Forever Flowers

Working in a nursing home, you never really know what kind of calls you will get or what will walk through the door. Last night I received a call from an elderly lady that asked if we would like a donation of flowers. She said she had done it before. This happens from time to time, a store will have a bunch of flowers left over from valentines/mother’s day or something like that and just want to get rid of them. So we have vases around (4 under my desk!) for that and sometimes we get beautiful arrangements left over from funerals/services that people cant really fit into there home, but they are too pretty to just throw away.

So I tell her to bring them on in. There were 6-7 huge boxes of pre-made arrangements of fake flowers. I remember the last time they were brought to activities there were so many that every resident got some in their room and they were literally everywhere, even in the kitchen. I think eventually people threw them away … but there were still some around. All I could think is what in the world am I going to do with all of these? I was talking with the lady that dropped them off and she was telling me that its her little hobby to make these … I can’t even imagine how expensive. Lets say she bought every single vase/mug/flower/foam/bead at the dollar store – there had to be at least 200-250 dollars worth of stuff. Wow.

I put them around in some bare spots, gave a few to residents and set them on every table in the dining room. I kept a nice red, white and blue arrangement with a little flag in it for my front desk. We bought her a thank you card and had all the management team sign it. We invited her to our recognition rally at the end of the June. That’s when we celebrate everyone’s birthdays, work anniversaries and the employee of the month for that month. There is cake!

I just took one of our residents for a walk around the building. Beautiful day. I’ve kept pretty busy so far. Found a couple of projects. They put me in charge of setting up interviews and giving them for the PM part time receptionist. I was kinda hoping we wouldn’t find one for awhile. I suppose we haven’t had one since April … but I wouldn’t mind the over time through the summer. I had 6 resumes this morning. I left 2 messages, one gal asked if she could change the start time from 4 to 4:30, one didn’t have her phone number listed, and I have one interview for tomorrow at 2:00PM. The only resume I liked was for the gal at 2:00 tomorrow.

I’ve been reading/hearing a lot about people going on vacations … I know I just had a vacation from work but I would really enjoy going somewhere I haven’t been before. The hardest part is driving though. We’ve been to Vegas, its a cheap destination and you don’t really need to be able to drive, you can walk/shuttle every where … I suppose if I just start putting away money now, we can plan a decent trip next year. I think we’ll have to go get some of those new licences … We will see.

I’m headed to Gigi’s after work today, going to bake pies, play spades and I am excited.