So I have a facebook/childhood friend whose mom has reached the unbelievable age of 102 and is still in pretty darn good health. After a bout with pneumonia or whatever a while back, she decided she could no longer live alone in her house and is now living happily at the long term care unit that The Commander stayed at when she was rehabbing after a small stroke. The Comm did not live there all that happily but she was “only” 91 and didn’t exactly make the decision to move out of her house voluntarily but that’s not what this story is about.

It is also not a story about my friend’s mom. She has her own story and it’s one that I (appropriately) get occasional details about on facebook. But when my friend showed a pic of her mom in the solarium picking out books to read, it brought back a flood of memories about my adventures in telecommuting from the solarium while The Comm was there.

There was the time that “Mumma” (one of The Comm’s roommates) came down and washed her baby in a trash can. When I wrapped up my work that day, I remember fishing the baby out of the trash can and also one of Mumma’s sneakers, which was I fergit where. I deposited them on her bed and skedaddled. There were pics of Mumma and her children and grandchildren above her bed with Mumma smiling a huge smile.

And then there was a woman who walked around constantly with the upper half of her body bent waaaaay over. I think she was around my age at the time… She tipped over in the solarium one day when she and I were the only ones in there. Oh dear, I think I need to press the button for help. Us Fins are pretty reluctant to do that kind of thing. I can’t explain why but we are always like, “I REALLY have to press the button?” Oh yes. But when I went for the button, it turned out that I didn’t have to press it because a staff member was right outside the door and I used words to alert them. The woman who tipped over was fine and me and The Comm learned how to push buttons before her time was over.

Then there was the young-ish man who used a wheelchair and couldn’t speak intelligibly but boy oh boy did he know how to get the seagulls going outside the solarium. You do it by throwing popcorn out the window. The Comm and I were kind of cracking up about this. I think it annoyed the long term care staff though because someone came along and put an end to it.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 17th, 2016 at 5:52 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.