I wish someone would let me know in advance that it is Hell Day.  Maybe I could mentally prepare for the chaos that envelops the day if I knew it was coming.  The very least I could make sure I have a lot of ice available for pina coladas when I got home.  OK, so I don’t really drink that much but still – some times I wish I was the type to get drunk.

Have a friend who got so drunk last night she awoke with a hickie and has no idea how she got it – let alone how she got home.  I have never been this drunk – have never wanted to lose control like that.  At least not until I started working 911 – now I sometimes wish I was capable of drinking till I was drunk.  Unfortunately (or fortunately) I can’t.  The voice of reason always steps in, though sometimes after the fifth margarita, and I stop long before I’m throwing up sick.  I am never confident enough in my designated driver making sure I got home safe and sound to get too drunk.  The only person I can trust to keep me safe is me.  As Mattie said in True Grit “I would not put a thief in my mouth to rob my brains.”

Ok, you are wondering what made it Hell Day.  First off I had a trainee for 12 hours – it is exhausting having one for 8 hours, 12 is excruciating.  That isn’t due to the trainee – she did wonderful – but to all the reams of red tape and documentation I must do for every single call.  We stayed caught up the first little bit but then everything went to hell in a hand basket.   Too many calls coming in one right after another, officers doing traffic, a basketball game going, an armed robbery in Coralville we assisted on, a possibly gunmen on his way somewhere he wasn’t suppose to be going, and on and on and on it went.  By the time I left at 7:20pm, I was 12 calls behind in my documentation.  Thankfully the trainee volunteered to come in tomorrow once I catch up to review and sign the DOR.   Ugh! I can see why the other trainers get so frustrated with it all.  I thought I would enjoy training but I don’t.

Another thing I don’t like is I can’t get on the internet at all to check my emails or anything.  I hate that.  Playing on the internet relaxes me so without that outlet, I was pretty damn stressed.  Man I’m exhausted.  So good night world – tomorrow surely is going to be an awesome day!  I heard snow starting tomorrow night and lasting through Tuesday…yippee, winter is here.  It has to start to get over with – Spring is just around the corner. 

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a very interesting day.  I am here at work, it is 7:04 am and I am operating on less than three hours of sleep.  I’m thankful I’m not training today because I wouldn’t have been any good at it.

Went to bed last night around 10:30pm hoping I would get a decent enough amount of sleep.  Well, I was up again by 12:15am because I heard a loud vehicle outside gunning it’s engine and honking it’s horn.  Then there were people laughing and carrying on out on the sidewalk as all the drunks in the next building found their way home (or maybe they were going out…I really don’t know).

Wide awake, but oh so weary, I tossed and turned once they finally left the area returning the night to a soft silence.  At 1am I decided that I wasn’t going back to bed because I was wide awake so I turned on music very low hoping it would be like a lullaby helping me drift off to sleep.  It didn’t.

So 1:30-3am saw me up watching tv.  About 3:15 or so I finally started to feel drowsy so I set the tv to automatically turn off in 30 minutes.  I was about to drift off when Bennie informed me he needed to go outside so I had to get back up for that.  I lay there listening to Columbo until the tv shut off.  Last time I looked at the clock it was 4:04 – drifted off and was awakened around 5am by another car outside delivering papers.  So that was my night.

I got up, walked the dogs again and got ready for work…yippee.  My only consolation is that this is the last day I have to work for the next five so I will have plenty of opportunity to get caught up on my sleep.

Also, I can’t complain too much because one of the officers worked 16 hours yesterday, went home for 8 hours of which he probably slept five, and came back in for another 16.  He is here now until 3pm.  I realize he signed up for the OT but that is still damn brutal.

Well, I’m behind on NaNo again and it is driving me nuts.  I was so proud of myself that I was ahead the other day but now I am behind again and am so stuck I’m not sure how I will catch up.  I’m having a block about what comes next so tonight I decided to quit writing it in order and to switch to a later chapter as I knew what I wanted to happen there.  I think I get too wrapped up in writing it front to back when sometimes it is easier to skip a portion that is difficult to write one easier because, eventually, the missing chapters will come into focus.

I did that with Siren’s Song and it went much smoother once I gave myself permission to jump around.  So I will do that now and see if I can get the words flowing again.  One of my writing buddies is already up over the 50,000 mark – hopefully that will be me soon.  I’m at the halfway mark, surely I can get done by the 26th so it won’t be a last minute thing.

Other news, my son’s Christmas present arrived today – I was quite happy about that.  They even put it where I had hoped they would so it would be out of the rain.  I had packages from all three major shipping companies – the post office, FedEx and UPS.  LOL.  One box was more Sensa - I should have cancelled that but I forgot.  The second box was the little River Otter stuff from the symbolic adoption I did on NWF.  It is a cute little stuffed animal.    The third box contained the present.  I love the present and hope he does as well.  I am leaving it in the original box so I don’t have to worry about find a box for it to go in.

His other present has not come yet which I am a little worried about – it was from Barnes and Nobel which is usually a lot quicker about getting orders to me.  Maybe that will arrive tomorrow.  I have at least one and maybe two other gifts I plan on getting him.  Am going to get my tree so I can have it up the day after Thanksgiving.  Have to get the whole thing – tree, lights, ornaments, etc.

I haven’t taken the dogs out for a walk yet because it is raining.  The radio, on the way home, said it might even sleet some tonight.  I hope not but it wouldn’t surprise me – it was rather chilly out.

Had a conference today on “Active Shooter Rapid Response” – it was alright.  The instructor played a lot of news reels from actual school shootings which I found very disturbing – some were security camera video which showed people actually getting shot.  I hope I never, ever have to deal with something like that.  One of our dispatchers was on duty during the shooting we had at the University years ago.  She is amazing – I think I would have quit dispatch altogether if I had been the one there dealing with the reports and aftermath.  She did an excellent job according to the supervisory staff. 

I don’t want to go to work tomorrow.  I’m tired and cranky.  The person I work with is working two very long shifts back to back so I imagine she is going to be exhausted.  Really, she should go home at 11am when I get in but she won’t because she likes the OT.  Personally, I’d rather be off any day than keep working a ton of overtime but that is me.  I live on what I make each month and while it would be nice once and awhile to have more extra money, it isn’t worth losing my personal time for.  That probably bothers her but I am perfectly fine about coming in if I am really needed.  There is OT for Friday night 11pm to 3am which I could very well be mandatoried for even though I work a 12 hour day that day.  If so, fine, but I’m not going to volunteer for it.

If it were OT on a Wednesday or Thursday night, I would sign up but working four hours, going home only to be back in less than four hours for a twelve hour shift doesn’t appeal to me at all. 

Tonight was a hellish night – fun, but hellish.  I don’t even know where to begin so I won’t try.  Tomorrow night will be Hell Night #2 – hopefully also fun though busy. 

The costumes we saw parade by our cameras were fun, imaginative, and most of the females were rather risque.  Guess it is a good excuse to wear a mini-skirt.  Course, a lot of them have the body for it so why not? Our own young dispatcher was a Captain Morgan Girl and looked so damn adorable it was sickening.  Hopefully she will post pictures on Facebook.  The outfit was not one I would want a daughter of mine wearing, but she has the body and personality for it.

One of the officers was rather rude to me tonight and embarrassed me in front of others, but on the drive home I tried to put myself in his shoes.  It was a busy night, we had some busy calls and a couple bad calls so I imagine he was a bit testy.  I can understand that.  Still it kind of hurt my feelings but feelings are a liability in this business anyway.

Had my first 10-33 call tonight.  Nothing wakes you up faster than a 10-33 call – it means a full-blown emergency and if an officer calls it out, you know it must be just that.  It was a hit and run with injuries.  In fact, the ambulance called a trauma alert for a head injury.  We did catch the car and the people inside – the driver had been drinking.  I will probably find out tomorrow night how badly the person was injured – or maybe the morning news will have it.

I must admit, I don’t think I performed as well as I could have tonight.  I can give a few reasons however, I think I should have done better despite them.  It gives me something to work on – I don’t think a good dispatcher is ever 100% happy with every call.  It breeds complacency when we don’t self-evaluate and lord knows we have too many complacent people in this business already. 

Lord I’m tired.

Outside the wind is gushing by the apartment with a whooshing so loud I could almost believe it is winter.  I half expect to see snow when I look out the window but there is none.  The tree outside my window is now naked and even the leaves that had scattered across the lawn are long gone, having been whisked away on the shirt tails of the wind.

I find it quite humorous that the weather channel says there isn’t a cloud in the sky when that is all that is visible as far as the eye can see.  There are no blue skies, no sunshine, just endless gray.  I actually hope it stays windy – it will curtail some of the festivities downtown tonight. 

Actually, I’m looking forward to seeing the students in their costumes but maybe if it is windy, they won’t bar hop as much but stay at one place.  This helps with public intoxs because we generally don’t arrest people while they are in the bar.  If it is windy and they stay in the bar, then at closing time they will all run for their homes or take taxi’s.  This will cut down even more on the arrests.  A lot of drunk people, on nice nights, think it would be swell to go for a nice walk at night.  That is usually how we find them – stumbling along the riverbank, getting into arguments with strangers, and sleeping on benches.  So I will cross my fingers about the wind and hope it graces us all night with the gusts it is showing us now.

Time to get ready for work.  Be safe and remember, it’s a jungle out there.

I just got my reminder notice that I have training tomorrow at 8:45 am.  This means I will get off at 7am and have to hang around for a few hours before getting to go home.  It does not make me happy.  I won’t get paid for the time between getting off and the training – then the training could last 90 minutes which means I won’t get home till 10:30 am.

Obviously I can’t let the dogs stay cooped up in the kennel for this long so I suppose I will have to run home, walk them and then come back in for the stupid meeting.

Why is the meeting stupid, you may ask.  The thing is, we are not allowed to do anything with the alarm program itself so whatever they “train” us to do, we aren’t going to be allowed to do anyway.  Only two people are allowed to mess with the alarm program – the rest of us just acknowledge the alarms.  So why should we go to that training???

I don’t understand going to training for training sake.  This week long training we went to a couple weeks ago is probably a mute point too because now they have decided they can’t afford to pay us to be trainers.  But they didn’t “just” decide this, apparently they decided it last month so why didn’t they cancel our training?

I’m sorry, I don’t feel like wasting my time on pointless training even if I do get paid an hour of overtime.  I figured by moving to days and not getting my raise I will be losing $100 a month in shift differential pay.  Is it worth it? I just don’t know.

Ok, so I’m disenchanted and grumpy.  I know I should be thankful I have a job and all that good garbage.  But how great is it to have a job when you feel like the job is sucking your life away?

My job takes most of my energy for five days out of the week – I have to sleep or come into work.  That leaves two days to clean, see family and friends, relax, read, write, run errands, etc.  I realize that is the way it is for everyone usually.  But most people work 8 hour days so they have at least 4-6 hours each day for themselves.  Working 12 hour nights (or days soon) means there is no time for anything else but getting home, sleeping, checking a few emails, walking the dogs and coming back to work. I don’t sleep well – wake up tired all the time.

So yes, having to come in for crappy training, barely getting any sleep and having to be back in to work just pisses me off.  I have got to get published or something but when is there time?

I’m sorry, I know I’m complaining.  It is 3:30am and I am so very tired – nothing looks bright and cheery when I’m this tired.  Like this coming weekend I work 5 days instead of 4 because I agreed to work for my coworker Friday night.  I thought I would get the following Tuesday night off so I’d still only be working the 4 days but I was wrong.  Sunday is November 1st so it would be two different months to do it the way I thought.  Ugh.

My sister said it seems like I’m having a bad year.  I wouldn’t necessarily say it was a bad year but it certainly isn’t where I wanted to be at this juncture of my life. 

It was a long night to say the least.  The Hawkeyes won by the skin of their teeth – it was nerve-wracking right up till the last second when they won with a touchdown.  What a great victory! For the first time in school history, the Hawkeyes are 8-0 this far into the season.  We won against the Cornhuskers in their stadium for the first time in 30 years – it was a fantastic high for the players.

Of course the students were downtown and we could hear the collective scream as the touchdown was made.  Everyone was thrilled and poured out into the street to jump up and down & let off a few fireworks.  Then they all proceeded to get drunk and be silly.  People wanted to know what time the team was coming home so they could meet the bus to applaud – of course, we had no idea – not like they consult us.  I assume they’ll be coming in sometime today.

Got home and took the dogs on a mile long walk hoping to wear them out.  They don’t seem to be tired though…the little shits.

Anyway, I’m heading for bed here shortly.  Really should stay up and do some cleaning but I’m just too worn out from last night.

Let’s talk about headlights for a moment.  I don’t understand what is so hard for people to comprehend when headlights are required so figured I’d explain it a little.

It is standard rule that if the street lights are on, your headlights must also be on.  Most people would have them on before this but they absolutely must be on by this time.

If it is raining and you have your windshield wipers on, your lights are also supposed to be on.

If it is dusk or cloudy and you find it hard to read your speedometer, your lights should be on.  This not only lights up your dash but also makes you visible to others.

If you are in a funeral procession, your lights should be on.

Please remember people that while your excuse might be “I can see fine without my lights” – an officer will probably still give you a verbal warning if not a ticket.  The reason, of course, is that your headlights are not just for you to see by but also for you to be SEEN by other vehicles.  Once heavy shadows start to fall, vehicles of all colors are harder to see and judge distance/speed of oncoming traffic.

Be safe people, and remember…it’s a jungle out there.

The Hawkeyes hung on to keep their undefeated status as they battled the mighty Michigan team.  I am glad they won and I’m told the game was thrilling.  We had it on in dispatch but didn’t have time to consult it more than a couple times to see the score.  First time we looked up it was 23-? in our favor.

We made over 100 arrests, the city had thousands of people downtown, there were fights, drunks, assaults, and all the good things that go between.  We were swamped the moment we sat down and didn’t quit until after 4am in the morning.

I had to walk from the Chauncey Swan lot about three or four blocks from work because there were no parking spots closer.  This morning as I walked back to my car, I was stunned by the litter that canvassed the entire downtown.  Wow, it was almost like snow.  A slight breeze fluttered some of it around but most lay limply where it was discarded hours before.  The red paver bricks were obscured by thousands, if not millions of cigarette butts – ironically it is a “smoke-free” zone.

As I wade through the debris of homecoming, I noticed the teams of cleaners coming into the area with brooms, pick sticks, and dust pans to sweep it all into the past.  It occurs to me that some of the same people from last night will be walking through the ped mall again today – will they look around in appreciation at how well the teams cleaned? In two hours, there will be nary a sign of all that happened last night.

When I get in the elevator to go up to my car on the 4th level, one of the first things I notice is a couple of used condoms.  I wonder if the people who had sex in there realized the wall was glass? Were they too drunk to notice? Who knows.  There was a streaker last night – some kid who ran through our lot 11 which happens to also house the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office.  One of our guys was going after the kid when the kid rounded a corner and ran smack into a couple of deputies.  That had to be embarrassing.  He was carrying a water bottle…guess he didn’t want to dehydrate while he ran…

As I’m driving home I find that my vision is blurry.  At one point I swore I was about to take flight because it seemed I was flying down the road but when I looked down at my speedometer it registered not even 50 mph.  I am exhausted.

It is cold outside.  I’m not happy that it is cold outside but what can I do about it? I pulled out my winter coat, found my lightweight gloves, wore some better shoes and just dealt with it.  I need to finish my scarf so I can wear it.  Took the dogs on a short walk – am still not warm.  It really feels like it could snow again – I thought today was suppose to be warmer.

I need to plan a vacation I think.  Right now winter is becoming too much of a reality – we could actually have snow in a couple of weeks – so I need to think about a getaway.

I would love to go to a nice sunny beach somewhere – do some snorkeling – but don’t feel like flying and don’t have enough vacation time to drive a great distance.

I am putting in to get off work at 11pm tomorrow night.  I haven’t gotten a lot of sleep lately and have the maintenance man coming over at 9am to work on the exhaust fan in my apt.  I know I am not going to get a lot of sleep so tomorrow night seems like a good time to take off & try to catch up so I don’t waste all day Wednesday doing so.  Lame, I know.

I am so ready to be published.