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Monsters vs Aliens

Bernsen Rehabilitation Center at Saint John’s Hospital

Bernsen Rehabilitation Center is part of the Saint John’s Health System in Tulsa. It is also one of the most amazing places I’ve ever seen.

What they do is take people who have had injuries, surgeries, strokes, heart attacks, broken bones and help them function in the community again.

The patients are the hardest working group of people I’ve ever seen. They are learning how to be independent. Physical Therapists and their assistants (PT’s and PTA’s in the lingo) teach their clients how to use a wheel chair, or how to walk with a walker, or just plain walk. They have their charges exercise to build up their strength. The work ethic is alive and well at Bernsen.

Occupational Therapists and their assistants (OT’s and OTA’s) teach how to dress and bathe themselves. They have kitchens set up to teach their charges how to cook safely while using a walker or other aids, load the dishwasher, and do the myriad things it takes to live independently in this world.

Recreational Therapists have the patients “play” games that demand the use of memory and recall and other skills.

There is a Social Worker that helps smooth the transition from the facility back to real life.

Every patient has an individual program just for them, overseen by a doctor. They work from dawn to dusk and they are exhausted at the end of the day. Its an inpatient facility so they take their meals together and get to learn about each other. During the day they cheerlead for each other, “Good going there, Mary! Look at you.”

They staff really goes above and beyond to make the patients comfortable. They are also very family friendly. Need a knife to cut a cake for an impromptu birthday party? They’ll get it, they’ll also ask if you have everything you need. Not a whole lot of rules here. Families are encouraged to eat meals with patients, or bring their own meals. You can check the patients out for a little while and go sit outside in the parklike setting the facility sits on.

Just before graduation, the family has a training session where we learn how to get the patient in and out of a car, how to go up and down steps, things to look out for, and items we can get to make life a little easier. Then a group of patients, families, and staff load up and go to lunch as part of the training. Finally a graduation tshirt from the OT department.

In the dining room there is a small document displayed on the wall. It is a notice that Pope John Paul II gave a Papal Blessing to The Bernsen Rehabilitation Center. I’m not sure exactly what that means in the Catholic Faith but to me it is an acknowledgement that the Staff and Patients at the Center are doing God’s Work, making people well again.

Harlem Globetrotters at the Hub Cap

The Yogi family ventured downtown to the Hub Cap, I mean the BOK Center, to see the Harlem Globetrotters. We had a good time. They are still doing the same corny gags they have been doing since I was a kid. They are a lot better athletes though.

SuperPizzaBoy was not a fan for the underdog, Washington Generals. He was very partisan in his cheers. He is turning into a little ham.

Sweetie grabbed the camera and took a picture right back at me.

The Generals lost again, even though they cheated! The coach had to wear a tutu. SPB loved that.

And then we went home!

Ice

Woke up this morning to ice. The ice on the road doesn’t bother me as much as the ice on the driveway. We have a pretty good slope to the driveway and I can see my pickup sliding out of control into our neighbors mailbox across the street.

So I’m going to have another cup of coffee and see how things go. I generally wait until everybody plays bumper cars at rush hour and then I’ll go in. I’ll probably stop at Lowe’s and see if I can get some sandbags for the back of the truck. It makes a huge difference.

A Day Off

Let me tell you how my day off started. It started with my employer. Recently they changed their vacation policy to accomodate the many old farts like me who work for them. What they are afraid of is that their statistics shows that 60% of energy company employees are going t retire within 5 to 10 years. Now, I’m not going anywhere. I have a fifth grader with autism. (But don’t tell them that!)

What they did was give us credit toward vacation for time in the industry, up to 15 years. So, I instantly went from 3 weeks of vacation (for another 4 years) to 5 weeks. They just handed it to us. So, I’m very happy with the Yogi employer.

Anyway, so I have a few more days I can spend with Sweetie. Her birthday is coming up so I took a day off, courtesy of my employer, and we spent the day together. We went clothes shopping for her. I cannot pick out clothes for her and the problem with gift cards can be that at some stores the clothes are picked over. Plus the good sales are before Christmas.

I told her that this was going to be on the blog, she said no pictures, so no pictures. Sorry.

So we went shopping. She released me from the dress store after the mandatory 8 count. Whew, isn’t she sweet? Its kind of a safety issue anyway. Women’s stores have an excess of estrogen on the floors and so they get real slippery for men’s shoes. Its best for men not to spend too much time in them. I got to look at some of the other stores before going back so I could pay for the purchases.

I almost got my ass kicked while paying. I think I got high on the estrogen fumes. While I was waiting for Sweetie to finish I was talking to the cashier, “Char'” Char’ was sorting a bunch of % off tags into nice neat little piles and tieing them off with rubber bands before putting them into a basket. I stupidly said “It looks like you just go through with a big sale.”

She said “They drive me crazy with all these different prices. I have to switch the tags all the time and then resort them.” I furthered my stupidity by saying “I would just throw them in the basket if I were you.” She said “Then I would throw the crap away just like I did with my first husbands stuff when he didn’t do what I told him.” She didn’t have a smile on her face either. So I backed away slowly and didn’t make any sudden moves.

Don’t mess with Char’ is my advice.

Something else we did was pick SuperPizzaBoy up after school and take him to see Santa Claus. That was fun. SPB has to be prompted to look at Santa and has to repeat his list a couple of times.

It was cramped in there with Santa and couldn’t get a good angle but I got a shot I like coming out. SPB looks like he got away with something. Sweetie looks relieved and Santa is like, who is that kid? He was a cool Santa. SPB was actually supposed to be the last kid but somebody else slipped past the rope, and the way Santa handled it was say, “Come on in here young lady!” That made me feel good.

Off to Starbucks for SPB’s hot chocolate, and my yearly double tall gingerbread latte with no whipped cream. Sweetie got her usual drink. It is a very complicated concoction that takes about 5 minutes to order, like double tall, half whip, no caff, half skim, double pump, half kick, shuffle ball chain, heel toe, heel toe, step, dosie do, latte. Or something like that.

Major Sponsorship Opportunities Available

The accompanying video is by my friend Tom, local celebrity engineer, inventor, mexican food gourmet, violin builder, beer expert, and crusty bike rider, thanking his sponsors for the money raised for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society for the MS 150 bicycle race he rode in last summer.

Tom, does the ride every year, I am looking forward to sponsoring him again next summer. I’ll also be letting my one or two readers know of the sponsorship opportunities available. As you will see from the video, Tom takes care of his sponsors.

Handyman

One of the things that we did last weekend was my Mother-in-Law, Nana gave me the rest of her late husband’s (Boompa) power tools. I was glad to get the stuff of course but it was very sad because she bought all of the tools for him over the years for Birthdays, Christmas, Anniversary, and just because. He wasn’t the greatest handyman in the world but he took great delight in all his tools. Anyway, it was sad for everybody that day. Sweetie went through his office and that was was also very sad and brought back lots of memories.

Saturday night we drove home and I piled all the stuff in the garage. Sunday, after church I came home and looked at it. I absolutely hate a sitation where I can’t park my truck in the garage. The Cowboys weren’t playing until 3 and I put it on the DVR.

It was a lot of stuff. Really good stuff. I wanted to keep it, and we don’t have any extra room and so a lot of existing stuff had to go.

Getting rid of stuff is liberating. After I’m done getting rid of stuff I feel great, like coming home and taking a shower after a two night camping trip.

We have some really heavy duty steel shelves. I took everything off of them and then removed a shelf from one of them to handle the taller tools.

To make a base for the tools I used some particle board left by the contractor who built our house (8 years ago). So I pulled out all the stops. I had my table saw, a hand held rotary saw, and a jig saw. I was out there making very loud manly noises (power tool noises, not passing gas noises) that sent my only son screaming into the house covering his ears.

All this produced two boards, about 15″ x 34″ in dimensions, notched in the corners. Pretty impressive huh. Give me enough time, I could build a house, er maybe a bird house. Maybe.

So, my new stuff now has a home. I’m so proud.

Then the fun started. In order to keep the same amount of stuff I had to throw a lot away. Things I had not used in 20 years. I just chucked it. Sweetie came out and joined the party and started chucking bunches of her stuff. It was great. We filled up our large Home Depot garbage can and 7 large garbage bags.

After we were done then I put all the remaing items away and the only thing left to do was sweep the saw dust out. That was a job for SuperPizzaBoy. He rejected his dumb old Dad’s instruction and did it ‘his way.”

Pull In!