4 and 1/2 gallons of water...

Yesterday, I was the cook.
There are some benefits to cooking...
* You get to leave for a little while. Whenever we decide who's cooking, (this usually takes a little bit of time at roll call, sitting around, shooting the shit, drinking coffee, ect...), they collect the money and it's off to the store. Our mess is $10 a person. There are 6 of us at my station, so we eat on $60 a day. That's for 2 meals, lunch and dinner. This is also a time to do an errand or two if you want. Stop back by the house. Whatever. No one really keeps track of how long you're gone. There's kind of an un-written rule of no more than 3 hours. One guy, one day, a long time ago.. took off for the store, did his shopping, and then went over to visit a girl he knew. I guess this was a common thing for him to do. Evidently his "friends" husband worked during the day. While this guy was "visiting", the girls husband pulled in the driveway. So, the guy takes off for the basement to hide. Well, 3 hours later he managed to find a phone in the basement and call his engine house to let them know he was a little "detained". He had to spill the beans when they asked him why he was whispering. He did manage to escape, un-noticed. I believe he ended up with a few days suspension with the fire dept.
* You get out of house work for the day. Every day except Sundays we have some sort of housework that has to be done. Mondays and Tuesdays are for apparatus, batteries, chassis. Mondays are also inventory, where we go over everything that is supposed to be carried on the apparatus to make sure it's there. Wednesdays are "outside" day. Mowing, trim, ect. Thursdays are tools and ladders, cleaning of, that is. Fridays are cleaning the stove, refridge, and windows. Saturdays are outside if it wasn't done earlier, brass and floors.

There are also some "pains" to cooking.
* "I don't like that" You can't please everyone. I have a Captain that won't eat pork, a firefighter that doesn't like anything green and a paramedic that breaks out if she eats tomatoes. It's taken me a long time to learn, but too bad! You pay your money, you take your chances. One thing's for sure, if I'm cooking, it's something I like.
* planning a menu. "Hmmmm, what do I fix today?" Some days, I'll ask for suggestions. Usually I'll just go to the store and see what's on sale. You'd be surprised how often pork is on sale...

Yesterday we had;
LUNCH
Meatball subs
French fries
Salad

SUPPER
Chicken and dumplings
Mashed potatoes
Roasted green beans
Biscuits
Salad

Oh, and a strawberry, cream cake

Now the reason for the title. One of the guys we work with, lets see... I'll call him Andy, he cooks just so he doesn't have to do anything else. He has 3 recipes that he uses over, and over, and over again. Usually it starts with 4 and 1/2 gallons of water, dip a chicken in it and call it soup. Or, it's 4 and 1/2 gallons of water, dip some beef in it and call it stew. Or, it's empty a plastic bag of frozen vegetables into a skillet, flash fry em and call it stir fry. That's about the extent of his meals. It wouldn't be so bad, until he sits down to eat and says something like "Mmmmm, this is good shit". My next day is Sunday. "Andy" won't be there, so I won't have to worry about eating his biscuits and gravy. He makes his gravy with 4 and 1/2 gallons of water....

Update....

Turns out a friend of mine on the dept's wife is a nurse and had our patient, (the elderly guy in full arrest), as her patient. There's a new procedure that they're doing for patients that have been hypoxic if they can be treated within 3 hours of the event. They ice them down to lower their body temperature and slowly bring them back up to normal. This was tried on our guy, but doesn't appear to have helped. The guy is still on a vent, and doesn't appear to have much brain activity. The sad thing is that his sons, which both live with him in the trailer, depend on his Social Security check as income so they wont do anything else but leave him on life support.

In another twist on this run, which was on 4/22/05... My crew and I got a call at the station from one of our EMS supervisors on 4/30/05 stating that the hospital had just informed him that our full arrest guy has bacterial meningitis. They assured us that we were probably safe, because symptom's should have started within 3-4 days if we were infected. That's comforting 8 days after the fact. They said we were safe, but to come to the ER immediately for prophylactic antibiotics. So we all strolled into the hospital, were checked in, examined and given our miracle 500 mg of Cipro. There were 6 of us in there at the same time, and after all our jokes, taunts and running from room to room pushing nurse call buttons, I think they were glad to see us go. At one time, the nurse walked into the room of one of they guys just as he had his pants down to his knees "mooning" another guy across the hall. The nurse stopped, and without missing a beat, the guy looked at her and said "They told me this was going to be a suppository".


It was big news here a couple months ago about a lady that had pulled into a gas station in the middle of the night in her van, and just sat at the gas pumps. The attendant finally meandered out to see what was up, and found the lady in the middle of child birth. They played the tape on the news and the lady's screaming at the guy as he's calling 911, "I'm having my baby!!" Well, the little guy finally comes out, and instead of waiting for an ambulance, the lady looks at the guy and tells him she has to get to a hospital. Off she drives. The guy called 911 again, tells them she's taken off for the hospital and gives the dispatcher the license plate # and a description of the van. Unfortunately, he gives a wrong plate # and the van comes back as stolen. So as this lady speeds off to the hospital, the police find her, pull her over, and with guns drawn, make her step out of the van. The lady gets out, holding the baby, covered in blood, screaming about how she's just had a baby and needs to get to the hospital. The police decided that maybe she should go to the hospital, and escort her the rest of the way... Turns out the van wasn't stolen. All the news stations caught wind of this series of events and made this lady a hero. "Super Mom Gives Birth And Drives Self To Hospital". Yeah, well... the rest of the story is that the baby tested positive for cocaine and went through withdrawls after birth, the mom had warrants for forgery, drug trafficing and now is charged with child endangering. So guess what... "Super Mom" is now in jail.


I said before that some days have "themes". All but one run yesterday was for traffic accidents, and most of them were up on the highway. It was nice yesterday, but no one could drive worth a shit. One poor guy that was driving a semi loaded with half a Lowes store on it lost it going around a curve, the truck tipped over and spread his load all over the highway. As we left that accident, we came across another that had just happened. A lady had zipped out from behind a truck to pass on the right, and plowed into the rear end of a guy that was attempting to merge on to the highway. Totaled both cars, but luckily no one was hurt. She was screaming at the guy as we pulled up about how it wasn't her fault because he was "parked" in the middle of the highway. Well, she was screaming in between cell phone calls to each and everyone of her relatives. The funny part was that she was driving a rental car, because her car was in the body shop being repaired from another accident. She then told us that the witnesses who all said she was "flying" down the highway when she rear ended the guy were lying because "I don't never speed, not after all the accidents I've been in...". She was still pleading her case to the cops as we pulled away...