"oh what a day is today..."

This post has an interchangeable title. It could either be the previously stated one, or it could be, "It's been a hard days night and I've been working like a dog." In fact, those are the two songs that Chelsea and I sang on our way back from the play we took some of our residents to tonight. Counting our lucky stars, it was a good day that was busy and simply put, wonderful. I laughed so much today. I loved it. Three times I laughed myself to tears. What a treat.

First, at work we are getting sweatshirts as our Christmas gift, at our staff party. They've made it into a contest to see what design we are going to put on them. Chelsea knows that I have quite the skilled hand....and all of you know that's not true. I say this because once we were to do a nerf gun shoot out at work with the residents. Chelsea was in a meeting and so it was up to me to use the dry erase markers to draw the wild west animals on the window. I declined the wild west, thinking it was too complex and deferred to safari. I could dominate safari. I was positive. When I embarked on the giraffe and asked our wonderful maintenance man what he thought it was, he responded with a dinosaur. I may not be an artist, but I know how to improv, so I went with it. I continued to (attempt) to draw prehistoric creatures. The staff members later, with their laughter, reminded me that this was why I kept my creativity to anything other than drawing.

Back to the sweatshirts...Chelsea asked me if I would please draw a dove so that we could submit it for the sweatshirts. Why a dove? Our facility is Trinity Mission...and our mascot is a dove. Here's how my art morning went.

Cheers to the dove. Cry number 1.

Progressing along in our day, it is now about 7 in the pm. We had scheduled an outing for our residents and planned a night on the town. Originally we were to go to Gardner's Village. Scratch that when it's supposed to be cold and possible thunderstorming. Back up? We found a playhouse in Lindon that was putting on "Frankenstein's Hotel" and quickly moved forward with plan-b. This place was wild. It is run by an 87 year old man and his darling wife that had the halloween vest and everything! (For the record, I think that one day I will be that woman with the halloween earrings and vest. I hope it has cute ribbon on it.) They were honestly amazing though. Before the show the man did a little stand-up and was just so cute. It was "in the round" so it was quaint and little and cozy and old. Before the show I had to dash off to the restroom. I went in and what did I find? Curtains. I also found a couple of 13 year old girls that bonded with me as we exclaimed how unnerving and awkward and strange it was that the bathroom had two stalls with a wall dividing them, but to close the "door" to your stall you simply pulled a curtain shut! Yes, a curtain. We laughed, they wished me luck and I was nervous. All turned out well and I went back to my seat and joined my residents.

As the show began they turned off the lights. Typical. As they were shutting down, one of the residents (the one that wore a tiara tonight, just because it looked good) said, rather loudly, "They must not have paid their power bill..." The entire audience was laughing. It made the opening scene anti-climactic to have the audience already laughing. Cry number 2.

Later, in the second act, that didn't even get started until around 9:26 (Chelsea and I were mystified that it was so late and had just passed the milestone of 13 hours of working) there was Natasha, Dracula's wife. Natasha was just finishing up her lines which consisted of her somewhat complaining about what a hard night she'd had and just as she was saying she even had a headache, this dear, tiara wearing resident said, "ohhh...shut-up." Again, loud enough for all to hear and all to laugh at. Tears. Her tone, the timing and the choice in words was perfect.

In spite of the incredibly long 15-hour work day, it was all entirely worth it.