People, people, people....

Today was my Stroke Group day. I am getting quite nervous about this fine group of people. I am nervous because I am never quite sure who is going to show up, and how many people I may or may not have. I plan, organize & hunt for new activity ideas every week, just so that each person can be met with some level of success to take away from the group. I am beginning to find this rather challenging, as I only have had myself to bounce ideas off of, and my thought processes are beginning to dry up. The whole bucket over the head for sound effects just doesn't seem to be working for me any longer.

A number of weeks back, when I was completely puzzling over what we were going to be doing for the month of November.. I came up with cake day. Cake day was today... November 20th, for whatever reason. It seemed a reasonable sort of "fun idea" at the time. It really did. Luckily I was scanning the flyers last night, and the most expensive grocery store in the world was having a sale on cakes... they always have a good assortment of cakes. I was in luck. Although I would have had better luck if they would have had all the cakes that they had in the flyer. I felt a bit "dogged" when it came to missing the airmiles on the cake sale, especially when more than half the case was empty. I wondered if the cake pigs had already come and gone before 11:00 in the morning. I managed to pick up a chocolate pudding ring thing, a lemon delight, and the standard carrot cake, with the thickly added carrot icing on top.

I haul my bags into the community centre, and I am ready to roll with my jokes, and my word games for the men and woman. I had to do men and woman word games today due to the fact that I had to due some BC Lions trivia since they won the grey cup yesterday. ( I admitted on the scale of 1 - 10 my love for football sat somewhere in the NEGATIVE 275 mark). Since it was cake day, I managed to find some trivia games about baking and stuff. This was hugely funny on a much larger scale, since the majority of food that I speak of are the things that the King creates in the decrepit kitchen. The members of my group fear my stories of cooking creations that actually come from me, I end up being a huge source of entertainment when it comes to me in the cooking department. (( Although I should point out... for dinner tonight I did manage to put together a mean batch of pumpkin soup.. which the PIP and I loved...., and the husband who didn't want to eat the leftovers from last night suddenly was interested after all.... now talk about a score!)) Eventually when I get all my crap together... I start cutting up cake.. of course this was after I told everybody that I had made them... and the people that have known me for a long time knew that I was the queen of BS!! We all enjoyed the cake... people may have enjoyed the fact that it was not direct from my kitchen...

Anyways... this story is nothing to do with any of this business, well kind of not really...it kind of something to do with this:

I was a rather bit emotional last week as I had got word that one of our group members had become terminally ill. The granddaughter of the lady called me the other night to inform me that she had passed away. It was sad to hear, of course it was, but that is life. We all die. This lady would have been 84 on Wednesday. She volunteered at my group because she liked everyone in it, and, at the time that she wanted to volunteer for us, she needed an excuse to leave the group that she was volunteering at.. she didn't care for them anylonger. "They weren't right for her", she had said to me. She had started volunteering 5 years ago at our group, and her kindness, charm and warm smile made the day even nicer. She had the wicked-ess Bocce Ball arm anyone could imagine.. as she just considered it to be a bowling ball, and the carpet was her alley. This always sent everyone into hysterics, including herself. She instilled the thought in me that it is always the little things that you can do for people that can make the biggest impact. I have sometimes heard the saying of: "the world is a nicer place, just because you are in it". This speaks volumes for our friend. Now that she has departed it is up to the people that she met along the way, to carry on with the same kindness and consideration for the many others that mark our path. It was a privilage for me to meet such a fine teacher.

I brought a card to the group for everyone to sign. I was a bit teary eyed when I asked for people to sign a card, that this wasn't a very happy one. Two of the members asked me if it was a card for another person. To my absolute shock, I had been fretting over telling people about the loss of one person, when I was lambasted with the news of another loss. I just stood for a moment, and then walked out of the building. (( OK, and this is where the story was supposed to start... you know, with the title.... )).

It was grand central station outside all of a sudden... so there I am, kind of double teary eyed over the news of someone else... and every single TOM, DICK, & HARRY was outside waving at me, stopping to talk with me, striking up conversation, and calling at me. I am chatting and wiping with the right hand, and then with the left hand, and waving with the left, and wiping with the right... so I walked away from the chaos, just to have a moment... and along comes super psycho motor mouth talking man... he was wailing and talking to someone upstairs I think.. I decided at that very moment the safest bet was to go back inside where the group was, and we could talk about what ever it was we were going to talk about... because after all.... on a day which you would wish not to celebrate... we did have cake!

People, people, people......