"Oh, you found the bread stand."

The other week at the farmer's market in the one (college) town where I live now, I bumped into the one (young) (a bit Goth-y) (white) ex-bartender from the local brewery, and she was there with a stroller and her now-walking baby, and we caught up a bit, and she was just telling me about her promotion at work -- she got into group homes for the disabled, and she loves it -- when two (white) (early 40s and mid 50s) (adults) with (developmental disabilities) came up and started telling her about some place with great stuff they had found, and she was like, "Oh, you found the bread stand," and then she introduced us all to each other.

It really was like a glimpse of my life that could have been -- that kind of work is so awesome, and I had envisioned something like that for myself with the elderly, perhaps with people with early-stage dementia, since that's a population that I discovered that I really vibe with, and there's all sorts of really interesting thinking and work being done right now about communal living and stuff like that for maximal quality of life for people facing those kinds of life situations.

But, how could you ever do that?

With the population that she works with, most don't have medications, probably, and even if they did, if supporting care-giving roles were shortstaffed, maybe you have mildly delayed meds at most, so it's really no biggie, there's medication windows and usually stuff like that isn't a problem, at all.

With the elderly, though, you start getting into falls and people wandering off and all sorts of horrible things like that, and you're better off just not getting involved in workplaces that have "gotten to that point," which are more and more because of the stagnant wage levels and wage inflation everywhere else.

Sigh.

It just never ceases to amaze me how many times the past 10-15 years I've gotten into stuff that turned out to be completely different from what I had scoped it out to be, or how it changed while I was in the midst of it.

It really is like a form of bad luck.