Probably, it'll mostly be people who know me who come to read what I have to say, so some of the information may be redundant. Sorry about that in advance!
The first thing I want to talk about is my job, which I am still so very thankful to have. On Friday, January 13th, I was officially "released" onto 911, which means that I no longer have the safety net of my trainer listening in to all my calls. In fact, I've already switched over to 2nd shift while my trainer remains on 1st, and I'm starting my second week by myself tomorrow. I'm fully liable and have to figure things out on my own, even though that means asking the supervisors and my neighboring dispatchers lots of questions. I've already learned--and messed up--so much more during the week by myself. It's so interesting how even though calls are similar, they're never the same. It's challenging and different every moment.
Last Friday I took a super challenging call, a threat to some of our officers. The caller was evidently attempting to disguise his voice, and he even invoked the name of a man convicted of killing 2 of our officers a few years ago. The call was 26 seconds long and I listened to it over and over. He only allowed me to ask him for an address, said a few things, and then hung up. It wasn't enough time to get a good plot on his location, and he called from a 911-only phone. I have to admit, it shook me up a little bit. I have learned that, working at 911, I will speak to some people on really terrible days in their lives. But it's an entirely different sort of reckoning to do with yourself mentally when a civilian is calling in to threaten people whom you're responsible for protecting; as much as it is my job to protect the citizens, it is also my job to protect the officers. It was intense last hour of work.
Enough about the job! I am getting excited about a mini-vacation coming up. My youngest cousin's bat-mitzvah, for which I'll be traveling to Atlanta! I've got the 2 days of vacation approved so I'll be headed there on the 10th. I haven't seen this side of my family in a while, and it'll be nice to get away for a few days.
Last weekend, I went down to visit my family in Myrtle Beach for the first time in more than 7 months. The beach was refreshingly dead, and I was so happy to see my family and my dogs. My Roadie misses me so much when I'm away, and when I'm there he wants to be touching me constantly. We cuddled a lot and he slept with me both nights. My mom said on the night I left, he scratched at her door to get out and went and stood next to my door, waiting on me.
Here he is being the most adorable little brat ever.
While I was in my childhood bedroom for the weekend, I went through a couple boxes of my things and came across some things I couldn't even make myself open and read. Specifically, a few notebooks full of my teenage angst-and-emotion-filled ramblings. I definitely need to go through them soon, though, even if I turned bright red just looking at the pages.
And on that note, I think I'm going to sign off of my first post here. Check back for new posts soon!
Lol @ notebooks of teenage angst. Just throw them out and be proud of how much youve grown. I tried reading mine too, probably at about the same age as you are now, but found them quite boring and/or annoying.
ReplyDelete-carrie
Throwing them away would be like cutting off a limb for me. The particular notebook I found was from my 10th grade Creative Writing class, so it holds more than teenage angst but also many of my high school-era pieces. I'll keep them forever. :)
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