Oh My Maude

Friday morning at breakfast, Lois got to the dining room a little late. WorkerBee showed her to an empty seat at the table where Maude always sits. If you haven't yet read about Maude, be sure to read this post. And just to make it even more clear how much Maude dislikes any change at "her" table, then be sure to read this one, too.

So anyway, Lois (who has dementia and usually doesn't even realize where she is) takes one look at the table and says to WorkerBee very matter-of-factly: "I'm not sitting here if that old bitch is coming." Very hilarious, but Maude did not come to breakfast and all was well.

About an hour ago Rock Ridge called "just to let me know" about what happened during lunch today. Apparently Lois was feeling more comfortable about sitting at Maude's table since she enjoyed breakfast there on Friday. Today, however, when she tried to sit at the table Maude told her she couldn't. When Lois didn't move, Maude picked up her glass of water and slammed it onto the table shattering it into bits and spilling the contents all over the place. The whole episode delayed lunch by about 15 minutes. Which means all the rest of the residents were probably pissed off, too.

Glad I'm at home today.

It's Monday...

A resident just answered the door to her apartment wearing a pair of underwear on her head.

Toot, toot!

I was reading this hilarious post earlier today about unfortunate happenings that befall others, but happen to be pretty damn funny. You know, like that time in high school sophomore year when the late bell rings and you're nowhere near your study hall seat so you make a run for it but at the last minute your butt hits the chair and sends it sailing like a launched rocket clear across the cafeteria and you land flat on your back with the air knocked out of you in front of the very hot senior you were secretly wishing would ask you to prom and when you open your eyes not only is the entire room laughing but the wretched ass of a teacher is standing over you telling you "nice try, but I'm counting you tardy." Oh. Wait. That probably only happened to me.

ANYWAY...

This post asked readers about things that make you laugh...at the expense of others...which reminded me of flatulence (because farting is funny, dammit)...which then reminded me of Mickey.

Mickey was in her late 80s. When she was younger she had been a competitive speed walker, and she could outwalk anyone in the building. Not only could she walk faster than any little old lady you've ever seen, but she did it silently. You absolutely could not hear this woman walk. You could, however, hear her fart.

She had a habit of entering my office, in complete silence of course, and come to a stop right in front of my desk. I usually had no idea she was there, until her butt trumpet announced her presence. This tiny, 85-pound, silent walker could float an air biscuit that would even embarrass the men eating beans on Blazing Saddles.

I would be sitting at the desk with no idea anyone was in my office until she was right in front of me, and then she would let one rip. This happened EVERY SINGLE TIME she came into my office!

And every single time she came into my office, I had to hold my breath just so I wouldn't laugh out loud. WHY is this funny? What makes uncontrolled wind-breaking so amusing? I have no idea, but today I really miss Mickey. And that special way she could lean up one cheek and sneak.

Fork You

Just like church, the dining room pretty much sees the same people sitting in the same places every day. There are no assigned seats here. Which I (perhaps mistakenly) tell each new Resident who moves in.

So New Resident decides to sit at "Maude's Table." Let me reiterate...THERE ARE NO ASSIGNED SEATS. There are no assigned tables. First come, first served. Sit wherever the hell you want. That kind of thing.

So, New Resident takes a seat. Maude comes to the table and proceeds to have a hissy fit that any two-year-old who wants candy at the check-out lane of the grocery store would admire. I try to calm Maude down, explaining that this is New Resident's first day here, and let's try to make her feel welcome, yadda yadda yadda, while pulling out a chair adjacent to New Resident for Maude to take a seat. Which she does.

Then, with as much hate as a pissed off 98-year-old white-haired lady can muster, she picks up her fork. She looks right at me. And sends the fork flying right at my head.

Ten Toes Up, Ten Toes Down

Gladys comes into the office. Unbrushed hair, wringing hands, completely distraught. She is so upset I can hardly get her to tell me what is wrong. I have to ask multiple times. She finally sits down and asks "Did anyone say anything about me this morning?"

"Uh, no. Like what?"

"Oh good heavens it must really have been a dream! Well, not really a dream it was more like a nightmare!" She is extremely animated, sitting at the edge of the chair, taking big, deep breaths.

So I ask what the dream was about, assuming it would be about missing keys or someone breaking in or some other caper that goes along with her slight (but darling) paranoia. I was wrong.

"I dreamt I had a man in bed with me!! It seemed so real. I dreamt that I got up and went out into the hall and told him to come into my apartment and then when I woke up there he was in my bed! Can you even imagine such a thing??"

She is so serious, and so...frazzled. And so worried about "what would everyone think!" She is 91 years old! This is damn funny. I giggled. I just couldn't help myself! So I ask Gladys, "Well, was he good looking?"

Gladys, who has Alzheimer's, starts laughing, and rolling off the one-liners as fast as she can. She says "Well, it wasn't his face I was looking at!" Which makes me laugh even harder. "And if he was good looking, I wouldn't be down here telling you about him, I'd still be in bed!" She then describes how real the dream seemed and that she lay there for a minute and finally decided she had better check the bottom of the bed to see how many sets of feet there were. I am laughing so hard my eyes are watering, and Gladys is full-out belly laughing. It was so awesome to hear her laugh like that.

Like all good things, our laugh-fest had to come to a close. Gladys left the office. And then...

In walked Assistant. "What happened to your chair?" she asks, as I glance at it.

And right there where Gladys had been sitting... is a perfectly round, great big, Wet. Spot.

A Week in the Life

I can't believe it has been an entire week since I could sit down and log in. I guess this week has just been a more typical illustration of what it is like to work in an assisted living....chaotic! Suffice it to say I've been surviving on chocolate.

Lots of things went down this week, but perhaps the most interesting is the Missing Key Epidemic. This is pretty amazing, really. Especially for a tiny town in the safehaven belt of the Midwest where people don't lock their doors and couldn't even if they wanted to because no one knows if there is even a key. So this story starts at the beginning of the week with Pearl reporting her keys as missing. (Sidebar: It is imperative to understand that keys go missing at Rock Ridge at least weekly. And every time a set goes missing, they get found. In a sweater pocket, hanging in the mailbox, at the bottom of a purse, in the microwave.*)

So Pearl's keys are missing. I haphazardly suggest they will turn up, as missing keys always do. Wrong. Move. Pearl leans over my desk with a red face and bulging eyes and says "they aren't misplaced, they've been stolen!" I calmly try and suggest we go to her apartment and look for them. She raises her voice several more decibals than I even thought possible for an 80-something person with dementia and screeches, "You won't find them, I TOLD you they've been STOLEN!" She proceeds to tell me that she sleeps with her keys on her wrist and that she woke up just in time last night to feel someone taking them off and see them running out of her apartment. (Sidebar: We lock all the doors every night. Houdini himself would have trouble getting into this building after 7pm. Yes, I wanted to tell Pearl this. Yes, I restrained myself and decided to write it instead.)

Fast forward to today. Gladys just paid me a visit at which she told me this elaborate story about her friend (who is dead, but Gladys can't remember that she's dead) coming to Rock Ridge last night and sneaking into her bedroom and stealing her keys from the string around her neck. Hmmm. What do you think? Coincidence?

*It's true.

And in this corner...

I swear I don't have any favorites. Really. I don't. I love ALL our residents. There are, however, those few who seem to touch my heart at a little deeper level than others. Gladys is one of them.

Gladys has early stage Alzheimer's. Her short term memory is shot, but her beautiful and loving personality has remained in tact. She will tell me ten times within one hour that she likes my dress, but always with a twinkle in her eye and a smile on her face. She loves people.

She also loves to put things in her purse. Butter pats. Crackers. Empty make-up containers. A million kleenex. You name it, it could be in her purse. It is packed full of, well, everything but the kitchen sink.

A while back, Gladys forgot her purse after Exercise Class. A couple of the ladies (read: old hens) saw the purse and seized their opportunity. Operating under the ruse of returning the purse to Gladys at her apartment, they made a quick side-trip to one of their own apartments.

As I rounded the corner, I could sense the mischief. Just picture this! Two ladies, both in their late eighties. Flushed pink cheeks, whispering, and giggling like a couple of sixth-grade girls who just called the local tavern asking to have Hugh Jass paged. "What are you two up to," I ask. More laughter. I think one of them might actually have a stroke or something. They say they are just returning Gladys' purse. More laughing. "Why are you laughing so much?" I ask. Finally, the less mischeivous of the two spills the beans.

They had taken the purse and put it on the bathroom scale. Total weight: 8 pounds.

Gladys is 91 years old, and probably weighs about the same as her age. I am most impressed with her athleticism. Seriously, she takes that purse EVERYWHERE. It's like doing 8-pound hand weights all day long!