Before I went to bed last night I made a list of things I wanted to accomplish today, including mowing the lawn, cleaning the house, working on this book, and going out to a new hot dog place. But I didn’t get out of bed until noon. My body was sore. Working the ambulance beats me up in ways it never used to. Riding in the back with a patient is like riding in an open pick up, each bump in the road jostles me. Picking up patients is straining too.. We did one call when an old man fell and another old man tried to help him up, and he got him up three quarters of the way when he collapsed and they fell together in a heap. So they called me, the third old man to help get them up. You alternate in this job between sitting scrunched up in the front seat on a street corner for an hour or more at a time to using muscles you weren’t expecting to.
I mow the lawn and clean the house. I send my daughter a picture of the lawn. She did some mowing for me this summer, and her last go wasn’t exactly perfect. "Good job,” she texts back. “You mow better than me, dad." That I do.
I’m too tired to go out to get a dog, so I repeat the one I had last night- the barbecue dog.
Day 43 in the belly.