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!