Sad moment of severance.

With my one assisted living client with disabilities moving away, it wasn't so much the moments that you expected to end - taking her keys off of my key chain and leaving them in her kitchen - but the other ones, like realizing that I had this ziploc bag of Egyptian flashcards tucked into my backpack that I'd go through on downtime sometimes, and realizing when I cleaned out my backpack that I'd have to integrate them back into my larger flashcard set, since I already have another ziploc bag that I go take into the resthome with me and use there for my study and review.

I think that that was the moment that really made me the saddest, when I saw this little scuffed-up bag of flashcards that I hadn't thought of as something final that I suddenly was faced with and that I had to disperse.

Great response of my one assisted living client with disabilities...

 ...when I was telling her last month about this Matthew Shepard expose book that I was reading, and how it related this anecdote about this limo company owner who lived 40 minutes outside of town and he had a whole decrepit small town he owned and he hired one of the guys who'd be one of the killers to do odd jobs and then gave him and his girlfriend and their newborn son this free apartment in a warehouse that he owned that didn't have any windows in it...:

"Get - the - f*ck - out. Like, now."

Resthome levity (3 of 3): Tennis.

Last month, I went in for a final evening check-in to the room of the one resthome resident who's a lawyer who recently moved in, and he had this tennis match on TV, and the TV was on so loud.

So, in between all the forceful grunts from the two tennis players on the TV, I was like, "You know, people outside are going to hear that and think that we're having sex."

"I can't hear you," he was like, "The TV is on too loud."

So, I repeated myself.

"I actually could hear you," he was like. "I was just saying that."

Resthome levity (2 of 3): Great-grandkids.

That same shift at the resthome, I ended up escorting that same hundred year-old resident back up to her room later that day, and in the elevator we ran into the one resthome resident with a heavy New York accent.

She was saying that she just went to go return all of these books to the one staff member who coordinates drop-offs with the library, since her great-grandkids have been visiting a lot lately and she's been going through a lot of books with them on every visit.

"Oh, you're a wonderful grandmother," the one hundred year-old resident was like to her, as the elevator came into her floor.

"Great-grandmother," she was like, as the elevator doors opened.

"So, that actually makes you a great great-grandmother," I was like, as she was stepping out of the elevator.

"Oh, you're so nice," the one hundred year-old resident was like to me, as the doors closed.

Resthome levity (1 of 2): Sun exposure.

A few weeks ago when I was going to go get on shift at the resthome, I walked by the front patio in front, and there was a group of people sitting out, including the one resident who's over a hundred years old and still really with it.

And, she was sitting in full-on sun.

So, I called out to her and was like, "Hey, [her name], would you like me to come move you out of the sun?"

And, she was like, "What?", so I repeated myself.

Then, all of a sudden, a horror-struck look came across her face, and she threw her hands up to her cheeks and started hastily plucking at them, and she was like, "Oh no, I'll get wrinkles!"

Then, she laughed and was like, "No."

Addendum.

Recently on Facebook, a (Classics Department) acquaintance who's now in instructional design posted about his career path.

Basically, he said that he only had one advanced stage interview a number of years ago for a tenure-track job, but he didn't end up getting that job, which he's always regretted.

And, he just found out that the entire department at that place has just been dissolved.

University doings.

At the beginning of this summer, I met and caught up with my one (Spanish) professor friend, who got tenure recently.

He says that the admin is drastically cutting down the number of graduate students per cohort, where soon you won't even be able to have enough people to run a proper seminar.

He also said that even though they still don't teach that many classes, the long-time profs are more and more teaching the (bigger and bigger) and (wealthier and wealthier) undergraduate population, which is especially glutted with students from abroad, who, of course, are presumably paying full tuition.