A day ripped from the book that is my life

As most of you already know, my husband & I manage a retirement community. We work a week and then have off a week. On our weeks off, my life is slow and wonderful. It is a complete 180 turn from what my weeks on look like. Here is how most of my days go.

5:30am - The phone rings at the retirement community. It is a resident needing us to call 911. They think they are having a heart attack. I call 911 and then go upstairs to the apartment. The resident is taken to the hospital. I later find out that it was a pill that didn't disolve properly and was partically stuck in his throat.

5:45am - Open the building, make coffee. We make an amazing amount of coffee here and we have to make it before every meal and super early in the morning. I am doing this in my robe and I look terrible. Atleast 4 people have seen me including a paramedic who made a joke about my robe.

6:30am - I finally get dressed for the day.

7:30am - I open the office and the day "officially" begins.

8:00am - Breakfast! During each meal my husband & I pour coffee throughout the meal, put fruit in the fruit basket and coffee in the coffee urns for the residents. All meals are a "sit-down restaurant style" but we rarely sit. I am wearing my homemade Steelers skirt and it gets the approval of the residents.

9:00am - I am back in the office. One of my tasks today is to call some of the residents who haven't brought back important forms. I literally have to yell what I am saying for several residents who are near deaf. Only one resident brings back the form out of 30+ I call. I now have to go to 30 apartments to get the forms. This will take approx. 10-30 minutes for each apartment depending on how talkative the residents are.

10:30am - A resident has locked herself out of her apartment. This happens no less than 5 times a day. I go and let her in. She hugs me.

11:00am - We answer the phones when they ring since our receptionist has off on the weekends. Someone needs us to open storage. I open storage. She is thrilled.

12:20pm - We start pouring coffee for what we call dinner. Everyone else in the world calls it lunch. My skirt gets many oohs and ahhs.

1:00pm - All 140 residents and a few guests are eating dinner. Wild turkeys are spotted outside the dining room. People turn in their seats to watch and a hum spreads over the dining room.

1:45pm - Dinner is finished. A resident comes up to the fruit bowl to pick out a few pieces of fruit and puts them on the top of her walker. She takes a few slow steps and orange rolls off. She bends to pick it up. I offer to get her a new piece. She declines and puts it back on the cart. She takes a few steps. It rolls off again. Sigh.

2:00pm - My husband goes out to buy a heater since one of the resident's apartments is too cold. She is excited for the heater.

3:00pm - A group of elderly guests comes into the office looking for the party. I state I don't know about a party but there are people upstairs having fun. They say that must be the party. They go up.

3:30pm - The group of guests come back down. That was not their party. They realize their party is at another building. I'm not sure what they were doing for the last 1/2 hour.

4:00pm - There is a call from one of our servers that was supposed to be working tonight. This means that I will have to serve supper to the residents. We use local high school students to serve on the weekends and they are not great about showing up. I serve atleast a couple times a week because of this.

4:10pm - My husband turns on the Steelers game in the TV room & pub.

4:30pm - I go upstairs to take a quick bathroom break and change shoes because mine are new and are hurting my feet. On the way a resident thanks me for helping with a bloody nose yesterday.

5:00pm - We start getting ready for supper.

6:30pm - During supper we had a resident throw up. I clean the vomit.

7:00pm - A few residents stop in the office to thank me for putting photos on the in-house TV of the turkeys and yesterday's snow.

8:00pm - The office is now offically closed and all the staff have gone home.

9:00pm - We lock the building and set the alarm.

9:10pm - I am asleep. Hopefully it will be a quiet night with no emergencies and I can get some sleep before another quiet day.