Ladder Fun

Started painting the front of the house, which is the highest part. Fortunately, being at the front, if the cheap flimsy ladder breaks I can easily be seen by passersby who (hopefully) will get me to the hospital, or if I still have some limbic use I can crawl there. When I filled out my firefighter application I ticked "not afraid of heights or confined spaces" ha ha ha HA HA HA hee hee heeee eeeeee ooooohhhh....

We start our firefighting courses this month, down at Cue. Gary & Paul have been scaring me silly with stories of the breathing apparatus rescue training. They duct tape your mask so you can't see a THING, then they turn the heaters on in the simulation building to "very very hot", and in full kit you have to go in, search for "bodies", make a mental map of obstacles (while trying not to trip over them) and layout, not faint from the heat, and find your way out when your oxygen tank beeper tells you it's time to go. Then you report to the supervisor and help them draw the building layout on the whiteboard, refill your oxy, and go back in. Inside the building is furniture, debris, fake bodies hidden under beds, a tiny tunnel you have to crawl through, pipes to trip over or hit your head on. All in complete darkness. There are stories of big burly men fainting and having to be pulled out. Fun! At least I have ladder & roof heights training experience from SES days, it's the tunnel that's giving me the heebie jeebies.

The aboriginal staff at the hostel continue to disappear on a daily basis, if I'm not careful I will soon be the only person left! I've been flat out on my shifts chasing up the work that hasn't been done properly and shaking my head at the mess that's developed with the medication records. I finally wrote a workplace safety note about the horror of the pensioners flats just as a precaution in case one of us catches some hideous putrescent disease from stepping in an old roo liver, gets bitten by a deranged chihuahua, breaks a leg tripping over the six thousand beer cans or is set upon by hungry drunk people while trying to deliver the meals on wheels "meals". I am trying to work out a good camera vantage point to take clandestine telephoto shots so my blog readers will realise I am not exaggerating!