Whoa! So, mornings at our house are always filled with adventure and a little bit of chaos. But, we try to get up and out the door
by about 7
30 in the morning at the latest.
laughing
by about 7
So, getting a 5 1/2 month old baby ready and an 8 year old ready for 3rd grade is a little bit chaotic. The most rewarding thing, I would say, about owning a business is the freedom to make certain choices.
00 and 8
30 and just kind of settle in, do some paperwork. Sometimes I re-arrange the store. My favorite thing in the world to do is clean the windows on the front door in the morning, it's a very nice thing, especially to see the other business owners opening up their shops and everything. There's kind of a camaraderie there, like, "Yep, yeah. "We're all here doing this here on Parmenter Street, and opening our little shops." So, that's kind of nice. I was spending a lot of time, a few years ago, in the fire station because I started fitness training with a private trainer. It was really being in the firehouse, consistently, on a repeated basis, hearing calls come in and getting more interested, like, "Where are they going?", "What do they do?" "What happens when those tones sound? "Who are the people behind the fire department?" That intrigued me. And the more I learned about it... Then it became less of, "Do I want to do this?" and more like, "I have to do this." There's not question, I can't not do it. Deciding to become a firefighter was completely unexpected. The training was intense, very educational, very thorough. It was more cerebral than I had anticipated. So the more academic, more cerebral part of the training was certainly fire science. Just learning when, construction of buildings, learning about fire behavior, learning about reading smoke, learning about chemicals. You know, areas that were a little more challenging for me were equipment. I had never been exposed to many of the tools that we use on the fire department.
metal crunching
00 and 8
The extrication equipment... It's very bulky, very heavy. It can be very dangerous. And so really acclimating myself to the use of heavy equipment...
chainsaw buzzing
00 and 8
...was something that I had to challenge me.
chainsaw cutting
sirens
00 and 8
So, responding from work is ideal for me because I'm, like, a block and a half from the firehouse. So, I generally respond on foot because it's faster for me to sprint from my business to the firehouse than to drive in my vehicle. You experience every possible imaginable scenario or situation on fire calls, and things that you would never imagine. Certainly, structure fires are what people think of when they think of the fire station and the fire department, but it's the people who I remember most, those interactions. And they're the things that kind of tug at me late at night. Seeing things that are difficult, tragic at times. It really... In the moment, I don't think it really sinks in so much because you're there doing your job and I think that as a first responder, you're able to kind of tune that out and do what you need to do to stabilize the situation and do your job. Afterward, its's tough. There are things that make you go home and hug your family, or stay awake at night and stare at the ceiling, and really be grateful. It shifts your perspective significantly. Whatever else I've got going on, it's not life and death, but my other job is. It really is life and death. I get asked a lot when people find out that I'm a firefighter, especially at my business. People will say, "Well, what in the world made you do that?" I say, "I really...I don't know. "I just know that I couldn't not do it once I was exposed to it." This may be clich, but I feel like I was born to do this at this time. Ten years ago, maybe not. But at this time, it was the exact thing that I needed to do and I'm exactly where I need to be.
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