High as a Kite

When I thought of door decorations for August, my first reaction was that August is the month school begins. What do families like to do before classes start once more? My idea was to enjoy the outdoors together. While making the decorations I learned from the residents that kites are best in March when it is windy, but I still hope they look at their doors and get inspired to seize the good weather. Also I found out the kites need a weight at the bottom of their tails (hence the last minute bead attachment). It was the last activity I did before beginning my vacation. Now it's my turn to enjoy summer before it turns into something less hospitable!

Sweet Summertime

For our big summer family-invited event we wanted an extra special dessert selection and music. It turned out really well. We had quite an array of things to finish off lunch with:

We rearranged the chairs in the dining room and then a musician came in and conducted a huge drum circle. Families participated and most of the residents came out. Everyone got two or three instruments to alternate between and we played for almost 45 minutes. I loved how interactive it was so that no one was left out. Also, because of the size, if anyone needed to take a rest they could just sit back and enjoy the songs. 

It's All Greek to Me

Today was Mediterranean day throughout the building and I wanted to make sure my section got their share for the couple of hours I was there and not planning. I rented a CD called "Greek cafe" to play while I did an activity making name badges. Using a Greek text book I transliterated everyone's names as best I could to wear all day until the special Mediterranean dinner. I am not a student of Greek but I do love archery so to make it more authentic I dressed up like Athena.

not me

not me

me

Then we played a game that requires a lot of preparation but always goes over very well: "What's In the Bag?" I use a thin sleeping bag cover as a shield for a single object that a person must guess using touch alone. While the person closes their eyes I show everyone else "what's going in the bag" before dropping it in theatrically. Some things I brought in today were a package of Tums, spool, bookmark, and badminton birdy. I encourage residents to characterize what they are feeling so that even if they aren't familiar with the object they can still be rewarded for an accurate description. It also keeps everyone who isn't taking a turn interested and awake.

MySpace Indeed

Today I showed someone the Internet. It was the first time he had ever seen it. He was quite amazed I could find his hometown on a map, find his Alma maters website, and even that a blog such as this could be written by someone he actually knew!

This job is not the first time I have ever done a computer class for senior citizens. Each time I do it I realize how amazing a computer is, how complicated it is to use, how much hand coordination it takes to use a mouse or touchpad, how many procedures there are to working computer programs, and how difficult it is to navigate the Internet. It is almost incomprehensible and therefore not easy to explain to any first time users (but especially those with memory challenges). Plus seniors are more often comfortable with steps rather than protocols and using a computer, with pop-up reminders and error messages, is not a step-by-step event.

I like the computer class most because it helps new people relate the things they hear about so often with the machine that makes them. The first class I taught was to a charity assisted living on a donated computer shared by the entire building. One of my pupils came in and said, "I would like to see MySpace. I don't want to start MySpace, mind you, I just want to look at what all the fuss it about." So we saw what all the fuss was about and I explained the basics of a social network. The next question I could not answer, "Why would someone want to put all that information for others to see?"

One of the selfish reasons I love my job is that interacting with residents gives me a unique perspective on our culture. Conversations can turn into a magnifying glass of the past and I understand so much without needing to study history.

Conversely spending time with children is like a telescope into the future. Today we visited a daycare class of 15 4-year olds and it blew me away. When one had a question about my sugar glider that I couldn't answer, they suggested I look it up on my phone. I didn't waste time trying to explain that my phone doesn't have Internet on it because when they are adults all phone probably will come with it as a standard.

Spelling Buzz

When I was working part time, I tried to incorporate Latin into my schedule. I studied Latin in school and I thought it would be fun to teach a Latin class. The interest wasn't there although when I did get people to come they agreed how many words they knew but didn't realize were Latin. I like to say that Latin isn't dead; just reincarnated.

Perhaps this failure was my inspiration for "Let's Win!" Mondays. The idea is to have an activity that people may be wary of, but then offer prizes to the winner for incentive. On the activity surveys I sent out people rated "being challenged" as most important. Yet when a new activity comes up it is hard to draw people out. There is a great fear of showing cognitive and memory weaknesses.

One week (to win) residents play "Every Day Latin" made up of Latin words that are commonly used in English, and matched to their meanings. One week is Trivia, another is Hangman, and today was a Spelling Bee.

The Spelling Bee has always been most popular and it never fails to amaze me how few words are misspelled (sp?). To make it random, I use a list of words for 3rd-8th graders and just go in order. Of course I just refer to the lists as easiest, easy, medium, hard, harder, and hardest. This is a great reminder of how different the school system is today. There is far less repetition and much more material to cover so I don't think children are as good at spelling. Also with spell check, dictionaries on phones, and abbreviations being the "hip" thing the ability to spell is not very revered.

Pressed Pamela

Sometimes I have an idea that doesn't quite fit into the schedule/budget/theme so I put it on hold. A few months ago I thought of a way to connect the residents to their families during vacation even if the residents weren't able to be with them physically; a paper friend I named "Pressed Pamela". Since we're inviting family over this week I thought it might be time to do this.

Pressed Pamela and her Scottish friend Pressed Percival

Basically, each interested resident makes a character like a paper doll and sends it to someone they knew who is going on vacation. That person takes the character with them, writes a letter about their travels, and takes a few pictures with the character in them before sending it on to someone else going to an interesting place. Meanwhile, the resident receives letters and pictures from family and friends about vacation, and can feel more a part of the experience.

Testing Taste

The above is the aftermath of today's tasting activity. If you spotted the cotton balls and wonder if I tried to feed them to unsuspecting blindfolded senior citizens, let me assure you it was much more interesting and less devious than that.

I cut up four fruits: apples, oranges, bananas, and my own garden-fresh cucumber and asked everyone to first smell and then taste each. We wrote down observations then tried the four again, only this time with a cotton ball that had been saturated in vanilla extract in front of our noses. The novelty of smelling food before we ate it would have been interesting enough (when is the last time you took time to smell food you're about to eat?) However, the difference between the foods we could smell and the foods that were overpowered by the vanilla scent was quite noticeable.

I went on to say smell is a big part of taste that we might not always be aware of. Then I made the joke that I was a spy from the kitchen, and did this activity just to make sure that no one with smell problems made any complaints about the food. I used the example of losing sense of smell as a side effect of a cold, but really I think loss of smell is a big general issue with older people. If they aren't aware of their deficit, they might be dissatisfied with food unfairly.

Afterwards we lingered around the table and I mentioned that during wine tasting you clink your glass to involve all of your senses: smelling the wine, feeling the glass, watching it swirl, tasting a sip, and hearing the clink. We talked about how it would change the way we ate if we tried to involve more of our senses. One woman mentioned the Korean-style of eating from a variety of dishes with your group which made me think of a sixth element: the social aspect of discussing what you are eating. How much different sitting around in a group, sniffing your food and talking about it would be to scarfing down a meal while driving to work!

Scrapbooking

When I found an empty scrapbook in a drawer one day, I got more than excited. I have found in my own life that scrapbooking is a meaningful way to record the past so you have good things to look back on. It shapes your memory and therefore gives you a chance to remember things in the way you'd like (and forget less pleasant things).

In some ways this can be bittersweet. When things change or things are lost looking back at the good times can be painful at first. But I believe the benefits outweigh the drawbacks and I knew scrapbooking was something I wanted to do in my job. It has gone over well so far. Especially I like that we can look at it when residents feel like we "never do anything fun".

My goal was to make about 1 page/month and so far we have been completing that goal. It prompts me to take more pictures at least. Today we had enough pictures and volunteers to do three pages, one of which was just the excitement of Royalty day. Each time our scrapbook committee meets different people come so the pages are in no way uniform. Actually, sometimes previous pages even get altered. At the end of 2012 our scrapbook will be a bit like the ancient Rome after a series of rulers has built, rebuilt, scratched out conquered rulers' names and replaced with their own, taken down other things completely, and left some things in a state of questionable finish.

Making Connections

Our retirement community has a locked unit for people with dementia. Interacting with them is a completely unique experience from everything else in my life. I have found people with dementia to have their own realities. The reality I live in just provides them symbols to use to deal with any feelings they may be having.

Many people from the section of the retirement community I work in will have enough memory difficulties some day that they will need to move into the locked unit. Even if they don't, their neighbors may and I believe they and the possible future they represent shouldn't be ignored. So one activity I have on the schedule is to make something for the people in the locked unit, and then later in the week to deliver it to them.

This week was the first time it came up and we made puzzles from pictures in magazines. We cut out any large vibrant photos we could find without text and glued them to plain white paper. Then we cut them into 4 or 6 pieces and voila- puzzles! Today we visited with the dementia residents and after a pet visit with my sugar glider we helped small groups configure the pieces. It was great to see the residents there working together and helping one another and it was good for my group to see that they are still human beings and enjoy visitors. I think this is a great group to connect with and I can't wait for our next visit.

Unfortunately, one of my residents was so upset she had to leave the locked unit. In particular, she has severe memory issues. She is very physically capable and hates the fact that her husband has "put her here against her will". Her anger towards him might as well be against the aging of her brain that prevents her from staying focused and safe. Today was the first time she mentioned her memory issues to me and it was only after she saw someone she knew in the dementia unit. It was someone whom she had befriended in another part of the retirement community when they lived across the hall from each other. That person did not recognize my resident. She just shrieked at us and ran away. It was then my resident asked to leave and said she couldn't deal with this, it was why her husband "really" put her here. I think she was seeing herself in her old friend- and imagining herself shrieking and running away.



Last night was my second attempt at setting up a movie night before I left and hoping it went smoothly. I could try for a third strike, but instead I think I'll just put it into my schedule for a time I am here so I can make sure no buttons are accidentally pushed or rude movie watchers do not ruin the experience for anyone. This morning I came in to find the input changed, DVD player moved, and a suspicious trail of popcorn leading to a bathroom.

Name That Survey Result

I am not the first activities person to survey residents of a retirement community about their activity desires. However I may have been more excited about it than most. I pored over the results with highlighters, post-its, a calculator. I made charts and a schedule to complement the level of interest: anything that someone gave a high rating to was put on the schedule, anything that many people gave high ratings to was put on more than once/ month.

One big thing I learned from it was that many of my residents care greatly about music and like to listen to it. Since this can be done independently I hadn't really thought of doing music as an activity, especially since I don't sing or play instruments myself. It seemed to be popular enough to happen weekly and deserve prime time (the hour before lunch).

I'm happy to say our music socials have been going really well. Each week I bring in a CD with mixed artists and we listen and try to guess the song title and who sings it. At first I found in a closet a 3-CD set of music from the 1950's. Many of our socials turned into dance parties and I was really enjoying them... but there were only 3. At the library I couldn't find any such samplers and I was beginning to panic when I tried a new search for "depression era music". What came up was music from World War II and we listened to the first today.

If I didn't have the cover in front of me I wouldn't be able to guess anything other than Sinatra. However, I'm glad I'm exposing myself. They are glad too because "they just don't make music like this anymore". Some of the funniest things I've heard at my job are senior citizens impersonating present day music (dah rah do do pzzang! hubba hubba rah!) and it does make me feel a little ashamed when compared to the slow, meaningful, and talented songs of their day. Also it amazes me how many songs they can remember simply because they listened to them so often. I think if I tried to do the same thing with a recent sample of the last decade I'd be hopeless just due to magnitude. Plus, song titles and singers aren't always announced on the radio and I listen to mp3 more often so I'd have to look down and read the information in order for it to stick. Another difference is that nowadays all you need is money to make an album (or 3) while performing skill was really necessary to get produced back then.

In the picture I have an example of the simple sewing project we did today: felt bookmarks. In addition to felt they use paper clips and embroidery floss and they have allowed many residents to do some sewing even after having "given it up". Of course I made mine to resemble the sugar glider I bring with me every day to work. I used to have this activity sharing time with ceramics but decided to split the two so that people wouldn't be rushed and come later if they needed to.

Wine Tasting

Friday I took a group of two to a vineyard for a wine tasting. We had a great time and acted like good friends more than anything else. The man had a lot of knowledge about California wineries and the woman is well traveled with resulting interesting opinions. I found out from our server that the difference between a winery and a vineyard is a the difference between a place that produces wine and a place that grows grapes.

Independence from Work Day

4th of July was my first holiday off since I began my job last November, for one reason or another. I spent the day at a coffee shop doing work, but it was worth it because afterwards I felt refreshed, well-planned, and excited about what was to come.

Sometimes I compare working in a retirement community to working as a school teacher. The most notable similarity is that it seems like there is not enough time for planning, unless you are willing to let the execution suffer. Since the people who take the jobs are likely to care about what they are doing they let their non-work time suffers instead.

Another similarity is that expectations are in no way related to the time and resources you have. In order to keep everyone satisfied many sacrifices must be made. Take a simple query like "Can we do more ceramics?" Here is what I would need to do:
1. find time in the activity calendar to have a ceramics activity
2. decide where the activity should be held, and make sure it does not conflict with another use of the space. reserve space if necessary
3. determine which materials are already available and will continue to be available (this may mean asking everyone else who has access to them)
4. check with budget to see how much can be allotted for materials not available
5. based on budget, either in store or online, find needed materials
5b. agonize over budget limit in comparison to what materials you can get
6. house materials
7. add event to calendar, including set up and clean up time
8. find people who are interested in activity when the people who expressed interest invariably have other things to do or just can't be bothered
9. consider changing the time of day/ length of event/ location based on resident's requests
10. explain tactfully why certain materials were chosen/ why we can't buy more right away/ why we need set up and clean up time/ why we must share
11. help residents be successful at the activity/ stay on track/ not spill paint
12. add more set up/ clean up time to include time to track down materials that get misplaced
13. feel guilty and take away extra time and work during lunch instead

Since I work on an hourly basis rather than a salary this leads me to make many tough calls: "Should I take my break or work through it and help that resident with their request?", "Should I leave early since I get here early or just take the extra time to organize?", "Should I turn my working brain off before I get home or make use of the non-hectic car ride to generate fresh ideas?"

I knew when I accepted this position that it was not a job that ended when I punch the clock. I also knew that I would have high standards for myself and take full responsibility for anything that was expected of me. What I didn't realize was how similar it would be to my "real" life and how difficult that would make it for me to keep track of budget and receipts, gather supplies, and think creatively at home. My attempt at an independence from work day taught me a lot.

Carrot Cake from a Carrot Top

The baking group I inherited wasn't doing so well. We were meeting every week.. then every other.. I was still struggling to get people interested. Although we purposefully used the things we baked as snacks for a discussion group, the residents are offered a generous selection of desserts at lunch and dinner and their nurses would always give me an understandable glare for offering yet another sweet. Also, after everyone had eaten their fill, we would leave it for the employees and I felt bad about giving them the scraps.

"Volunteer Baking for the Employees" was born! I decided once a month to bake something the workers had requested. The residents would help bake but not help eat, which may mean less insulin shots that day. Before this began we had an activity to make the jar for putting suggestions in. It sits in a place of prominence and we have gotten many slips of hopeful paper so far.

A resident chose the winning slip for this month and it happened to be a redheaded nurse's carrot cake recipe. So we worked on it today although she warned us it would be labor intensive. There was the usual "can't find a 13X9 inch pan", "we only have margarine not butter" hiccups but our end result was pretty tasty according to the people who tried it. I knew this day was worth it when I pointed to the cake and explained to a disbelieving worker that it was for her, not for the residents, and to say thank you for all your hard work. The residents joked about not getting to have a slice for themselves but they were happy to know they were doing something for the people who do so much for them.

Clothes on a Line

Yesterday we did one of my favorite activities: Show and Tell. When people move into retirement communities, they often have to give up many possessions so they can fit into one room or an apartment. I graduated college only a few years ago so I can still imagine fitting all my things into such a space. However I'm sure it will be a different story after 60 years of marriage/family/work/life. The result of condensing houses into small square footage often means people bring with them the essence of their lives and this activity gives them a great chance to talk about some of it. Some of it was painful to talk about but overall we learned how much everyone has in common.

Today I set aside time for door decorations for the month. I want our door decorations to remind people of home and traditions. When I was thinking about July, I remembered the first time I ever put clothes on the line. It was a few years ago when we lived in the country. The smell of our sheets when I brought them in was fresh and unique and has ever since reminded me of summer. Inspired, I gathered some mini craft clothes pins, magazines, embroidery floss, tape, and scissors, and told people to look for some pictures of apparel they liked. While we worked, we talked about our experiences with hanging clothes and how sometimes it froze in winter or the line broke and all the clothes needed to be re-washed. Here are a few:

Royalty Day

About once a month, I give a day a theme and all the activities for that day center around it. June's theme day was "Royalty" and the schedule looked like this:

• Gardening fit for a Queen
• Regal Discussion Social
• Herald Stroll: Calendar Distribution
• Princess Tea
• Crown Making
• A Very Royal June Celebration
• Kings in the Corner
• Knightly Resident Led Wii Bowling (after dinner)
  

For the discussion I got a few books from the library and we talked about what we really thought it would be like to be royalty. This is what I love most about my job, and how it is so different from working with children: we had a dynamic talk about pros and cons of growing up to be in the royal family or coming into it later in life. We talked about the difficulty with being such a role model and how you would need to be careful about your image for your entire life. When it was almost lunch time I asked everyone at the table to brainstorm about what a typical day would be like for someone of this most noble class. We came up with something like this:

• be woken up
• discuss clothes and outfits and get help with dressing if need be
• served breakfast
• discuss schedule for the day with very little wiggle room
• served lunch
• may make choices about dinner
• forced to socialize
• at all times servants are around to attend to you

I read over our regal itinerary, then posed this question: "How is this day any different from your own here at the retirement community?" 

Princess Tea I composed of unsweetened ice tea with a little sugar-free kiwi strawberry. We have both of those in dispensers. For the foam crowns I brought in an example and we quickly got to work. I showed everyone how I had made a design along one length, and cut it out. Then I cut out a thinner strip of equal length and attached it with paper clips so that it was adjustable. My inspiration was this:

However, we had no stickers or buttons. I provided ribbon to wrap around and for those who wanted jewels I found a stash of costume rings and made holes to punch them through. They could have been made of paper and many other embellishments but I wanted to use supplies on hand.

Our celebration is a time us to acknowledge all the good things that happened during the month: new family members, birthdays, physical therapy accomplishments, etc. It's also just a good time to have fun. With that in mind I made a way for us to have a joust. A sturdy black wheelchair was our noble steed, a pool noodle the lance, a marker the point, and three helium balloons of unequal point value our goal. Here is a picture of me in royal garb announcing "Let the Joust Begin":

To top off the celebration I got some joke books from the library and acted the court jester. The funniest was a knock knock joke:

Flashley: Knock Knock

Mary: Who's there?

Flashley: Little Old Lady

Mary: Little Old Lady Who?

Flashley: Why Mary, I didn't realize you could yodel!

The entire day cost $0 and I won't soon forget it.