There's no 'R' in Thursday

I was sitting here this evening trying to come up with a topic for my blog post.  It's been a busy week, but nothing we have done has been all that exciting...unless you count the con ed on dealing with difficult patients (hello, after years of working in geriatrics I could have taught the class myself) or the first DHART landing I've been to.  Yup, just another day.  So John suggested I do something in honor of Mom for Mother's Day.  He said I should go with a favorite memory.  Well that left me giggling and with an evil look on my face.  I remembered the time when the state fire marshal had paid a visit to my grandfather's (Mup) house on Lafayette Road.   The previous night there had been a suspicious fire that destroyed a vacant barn across the street from their house.  The fire marshal was acting on a tip that had come from their neighbor who had heard yelling and loud noises from behind his house earlier that morning.  Mup just chuckled...

Mom had dragged me out bed that morning after my dad's pager had gone off for a reported structure fire across the street from my grandparent's home.  From our driveway a mile away you could see the familiar orange glow in the sky.  That old barn was rocking!   I don't think I have seen her as fired up (pardon the pun) as she was that morning.  I will spare her the most of the embarrassing details because there weren't a lot of rational thoughts going through her head.  She was acting purely on adrenaline.  She blew past a state trooper who was blocking off Route 1 screaming over her shoulder as she ran past  "I have to get the GAHDEN hose, the house is on FIRE!"   She yelled to me that I had to get inside and get my grandfather as she ran down the driveway to the back of the house repeatedly screaming "I have to get the GAHDEN hose!"  I met my grandfather at the side door of his house and he followed me back to where we could hear my mother yelling.  With wild eyes, she whipped around to him and started yelling again.  "I have to get the GAHDEN hose, the house is on FIRE!  I have to get the GAHDEN hose!"  She cranked the water on and proceeded to lift the hose off of the hose reel and in doing so tore the hose reel and the vinyl siding off the house.  I was blown away!  Two hundred feet of standard garden hose full of water is heavy and she is not a big woman!

She can be intense, but it's also a good thing she has a great sense of humor because for years after I would run into my grandparent's house yelling..."I have to get the GAHDEN hose!" much to the delight of my grandfather and her chagrin.