Friday, May 30, 2008

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.

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