The Happiness Thread

I attended a fire call tonight.

Nothing major, but my first since being suspended from the police. Getting in to my gear and sitting in the back of the engine screaming through the night to go and save somebody from something...that's what life is all about. It certainly helped assuage the feelings of uselessness and shame that have been plaguing me lately.

 

So you're a dual-discipline guy? I remember when you first joined I thought you were a firefighter, which made some of your comments about your current difficulties hard to fathom ("turn in my gun"), but I just assumed I'd confused you with someone else or misremembered. We had a couple part-timers at 9-1-1 who were either firefighters or CSOs (Community Service Officers, not sworn, no gun, but allowed to do traffic direction, crowd and animal control, that sort of thing), but I've never met someone who was both a firefighter and a cop before.

And congratulations! It's got to feel good to be doing good.

 

This one belongs spread across the happy thread and the not happy thread. The wife sent a text that she might be bringing a kitten with her tonight. Supposedly the kitten was tossed from a moving car on a four lane highway. She’s voluteering her time, money, and expertise for the cat’s care.

How can I be anything but proud and boastful of her on that?

The not happy part is that when she’s at work and I’m home I have another animal to look after, and then when this cat is healthy and adoptable I have to watch her go through giving it up.

 

Thanks.

Yeah, I'm an on-call part-timer at my local fire station. It's kind of weird, having a foot in both camps, but my family have traditions in both and I have this weird thing about this sort of work. I tell everyone it's a uniform fetish and that always gets a laugh, but I don't feel worth a damn as a person unless I'm doing this stuff. Being benched by the police really hurt me. Even more than I thought it would. I really needed that tonight to remind me that I'm still in the game. 'Still awesome', as my partner puts it.

So, hey, somebody's property damage had a silver lining after all!

 

Got approval from my doctor. Gonna get the eh, life saving surgery next week. After recent happenings, not having to worry about screaming bank account parasites will be perfect for me.

Yippee!

 

My fellow writers, have you seen such butchery of a language before?

 

Roman attic? Okay, I laughed. (Blame it on auto-correct?)

 

I really hate it when people do this, but I think it's a joke. I've seen that picture multiple times, with different captions. Although this could be its original source, of course.

 

Clearly that makes the name of the genre of love stories “Roman Ants”!

 

Tired and happy.

Wrestling day.

I have been wrestling with text, stones, earth and timetables.

 

So this is the kitten I mentioned yesterday. He’s doing a bit better, he’s eating and drinking, but not while anyone is watching. His level of trust has been bruised.

He had some teeth knocked out and some soft tissue injuries. Somehow no bones were broken. From what I’m told he’s not a big fan of his antibiotics but canned food buys a lot of forgiveness.

 

I hope the little one will get better soon.
Good luck. ☘️

 

Counselling is going well. The therapist thinks I could be signed off to return to work in three weeks or so. Then it's all up to HR.

 

The funeral went well. We even livestreamed it because of family and friends died around the globe. The other half flew over too and had been a great comfort. We had a few fraught moments when the florist lost the order for the flowers but the funeral director was brilliant and rustled up something at the last minute. It was good to give Dad a good send off although the unofficial sendoff is likely to be a lot more raucous when we get his ashes back. He had definite plans for his ashes and not the conventional ones.

 

I completed my 5k Darkness Into Light walk this morning. We set off at 4.15, and I finished at 5.45. I did what I intended to do, and it was important for me to do it. I plan to do it again next year too.
A big thank you to everyone who made it possible for me to do this, and who supported and/or sponsored me. You are all awesome!
An extra special thank you to My Amazing Man @Cave Troll , without whom I may never have done it.

 

I know what you're doing. You're making a Stonehenge for Finland.

 

Just discovered that my sleeping tablets taste like a really good strawberry milkshake. A proper quality one, with real ice cream in. Yummy!

 

A quiet Saturday night. Some might say too quiet, but I like it that way. Now its time to write by the candlelight.

 

I had my end-of-year meal with the dance team on Friday night. I had a great time. We were all given cards from the committee with personal messages (rather than just "You did great!" in every card) and my crush wrote "You are so talented! I'm so happy you joined us and I got to spend this year with you! Keep it up!" with two kisses, which made me happier than it should have done. In addition, I won one of the three most prestigious awards in the society (Committee's Dancer, with the other two being Dancers' Dancer and President's Award), which was accompanied by loads of hugs, including several from my crush. According to one member of the committee, votes were unanimous, which was lovely. I hadn't expected to win anything. To celebrate, I accompanied the society on the following night out, and that was fun too (although that doesn't mean I'll be going on the weekly nights out next year!). I danced with my crush for a bit and she gave me another hug to say goodnight. I'm still so happy.

 

I have eight days that I don't have to do any college stuff. Eight days of freedom.
Then I have summer classes but it's okay and I'm glad because hopefully I'll graduate a semester early since this summer is a semester for me. Taking 15 credit hours but it's spread out throughout the summer.

 

I have a little niece!

 

Saw a girl with multicoloured dreadlocks the other day. That made me smile.

Spoiler

I'm a big fan of nearly anything multicolored.