why that jewish lady singing to the christian lady is no big deal (o.k, kind of a big deal but ... not really)

There are a couple of things that are circulating on Facebook that have me more than a bit irked.  First.....

This is an awesome video. I've seen it circulating with the description something like "a Jewish lady sings to a Christian lady." BFD. The lady singing is Naomi Feil. She created the Validation technique, a way to interact with people who are treading water in  the murky slough of Alzheimer's.

The fact that Naomi is Jewish and Gladys is Christian has absolutely nothing to do with anything here. Although Naomi has a graduate degree in something & her title is a social worker, she is basically just an activity professional. And when one is just an activity professional, one is whatever one is needed to be in the moment. Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Atheist. It just doesn't matter. There is no religion when it comes to working w/Alzheimer's residents. All you needs is empathy, patience, compassion and most importantly detachment from a supposed end result.

This is not a  Christmas miracle or even an example of god's greatness. (I think those who think this should read up on the symbolisms of validation technique.) This is is just what any activity professional that is worth a damn would do.

So, Get over it!!

Naomi may well have worked with Gladys every day for 6 months, a year, a week. Maybe not singing these songs, but sitting with her holding her hand, reading to her, massaging her forehead, showing her pictures ..... whatever. Or, this may have been their first interaction. There is no formula nor timetable. Also, Naomi may have seen this response only once. Gladys may very well have retreated back into her memory den, never to respond in this or any other way again.

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I once worked with a lady i'll call "B". She was deeply confused and extremely anxious. Her disease was not as progressed as Gladys'.  B was still verbal although to describe her speech as nonsensical would be an understatement. I decided i was going to have a poetry group and see what happened. I shut the door, put on relaxing classical music and showed the residents pictures of landscapes. Most everyone fell asleep except B.

B & I looked at a picture of the ocean. I told her we were going to write a poem. And asked her to talk to me about the picture. She asked what it was. I told her it was the ocean.

& this is what we got:

I've always liked the Ocean, 

my mother was born very near it. 

I've always thought my father kept a magical part of it in his soul. 

I've always liked the ocean.

It's wild and uncontrollable. 

Alive, not easily reachable. 

Marvelous waves. Unstoppable.

You can't stop a wave.

My mother and father were close to the ocean.

I didn't know that until they were older. 

Stronger. 

My memories of my mother and father are as of the waves. 

Unstoppable, beautiful.

I've always liked the ocean. 

Yes. She said all that. I arranged a bit. But those were her words. And yes, she did repeat "i've always liked the ocean."

And... this never happened again. I tried ... a few times. But that was all she had to say about that.

 I guess. 

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I once worked w/a lady, "L". L loved to stay in her bed and make wonderful works of art on the wall with her feces. She was combative, aggressive, downright nasty & minimally verbal. She was pretty deep into her disease and also very very hard of hearing. One to one time w/L. was one of my one to one assignments.  Yay. :/

Since communication was limited, i simply visited w/L and showed her pictures. By doing this i discovered that she really liked birds as evidenced by the length of time she looked at those pictures and a softening of facial expressions.  I decorated her walls with pictures of birds. 

I decided we would try some coloring. I brought a coloring page of a bird and crayons & showed it to L. 

Nothing.

I colored a bit of the picture then offered her the crayon. She took it and began coloring ... just a little. She said "pretty." Just a word but an appropriate one. When I left she said "Thank you."

Did she ever color again? Hell no. Nor, did she ever really interact with me that positively again. But that one time was pretty cool. And it happened after weeks and weeks of visits. 

_____

I guess what i'm saying is this: no matter how deeply entrenched a person is in her Alzheimer's/dementia. She is still in there. And bringing her out, getting a response, is a lot of work sometimes. And a lot of detachment all the time. But it can be done. For a moment anyway. And if it is done, it will usually be done by those who are considered to be the lip gloss of the facility. Those with the "cake job." By those people who are just activity professionals.

In case you want to go a-Maying

I was going through my photos and came across the pics from last year's Maypole "dance" at work.
A Maypole dance was one of those things that i always thought would be cool to do; then last year finally did, and will probably never do again.

Making the May pole was pretty simple.  There was a piece of some kind of heavy plastic-y piping left from some work that was being done. The magnificent maintenance director cut it down to size that i wanted.

All i did was wrap it with brown duck tape, tape strands of crepe paper to the top of it and stuck some artificial flowers on top. Voila.

Rocks in a beach pail in another pail thing worked to get to stand upright. 

And that was it. 

The whole thing as actually rather successful simple because members of departments were in  good moods (or just curious) that day and helped push people in their wheelchairs around the Maypole. 

We ended up with a rather large number of people who wanted to participate. I ended up adding more strands of paper to the pole. 

So, there ya go. Happy Maying. 

spin the bottle

So, here is an idea that most activity directors etc. have probably already done. However, I am going to share it anyway.

Many years ago i put together this game for Valentine's day. And every now and again we try to play it.

This year we had students from a neighboring school visit on Valentine's day. So, I drug the bottles out of the basement & gave it a go again. & this time it went quite well. So, I would say that it's a good game to play when you have plenty of help.


This is just a simple version of spin the bottle. I decorated my bottles, but that certainly isn't a must do.

We use candy kisses of course. The cards are from a reminiscing game, Shake Loose a Memory, I think. The cards have things like "keep this card if you've ever baked a cake from scratch" on them.
With spin the bottle, we just changed the verb-age - "Get a kiss if you've ever ...."

You could make up your own cards for continuity of the game if you wanted. I've just never been that motivated. 

You could also use trivia cards or you could do something like a name 3 game - where the person has to name 3 types of pie or whatever. You could also have the person roll dice and name ... i don't know... 5 types of birds or whatever. Then she could get 5 candy kisses. Your residents would like that. 

They usually like candy. And again if you feel motivated, you could make up cards for that. 

Anyway - the bottles took a long time and a bit of decoupage for me to make. So, I guess I just wanted to show them off. ;)

Thanks for reading.  Feel free to leave suggestions, questions &/or comments.

Cheapie balloon bags

Hey. Happy New Year.

The first year I had to do the New Year's eve party I invested in balloon bag kits. They were kind of expensive, hung too low from the ceiling and really didn't work very well.

So, the next year I had to think of something else.

I am sure that this was not an original idea. Probably a thousand and one activity directors are rolling their eyes saying "DUHHH".

But anyway - you can make a kind of o.k. balloon bag out of a cheap, plastic, dollar store  tablecloth.

Here we go: Get yourself a plastic tablecloth. Unfold it until it is halved. Then put one or two little slits in it.

Lay it out

Then bunch the ends and tie w/ribbon

Then put in balloons ( the balloons were 20 for a dollar at Dollar General). How many balloons you need depends on how much you blow them up. Usually a 100 - 150 balloons will make 3 balloon bags. I was lazy blowing them up this year, so the bags are not as plentiful as in past years. But that just means there will be a little less waste. 

I like to throw in some serpentines b/c ... well, I like serpentines. 

I kind of stopped taking photos here b/c ... I just wanted to get it done. 

But I tend to staple the bag closed as I fill it. It ends up looking kind of like a body bag. (Well, it does.) 

The first year I made it like a hammock and filled it after I hung the 2 sides. It looked pretty hanging, but it was a pain in the butt to hang and fill. 

If it's all closed up, it's easier to hang from the ceiling. 

I add extra long strands of curly ribbon from the ends so and throw serpentines over it to dress it up a bit when it's hanging. 

If I think of it, I will take a photo of the finished work of "art" and post it later. 

Of course the efficiency of the bag depends on how low your ceiling is. Someone has to stand underneath of it and rip it open. 

You could probably devise some kind of something with ribbon or string to rip it open if the bag is out of reach. Like if you made, like, small slits down the length of the bag then stapled ribbon or twine or i don't know something to an end. Maybe you could pull it open. Or if you put 2 bunches of strong ribbon or something in the middle, maybe you could pull it apart like a curtain. I don't know. I've never had to worry about that. 

So, anyway. There you go. 

Happy new year. 

wild woman

Take a breath

Welp, the holiday season is officially on. However, if truth be told, the season was upon us back in October before Halloween candy had been marked down. Shoot, before Halloween had even been tricked or treated Christmas decorations were being stocked on some retailers' shelves.

This year, stores opened to a bargain hunting frenzy on Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving, a day traditionally reserved for family, feasting & football is now just another sale day. May as well be Presidents' day or one of the other holidays that is only recognized by banks and congress.

Now, I am not a big traditionalist. I don't go in for all the feasting and fraternizing. I prefer to spend the day quietly with my husband or (before he was around) by myself. And I guess I can kind of understand the adrenaline rush of getting a really really good deal on something. We do like to conquer things and there are no more worlds to be discovered so.... maybe discovering that great deal on cookware ... is the same kind of thing. I don't know. Or maybe it's just the idea of being a part of something bigger than them that pulls people out in the middle of the night to spend money in a feverish way. Like I say, I don't know. I'm just trying to see the other side.

However, the most wonderful thing about Thanksgiving & Christmas is, or used to be, that there was very little that one could do on those days. There was no shopping outside of running to the 7-11 for forgotten cranberry sauce or milk. Fast food restaurants were closed.  Thanksgiving was a day to be with family, like it or not. & when the family finally left, it was a time to rest. Be quiet. Be grateful for your comfy chair in which to nap.

I mean, who wants to shop after a big meal anyway? Maybe retailers were thinking that the tryptophan would slow everyone down, make them more docile. Umm... nope.

Look, the point is that we tend to move from event to event. We are constantly in motion. We are always looking back at past mistakes, hurts, & also accomplishments and good times. Then we look forward - planning, planning, planning. We very rarely give ourselves the opportunity to enjoy the present.

I don't know if retail is imitating life or vice versa. But I do know, I do believe that we need a consumer-less day. We need a day for reflection & gratitude. And we aren't wise enough to give that to ourselves very often. But it is oh so necessary.

Whether the time is spent with a house full of relatives or in solitude. Whether one feasts on turkey, tofurkey or peanut butter crackers. We need the time to simply breathe and be thankful.


Just my opinion. 

Soooo confused

This post was started during the government shutdown.  However due to the fact that regardless of what all the new agers say, time is not endless and abundant. There truthfully are only so many hours in a day. And the older one gets, the days & nights seem to get shorter and shorter. Until, of course, one hits the age of institutionalization. Then time lingers on like an unwanted house guest. But, with my luck when i (god forbid) hit that age, I will most likely be too blind, deaf, demented to finish any blog post, or anything for that matter. So, I will do so now regardless that the topic is no longer timely. 

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First of all, I am about as dumb as a rock these days when it comes to current events. There is too much stuff happening all the time and just not enough time to pay attention.

However, I am going to give my opinion on the current government shutdown  situation & "Obamacare" anyway. I mean, shoot, if news stations can report about on things that they know nothing about, I can surely opine on these things as well.

So, here is my question - Why do people hate health care and the idea of the working poor getting health care. And why are the cons still fighting the Affordable Health Care Act (aka Obamacare) when it was already passed into law and then upheld by the Supreme Court? I mean, it shouldn't have even gone to the Supreme Court.  Do they need to a refresher on how the system, their system,  works?

Here ya go.

I mean the Supreme Court once chose a president for god's sake. The cons were certainly happy with that. 

Is this health care law perfect? Hell no. It seems quite imperfect from how little i understand of it. But here is the thing. The Affordable Health Care Act is the result of Obama's big compromise with the cons. Yes - compromise. The Republicans tore apart the original bill and reassembled it into the mess we have today. Obama accepted it because, well, I don't know. Because something is better than nothing? Get something in the works and improve upon it later? I really don't know how we got this mess of a bill. But, something is better than nothing. This is true. 

See, here is the thing I really don't understand. Why the hate? Why the feeling that poor people are undeserving of basic medical care? Now, I'm not talking about the poorest of us - the person who survives totally on welfare & does not work at all. You know why? Those people have health care. Very good health care. They usually have Medicaid. Their medical expenses are paid for by the government.  I do not begrudge welfare recipients their health care. Everybody should be able to go to the doctor. 

(Do I think some people play the system? Absolutely! Do I think that often welfare recipients could work if they wanted to? Yes, but that is a moot point in today's economy. Jobs are not plentiful. And well paying jobs are pretty scarce. Again, regardless of what the new agers say about "pulling money towards you," "doing what you love," etc. At this point in time, finding one job that pays a livable wage is challenging for many people. And often those companies do not offer health care. )

The other side of this is the elderly people who have Medicare. Most are retired and have paid into the system for the majority of their adult lives. However, we are still talking about government sponsored health care. If, god forbid, they end up having to spend the end of their days institutionalized, who picks up the bill once their money runs out? Medicaid .... the govern...... err, well ... the taxpayers. 

So, we have people who are unemployed on Medicaid and the elderly who receive Medicare. Both of these are government funded programs. So, in the cons point of view, we already have limited socialized medicine. 

But then, there is this large number of working people. These folks are trying to be self-sufficient, to put food on the table, pay the bills, etc. And they have no medical insurance. It's not offered by their companies or maybe, they can't afford it. But they are out there trying to make a living, trying to make things happen or simply to keep their heads above water. Trying to be productive tax paying members of society. 

So, why don't they deserve help? I don't understand. Like, I really honestly don't understand the Hate, people. It's o.k. for those who don't work, who don't produce, to have free health care. But those who are trying to play by the rules, to realize the "dream?" Meh. Let them eat hydrogenated oils and bags of white sugar. 

And if this is a smaller government kind of thing. A belief that "people are corporations" and should be allowed to do as they please, then why aren't the anti-health people  angry with corporations? You have to know that if we allow corporations to do as they please, they are NOT going to do the right thing. That is why there are regulations. 

To recap - I don't understand the hatred and indifference towards the underemployed. And if anyone would like to explain this craziness to me, I would love to hear it.