The end of the story

Well, I'm back in P-town. Every part of Denver ended up being an adventure. Here are the pics:

This is me being ever so excited to embark on our forever long trip to Denver. Little did I know what was in store for me...

This is my boss being super excited about our trip. I sure like him and am grateful for him often. He is one of the reasons I love my job. He is just a good man.

The gorgeousness of this earth out in the middle of nowhere. This is probably my favorite picture I took and it doesn't compare to what my eye really saw. It was just the beginning of all the clouds we saw for the next 24 hours straight of rain. blah.

Monica was our ever faithful driver. She brought many laughs the entire trip. While we don't necessarily agree on the appropriateness use of a handful of words, she is a pretty fun gal to have around. We bonded a lot us two in the front seat. She was even subjected to some of my Grandma Andersen's stories. Twenty hours in the car together, plus almost three full days of being together is quite a lot...

These are the people from Mission Health Services, the corporate of the place I work for. There are five "sister" homes owned by this place.

These are my fun friends from the great Alpine Valley Care Center. Kenzi (far left) is an awesome CNA and Monica's daughter. Then Rod is our maintenance man. Good soul that boy. Then Monica, and Kay (I spent the most time with her because we shared hotel rooms just the two of us twice and we also got to be bed buddies our last night), then Bruce, and me.

This is the one and only Eagle Diner in Eagle, Colorado. On the way home we stopped at the gas station across the street called Loaf n' Jug. I'm telling you this town is priceless. They also have a Kum n'go gas station... oh boy.

My last picture is of Monica and I at the Cheesecake Factory with our socially/politically correct napkin bibs. A huge thing in the culture change movement is to promote the dignity of the Elders. Part of that is not having them wear "bibs" or "clothing protectors" while they. (We're working on getting rid of them at our place). Well Monica and I felt like it was good to model the Cheesecake Factory's napkin size as a possibly replacement to our clothing protectors.

There were so many things that I wish I had pictures of that happened, or even that there was a way to capture and share what I experienced. There were definitely some way too fanatical people at the conference. Some of the large group sessions, my co-workers and I would look at each other and, knowing the other person was thinking the same thing as us, just smile and shake our heads. Some people are just extra special and different. :)

Then there were the two dinners with friends. I got to catch up with a dear friend I haven't seen in five years, and I'm soooo grumpy at myself for not capturing that one on film. It was so, so, so good to see her again. She is amazing. Then to see good ol' Kristen Anderson-no longer Anderson. Oh happy friends.

Then the millions of funny moments. All my new friends that I met on 16th Street. There is this place in downtown Denver that the whole street doesn't allow cars on it. They have pianos sitting out, and artists, and street performers, and bicycle rides, and fun friends all over the place. Bruce, my boss, and I played chopsticks on the piano. We were so good, we shut up the street performers. Next stop, Carnegie Hall.

So yes, the trip was marvelous, but it is so wonderful to be back home. I had a weird experience while there. Everyone would ask where you were from. My whole life I have said that I am from Mesa, Arizona. I still say that. I feel like I am just visiting Utah...but I do believe I might almost should actually be saying I'm from Utah...yikes.

An Addendum

I was reminded that I didn't share about some other friends. And I also remembered I forgot a story that has been a huge part of my experience here :)

The most exciting news is that I have a bunch of England rugby players running around the same hotel as me! They aren't too shabby to look like at, they are wonderful to listen to talk, and they don't smell too bad either ;). (Happy Carie?)

The second thing I forgot was a fiasco I had last night trying to warm up some dinner. I didn't want to worry about getting dinner so I saved leftovers from Saturday in our cooler. So yesterday evening I went to go warm them up, there is not a microwave to be found at all. So I went and found a worker. He goes and looks, doesn't seem to see one, so he said that he'd radio someone. Which he did as I stood there next to him. This was there convo: "Hi, I've got a lady here that would like to warm up some food, do we have somewhere she can do that?" "No, we don't. Where are you?" "I'm upstairs. We don't have anywhere where they can warm up food??" "NO. Are you talking about this in front of her? Stop. Come find me now." ...yikes. Anyway, so this 4 star hotel I'm staying in doesn't own a microwave. I guess people are too ritzy to need to warm up food that normally stay here...

Okay, it's time for more classes I suppose...

Adventure in the Mile High City!

I'll post pictures when I get back because right now they are upstairs, and I am downstairs, and the elevators take eternal amounts of time. So they will have to wait. I'm just proud that I have taken pictures period. I need to take more.

But truly this has been an adventure. It all began yesterday at 1:30, we left beautiful Alpine Valley Care Center so gently situated on Alpine Dr in Pleasant Grove, Utah. Little did we know we were about to have the drive of a century and experience every type of season possible within ten hours.

We took the route through Price and weather was pretty good. It was overcast and a little sprinkle would happen here and there, but nothing we couldn't handle. Every now and then though, we would drive right through a heavy pour, it was like we were swerving in and out of a nasty storm. It was pouring so hard we could hardly see out of the windshield. Well upward and onward we continued, and pretty soon the storm was constant. Not so bad that we couldn't see, but constant so that our wipers had to be on almost full speed. That started about five pm.

It was about the time that I started to drive actually. We headed ourselves into the canyons of the Colorado mountains and there were sooooo many huge puddles of water. We were definitely hydroplaning in different spots. There was one point where the road had nasty potholes in it. A little Toyota red truck was in front of us and hit a pothole so hard, he lost control of his car for a minute swerving back and forth as his car hydroplaned for a good fifteen, twenty feet. For a moment I thought we were going to slam straight into him.

It would have been a not so happy experience if that were to happen...I'm grateful for the gentle whisper of the Spirit that prompted peace and what I should do. Thank goodness all was well.

We stopped for dinner at a small diner in Eagle, Colorado. Wow, what an experience! They were out of half of their main courses and our waitress talked very loudly and with a slow ...stringy? voice. I'll have to imitate it for you if you want, just ask. It was a true 50's diner though decked in awesome fashion. Besides that fact that they took forever to get our food, forgot one of my co-workers' order, didn't have a lot of the food, and the waitress' voice, I recommend the stop.

We continued our trip through the mountains, the rain never stopping, except for when it turned into a crazy snow storm. We could barely see twenty feet ahead of us. Since when does it blizzard in June????

We finally arrived and got situated in our hotel at about eleven, oh happy day.

The purpose of my visit is the most wonderful Eden Alternative Annual Conference. In short, the Eden Alternative is an approach to long-term care that is devoted to proactively fighting against the plagues of helplessness, boredom, and loneliness that are so common among those that are aging. In some ways, I feel like these people are a little fanatic about something that seems so much like human nature, to treat our wonderful wise sages of the world in a respectful loving way, but you'd be surprised how many of them are treated. There is much culture change being attempted in the field of long-term care. So...that's why I am here. (there are some real um...you could say tree hugger type folks here, bless their hearts(that's why I changed my background of my blog. Eden is represented by trees and stuff I guess))

Today we toured three homes in the area that were (maybe they weren't because one of them reeeeeeeeeaaaaaaally was a sad place to be) supposed to be examples of good Eden transformed homes. I've met a lot of interesting people from all over the world today, and had the opportunity to talk about things that only those that work in long-term care really understand and problems and solutions. So it's been neat. But by far my FAVORITE part has been meeting my new friends. I LOVE OLD PEOPLE!!! From Dora from Buenos Aires, to Bea, and Sid (I'm now his sugar for the day), and Miranda, and Goodam (a Norwegian name of a lady I met), and Joy, and Vivian. My favorite thing is looking into their eyes. I love seeing them as my brothers and sisters. It's soooooo awesome.

So the next two days will be full of classes, which should be good to learn from others' experiences. And then a drive home....I hope the weather is more happy then.