Happy St Nick's Day! Happy Advent! Masks on Maryland!

  I was very happy to have a short work week the first of December. Currently our entire building has COVID-over 100 patients, so going to work is not much fun. We have patients that are very ill and some not so sick. We are seeing extreme symptoms from coughing, upset stomach to neurological changes that resemble a stroke. We have patients not wanting to eat or unable to eat. We are seeing very strange cognitive decline-patients unable to come up with words, very confused, very unsafe and falling or passing out. No one can come out of their room. You have to change out of your gowns, gloves, head covers and foot covers every time you enter a patients room. We are now leaving on our face shields and using N95 masks all the time. We can only provide treatment to our patients in their rooms, so we don't bring in too many therapy tools. It all has to be sanitized after use. It has been hard to keep up with patients coming and going to the hospital or being put on hospice. So I spend a lot of time doing paperwork on my computer. And to top it off, we started working for another Rehab contract company on Dec 1st that offers even less benefits than the last group. Fortunately we were able to keep the same Ipad Apple mini so the documentation transition went smoothly. But my keyboard pooped out. I don't think it likes being cleaned with Clorox wipes every day and I just got it in July of this year. All of our OT's are back to work. The CDC has now dropped the quarantine time down to 10 days. Our two PT's came back to work, but my boss is out with COVID. Also the last standing PT that was covering while the other two went out started feeling sick and stayed home for the past two weeks. I would not be surprised if she tested positive for COVID. So far only our speech therapist and the Rehab tech have not been sick or tested positive for COVID. And because we have so many COVID cases, the State Health Dept demands that staff and residents be tested twice a week. On Mondays we have the test that is sent out, and on Friday's we have a rapid test. So far I have stayed negative which is a great feeling! Except before you could have a throat swab. Now it is only in the nose-both sides! 

As we near the week before Christmas, all of our residents and the majority of our staff have tested positive for COVID. We are winding down our quarantine period and if we stay negative for one more week we should be able to admit more patients as well as allow more patients out of their rooms and wear less protective gear. Overall I believe we lost about 25 residents/patients from our COVID outbreak out of  about 100 when the virus was as its peak. Now we are mostly treating residents as they recover from the COVID symptoms. I seem to have taken over the Assisted Living facility as residents return to their apartments from our rehab unit. We have been asked to avoid working in multiple parts of the facility to help avoid spreading the virus. So a few of us have more patients to treat than others. Some days I only have a few patients and other days I have a full schedule, about 6-8, so I never know what I am doing each day. But when I get off early it gives me time to run errands like to the post office, grocery store or bank. And I continue to gather items for various donations. At Thanksgiving it was food for our County Food Bank and recently Toys for Tots all through the Girl Scouts. This week I was packing up some odds and ends clothes that Allison outgrew that was still floating around for a neighbor whose staff member adopted her 4 grandkids.  

And since I have been testing negative, it allowed me to feel more comfortable going out Christmas shopping. I had several errands to run and just did not have time over the Thanksgiving weekend to take advantage of the Black Friday sales. Fortunately most places seem to be carrying the sales on past the holiday weekend. I had a wonderful time at Kohls and the Mall. (Although someone was shot and killed in the mall parking lot that night after it closed). For the most part that area of the Columbia Mall is pretty safe. They have just been building like crazy, especially around the mall. It is turning into a small city with lots of restaurants, entertainment venues and apartment buildings. So some businesses stay open later and I guess it invites more crime. Mostly the stores have been shut down during the year and not alot of traffic. It was picking up again when I visited-especially at the Bath and Body Works store. Their line ran down one end of the mall and back to get into the store. Santa also set up shop at the mall, but you have to make a reservation to see him-he looked lonely when I walked by. And if I couldn't find items at the store, I was able to order most items online. For us so far, Amazon has been doing a terrific job delivering our packages.  I also don't think the porch pirates are as profitable this year since most people are home to pick up their packages. We also used our lock box at the front door that I got Tom for his birthday and that works very well for small expensive items to be dropped off, especially if the weather is bad. If not, our packages usually sit out in the elements since we don't have a roof over our front door entrance. I also had packages to mail early in the month(although I got the wrong labels on the wrong boxes heading to Dad Seitz and Eric and Sarah-sorry for the mix up) as well as picking up my mom's Thanksgiving and Fall decorations from her apartment and getting her Christmas decorations from her storage unit and dropping them off. Fortunately her building has remained practically COVID free. They have had 1 or 2 staff members test positive that do not work directly with the residents. If they have a two week time period with no COVID, they can return to eating in the dining room and participating in socially distanced activities like BINGO. Fortunately they were all able to enjoy their Thanksgiving meal out of their rooms before they went back to lock down. I was happy to see the staff helped mom put up her Christmas decorations in her apartment. I also dropped off my mom's St Nick's day gift-some chocolate treats, peanuts and cookies, Christmas jewelry, magazines and a Christmas coloring book with colored pencils that you don't have to sharpen. Something to help keep her entertained while in lockdown! I also framed our family's Christmas photo card for her to put out along with our Christmas card. And the weekend before Christmas I packed up all of mom's Christmas presents and dropped them off. I figured the staff would be quite busy passing out packages and it would be better to get an early start since they have to disinfect everything before it goes into the building. For Christmas I wrapped up some new clothes for mom-pants, shirts and sweaters. Also some lotion and body spray, jewelry, a family photo calendar and a photo quilt. I wish I was more technologically adept with the computer photos-I was locked out to most of my pictures without knowing it. But I think the quilt came out pretty good after all. I was a bit rushed when I put it together over Thanksgiving weekend because it was 70% off!

Our family celebrated St Nick's Day aka Little Christmas on Dec 6th by opening our Christmas stockings. We like to share Christmas gifts like ornaments and jewelry, clothing so that we can use them now before the big day. And of course it wouldn't be a Christmas stocking without a few special treats. In Allison's case, I thought she needed a few Holiday items to help with entertaining her friends at her apartment. She got a 4 place snowman setting(plastic plates and bowls) as well as a matching tray and even a plate and mug for Santa's cookies. I also packed up some extra Christmas items for her like a Christmas tree card holder and some decorative Holiday drink mugs while hauling decorations out of the attic. I think she especially liked her Disney Mickey Mouse Christmas sweatshirt! Tom received some low carb treats as well as Star Trek and Star Wars ornaments. Everyone gets an ornament or two. I always shop for ornaments on sale after Christmas and put them away for the next year. Tom has his own Sci Fi Tree with Star Trek and Star Wars vessels and characters. Allison has a cat themed tree and Scott has video games like Mario. And we had a "kids" tree with tv characters and toys/games that we usually put up in our front foyer with my snowman family. Scott put up our Christmas tree over Thanksgiving weekend and I put on all the decorations. I collect rocking horse ornaments and glass blown ornaments, usually from all the different places we have visited. I added a black bear to the tree this year from the Smoky Mountains and Tom got me this year's Hallmark's rocking horses. My decorating is a bit slow these days since I have to haul things down from the garage rafters on a narrow pull down ladder. But eventually I get it all done. Plus I like to leave my snowmen up over the winter so I don't have to drag everything back up the ladder right after Christmas!  Tom and Scott also did an incredible job putting up Christmas lights on the outside of the house over Thanksgiving weekend. I added some LED candles to the windows and a fresh garland for the lamp post and wreaths next to the garage door. I understand the neighbors are calling our place "The Rainbow House". Tom says it looks like a clown threw up. We even attracted the local food truck to our corner. One of the neighbors has been coordinating Food Trucks to come to the neighborhood since the onset of the shutdown in March. We like the Greek on the Street. Scott, Cookie and I ran out to order our dinner the other night-I told them I would not charge them for the light show as their customers waited on our lawn for their orders. Meanwhile Cookie thought we were having a party! She was so excited to see all the people and ran to greet every one there before we headed out on her walk.  Recently we had a BBQ truck stop by and they ran out of the good stuff-ribs and chicken in about 1 hr. 

We have had fairly mild weather this fall. I managed to clean up the rest of the leaves around the bushes and front door with my leaf vacuum in between rain storms. Tom thinks I am obsessed but the leaves aren't going to pick up themselves! He just decorated around them. I wanted to get them bagged up and picked up before the county stops yard waste collection for the season. It actually warmed up enough days this past fall for my lilac bush to bloom a bit, some daffodils stuck their heads up out of the ground, my bluebirds came by to visit their house and we even spotted an entire small cherry tree in bloom! (global warming). We had a beautiful weekend day to go hiking through the woods with Allison at local county park. We just had to dodge the mountain bikes and mud puddles. We have mostly had rain, but recently we had our first snowfall/sleet and ice of the season.(not global warming) Tom enjoyed getting out the snow blower and clearing the driveway, sidewalks and even the road in front of our house to the corner. It was nice to come home from work during the middle of the snow/ice storm and be able to pull into the driveway. Meanwhile, the cars and people were slipping and sliding in the parking lot at my work. And the snow made our Christmas lights look even more festive!  The neighborhood seems to be really getting into the spirit of the holiday with all the lights. What else do we have to do! With the cold weather though it is getting a lot harder to find places to eat outdoors. A few restaurants left up their tents and are still serving outside, but most don't have heaters. Last time we all went out to eat I had to wrap a few blankets around myself. Not too fun. 

At this time of the year I would not have much free time. Usually I am running every weekend to a Girl Scout choir Holiday event like the German Christmas Village, Tree Lighting Ceremonies, Holiday Parades, The Christmas Tree Festival, as well as performances at the Baltimore/Ohio Railroad museum and nursing homes including my mom's facility. And our family would be attending the incredible, free Holiday concerts by the Army Field Band and Jazz Band at our local high school and Lyric theater downtown. Then there is always some free Holiday choir and orchestra concerts put on by the local high schools as well as theater productions which I usually try to take my mom to if there is time. I also try to join her at the Senior Center Holiday Party,  the Sr Center luncheon at Bob Evans and the County Senior Thanksgiving dinner which of course all was cancelled this year. And last year Allison and I visited the County Christmas Mart for the first time which was a lot of fun and included a painting event where we made our own little Christmas trees, bought some gifts at the market and enjoyed some tasty treats all indoors. 

Since I have had extra time this Holiday season, I put my energy into sending out Christmas cards with a letter and family photo. Although I understand not all the cards have managed to get delivered yet. Besides our family Christmas cards and Hanukah cards, I sent out cards with a photo for my mom. After sending out the cards, I was busy wrapping gifts. And then I spent the weekend before Christmas in the kitchen baking several different types of cookies. I even put Scott to work helping me bake. I put together about a dozen cookie bins for fellow rehab staff and some neighbor families. Then I got busy on our Christmas dessert. I decided to make a rum cake this year. I don't think I ever made one for us. When I was in high school I used to make one for the Bozyk family and my old boss at the pet store. It was his favorite. Hope Tom and the kids enjoy it too!

Scott has been busy these past few weeks finishing his Fall term. He had many quizzes and tests to take, homework assignments to turn in and even a group zoom presentation. Plus he had to attend a few online classes. He made it through his finals and finished the term with two A's and two B's. Excellent job Scott! He's already signed up for his Spring semester and was supposed to return to Western to start classes on January 11th. However, now the state of Michigan is asking Universities not to return to campus until January 16th, but classes will still start online Jan 11th. I hear Michigan is not the only state to do this. Here in Maryland the kids are still doing distance learning in public schools. They keep pushing the return to school date out farther and farther. 

Allison has been busy working from home with an occasional stop into the office. When she isn't working, she is enjoying spending time with her Dungeons and Dragons group. They usually try to get together in person once a week and Allison is able to host game night at her apartment. She also has time to visit with Gabe on the weekends, usually at his house. It will be a bit strange to go back to doing all the activities we enjoy, like going to the movies or concerts, sporting events, eating indoors at restaurants and shopping without wearing masks! 

Tom has mostly been going into work since he has his own office, however, the company told everyone to stay home last week for the rest of the year as several employees tested positive for COVID. Every time someone has COVID they have to completely sanitize their labs and office spaces, so they decided it was not worth it right now. So Tom is currently focusing his time on rewriting his thesis proposal for his current advisors and awaiting final approval. 

Here in Maryland the new vaccine has been rolled out to our hospitals. One of our previous Speech Therapists has taken the vaccination and reports so far no strange reaction. She was very excited to be one of the first to get vaccinated and help get us back to a more normal life. Looks like our Nursing Home residents and staff, including myself, will be upcoming in the next few weeks for getting vaccinated. It will certainly be a wonderful Christmas present!

Sending out recent Birthday wishes for Sheila Bozyk who celebrated on Nov 28th, Linda Seitz whose big day was Dec 12th and Cookie Seitz had her 12th Birthday on Dec 13th! Happy Birthday Ladies!

 

Nov 23-30th. Thanksgiving weekend

  Can't believe we are nearing the end of the year and celebrating Thanksgiving. So many families and friends were not able to share this special day together. We were grateful to have our nuclear family to share a wonderful meal and relaxing day together. Usually we would at least invite our good friend John D, but he moved to Ohio last year. And naturally I would have picked up my mom to spend the day, but that is out of the question. Instead, she enjoyed a Thanksgiving meal a few days earlier while sitting in the dining room, flipping through some of the magazines I sent her(as I was told by the facility manager). Again, just glad she cannot recall what is going on and when.  I did try to call her over the long weekend, but no answer. Just hoping they are keeping her busy. Her facility had to shut down all group activities and communal dining over the weekend due to a few positive COVID cases in the building. Fortunately it was with staff and no one that works directly with the residents. But it still causes the state to shut things down for two weeks. Including all visits. They are even saying that when they do allow visits again, family will have to show a negative COVID test. I almost think it is not worth taking the risk to visit my mom. Especially since I am exposed daily to COVID at my work facility. 

My Nursing and Rehab center has been a place of horror. Basically every resident has COVID, over 100 residents. There are about 5 residents that don't have COVID in the whole building. And on top of the residents, nursing staff have also contracted COVID. They are very low on staff and being forced to bring in contract workers, although they don't prefer hiring people that work in different buildings for fear of spreading the virus further. Along with the nursing staff,  our Rehab department has been affected. Two out of Four OT's were out sick. Two out of Three PT's were out sick with COVID and our Rehab manager is out with COVID. That just left 1 PT working alongside myself and an OT assistant. On top of that, the facility manager requested that the staff not travel throughout the building to treat patients, so one therapist might have 12 patients to see in one day on one floor, and the other therapist might have 2 patients to treat in another part of the building. We started off with 2 patients having COVID and it spread like wildfire down the hallway and throughout the building, regardless of cleaning protocol, use of PPE, isolation techniques. The facility even brought in cleaning units to spray entire rooms as well as an outside cleaning company to wipe everything down and clean carpets and scrub floors. Now we are up to being tested twice a week. They are even using rapid tests which I was happy to have a negative result for the Thanksgiving weekend as well as getting a lab test the week before that was negative.  It has been incredibly sad to see some of our residents pass away with their new COVID diagnosis. Many of those residents that passed away had serious medical conditions. And some of the residents that we are providing therapy to are so weak with the onset of COVID that they can't really participate in any therapy, let alone eat or get out of bed. I have had a patient pass out on me trying to get on the toilet and it happened to our PT as she helped someone into a wheelchair. Plus it is very exhausting spending time providing treatment since you have to put on all the protective gear before going into a room, and then take it all off when you come out. So you hope you have everything you need before going in. And everything you use, like your computer, pen and therapy equipment needs wiped down with Clorox wipes after exposure. Just putting all the protective gear on and off is exhausting. Mostly I spent last week doing documentation as patients came in and out from the hospital. At one point the ambulances looked like they were going through a revolving door, one arriving after the other. So sad. 

I was so happy to take Thanksgiving Day off from work, as well as the following day. I spent Thursday morning preparing Thanksgiving dinner. Again I was happy to have bought all the supplies the week before. I made Hot Maryland Crab Dip for a mid day snack before preparing all the sides including fully loaded baked potato casserole, sweet potato casserole and stuffing. We had plenty of pies for dessert-the pumpkin pie from Costco and an apple pie from my boss. We added rolls and bacon wrapped asparagus, and cranberry sauce. And of course a very tasty turkey that Tom cooked on the rotisserie grill. More than enough food for a family of four. We are so thankful to have plenty to eat and family to share it with!  The week before I sent out an email collecting food from the Girl Scouts for our local county Food Bank. I was happy to have a few donors as well as some people dropping off checks. I dropped off the donations at our Service Manager's house along with some uniform donations and a few of my GS guidebooks. Currently the Girl Scouts are collecting funds for Toys for Tots. We spent the rest of the day watching the attempt at The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on tv. I was so sad because this was the year I thought Allison and I could travel to New York to catch the parade with her friend Sophia who lives and attends school in Manhattan. Not this year. As it is, Sophia has been back here with her parents taking music classes online. I think she is ready to get out of the house! I also spent a few hours trying to get the last of the leaves picked up before the weekend! They were clogging up our street drain in front of the house and we had a big rain Monday. I did not want to flood out the neighborhood and I wanted to bag up all the leaves for pick up on Saturday morning. I still have to redo the flower beds since the wind blew another batch under the shrubs for me to clean up. Yeah. I did help put away the fall decorations from outside while Tom and Scott pulled out the Christmas lights. I just run out of hours in the day!

I took Friday off to celebrate Scott's 21st Birthday. We wanted to take him out to eat and since we are still trying to look for places that are set up for outdoor dining, we preferred to go at lunch when it was sunny and warmer. Fortunately the Thanksgiving weekend was pretty mild. We started out Scott's day by taking him to the Guinness Baltimore Brewery. They have turned their large, outdoor space into socially distances seating areas and they wipe everything down in between guests. They also had a few seating areas with outdoor fire pits, but those were already taken by 11am. We stopped and picked up Allison early since the brewery opens at 10 am and it was already getting a steady flow of people. They also have an outdoor tent, but really that's more like eating inside. And you can still go into the brewery and sit in the 3rd floor dining room if you prefer. That is where they were serving an English breakfast, but we did not want to sit inside to eat it. Instead, Scott received a free beer sampling-about 6 samples total. Tom enjoyed a beer while we went inside to shop for the specials in their store. Afterwards we headed down to the local outdoor bar and grill, Daniels to eat lunch outside and enjoy a beer/drink with Scott. The waiter and bartender gave Scott a free pineapple rum drink to celebrate. After lunch we headed to Allison's place to open Scott's presents. He got a new set of head phones and a stand to keep up with school work and socializing on the computer as well as some electronic pen adapters, WMU pj pants, Pilsner glasses and Guinness socks and a fingertip electronic drum set to take a break while sitting at the computer all day. Besides his new phone. We stayed long enough to watch Disney's The Mandalorian and then headed home after a stop at the pet store. All of us did most of our Black Friday shopping online. So convenient. I stayed up late putting together a photo collage blanket for my mom since they had such a great discount. On Friday night, Allison came over to our place  for dinner and to share Scott's birthday pie. He and Tom picked up a coconut cream pie from the Traverse City Pie Company on their way home from Michigan. Overall, a great two days of celebration!

On Saturday I headed into work. Tom and Scott got busy putting up the Christmas lights which really look amazing! Allison finally spent the day catching up with Gabe at his house. I coached her through making a Turkey Seitz Casserole-left over turkey, stuffing and gravy-one of our very favorite dishes before she went home on Friday. So now she has her own and can share with friends as they drop by next week. Or freeze it and keep it all for herself! 

On Sunday(Happy 1st day of Advent by the way!), we all went over to our neighbor's house to take our family Christmas photo. I could not talk the family into going to the JCPenny portrait studio this year. They did not want to be in a cramped photo studio with their masks off over a busy holiday weekend. So our neighbor Tom has a digital camera and had their house all decorated for Christmas already. Dan took some great photos so I was able to put together our Christmas card online and put in the order. Should be done next week! We all had a lot of fun posing for photos in their living room, and even included Cookie! Can't easily do that at Penny's! Afterwards Dan and Gloria invited us to stay for a drink and snacks, some football and a puzzle. We ended up staying to dinner time, but left to go home and dig into that Seitz Turkey casserole and finish off the pies!

We would have been catching a Raven's game this past weekend.  Most of the 1st string players have COVID, including our QB, Lamar. And so do some of the Steelers which they are supposed to play. Guess we will have to wait and see if they can reschedule. It is set for Tuesday night right now. We'll see. Instead we watched the Detroit Lions game on Thanksgiving. Sadly it was a usual loss for the Lions. 

Scott also enjoyed the week off. Some of the professors originally scheduled quizzes or projects to be turned in during the week, but quickly cancelled. Technically they were on break for he whole week. Scott did a bit of work on his group project and was prepared for the upcoming week to turn in his section. On Monday he was up early and online for his Materials class. He just has two more weeks to finish up projects and quizzes, homework assignments and prepare for finals midway in December. I also put him to work taking Cookie up for a bath and trim during the week as well as keeping her exercised with walks during the day. It's so nice to have him home. 

Now I have to get ready for another change at work as a new management company takes over starting Dec 1st. What a crazy year this has been!