The Soup Ladies is a non-profit group that shows up to calls to feed first responders. A friend of mine’s Mom has been involved with the group for some time and I’m more than happy to get the word spread for more exposure.

They are holding a first annual dinner and auction, Friday, 10 September 2010 at the Meridian Valley Golf and Country Club. Cost $75pp. Contact Linda by email at thesoupladies@live.com. All proceeds benefit The Soup Ladies mission in the greater King and Pierce County in Washington state.

Can’t make the event? Donations gladly accepted.

Ok, I may be exaggerating here, it could be a full 30 seconds. OR wait, it could be even less, as all it takes is seeing telestaff on the phone and you know some day’s schedule is about to change.

Sure, I know that we left school supplies until the last minute. We got school clothes done almost 2 weeks ago, but I haven’t bought any of the supplies. I have time, they don’t start until tomorrow. lol The plan was for hubby to go today and then tonight we were going to hit a last dinner out with the kids. Oh, you caught the “was” and “were”? Yeah, that was the plan before the call came in at 10:20 last night.

I have hours of work to get done for a client (YAH) and it was going to spill over into tomorrow already. Now it will spill into a late night since I need to runaround getting everything finished up for school. Which obviously means I’m not at home working. Poor planning and I don’t think I’ve ever been this last minute. Adapting all plans on short notice is a main part of life as a firefighter’s wife. It’s only going to only happen on days that are already full.

It’s hard to believe that the summer is over. Sure there is going to be decent weather at times, but the kids are back to school tomorrow and that means no more trips anywhere for a while.

Instead of going out to dinner, we’re going to plan a big fiesta at home. Quesadillas, nachos, taco’s and whatever else the kids can come up with. I think I’ll encourage the oldest to make some cupcakes as well. She’s a cupcake wars junkie and we found some yummy recipes.

Holidays will be here before we know it. Passing up OT isn’t ever easy and it’s almost always something we can change our schedule around to accommodate. I guess it’s a good thing I’ve never really been a scheduled person, so it may be easier for me to roll with than some. Who knows?

Is it pretty easy for you to work around the last minute OT?
photo credit: intenteffect

Thank you to a visitor that sent me this poem to post. If you have a poem of your own that’s fire related I’d love to post it and give you credit.

A Fireman’s Wife

A Fireman’s wife, the Padre said,
has nights of fear and days of dread
as she hopes against hope
that she can ably cope,
when the dark visions arise
from their blackened night guise
to tell of the dangers that he befell
when he answered the call of the bell.
And in her heart she hides a dread
that the day may bring a car of red
with the Padre wearing eyes full of sorrow
that say that upon the morrow
her husband, her life, will not return
and her soul will burn, her soul will burn.
Burdens more than a wife should endure
but her motives purely simple and simply pure.
She Loves Him.
Or in tears she will quietly be by his side
that day when a comrade has fallen, has died,
because it was his friend, the one who fell
and did not again hear the ringing of the bell.

She must show him her love but not the hurt that she does feel,
or the pain that she quiet suffers when from his grief he does heal,
or nary tell him that she kneels every dark night
after sunset, before the morn’s dewy light
willing his return to their happy home.
(Come home, come home, oh please come home.)
To the wife, the Padre quietly went on,
I vow the fear and the dread will be gone
when the morning sun comes with no car of red
and he is home safe, safe in his bed.
Show him your love and show him your pride
held within your heart that you feel inside
because he is your husband and he is the one
who does a hard job, one that must be done.
In a garden of colour that lifted her soul
he brought her some comfort,(which was his goal.)
The Padre said to the fireman’s wife
“A woman who chooses to live such a life
must accept times full of fun and also full of pain
as well as times full of sun and times full of rain.
But know that the yoke that you quietly wear
is also a great burden that he too must share.
Be content with some comfort, for it be true
and do not be troubled nor your life should you rue
for your husband though he leads a valiant life,
holds higher than the heavens, you, his wife
and he would be resolute and first to agree
that you are the much braver, far braver than he.”

D.M.Bowles

It’s not just because he’s a fireman that I feel this way.  I felt this way since I was lucky enough to snag him 20 years ago.  Every day he’s with me, he makes me smile.

Yes, I’m sappy as hell right now, I’m watching P.S. I Love You for the upteenth millionth time. I freaking hate this movie as it makes me bawl like a baby. No matter how much I want to not cry. I cry within 15 minutes of it. lol Not just cry, but uncontrollable sobbing. UGH, so pretty.

I swore I wouldn’t watch it again without making hubby watch it with me. He ticked me off so I swore I’d make him watch this chickflix. I never force him. lol But this one, now I’m not sure I can share. OR maybe I need to commiserate with the only other person that can relate?

He’s never worked in anything that was safe. I try every day not to take it for granted. It’s not easy, but honestly, you never know when it’s time for one of us to go. I know that I don’t want to be pissed off about the dishes, the socks on the floor or any other little thing. I try to keep things in perspective and I think it helps that he does as well. We aren’t big arguers which is good and bad of course. Bad in things may not get worked out as quickly as if we just had it out. But definitely good in the fact that we aren’t sending each other down the road in an angry tirade.

I made a vow a long time ago not to send him out the door while angry and without saying I Love You. I may not have been successful every single day, but it’s my goal to keep to that. Especially now that he’s got so much on his plate for a full 24 hours. Before it was just construction bullshit, both of us only gave so much of a *hit about. But now, it’s his life and it’s our life. So when work stuff comes up, it does make an impact if he doesn’t deal with it.

But none of that is us or matters in what I’m saying really. I never thought I’d be lucky enough to have a man who is my best friend, in my life, let alone for 20 years in my life. I try not to take any day for granted as every day is a blessing and a day to make at least a couple of new memories. lol I’m not going on spiritual on you with that, I just mean that I do give thanks to all that are listening that I still have him.

I’m not sure that this doesn’t sound like a desperate woman’s post now. It’s not that way, it’s mutual. lol I just really try to focus on us working things out quickly. It’s way past time for a date nite and I’ll bring up if he feels the same way. But I know that because of his past experiences, and our horrible traffic, we don’t take a “have a good day at work, bye” for granted.

So when hubby’s at work, do you cook?

I don’t all that often.  There are usually leftovers in the fridge and the kids and I will rummage through them.  I’ll add a salad and maybe a fresh veggie or side to our choices.

Kids found other places to spend the night and I don’t want to eat leftovers.  But I also don’t want to go start the BBQ for just me.  I’d make up a lot of food for lunches and dinner tomorrow, but it just seems weird to light the BBQ for only me.  lol  I’m going to work really hard at not calling delivery.  I’m sure there has to be something around here I can pretend is unhealthy.

I have a new book I could start, or plenty of online stuff I should be working on.  I bought I Love a Fire Fighter: What the Family Needs to Know and of course I’m dieing to dig into it so I can do a review. I’m going to review it differently than The Fireman’s Wife. If I feel the need to comment about the book as I read, I will. Then I’ll also do a big review linking any posts about it up.

So you may see a few little changes here on the blog as I work tonight on odd projects and work on brainstorming other ideas for this blog. If you have anything you’d like to see or get more information on please let me know.

The more I write this post the more I want that teriyaki chicken marinating in the fridge.  I just may end up cooking for one, for the first time in a long while.  Do I have enough charcoal?
photo credit: russelljsmith

Unexpected overtime can be nice.  Especially to get the OT at the beginning of the month.  However, it’s disconcerting when it happens and you weren’t really ready for it.

I guess I should have been, the OT started going out almost 48 hours before because of the deployments to Eastern Wa for the wildfires.  But, it didn’t dawn on me that it would keep going because of the deployments.  DUH

He’s on 48 and with the school year starting up, believe me it will be completely necessary.  What was missed today?  The first thing completely missed was his 20 year reunion.  However, we were already going to miss it because of prior engagements.  It just stinks that I had to do all the other engagements alone.  Oh well, such is life right?  At least my phone didn’t run out of battery so I could complain to him about it all. tee-hee-hee

Today I get to sleep in completely.  No hubby coming home from work to wake me up and no kids at home.  I’ll look to any positive I can find.  Otherwise it will just be depressing.  Of course, it’s sad already that I’m up so late.  I don’t take the ambien much unless he’s at work.

With our schedule being so crazy this summer I will take all these quiet moments and try to put them to good use.  I have quite a bit in store for this blog and my order of new books to review is supposed to be here on Monday!

Any books you’d like to hear reviews on?  I’m going to read some of hubby’s books as well so I can do some Christmas present reviews for you all as well.  I told hubby he has to step up and answer some questions.  I also told him he has to figure out who borrowed his  B Shifter book so I can read it first!  How can you forget who you loaned a book out to? UGH, MEN!

Tons of projects are completed or in process.  Man, hubby’s been working his ass off at home, my parent’s house and then extra at work too.  Happy to see a couple of days of much lower key activity during this 4 day.  Starting it off with dinner and a fire with friends sure helped   I’m just glad that he didn’t burn down the new fence he put up.  I did tell him I was going to literally LMAO if it happened since the two guys couldn’t stop loading wood on the fire.  Damn firefighters.

Planned out the back patio and now we are sitting out on the falling apart deck just chillin’.  Our weather has been nice and warm for a few weeks now and it’s just so nice to be outside. Now I need to get a new laptop battery so I can sit out longer.

It’s been months since a 4-day meant I saw my hubby unless we were camping.  Even the last one that we went to the lake he was doing projects.  With my luck he’ll do all this work, we’ll put the house on the market and not even get to enjoy it next year cause the house will sell.  At least when the patio gets poured, we are also doing a cover for it.  We can sit out back most of the year since we have months of temperate weather here in Seattle.  We would just like to not sit in the rain.

He has this set coming up and then most of the next 2 off.  However, a bunch of yardwork with an excavator is set to be worked on Sunday and then the wood for my parents house comes in.  He’ll be helping my parents build their new addition because that’s just the kind of guy he is.  He’s worried someone will take advantage or do it half-assed OR mostly likely both.  So we’ll all be down at my parents a lot this month.  At least I won’t have to cook much.

The problem with the full moon schedule is it’s not as specific as just the night of.  It can hit a couple of days before and after.  However, I’m glad he’s not working tonight when the full summer moon is hitting.  It’s been bad enough the night before.  He was crazy busy.

The funny thing is, we are sitting out at the lake with friends during the full moon.  Much better than the guys at the station!  Us wives are crazy enough for them to deal with. lol

I know super quick post, but if you’ve talked to your man you have much better full moon posts than this.  Yes, the crazies really do come out during a full moon.  I love to hear the stories from my cop dispatch friend also.

I know there are times that go farther between posting than I’d like.  It’s not for lack of ideas, it’s because I try to be smart and think before posting.  I refuse to be like so many other sites and post info that in my opinion violates privacy laws.  I try hard about that and it’s not easy for me as I’m such an open book.

Tonight and day, hubby has been busy.  He’s been helping my Dad build a fence, finished up two big projects here at the house and had a busy set.  It was rough to send him and rough for him to go to work today because he’s been so busy.  TOO BUSY!  We run off to friends when he gets off work and then he’s said he’ll start another side of our fence the next day when we get back from the lake.  NO, I don’t think he will  I’m pretty sure we need to go have a fun day of play with the youngest.

Anyway, the blog title.  Do you post TMI on your blog?  Do you think before you post?  It’s a rough line.

For one thing I don’t want to embarrass my family.  To many people know who we are because of FB.  The internet is not as anonymous as it was when I first started building sites when the dinosaurs were around.

Secondly, I don’t want to have hubby lose his job or be reprimanded.  Quite a few from his work follow my FB account and updates from this blog go to that account.  While I don’t have a worry about corporate for anything I say, I am aware of how things could affect his work.  Yes, I hate that and it can stifle talk.  However, I’m thankful that I’ve always been a horrible liar and any opinions that do come out of my mouth are backed up by some facts and I will own them as my opinions.  Feel free to send me more facts so I can change my opinion by facts presented.  From years of my Dad being in government, my holding positions on boards and now hubbies job, yes I do know things I’m not supposed to.  After 16 years I’m aware of this and I don’t post and I don’t talk about many, many things.  It’s a rough line for me at times to know what may be public knowledge so I just ignore it until later. lol

Right now, hubby has had a super busy day.  How do I know this?  I thankfully got to see him. I passed him driving the engine (HOT!) and then did a turn around so I could drop stuff off at the station for him.  But since then I haven’t heard anything.  It’s always a wonder if it’s that busy or if his phone ran out of juice. lol  I haven’t been home so I’m not sure if sirens have been rocking or not.  Then we’ve had movies up loud so we can’t hear outside noise as much either.

But it’s almost midnight and we’ll be going to the lake with friends for a few days.  Man I’m excited to see him for more than a few minutes.

This wasn’t too far from my house. Not dangerously close by any means, but a little ways down the road. I wasn’t home and my friend texted me to tell me the district must have just blown up because there were sirens going from both stations like crazy.

We heard a plane had crashed and sadly that has happened a few times during hubbies career.  I hoped it wasn’t too bad. We live by a private air strip and people build there own planes. Now that’s a brilliant idea isn’t it?

Luckily it wasn’t that bad and the old man made an emergency landing. His ultralight stalled from what I can find out on the tv channels and he landed in the field and ended upside down. There’s some cool footage and pics.

Hubby’s not in the footage and I can’t get a good pic of the extra rigs there that were first called out to see if he’d even made the call.  It was a busy morning.  But there’s a lot of guys in the pictures that owe some ice cream tonight.  I made sure and posted the link on facebook so they can be called out.