Wednesday, December 15, 2004

Putting on a brave face...

I had to face a group of Senior's on Monday. Yes, two days ago, that Monday... and I started writing a post at my regular time of 7:00 in the morning when I should be doing things like making lunches, waking children and readying myself for the day. But none of that happens on a regular basis... I find myself plugged into the keyboard as this eases myself into the events of the day. Which now of course have to be done in complete ultimate speediness, since I spend one too many moments writing whatever I have come up with at this hour of the morning. Anyways.....
I started to write a little something.. and there it sat.... I never completed it, I never filed it, a thought caught in momentary abyss of blogness. That was until this morning... when I decided once again at seven oclock to finish it off. And that I did... then that was that. Filed and gone. Into the depths of blog purgatory.... luckily I remembered the last line of the story.... so, that is where I will begin... because the story was forever changed, because that story took me three days to write, this will take me 10 minutes.. because I have things to do.. and don't want to be here any longer than I have to.....I have candy to buy for the gingerbread houses for tomorrow !

So, back to the meeting with the Seniors from the Senior Advisory Board... about 25 faces in a room. When it is my group, I can talk to them... and speak in front of them... that's alright.. I do it all the time, not a big deal. But, when I have to PRESENT information... that's when I get caught up. And, it doesn't help that I drank 3 1/2 cups of coffee before the meeting....which of course I debated drinking while I made the pot of coffee. I am not certain if I would have done better with or without... so I went with "WITH".... it seemed a safe bet at the time.. the only trick was.. "Do not hold pages of paper in your hand and expect to read them"... that doesn't work... the words get too blurry on the page, and your speaking becomes fragmented, and the thoughts become more difficult to express... none of that happened to me... I put my piece of paper on the table, and told this group that I was reading from the table... because I had drank three and a half cups of coffee. They laughed, in fact they laughed at many of my details to my group that I shared with them.... of course one was the fact that I generally share a story of life from the past week with my actual stroke group... and because we were not meeting on this day.. I shared it with them... and I hope they didn't mind.... because I have to share with someone... because I was quite combustible if I didn't get my stories out. They were quite an attentive audience. My last detail to them was the end of a letter (from one of the Stroke Members) which I did not read out loud, but a fellow from the Advisory Board requested that he wanted the letter to put into the newletter.. then I had to come clean.. I had to tell him that he could have the letter... but they had to disregard the comments at the bottom...because I didn't read them to this group. Silence. Hmmm. Anyways... "Don't worry people, it's nothing bad... it's just about me..." I said. So I have this grey box on wheels.. and everyone knows me as the "Girl with the Grey Box"... my Stroke Group member asked the advisory board to create some space for me, that way I could keep a bunch of my supplies at the Centre, rather than wheeling them back and forth everyweek... so I came clean.... "You know", I started... " I have to let you in on a little secret...this grey box with wheels holds all of the grey matter for this group that really matters.... if I keep this stuff here at this centre.. I will have no grey matter to work with at home". And that's not safe... me with no grey matter. Not safe at all.

Later....... The lady that is the Senior's Services Coordinator for the Centre told me that the Advisory Board loved me. I even made her laugh, and other people laugh who where sorts that were unlaughable even. Good... I am in for another year. Yae!!

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