Wednesday, April 19, 2006

What A Great Day This Turned Out To Be

I'm not proud of this but I'll be honest and admit that I've had a pity party for myself for the past day and a half.  Something happened at work yesterday morning and I was royally dissed and got my feelings hurt. Last night I was in a terrible mood, and the mood carried over to today.  We had hellacious thunderstorms last night that lasted for a couple of hours so on top of feeling sorry for myself I was cranky this morning after not being able to sleep during the storm.  At least I had a project to do at work, besides my normal daily work, so keeping busy today helped a bit.  But something happened tonight that took away every bit of pity and crankiness that I had inside. You see, tonight I went with my Ladies Auxiliary sisters (yes, that's what we call each other) to a local nursing home.  I honestly can't tell you when I've felt this good. 

Mom said she wanted to go with us, too, so we met at the VFW and headed over to the nursing home about five minutes away.  As soon as we went inside, we noticed the place was immaculate.  You could see your reflection on the spotless floors.  And unlike some nursing homes, this one did not have that terrible nursing home smell.  They started bringing the residents into the huge dining room and got them all situated at the tables.  In typical VFW fashion, we handed out gigantic bingo cards and chips and started an hour of bingo games.  The residents loved it.  There were enough of us there to station one person at each of the tables to help the residents cover their cards.  And we were playing for big money, too - a dollar a game.  I have to say the residents were much nicer and were a heck of a lot more appreciative than my Thursday night bingo crowd. 

When I heard that the Ladies Auxiliary went to the nursing home every month, I knew I had to go with them.  I remember how much Grandma enjoyed the groups and clubs that would come to visit her when she was in the nursing home, and I wanted to return the favor. I saw Grandma in quite a few of the residents there tonight - not so much that some of the residents looked like her, but it was the little things they did that reminded me of her.  Little things like how they all had folded Kleenax in their pockets, and some had theirpockets crammed full of Kleenax and other things.  I went there tonight feeling sorry for myself, and left there feeling better than I've felt in a long time.  I can't wait to go back next month.

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