Five

I really tried last night. I went to bed around 10 PM, deciding against my impulse to stay up and watch the State of the Union address. I would get a nice, full night of sleep before my long day and everything would be peachy.

Tomorrow is my long day because I get up in the morning with the Monkey, stay up all day with him, and then go to work all night. I'll sleep during the day Thursday after being up about 24 hours, and then work Thursday night. Then when the weekend hits I'll get back onto a day schedule where I'm sleeping at night. Then the whole cycle starts over. So basically twice a week I go from a day schedule to a night schedule. It's a little like a square peg and a round hole, but more like a peg that's been chipped away enough that it fits both square and round and you don't know where the hell to put it.

Well, 3 AM hit and I sat up in bed wide awake. I had a dream that I was at work and in trouble for doing a bad job approving reports. Like I had missed all kinds of spelling and grammar mistakes. Who the hell has dreams about spelling errors?

I guess work and being a supervisor has been on my mind a lot lately. If all goes well, if all goes the way I've been told it will go, I'm looking at a promotion to Sergeant in March. And yet, I'm worried. I'm worried that something will change, or somebody will change their mind. I have plenty of confidence in myself and my ability to be a supervisor. I'm worried that at the last minute they'll give it to someone else for some reason. Like move a Detective Sergeant back to Patrol Division to save the money from giving me a raise - basically the same treatment the Weirdo got at her job last year. It's like the closer it gets to March the more anxious I get. I just hit my 30th working day as shift supervisor, which qualifies me to get paid as a Sergeant. Submitting the paperwork to get the raise got me excited, but then I started wondering if the paperwork would bring just enough attention to the situation to motivate a change.

In other news, had one of those "moments" with a kid at work last week. This deadbeat son of a bitch "father" was visiting his ex wife and their son. He had watched the son all day so the mom could go to work. At first you'd think it was a good thing for him to do; put aside the troubles that ended the marriage so their son could be taken care of. Not so much. The jerk interrogated his 5 year old son all day.

Does your mom bring men over here?
Does your mom talk to other men on the phone?
Does your mom talk about me to other men?

Five years old. This poor kid wants to talk to his dad, wants the approval of his dad, but also doesn't want to talk about his mother to his dad because he knows that's a gray area. So the mom comes home just in time to catch the father in a rage.

Nobody will ever want you.
You'll never find better than me.
Whore.

This is, of course, right in front of the five year old. The verbal jabs turn to actual jabs, and the guy pins the woman down on the floor. He slaps, punches, and chokes her. Bends back her hands and fingers as she tries to defend herself. He draws blood. The five year old is crying, no doubt thinking that this is all because he talked to his dad during the day. At one point the guy snatches his son by the front of his shirt and drags him across the room like a bag of rocks. The woman got free, got a knife, and scared the monster enough to make him run out the front door of the apartment. He was long gone by the time we got there.

So I'm taking my notes and gathering all the required information. The woman decided to gather up some stuff and stay with her sister for the night. She was afraid to stay in her own apartment. As I'm standing in the hallway explaining how I would swear out warrants for the guy's arrest the five year old suddenly walked up in front of me and held his arms out to the side. He wanted a hug. I hugged the kid, realizing that it wasn't really me he was hugging. He was hugging safety, comfort, security. He was hugging the idea of a police officer and the stability that comes with them.

As we walked out the front door the five year old reached up and held my hand while scanning the woods and parking lot with his eyes. He asked me if I thought his daddy was going to attack us if we walked outside.

Not on my watch buddy.

He held my hand all the way to the car. The next morning I decided against going home and going to bed, and instead I stayed up to make sure the warrants for Battery and Cruelty to Children were signed, filed, and put onto the computer.

The way I see it, even if something goes wrong and I don't get the promotion in March, at least I can still spend my time at work locking up worthless assholes like this guy.

Checkers

Earlier today the Weirdo posted "walking the fine line between being hopeful and being the queen of denial". I get that. I get her. It's stuff that holds an ever-present spot near the front of your mind, but bears so much weight you just don't want to talk about it.

I don't do defeat well. I'm usually an optimist until a little ways after there's no point anymore. I remember playing checkers with my grandfather as a kid. He believed in teaching that life is tough, so he didn't just let me win. When I was down to my last checker, backed into a corner with nowhere to go and no move left to make, I would spend whole minutes studying the board looking for any last chance I had to do something about it. My grandfather would laugh, knowing the game was over, but I wouldn't give in. Finally, grudgingly, I would concede - and it absolutely ate me up to do it.

When two officers both wanted to go to the same class recently there appeared to be no way to logistically make it happen. They were both on the same shift and manpower would be too drastically affected. Enter Anthony, Boy Wonder. I sat down and figured out a plan that involved switching and changing around half of patrol division, but in the end I had a viable plan. The Lieutenant shot it down because it was unrealistic, but I had a solution. I had a move.

I am stubborn and bull-headed and I won't stop hoping for another move. The Weirdo and I, our whole family, are waiting for a phone call about a liver transplant. If the call doesn't come this minute, there's always the next minute. If not today, there's tomorrow. We still have moves open to us.

Quit

So I've decided to quit smoking.

I'm coming up on 48 hours without a cigarette, with help from the patch. It's weird, but it's both hard and easy at the same time. I get these little triggers all the time as I go through my day. I eat, I drive down a certain road, I make a hot cup of coffee, and I want to smoke. It's like a little lightning bolt hits my brain and for a few seconds I can't think about anything but how much I really want that cigarette.

Then it passes, and I'm guessing that's due to the patch.

I initially wanted to quit starting New Year's Day. I made it about 6 hours going cold turkey before the Weirdo told me to just go get a pack. I was miserable, jittery, and not really in much of a mood to be alive.

The patch seems to take just enough of an edge off to make it bearbale. I still want to smoke at certain moments, but because this time I'm quitting for me, quitting because I want to quit, I get through those moments.

Tonight has kinda been one giant moment of wanting to smoke. We're having some rare snow and ice in the Atlanta area, and I'm here at work. It's been stressful, to put it lightly. This is probably the most stress I've had since starting on the patch, and I'm kinda proud of myself. I was tempted a couple times to rip the damn patch off and sprint into the first ice-covered gas station I could find that sold Marlboros.

Maybe I'm just writing this solely to encourage myself, pat myself on the back for not breaking down and lighting up, but if I need to toot my own horn all day to stay off cigarettes then so be it.

Food is already starting to taste better.

I Love You More Than I Could Ever Promise

Well the holidays are over, and we're on to a new year.

No shortage of happy memories from the past couple weeks. Christmas was great, but extremely tiring. I hardly slept at all through the weekend because aside from work we were driving all over town spending time with family. The Monkey got more toys than he (or we) know what to do with. I really enjoyed watching him open his presents because he's finally at the age where he has an idea of what's going on. Last year we would open a present in front of him and he would mostly just stare. This year he would help open, visibly show surprise, and then start trying to pull open the various boxes of stuff to start playing with it. It was great.

Then New Year's Eve came along, which is also our wedding anniversary. It was our 5th anniversary, so it was a big one. For most of the day I was feeling very romantic and mushy, thinking about spending the evening gazing into the Weirdo's eyes while we hold hands and gush about how much we love each other. In the back of my mind I knew this wouldn't fly because the Weirdo isn't big on that kind of stuff. I got my What light through yonder window breaks time in the car on the way to dinner though. We held hands and talked about our favorite moments from the past five years. I of course mentioned all the big ones, like trips to the beach we took, the birth of the Monkey, and so on. It's been a few days now, and as I've thought more about it I've realized it's all the little moments, that don't necessarily pop into memory immediately, that I also treasure. It's the simple fact that we don't have to be at the beach or in the mountains for me to appreciate her love and companionship. Even when we're just sitting on the couch together chatting about our days, or what's on tv, or the Monkey's latest discovery of his capacity for destruction, I'm happy. I'm content. Just being with her from day to day, during the ho-hum parts of life, evokes the same feelings of love and togetherness that I get when we're having a "big" moment.

At dinner the Weirdo gave me a new wristwatch, which is great because for years I have been wearing a $10 Wal Mart special. She had a jeweler engrave the following on the back of the watch:

I Love You More Than I Could Ever Promise

It's from a song, and she said she thought it was very appropriate to describe her feelings for me. I was blown away by it. If the ring on my left hand ever isn't enough of a reminder that my gal loves me, I need only shift my eyes to my wrist. I'm a lucky guy. And, that definitely provided the mushy romance I was hoping for. After that we spent most of dinner playing Angry Birds on her iPhone.

Following our wonderful dinner we went out to a bar with Bestie & the Firefighter to ring in the new year. We spent the first little while standing off to the side of the place waiting for a table to open up. An older couple suddenly had the check on their table, and the Weirdo was waiting to pounce. We finally got to sit down. Had some drinks, some laughs, and the Weirdo and I got to dance.

So we ended one year and started a new one. Here's hoping for a great 2011!

Merry Christmas

A bit of a rough start to Christmas this year.

I was already kinda bummed about working Christmas Eve, but I stayed positive hoping it would at least be a really quiet shift. Well, not so much. We had a car run off the interstate into a tree. We had a 3 car pile-up that became a hit & run when the guy at fault decided he was gonna get his jolly happy ass out of there. We had some damn kids throwing rocks at cars, which turned into five different people wanting five different reports about damage to their cars.

We had a demented person. A nice family came home from Christmas festivities, and as they unloaded their car a strange woman walked up, got inside their car, and closed the door. A little stunned, the family asked the woman to get out of their car. She said no. A quick 9-1-1 call later and I was talking to the car squatter. I asked for her i.d., and she handed me the Rand McNally road atlas.

Awful lot of pictures on your i.d., aren't there ma'am?

We had a domestic dispute where a grandmother insisted her 18 year old grandson be immediately thrown out of her house, where he had been living with her for years. Some people say "Merry Christmas! I love you!" in the wee hours of Christmas day.

Grandma said "Get the fuck out!"

Last, but certainly not least, I had to shoot another deer. Deer got hit, and I pulled up to see it laying in the road looking blankly off into nothing. I walked up and unholstered my gun just as the deer turned and stared at me. The freakin' deer stared at me. Then I shot it. Walked back to the victim's car to see the old lady in the passenger seat was crying because I shot the deer. I got the victim out of there, and as I dragged the deer carcass off the road - leaving a bloody smear on the asphalt - I thought to myself "Christmas Eve sure has changed from the days when I would stare out my window at night trying to spot Santa."

So maybe I had a bit of a blue Christmas for most of my shift tonight. I'm not going to let it spoil the rest of Christmas. Work is work - it's always gonna be at least a little rough regardless of what holidays come around. Even the nights that are a little rougher than usual are still a blessing so long as I get to go home to my family at the end of them.

I hope you have a very merry Christmas, because I certainly will!

Statistical Improbabilities

So last night I ended up reading through some old internet journals, and wound up reading the Weirdo's online journal from when we first started dating. There were some people that were openly (maybe even forcefully?) against the idea of us talking about marriage so quickly. She was 19 and I was 21, we had been dating for 2 months when we started openly talking about how we were getting married.

Talked to the Weirdo about it this morning too. We had a couple laughs, a couple sarcastic eye rolls thinking about back in the day.

I can't shake the feeling of being a little miffed by the doubters - even 6 1/2 years later.

I get it. To the normal, rational, logical person we were crazy. Nuts. Who talks about getting married after knowing a person for 2 months? And one is still a teenager for God's sake! I get it. Looking back, I have no doubt that every single person in our lives had their doubts - even if silently.

But then again, maybe that's the whole point. The people that loved us, that, despite their doubts, wanted the very unlikely to actually become a happy story, never really voiced their doubts. They were concerned, but they kept it to themselves because they saw how happy the Weirdo and I were together. They hoped that it really would work out for us, regardless of the statistical improbabilities.

Here's the problem with openly voicing your serious concerns about a newly budding relationship: you're setting yourself up one way or the other. If the relationship lasts, you're the guy who challenged that it would. If it doesn't, you're the asshole with the "I told you so" condescension. Furthermore, when you openly speak out against someone's new love for whatever reason you're not just being a concerned friend (most especially if you're not even a close friend to begin with). You're questioning the judgement and on some level even the intelligence of two people - two people who are busy falling in love.

So I'll end with this: people are going to fall in love. It's almost guaranteed that most of us have or will, at some point, fall in love with the wrong person. That's part of being a human being. I think the best thing you can do for a lovestruck friend is to hope for the best, wish them well, and be ready to catch them if they fall.

And after 6 1/2 years I still love my Weirdo <-->, just like I said I would.

Chilly Bathrobe

It's been a cold, icy night. The temperature has been hovering right around freezing since the shift started, and we've had the car accidents to prove it. On a four lane divided highway earlier tonight we had two cars lose it on the same patch of black ice and wreck. One officer checked out with the first wreck. That driver had jumped the grassy median and wound up facing the opposite way from whence he came.

I pulled in behind the second driver, who had hit the ice and bounced and spun from curb to guardrail to median. One of his tires had been ripped free from it's wheel. The driver was a Hispanic guy wearing a bathrobe. Normally this is when I would start a little investigation into Mr. Bathrobe. First question would have been something like "Why the hell are you wearing a bathrobe?"

But, my mind was a little occupied. The Weirdo had just called to say she was heading home from her parent's house with the Monkey in tow. I was standing in the median panicking. There were two wrecked cars in sight, a third had rolled over a little while ago, and a fourth wreck had happened just before my shift started. There was black ice all over the roads and my wife and kid were driving home. Oh, and just minutes ago I saw a friend's Facebook status about how she had been in a wreck with her baby in the car. Because of the ice.

I lit up a cigarette, not really caring about looking professional, and covered my bases with Bathrobe:

What happened?
Uhh... I skidded.
You want an accident report?
No. 
You want a wrecker?
Yes. 

The wrecker was called, and I stood there in the median. A big van came slushing by, and about 100 feet past me I watched the van suddenly veer left, fishtail to the left, then to the right, and somehow manage to catch it and keep going. I took a puff, imagining the Weirdo fishtailing all over the highway.

She's a good driver. She always bragged about how she really enjoyed hydroplaning in the pickup truck like a freak.

Moments later the Weirdo called, saying she had spotted my patrol car where I was working the wreck with Bathrobe. From that point I was counting in my head, estimating exactly how long it would take her to get home. Right on cue, she called again to say she was safe in the driveway.

The police stuff I can handle. Domestic dispute? Someone's got a gun? Let's do it! But give me half a reason to think my family may be in danger and I become a chain smoking nut. Thank God they made it home safe.

Hmmm.

Hey Bathrobe! C'mere a minute...