who's pretty popular in Ireland. Mick's mom sang back up vocals and even a song on her own. They both had gorgeous voices. Not a lot of people came, so it was an intimate atmosphere with the stone walls and fireplace and wooden shutters. The place was dimly lit with candles and I was buzzed off two glasses of wine. It was absolutely fabulous, my best night there! We each bought one of her cd's and then went off to a pub to listen to some locals play traditional music.

The next day we went off to Galway on the west coast. We stayed a couple nights in a bed and breakfast to get away from the hubbub of hostel life.

I've never been a big fan of bus tours as I've seen a lot of them and developed a stereotype of them while living in San Diego. We all know the image of a big bus pulling over, a group of people climbing out to snap photos and then everyone hopping right back on. It didn't appeal to me being as I'm more of a free roamer. But it was either that or rent a car and try to figure out how to drive on the other side of the road. I was having trouble just trying to cross the street. The tours ended up being amazing. We went with Galway Tour Company and our first tour was The Cliffs of Moher and The Burren.

We stopped and took pictures of this little castle and then went on to a small town across the bay to grab a Bailey's Coffee and use the WC.


We stopped at a ring fort and I made a wish on a fairy tree. The white papers and ribbons mean you're wishing for good to come to some one. A red one meant you were wishing for something bad to come to some one. Needless to say my ribbon was red. Just kidding. I skewered a white piece of paper on to a branch and made a wish.


We took a small detour to check out an old abbey that's been turned into a cemetery.


There were castles, abbeys, churches and stone walls scattered all over the green countryside. It was amazing, and our guide was both humorous and informative.


The Cliffs of Moher rise almost 800 ft above the Atlantic Ocean. It gets so windy there that it almost knocked my legs out from under me. By the way, it pretty much rained the entire time we were in Ireland, and umbrellas were about useless because of the wind turning them inside out. It was best to just ignore it or slip into a pub if it got bad, drink a Guinness and go on our merry way.

This castle may look familiar. They filmed the Princess Bride here and apparently a few episodes of Harry Potter. The Cliffs also had a really cool museum and 3D virtual flight over the cliffs.

The next day we booked a tour with the same company to see the Connemara area and the Cong where The Quiet Man was filmed. We had a different guide but he was just as funny and knowledgeable. I saw three black sheep that day...in case any of you were wondering if they really existed. I was.

The Connemara area is beautiful country. We stopped for awhile at the Kylemore Abbey to tour the abbey, the gardens, chapel, mausoleum and eat lunch.






By the way, this here is turf or peat. Not like astro-turf or peat moss (which reminds me, I have to tell you about solicitors). If any of you would like to buy me a birthday present, Christmas present, Valentine's Day present, St. Patrick's Day present or whenever present...I would like some peat. This stuff is near and dear to my heart. And it turns out you can get it shipped here. When I get back from North Carolina, I think I'm going to order some.


Ireland is covered in Peat Bogs. These bogs are swamp-like decomposed stuff that settles down and compacts. I think it runs along the lines of fossil fuel or something. People take shovels and dig down into the bogs and pull this stuff out. They lay it out to dry and rotate it every once in awhile until it hardens. Then they burn it in their fire places. It puts out a wonderfully cozy smell. Even better than wood. It's amazing. The new love of my life. You can see some along the road here. Looks and feels like mud. Burns for hours I'm told. Smells wonderful. Emits an Irish warmth. Good stuff.

We drove around the country side stopping to take pictures and listening to the tour guide fill us with stories, history and lore of Ireland. Here is another fairy tree.


Feeding an apple to Joey the Connemara pony.


The Quiet Man House.


Drunken debauchery in Galway.


Galway.


I got a kick out of this port-a-potty. It's got a joystick. Hahaha! Ok, it's not a joystick. This thing flushes. It's pretty cool.


Ok, so solicitors. Everywhere you go in the US, you see signs that say "No Solicitors". We all know what those are right? People who go around trying to sell things or advertise or whatever. Annoying people. Anyway, everywhere we went in Dublin we kept seeing signs for solicitors. Corey and I wondered about this for several days. Then one day I was thinking about it (as it had been bugging me) and wondered if maybe a solicitor was a lawyer. That day we came across one of the offices and it listed what services they offer such as divorces and accidents, etc. So it turns out in Ireland, solictors are lawyers. I commented to Corey that solicitors from Ireland who come to the US must be deeply confused by all the "No solicitors" signs.

After a few nights in Galway, it was time to head back to Dublin for our flight home. We did some last minute shopping and flew out the next day. During our stay in Ireland we ate a ton of potatoes, drank a bunch of Guinness and had way too much coffee. I put on a few pounds.

Flying out of Dublin, they sent us through US Customs before getting on the flight which is unusual to me. Usually my first stop in the US is where I go through customs. But this seems like a much better idea. We had gotten there in plenty of time and I thought I had briefed Corey pretty well on how to go through customs. Since we are not in the same household, we have to go through seperately. They put us in two different lines and I went through with ease. The officer in Corey's line disappeared and I was trying to get her attention to signal her into another line. I don't think she was aware that it was ok for her to go into another one. An agent came up to me and told me I had to wait further away. So I waited. And waited. Then I saw an officer escorting Corey to another location. I thought, You've got to be kidding me. Corey is the least threatening person I know.

I noticed that there was yet another security screening for me to go through so I figured I would get through there and wait on the other side. After about 20 minutes I got worried. What if Corey wasn't out there by the time the flight left? Her family would kill me if I left Ireland without her. I couldn't call her as phones were not allowed in the screening area.

Finally after over half an hour, she came out.

"Carrie, they put me in a dark room and made me tell all my deepest darkest secrets!" Geez, and it took that long?

Apparently US Customs does not appreciate rawhide bones as a Christmas gift for the doggies. Corey also took out her phone to turn it off and got yelled at. She misunderstood what the lady was asking and got yelled at. They went through her entire suitcase and did a crappy job putting things back so her Guinness glasses broke on the trip home. I was just glad she was released. It wasn't quite as scary as if she had been detained by Irish authorities, but still.

Living Room and Dining Room Renovation

Better late than never, here's the renovation pictures for the living room and dining room.

It seemed so simple when I first bought the house: the older half of the house was wallpapered. They tell you not to judge a house based on cosmetic things such as wall color or wall paper. So I didn't. And to be honest, I'm still glad I didn't. It's been a pain in the butt, but my house is still absolutely beautiful.

One day I got the itch and decided to start removing the wallpaper. Anyone who's done it can tell you that removing wallpaper is not that simple, but I had done it before and was prepared. Or rather I thought I was prepared.

Under the first layer of wallpaper was another layer of wallpaper.


The living room had two layers of wallpaper and the dining room had three. So what was under all that wallpaper?

It's a little hard to see in this picture but in the corner you can see the old 1970's faux wood paneling. I thought it was a little odd that someone would wallpaper over paneling instead of removing the paneling...which said something for what could be under the paneling. See the mauve-ish color in the middle? More wallpaper under the panels. What's under that layer of wallpaper?

Wood. Some of you may not think that's strange. I however, was hoping for drywall...or as they say up here, sheetrock. Best case scenario. With a house this old though, I should know better than to hope for the best case scenario. Interestingly enough, under some portions of the older wallpaper was a muslin cloth which is indicative of a much older process. Very cool.

On one section of the old wallpaper was a list of phone numbers written in pencil. I can only imagine that was where the phone once sat. I didn't call any of the numbers but it was fascinating to see.

For a little background, once I figured out that the job would require more than scraping wallpaper, I decided now would be a good time to update the electrical and insulate the house. The electrical in the old half of the house is knob and tube wiring. In itself, not so bad but combined with the newer copper wires it can be a fire hazard. To my knowledge, there aren't any combined wires, but up to date electrical is usually a decent idea. Not to mention that you can't fully insulate the house with that sort of wiring. The wires dissipate their heat into the surroundings, which actually makes it fairly safe. That way they won't overheat and catch on fire. But that also means the old part of the house is not insulated. At all. Ever lived in a snowy environment in a house without insulation? Yeah. Exactly.

So I called up a recommended contractor and got a quote. Holy moly!! I decided that to save money I would do the demo (tearing apart the walls so he can do the insulation and wiring) and do the drywall and trim myself. How hard could it be?

After taking a pretty decent fall in which I broke my wood holder/rack (for wood stove wood) and the controller to my wood stove blower, I decided I was done and I'd see if the contractor would finish the demo at a discounted price. He came down a little bit, but since fire season was in full swing I decided to just let it go and hand it over.

When the insulation and new electrical was finished, my superintendent came over to show me how to hang drywall. Being as not a single wall in the house is level, measuring and cutting the drywall was tedious work. We spent an entire day measuring, cutting, shaving down and hanging drywall. We got a lot done, but he had a life to go back to and during the next couple weeks, I hung drywall on my own when I found time.


With the drywall up, I was beginning to feel relieved about the whole process. I could now envision my house with walls, which is something it had lacked for several months. The next step was to tape, mud, sand, texture, prime and paint the drywall. It sounded easy enough.

First I taped all the seams with an adhesive mesh tape. I chose this over the paper tape for a couple reasons. It seemed like it would be easier and it also allowed me to apply quick drying mud. Mud has to be applied three times to the seams and screws and if you have to wait an entire day for one coat to dry, it's going to take awhile. In the picture below you can just barely make out the tape.



Then I applied the drywall mud...three times. Every single seam and every single screw got 3 layers of drywall mud. It was exhausting.


After all the mud had dried, it was time to sand. In the dining room I sanded everything by hand. What's nice about that is the dust falls straight down (onto my head and eyeballs). What's not nice about that is it takes a lot of time and my shoulders were aching pretty badly by the end of it. One of my captains suggested I use a palm sander, which I own. I didn't think to use it because I figured it would take off more mud than I needed and I'd have to redo it. He said it should be fine. So I went home and took out my Dewalt 5" Orbital Palm Sander (power tools!) with vacuum attachment and tentatively set to work. What's great about the palm sander is that it took very little effort and was quick. What's not great about it is that even with the vacuum attachment, dust flew everywhere. It was so thick it set off my new smoke/CO2 detectors.

A note on the detectors. New California Building Code requires that with any new electrical work in a house, hardwired smoke/CO2 detectors must be installed (in pretty much every room). You know, I can almost understand their good fortune, due to the job I'm in, but I'm perfectly capable of maintaining battery operated ones. Unfortunately, when one detector goes off if it's hardwired, they all go off. That also means if one is malfunctioning (like smoke detectors never malfunction) then they all do. Next thing you know the entire house is beeping in protest.

After setting off the detectors in my house, I went to the circuit breaker and flipped it off. Ha! I'll show them! I thought. I went back to sanding and the detectors went off again. I climbed up on the ladder and removed the back up battery. It was almost Thanksgiving and leaving windows and doors open was not an option. And yes, I was wearing a face mask.

So once the walls were sanded, I went about practicing my texture technique on scrap pieces of drywall. It looked about average and I was in a hurry. The days to my big Thanksgiving party (that no one showed up to) were dwindling. I rolled the texture on with a paint roller and let dry for about 10 minutes, then I knocked it down lightly with a trowel. It didn't turn out half bad.


When the texture dried, I set about priming the walls. I think paint primer must be incredibly toxic because it's the most noxious stuff I used in the entire process. And I got some on my hands and feet and it literally took weeks to get it washed off. I even tried shaving it off.



I think I was looking forward to painting the most. I guess because I feel it's the easiest part...until I actually get to it. Painting takes so much time. It takes forever to cut in the edges and corners, then you gotta paint the walls and then repeat the whole process. Both rooms got two coats of paint.

I'm not incredibly fond of how the colors turned out. I'd like the living room to be a little more gray and I meant for the dining room to be a darker grayish purple. Looks a little more pink than I'd like. But I'll tackle that this summer. For now it looks so much better than it did before.

Showers

The other night a guy from the electric company called and wanted to ask a couple questions about the energy saving rebate program I took part in when I bought my refrigerator. The last call I got from the electric company lasted all of 5 minutes because I didn't really know a whole lot about the energy saving light bulbs and didn't really go out of my way to purchase them. I answer these calls because people are friendly up here and talk, so I'm trying to assimilate. Not to mention it's fairly lonely up here and I've started answering solicitors calls just to have some one to talk to.

When I bought my house, it didn't come with a refrigerator, so I went out to get one. It was a sort of desperate purchase because it would dictate when I got to live in my new house. So I went to the local appliance store and picked one out that I thought would fit (I had measured height and width but not depth...which is apparently pretty important). Anyway, my refrigerator is an energy efficient one so it came with a $20 rebate incentive from the local power company. Ha. No, the $20 did not inspire me to purchase the refrigerator, which was one of the questions the guy asked me in the survey the other night.

First of all, he had a terrible speech impediment. I don't mean to knock anyone who's got a speech impediment, but I just don't think telephone surveys are the way to go in that case. But I let him continue on while my Irish stew got cold and my stomach continued to get ever more empty. He also had a tendency to apologize or say "that's alright" as if I gave him a wrong answer. It also became very apparent that most people do not agree to do the survey because he'd finish a question and then say "Oh wow" and continue with another one, as if he was shocked that the survey kept droning on. I was too. But by that time I was fully committed (or should be as Johnny would say).

Then he got to some interesting questions which gave me some pause. "On average, how many showers per week are taken in your household?"

Please keep in mind, there's only one of me in my household. I couldn't hold back my chuckle and he apologized for what seemed to him to be an embarrassing question, which caused it to become an awkward moment for the both of us. I thought about lying. Those who know me real well know I do not shower every day. Especially in the winter. Not to throw anybody under the bus (oh heck, I'm throwing somebody under the bus) but Candace told me if she had my job she wouldn't shower every day either. Actually she doesn't have my job and I'm fairly certain she still doesn't shower every day (tha-thunk, tha-thunk).

The first answer that popped into my head was 3, which while being the most accurate, was not one I'd advertise to just anybody. So now there was an even more awkward pause as I tried to do the math in my head: weighing how many days there were in a week, versus how many days a week it's unacceptable to not shower, versus how many times I week I honestly shower. (Right now Melissa is cringing. We had this conversation, didn't we?) I either settled on 4 or 5, I cant recall at this point. He said ok and jotted it down.

"And how many baths are taken per week in your household?" Oh, shoot. Those were tallied in my shower answer. Should I go back and correct him on the shower number? Better not. He was obviously uncomfortable at this point. I told him one, which isn't far from the truth. On average.

I'm surprised he didn't ask about how many times I have to flush my toilet in a given day. The survey lasted almost 25 minutes. It was painful, literally. I'm glad he didn't ask about how often I shave my legs.

Hmmm...interesting.

There's a "Stats" section on this blog and out of curiosity I clicked on it. I had 12 page views yesterday. 3 today (one was probably me signing on). 94 in the last month. This is really interesting. People went to my blog page 12 times yesterday. I don't think I even have 12 friends...so I'm really curious as to who is reading my blog. Maybe I should write more important things other than not being able to get out of bed or fix my lawn mower. I feel a sense of obligation now that I see I have an audience larger than my immediate circle (either that or I've underestimated my immediate circle).

I also get the feeling that maybe people are waiting for my house renovation update pictures. It's mostly done, and yes, I did take pictures and meant to post but my motivation to do anything really has been non-existent. Just getting out of bed is a feat in of itself.

Or maybe people are dying for Ireland pictures and stories and keep re-clicking on my blog to get the scoop. How disappointing my blog must be these days. I blame it on my new work schedule. The 4 ten hour days per week leaves me with no time for anything during the week and too exhausted to do anything during the weekend. Really my only free time is when I'm at work. I'm not entirely opposed to posting while at work being as people have been promoted for greater offenses.

So to my faithful blog viewers or anyone else who has accidently stumbled upon this blog, I will strive to not only post more often, but post more interesting blogs.

Winter Blues

I'm starting to get that itch to do something extraordinary. Like run another marathon or become a fitness model (just kidding). But I'm about to ship off to Asheville, NC for a winter season of fire on the Asheville Hotshots, which means no marathon for me, no Century bike ride and no body building. Just hiking and running and lifting weights....which isn't really all that inspiring. If I had a meaningful goal I'd be doing much better. But there's no marathon in my future because you just don't do crazy stuff like that during fire season and I've got two fire seasons coming up: back to back.

I do miss the life I had in San Diego, before I got sucked into full time fire where I had pools to swim in, oceans to surf in, time and weather for long runs and a plethora of 24 hour gyms at my disposal. I miss the sunny days of looking out the window, excited to get out and run or ride my bike. Now I look out the window with coffee and cookie in hand and stare at the snow and ice on the road and listen to the little voice that says softly but firmly "No way".

After having a ton of potatoes and Guinness in Ireland, I would like to be able to see my abdominal muscles again but that might take a few weeks. Funny how it takes twice as long to lose what you put on. I'm scheduled to run today, and I thought with it being so warm (32 degrees as opposed to the 12 it's been) I would run a 5 or 6 miler instead of a 3. Looking at how gray and cold it is outside, I'm thinking 3 would be miraculous.

November Update

Well the renovations are almost done on my living room and dining room. I'll be posting before and after pictures this weekend once I get my house put back together again.

I'm not sure why I'm at work. What's funny is that we all voted on what schedule we were going to work this winter. Everyone but me voted for 4 ten hour days per week. I voted for 5 eight hour days, for reasons I'll get to in a second. The 4x10's won, much to everyone's relief but mine. The funny part about all that is that I'm the only one at work. That's right. Everyone got their precious 4x10 schedule and I'm the only one who has to work it. Damn you all! That's ok, tomorrow is my last day before I head off for my vacation.

You would think that 4x10's would be exciting, after all you get a 3 day weekend every week. But think about it. Now you have to be at work 10 hours per day and with a 45min commute, you drive to work in the dark and come home in the dark. Worse yet, our so called "gym" at work is a piece of crap so I have to go to the gym before work. And since I start work at 7am and have a 45min commute, I have to be up at 4:15 am (or 0415 for those of you in the federal government) to get to the gym. So my days go like this: up at 0415, eat breakfast, have coffee, go to the gym for about an hour, drive to work, work, drive home, eat, go to bed. Sometimes I stay up a little later to shower but when I get real tired that's the first thing to suffer. I don't really know when my last shower was. But then I get 3 days off in which I still wake up at 0415, get up, have coffee and work on my house. What could be better? How about having a little free time 7 days a week instead of 3 and getting some decent sleep?

I was going to have quite the attendance for Thanksgiving and was excited to host it at my place this year and show it off (after all, Thanksgiving is what made me buckle down and get the work done) but everyone is cancelling. I'll be lucky if I get 4 people. There's a possiblilty I will spend it alone and eat a 20lb turkey by myself, with all the fixings and wine of course. Nice.

On the bright side, Corey is coming up on Friday to come check out my place and pick me up for our trip to....IRELAND!!!! Yay! We're flying out of L.A. on the 28th and coming home the 9th or 10th, I forget. Maybe I'll never come home, we'll see.

I'll be in Arizona for Christmas to see my family and then I'm moving to North Carolina for the winter. I'll be working on a hotshot crew out of Blue Ridge, NC (just outside of Asheville) from January through May and then coming back here to work the fire season back home. It'll be a busy year.

That's all I've got for now, I'll post pictures of my house renovations this weekend. Have a great Thanksgiving!

Sleep

All I want for Christmas is some normal sleep. By the way, just a second ago I got a handful of a thousand tiny slivers by shoving a piece of wood into my wood stove. It pains me to type this. Literally. This is so lame. They're like tiny little hairs, so it's impossible to get them all out.

Years ago, as a teenager living in my dad's house, I was once so out of it that I reached into the oven and pulled out a pan without a hot pad. It took about a second for it to register to my brain that a) it was hot and b) I should drop the pan. A few weeks later I did the same thing only it took slightly longer for both of those actions to occur. The pan actually made it out of the oven and I dropped it on the open door. I remember my dad was standing there staring at me as if I had lost my mind. Maybe I had, I don't know. I think though, really, I was just tired.

I'm tired a lot these days and I've tried an awful lot of things to get me to sleep. Everyone's got some amazing ideas. The thing is though, if you've got insomnia, it's not like there's a whole lot out there that will work. I just finished reading this super long, boring book that basically said if you've got primary insomnia (insomnia without a side cause like getting dumped by your boyfriend or having a big presentation coming up, or just being crazy in general) doctors have no idea why or how to treat it and the big money is not in trying to find out. The big money is in the drug companies.

Back when I was younger (high school age) I only partly valued my sleep. I slept whenever I could, I went to bed early and got up early. But some nights I laid awake for hours. I'd get up and write or read, or go get a snack from the fridge. On many of these nights I'd find my dad laying on the couch watching tv. He'd say he couldn't sleep. There's evidence that this is hereditary. I didn't think it was such a big deal because many creative ideas came into my head at 2am. I'd just write it out. In college I started to struggle with it a bit, but then again, a couple shots of espresso can get you through class no matter how tired you are.

I think it all really became a problem when I took on a job where having energy and being able to stay awake were actual requirements of the job. Last year on a fire in Oregon I was having a particularly hard time with my insomnia. I was becoming so exhausted that I couldn't keep my eyes open during the day. But when I would lay down at night, I couldn't fall asleep. One morning a couple people asked me what on earth I was doing walking around at 3am. Apparently I had woken them up. This year in Montana I have memories of one night where I was just as exhausted and could hardly sleep. I'm starting to think that I may get "overtired" like a kid does and it gets to the point that I'm so tired I can't sleep. That night is forever engraved in my mind as fragmented moments of a horse walking in a pasture. First he's standing over me (nearly, there was a barbed wire fence between us), then he's gone, then he's back and his face is coming through the fence at me, then one of the guys is trying to call him over so he can pet him (so he wasn't sleeping either I take it). The horse walks away. Then I see him in the distance. Then he's standing over me again. Then he's gone. Then he's walking towards me. I spent the entire night watching this stupid horse. And it's all in weird fragmented images like a bad horror movie.

I bought a highly rated book called "Sound Sleep, Sound Mind". The guy seemed to make sense, except that he kept saying that if I'm laying in bed at night, it's because I don't truly want to be asleep. I beg your pardon? I won't even touch that one. But it infuriated me to the point I finally quit reading it. He did have some suggestions that I gave a good try. One of the common suggestions that actually come from quite a few people is to not stay in bed if you can't sleep because then you begin to associate bed with not sleeping. Fair enough. He suggested going into another room and reading or finding some other mind numbing task like coloring or a puzzle. No tv of course because the blue light messes with your circadian rythm. So one night I couldn't sleep and I got up and tried coloring. I got sleepy so I went back to bed. After about a half hour I still couldn't sleep so I got back up and tried a puzzle. The light was terrible so I tried a book. I was so tired my eyes burned and I couldn't focus on the book. I tried the coloring book but my eyes were burning so bad by this point that I just wanted the light off.

I've tried limiting my coffee to nothing after 2pm. I've cut out alcohol before bed. I've spritzed my sheets with lavender. I've drank chamomile tea and had a warm bath (infused with lavender). I've taken melatonin and valerian root and recently, 5-HTP. I've tried meditating and breathing exercises. Speaking of exercises, I tried working out several times a day so that I would be too exhausted to stay awake...still didn't work. And that was training for a marathon. So not only would I run 12-18 miles per day, but then I'd eat a lunch and go hike a couple hours up a steep hill with a 45lb pack on. Didn't help.

My doctor prescribed me this wonderful drug called Dalmane. And I slept. Sure, sometimes I had to take two but for the most part it worked and I felt great. Until I had to carry 5 gallons of drip torch fuel and a full drip torch (2 gallons?) up a hill in the snow. My legs were jelly (aren't they always). Dalmane stays in your system for about 72 hrs. It relaxes your muscles quite well. Not so great for walking uphill in the snow with several loads. So we tried Xanax. It works but not for the entire night.

I moved up north and got a new doctor in the process. He gave me a sample of Ambien. After the first weird psychadelic night, the rest of the nights weren't anything too crazy, and I slept ok. Not all the way through the night, but I did better. Then I tried to go a night without taking it and was slammed so hard with rebound insomnia that I decided Ambien was not for me. Rebound insomnia apprently happens the first couple nights when you're off a sleep drug. It means you don't sleep AT ALL. Like, at all. Ever. The entire night. But you're god-awful tired. So tired your bones and joints and muscles and hair hurt. And your eyes. OMG the eyes hurt.

So then he prescribed me a bottle of Lunesta. Same thing. Halfway decent sleep unless I didnt take it. And have you seen the warnings for these things? One guy reportedly ate a buttered cigarette. Many people eat, drive, have phone conversations and even sex in their sleep without knowing it, all due to these drugs. Awesome. As far as I know, none of these things have happened to me. Can you imagine waking up halfway across the state and having no idea how you got there? Some people gain 20lbs, blaming it on the drug, which does not cause weight gain...only to find out they've been eating quart after quart of ice cream while they're asleep.

I went back to the doctor and he recommended trazodone (generic for Desryl). I gave it a shot. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. The whole problem with all of these (except xanax) is that you need to commit to a full night's sleep. If you don't have 8 hours to sleep, you can't take any of them. But more importantly, I don't usually have a problem falling asleep in the first place. My problem is waking up at midnight, 1am, 3am, 4:30am, 5am and then being unable to get up when my alarm clock goes off at 6am. Or worse yet, when I go to bed at 9pm, wake up at midnight, lay awake until 3:30am and my alarm goes off at 5:30am.

I have an aunt who doesn't sleep through the night much (same blood line, notice a pattern?). She remembers a fair amount of the night and mentioned she doesn't like it much when she sleeps all the way through the night and can't remember any of it (because she was asleep). I can sympathize with this a little. I had that happen to me a couple times. One time I did it two nights in a row and it was very strange. I crawled into bed and it was night time. I woke up and it was day time...and I remembered absolutely nothing in between. It was strange. I'm not asking for that really. I'm asking to be able to fall asleep within a half hour of laying down and closing my eyes, and then if I wake up at night, I'd like to be able to fall back to sleep within a half hour and preferably not wake up more than twice in one night. Oh, and these weekend "natural wake-ups" of 4:45 am? Yeah, I can do without those thank you very much.

Last night I gave up. I've been so hooked on caffeine throughout the day that it's getting pretty serious. But I'm always so tired. So I took my last Ambien sample. I just wanted to sleep. And I did. I don't remember much of the night and I think I slept through it. I have a vague memory of a dream. Then I woke up at 5:15 am, went to the gym and then went to work. I've been yawning all day. I just took a Lunesta because now I'm stuck. Rebound insomnia and all. But I have a plan. I'm going to take the Lunesta this week and then take the Dalmane (yep, still have that too, it's probably expired) when my weekend gets here so I can get off the Lunesta without losing sleep (literally) and I won't have to struggle up the hill after the boys while under the influence of the Dalmane.

So I'm going to go get ready for bed. If you guys ever get weird messages from me in the middle of the night, I may not have been awake when I've done it, so disregard. And forget it ever happened. Let's not make it awkward, huh?

The Lawn Mower Saga Continues

I woke up this morning intent on getting my lawn mower to start and then reviving the life of my neglected lawn. After putting fuel stabilizer and octane booster in the gas tank, I hadn't attempted to start it. Today would be the day. I went out into the backyard, wheeled it out of the work shed and gave it a couple good pulls. It started and died immediately. After staring it down for a couple minutes, I decided I would tear it apart to see what I could find. My mechanical knowledge is limited for sure, but this season I completely dismantled a chainsaw and put it back together. And the thing still runs great! If I could do that, surely I could do the same to the lawn mower.

Without first consulting the manual (because who really needs directions in a time like this?) I grabbed my toolbox and started dismantling the lawn mower. I took off the cover and found what appeared to be the flywheel. Ok, awesome. So far it looks exactly like a chainsaw. I located the magneto (I think) and started to feel quite sure of myself. I figured out how it started and stopped (spark plug wire goes to magneto area, pulling back the lever on the mower handle releases the brake from the flywheel). I pulled apart what appeared to be the air filter and found it to be soaked with oil. Ooh, not good. My chainsaw air filter should never be soaked in oil. So I pulled it out and washed it with soap and water and placed it out in the sun to dry. I pulled out the spark plug and examined it, wiped it down and set it aside.

At some point I decided I needed to pull apart the muffler because it was spitting out black stuff. So I consulted the manual. Interestingly enough, the manual stated that the air cleaner (not air filter, I guess there's a difference?) is supposed to be saturated with clean, fresh oil. What? Crap. I was running low on oil. Should've read the manual first. I poured what was left of the oil back onto the air cleaner and replaced it. I put everything back and tried to restart the engine. No go.

I've been in denial about the stale gas deal. Plenty of people have mentioned this to me and I was beginning to think that adding the stabilizer and octane boost after it had already gone bad might not have been the best idea. It was time to try draining the fuel and putting new fuel in.

The manual did not describe how to drain the fuel. I checked the tank for a drain and could only conclude that I had to turn the mower upside down and pour it into one of my gas containers. Ha. After getting a couple ounces of gas into the container and a half gallon onto the sidewalk, I took the container over to my jeep to dump it in the tank. Apparently the stupid container did not depress the opening of the fuel tank correctly and I spilled what remained of the fuel all over the vehicle and the driveway.

Not to be dragged down by small nuiances, I walked myself and my little gas can across the street to the gas station. I would guess the gas station is less than 200 feet from my house. A group of guys were fueling up and made a comment on my dire situation of walking to the gas station with a gas can. I assured them it was not because my vehicle was stalled 5 miles down the road, but because I literally lived across the street and the fuel was for my lawn mower. Not a single one of them was attractive and mate-worthy. Otherwise I may have accepted the ride they offered a second time before I walked back home with my 97 octane gasoline. Maybe they could've gotten my lawn mower to run.

I got back home and filled the tank of the mower with the new, fresh fuel that had also been mixed with stabilizer and octane booster (by this point it's probably 125 octane). I gave it a couple tries. It started and stalled, started and stalled. Five attempts later I called it quits. And watered my lawn instead. I don't know.

My Muse is a Flake.

The morning after our hike/medical evacuation drill, I was feeling rather poetic and could've sat down and written my book based off my anger and irritation alone. I had a stream of notes running through my head while I drove the river road to work and tried to jot them down when I got into the parking lot, but Johnny was already on me to hurry up and get out of the car to unlock the door. I'm always in a forced hurry around the man, drives me nuts. Hurry up the hill, hurry down the hill, hurry to the chow line, hurry to briefing, hurry while driving the buggy on a broken up road in Arizona. By the time I let him in the office and sat down to jot down my ideas, most of them were gone. Now I'm seated in front of my computer, tucked safely into my weekend and I seem to have lost my muse. Damnit. Stupid muse was never that loyal anyway, maybe I should aquire a new one.

Our hike/medical evacuation drill turned into a 5 hour ordeal that had me convinced I needed to quit my job. During the hike down I had quite the conversation with myself. It's hard to tell who won that argument. I think I've figured out that there isn't much I'd be happier spending my life doing than this and that if I want to quit I have to start producing novels, articles and essays that will not only pay the bills, but pay for my travel bug as well.

In front of me are several strips of paper with about 4 different thoughts written out and expanded upon. I sat down this morning with a cup of coffee and tried to write and have managed to choke out 5 sentences. I'm telling you, I could've written for hours that morning but then I would've been late for work. It's definately frustrating. All my best stuff comes out when I don't have the means to record it or write it down.

I've found a literary magazine that might be the right audience for some of my work and the submission period is October 1st -December 31st. Which means now is the best time to get something going. I looked through the material I already had and was disappointed so I'm banking on the random strips of paper in front of me. Ugh. Bring me back my muse!

Sometimes it's ok to be a girl.

This morning I woke up with a checklist of chores in my head which included mowing the lawn and doing other yard work, finishing my laundry and repacking my "war bags" for the next fire assignment. None of which sounded fun. I've also got to either buy or make potato salad for our bbq tomorrow, and also possibly make deviled eggs if I was feeling extra frisky. I'm thinking I'm not going to feel extra frisky. I don't know yet.

So I've managed to repack my war bags and finish the laundry. I got my boots on and went outside to my work shop to get the lawn mower. I checked the oil and that it had fuel in it, wheeled it out to the front yard, primed it and pulled the cord. It sputered and died. I pulled the cord again and got nothing. I pulled another 5 or 6 times. Nothing. So I primed it again and it sputtered and died. This continued for about 5 minutes and I let it sit for a couple minutes. I repeated the process but never got past the sputtering phase. So I read the manual. For troubleshooting I have to call the company. Forget it. I gave it another shot and then parked it in front of the work shed.

I went inside and plopped myself down on my bed and wished I had a man around to start my lawn mower (and maybe mow the lawn?) and fix my sprinkler system. That's another thing. Fixing my sprinkler system would demand that I crawl under my house with the black widow spiders and rewire the electrical system. Yeah...about that....

I often find myself wishing I had a man around to do some of the harder stuff, but then a voice pops into my head that I need to just man up and do the job. It occured to me as I lay on my bed pouting that I actually am a girl. I was born a girl and to this day remain a girl. Last I checked. So I told myself that sometimes it's ok to be a girl. But my lawn is still not mowed, so I'm guessing that little epiphany got me nowhere. I'm going shopping. That'll solve everything.

Aaarrghhnnnngg!

My body has been hinting to me lately that PMS has been on my horizon. I've been extraordinarily tired and not so motivated to do anything, not to mention nauseas. I spent yesterday up in Medford doing all the shopping I haven't been able to afford until this last big fire check. Being that Medford is just under an hour away, I cram all my shopping into one big day. It wouldn't make sense to make a trip up there more than once a month. Talk about shop 'till you drop. I went to TJ Max, Ross, Walmart (I'm avoiding the greeter at our walmart), Lowes and Home Depot. I came home completely exhausted and quite a bit more poor.

Today was yard work day. On my list (after my dentist appointment): clean house, pull weeds, weed eat (trim) and water lawn and roses. What I've accomplished: dentist appointment. What I plan to accomplish the rest of the day: nothing. After my appointment I had lunch and set about putting together my new weed eater. Flooded the engine, finally got it started, wrapped it up in an electrical cord that runs my sprinklers, unwrapped it, started again, ran out of string, re-strung the stupid string, couldn't get it to start back up. It's quite warm out and my patience is absolutely non-existent, so I came inside to pout. Oh wait, there was one other thing I accomplished.

The other day I went to water my roses only to find an opposum had wedged it's head under my front step and died there. I considered flinging it into the street by it's tail but figured it would just rot out in the middle of the street and that would be unkind to my neighbors, so I threw it in a garbage bag and into my garbage can. Big mistake. Thankfully tomorrow is trash day. I had to take it out to the street early because the flies were absolutely horrific. I accomplished that today. So, all in all, dentist and took the trash out. I'm so irritated.

Front Porch is Done!

So of course my R&R days turned into anything but. I woke up at 5:15 am on Wednesday, being as that was what I was waking up at for the last few weeks, and had coffee and shaved the lower half of my legs. When they get that bad you have to break the task up into smaller parts. I mowed the lawn which was also quite the daunting task since it had been several weeks and we had gotten a lot of rain. My old chief stopped by today and told me he almost came over and mowed it for me. Almost, huh? Ahh well. It's the thought that counts. Then I sanded my front porch deck and stained it, went grocery shopping, pulled weeds, dyed my hair and watched a movie.

This morning I got up at 5:45 am (getting better), had coffee, shaved the upper half of my legs and took a nap. Then I got up and went into town to buy another rose bush and some flowers. I looked for a weed eater but the choices were confusing so I gave up. The weeds will live to see another day, and probably become several feet taller. I threw my fire clothes in the washing machine and went out to plant my new flowers. My boss stopped by so I gave him a tour of my messy house and then went back to my flowers. I put another load of laundry in and crashed on the couch with a couple of Guinness and Chambord (yum!) and watched a Spanish horror flick. Then I went out to set up my front porch and pull more weeds.

I'm calling it quits for the night and I'm getting itchy from pulling weeds, but I thought I'd post a couple pics of my front porch.

Porch before and after.

Just a quick glimpse at my house as spring arrives. It's late in the day so the light isnt great. When the flowers bloom a little more I'll get some better ones.

First Roll of the Season

Woohoo! R&R!! I love R&R days. R&R stands for Rest and Recuperation but it's not your momma's days off. These are super days off. Our days off are Sunday and Monday but they're not guaranteed days off. We can get called in to work on days off, we can go to a fire on days off. On days off we have to be within 2 hours of the station and fit to drive to the station and respond to a fire. But not R&R days. Those are a whole 'nother animal. R&R days are given to us after a 14 day assignment and are completely ours. No one can call us in to work or call us to a fire. We can be as far from the station as we want and we can be as snockered as we want. The best R&R days are ones that don't fall on our regular days off, for several reasons. We have to take R&R immediately upon arrival home. If those days are on your regular days off, you just take 2 days off. If they fall on anything other than your days off, you get paid for them since we're required to get paid for 8 hours each day. So the fire we just came from pays our salary for 2 days. The other great thing about R&R days that don't fall on days off is that you also have the opportunity to have 4 days off that week, which is awesome. But then all the regular rules of days off apply: we can get called in to work and we can go to a fire.

The first part of our assignment was just prepositioning in Albuquerque, New Mexico because they were expecting some bad fire weather and needed crews there. Prepositioning is cool because we get to stay in hotels, hang out at the local station, do some project work, PT, eat at restaurants, etc. But as soon as we got in to Albuquerque, we got sent down to the Miller fire around the Silver City area. By the way, Silver City is not nearly as nice as it sounds. We had a 7 mile hike in to our spike camp over several dozen creek crossings. Spike camp is a camp set up near where we'll be working instead of way back at camp. Fire camp (or incident command post- ICP) was an hour drive and 3 hour hike away. A 4 hour commute to work is pretty inefficient, so they fly in our sleeping bags and some food and we camp out in the wilderness.

The fire was in the Gila Wilderness which is absolutely gorgeous. We worked along the Gila River everyday. There's a wilderness trail that runs for miles out there along the river. Unfortunately when we hike, we go mighty fast and I spent a lot of time looking at the feet in front of me trying to figure out where I'm going to slip on the rocks and fall into the river. One day I was put in charge of a small section of line that was threatening to cross over and we would lose it. My superintendent put a lot of work into holding the line and had me wait for the pack mule crew to pack in a small pump to secure the line better. The pack mule team arrived with the pump and got to work setting it up by the river. Meanwhile, I watched a huge burning tree throw embers over to the side we were trying to keep the fire from getting established. The pump had all kinds of problems going on, so I crossed over the river to help trouble-shoot. When I looked over again, the fire had gotten into a log on the other side of the line- meaning it was getting away. I ran towards where I thought I had crossed the river previously (and only gotten a little of my boots wet) and pulled my helmet off. As I entered the river, it occured to me that it was much deeper than it looked but I was fully committed. As I went in water just over my knees, I scooped water into my helmet and ran up the other side of the bank to dump it onto the log. The flame went out and I could feel water sloshing in my boots. Definately not good. About half an hour later we had water from the pump and secured the line.

After an hour or two of securing the line, I tried to air out my socks and boots but it wasn't very helpful. We hiked a few miles back to camp, me with wet boots. The next day we hiked several more miles and my ability to cross the river without falling in was dwindling. We had hiked over so many miles on beds of river rock, crossed the river hundreds of times and my feet and ankles were giving up on the idea of balance and coordination. My feet on day 3 were hurting much like they do usually on day 12. They were burning and painful and swollen. So my supervisors gathered around while I took off my boots that night. One captain said "Oh yeah, that's trench foot". The other said "Ooh, you gotta take care of that, no joke". My superintendent walked by and said "It's gangrene!" Trench foot (just google it and look at images) on day 3. I had 11 more days to go. And we hiked over 8 miles every single day... mostly with me falling in the river.

Days later we hiked out of spike camp (that had moved several miles up river) for 11 miles over 38 river crossings. After about 10 or so crossings, I gave up on trying to stay on the rocks and just trudged through the water. I could see snapping my ankle slipping off the rocks and didn't think it was worth trying to keep my feet dry. It was too windy to fly our gear out, so we hiked 6 miles and then met with the pack train and gave them our gear. Then we continued out the rest of the 5 miles to our vehicles. We got to tour the Gila Cliff Dwellings, which were pretty cool, then we went back to fire camp.

After a few more days of hiking out into the wilderness and hanging out by the river, we got taken off the fire and were going to stage at Camp Thunderbird (think summer camp) in case of more fires. On the first day of camp t-bird, we played horseshoes, basketball and baseball. I took a shower but apprently the girl's side of the building had no hot water. So it was a long freezing shower. Had to get all the shampoo out of my hair. On the second day, we went out to do some project work for the local forest. After a short day of cutting brush, we got called to a fire in Alpine, AZ- the Wallow Fire.

When we got to the Wallow fire, things were a mess. Absolutely no control over it and the management team was a cluster. We continued on the clock and went to work on the fire that night, turning it into a 24 hour shift. Then we slept under some pine trees off a dirt road and rolled into night shift. Night shift is burly. It's so hard to stay awake at night unless you're actively doing something (which sometimes we were, sometimes we weren't) and it's hard to sleep during the day. Thankfully I have sleep medication prescribed to me and that helped a bit. Another day we slept at a school. There was an option of sleeping with the rest of the world inside a dark gym, but sleeping around that many people usually doesn't work for me, so I picked a spot outside.

Picking a sleep spot requires a bit of skill. Especially during the day. In your mind you have to project where the sun will be at each hour and how you'll be shaded...without having to wake up and move every hour. Plus you need a spot without too many rocks and pine cones, one that's fairly quiet and one that's away from dangers such as moving vehicles, falling trees or limbs, wild animals and dogs and man eating bugs. Outside one of the classrooms, there were some awnings over the windows and about 2 feet from the building were bushes. So I found a spot where I could wedge myself between a bush and the building and be covered by the awning most of the day. After the sun went past the awning, there would be a period of time where I would get a little bit of sun before I was then shaded by the bush. The spot looked like something you'd find a bum sleeping in. So I rolled out my bag and went to sleep. I woke up every single hour on the hour before giving up and going to work.

Now we're home and the fire is anything but controlled. Someone up high decided we needed days off and that we couldn't take them in AZ (which is an option). So we'll probably get called back to the same fire and have to drive all the way out there again. The drive is especially long since I'm one of the drivers. Those that aren't qualified to drive our vehicles (big boxy buggies) get to sleep and read in the back. Not me. Plus our buggy kept overheating, so we drove through the mojave dessert with our heater on full blast while the guys in the back had their AC on.

Today I'm going to figure out what happened to my mail (maybe the post office held it?), figure out what's wrong with my roses, mow the lawn, dye my hair, shave my legs and do some laundry. Most importantly I am not going to wear any shoes except for sandals and I'm going to try to fix my feet. And I'm going to sit on my butt as much as possible.

An Epic Tale of Survival continued...(scroll down for Part 1)

My will to survive was dwindling. I had to make a plan. If I could break it all into baby steps I might be able to pull it off. I could feel the cerebral spinal fluid in the base of my skull thicken from dehydration. The toes on my right foot were mysteriously ice cold- like the hand of death was reaching out for me. At that point I had an out of body experience and out popped my SurvivalSelf. SurvivalSelf shook her head at me in disgust and asked if I was just going to lay there and die. I considered it for a moment and then agreed that if she could get me through this, I'd do almost anything.

SurvivalSelf weighed the necessary steps with the ones sure to nudge me from my pitiful state. If I took a hot bath and put my contacts in, I would accomplish several important objectives: (1) I would thaw out my right foot and increase overall moral, (2) my world would be less blurry and therefore provide a more positive outlook on life and, most importantly, (3) I would then be naked which would force me to make a decision at a major crossroad that would dictate my success: I could either get back into my pajamas and wallow in my self pity and starve to death or I could seize the opportunity to put on some clothes and shoes and get out the door to scavenge the world for food.

SurvivalSelf's plan worked perfectly and I'm now well on my way to surviving the day. It was a risky venture to go out into public under my current state but I was starting to fade and needed to act quickly. My challenge would be indeciveness with potential for a total melt-down in the frozen foods aisle. I stayed focused and put myself in my happy place as I perused the aisles. I had two vital tasks to accomplish: I needed to rehydrate (badly) and I needed somewhat tasty, easy and fulfilling calories. I did ok. I came away with 2 bottles of Propel, a jug of V8 juice, a carton of yogurt, 2 bananas, 2 frozen pizzas, 2 cans of corn beef hash and a box of cherry turnovers from the bakery section. My nausea was building to an unbearable degree and I wondered if perhaps the prednisone was worse than just enduring the poison oak.

It being lunch time when I got home, I popped a pizza into the oven and ate a cherry turnover while I waited. While munching on the fabulous pizza a feeling of peace came over me. Yay! With food and a little more fluid in my system I felt slightly more invigorated with life.

SurvivalSelf said "Good, now go mow your lawn". I kicked her in the ribs, put my pajamas back on, took another dose of prednisone and crawled into bed to sleep off the nausea.

An Epic Tale of Survival

Yesterday we helped out at a prescribed burn in Happy Camp, CA. We were only going to be there for a few hours to help cut some line and fall some hazard trees. After lunch we got dragged into the burn show and had to haul flaming drip torches (they literally drop flaming pools of fuel on the ground) through tangling blackberry bushes and head high poison oak. It's quite a concept to have to walk with a 35 lb pack, 8 lb tool, and 20 lb drip torch through briar patches. I would throw flame onto the ground at my feet only to become ensnared in the thorn infested bushes and tangled up in their vines. At one point I had a near panic moment when flames around my feet flared up in the dry undergrowth while I twisted and turned to no avail to escape the briar patch's evil clutches. I lunged forward desperately, yanking free of the vines but bringing the thorns with me, deeply embedded in my thigh.

I got a little closer to the road for my next strip of fire and was able to overhear one of the guys on my crew joke that this was an "entrapment waiting to happen" (being entrapped by flames). I couldn't entirely disagree. I had a brief image of being tangled up in barbed wire and being gunned down by enemy sniper fire. I told him not to joke about those things.

Having the limp noodle legs that I do, my captain had mercy on me and put me in charge of the holding crew. The holding crew stands on the road or fireline and makes sure that what the lighters are lighting doesn't get lost and run off up the hillside. We had 10 burners and 4 holders, just me with the radio. The fire started to burn up the moss on the trees and the wind started to blow over our line. I got nervous fairly quickly. Thankfully it wasn't long before my squad leader took over my job and I became just another holder.

It was nearing 7pm and I hadn't eaten since noon so my calories and blood sugar were dropping fast. Those of you who know me know this can be a dire situation at best. I took off my gear and rummaged through my pack for what was left of my sandwich. It was only a few bites (a third to quarter of the sandwich) but it would keep me going for a little while longer. Just as I got my hands on that bad boy, a desperate call came over the radio that our fire had slopped over our containment lines. Bah! I threw my sandwich back in, put my pack on and made my way through the thick smoke to help out. Along the way I caught a few hot coals on the other side of our line and put them out by mixing them with the dirt around it. By then the guys seemed to have their side handled so I went scouting for more little spots to put out.

When things finally quieted down again, I got my sandwich back out of my pack and gobbled it up. Four bites maybe. I pulled out my apple while the lighters walked past me and said they were putting more fire on the ground. I demanded they let me eat my apple first. They refused. I scarfed it down quickly and went back to sucking smoke and looking for spot fires through my watering, stinging eyes. They decided they needed more lighters so I was pulled back into the mess. Several long passes with my drip torch later, they called it off and said we could go home. I dug a granola bar out of my bin in the buggy and stuffed it down as fast as I could and drove the crew back to the station.

We got back to the station at midnight and then I had a 40 minute drive home, dodging deer on the river road like a pinball machine. I got gas in Yreka before the last little stretch to Montague and the attendant there said "Good Morning!". In my mental fog I repeated it back and then continued to mull it over while the gas pumped. Who says that at 1230am? How crude.

I got home a starving, exhausted mess but still had to somehow make food happen and shower since I had trudged through massive bushes of poison oak for hours on end. I popped a lean cuisine into the microwave, showered and then ate it sitting on the lid of the toilet due to my lack of enough energy to eat at the breakfast table. I plopped into bed with my hair soaking wet at 2am.

At 5am it was light enough out to rouse me from my slumber and something resembling a bad hangover hit me like a truck. My head hurt, my eyes were swollen and I felt like vomiting. I went in and out of consciousness until 7:30am when I decided the effort was useless and I would need to get up and continue my calorie consumption.

Since my imaginary friend refused to get out of bed and make me breakfast, I staggered to the kitchen and started a cup of coffee. I opened the refrigerator and thought "What the hell!? I've been robbed!" Well, I hadn't though. We've all been expecting to be gone on a fire and so no one has food in their refrigerators because it will just go bad and rot in there for a couple weeks before we can get home to disinfect everything. All my food was frozen or packaged. Great. So I grabbed my coffee and went back to bed.

This is where my panic set it in. I was all alone, starving, tired and aching and the nearest restaurant (1) was probably not open, (2) probably does not deliver. I considered the food in my cupboards and knew I needed something with a much higher calorie content than what was there. I needed corn beef hash and eggs. Things got desperate so I pulled out another lean cuisine. It has all of 300 calories in it. So I was a tenth of the way there. Wimpering, I crawled back into bed to mull over my increasingly desperate situation.

Then it hit me. Why yes folks, I do have survival skills after all. In my collection of extra stuff for my gear, I remembered I had a single serving packet of spam that I used to carry around and never ate. I could make spam and eggs! And I would be ok! With renewed hope, I pulled the packet of spam out of the box in my closet and went about readying the meal. I opened the packet and realized the spam was not the color it should be. Argh! It wasn't expired but apparently while carrying it around in my gear, the package had become slightly damaged and compromised the safety of the spam.

With the pan already hot and me growing more and more desperate by the second, I cut up some sliced turkey, threw it in the pan and threw two eggs on top. I poured coffee number two.

So here I am, still in dire need of calories but smart enough to know that scarfing down a massive jar of jelly belly's would be a really bad idea. I'm still in my pajamas and it's after 10am. I'm not entirely certain how to handle this situation. It reminds me of the show "The Alaska Experiment" and the part where one of the women gets cabin fever and is basically incapable of getting up and saving her own life by going out and getting food and wood for a fire. Thankfully her husband is there and mans up to handle it. I don't quite have that same luxury. I've been sending out mental pleas like a beacon for batman and no one has shown up at my door with a can of corned beef hash...much less fresh corned beef hash from a restaurant. I discovered a couple rotten potatoes in the bottom of my cupboard and I'm starting to eye the frozen steak sitting out on my counter. It's as solid as a rock. I might have to get in my car and drive the 15 minutes to McDonalds but so far the energy required eludes me. I think I'll go back to bed to conserve energy.