Check, One, Two, Whoopsies

Like many others across the globe, I watched (cried through) the Friends reunion last night. Now that I have your attention, that has absolutely nothing to do with today’s post… 

Have you noticed how many times we check things out of habit? Whether it’s our phone, email, the time, social media, our appearance or others? All of these actions are harmless as long as the person you are checking out is flattered and not repulsed. A simple “how you doin'” would determine this. 

Although, if we were asked why we check these things multiple times per hour, we wouldn’t have a good answer. However, we would know what’s going on around us and we would look good doing it. 

It seems we have gotten to the point where we are physically incapable of waiting in a line, passing someone on the street or completing a Zoom call without checking the above. 

At least with Zoom calls now we can dart our eyes across the screen to check the time, emails, messages and latest news while everyone else on the call just thinks we are checking ourselves out.  

No matter what I’m checking out on a minute-by-minute basis, it seems I always need someone to check up on me…

In Sweating like a Pig or Pig in Sweats, I couldn’t hear properly. Today, I couldn’t be trusted with expensive sound equipment.

One positive aspect from this past year is the fact that we barely spent any money from our recreation therapy budget. For those of you who work in recreation, you know our budget is more of a “get.” 

Serving food at programs was prohibited this past year, which we realized had a large impact on our savings. We also realized, encouraging residents to participate without food was trickier than expected. 

However, the money needed to be spent by a certain date or we would lose it. So we looked into innovative headsets that another Recreation Therapist suggested.

These wireless headsets are a pretty penny, but have been shown to manage pain, reduce stress and increase mood through immersive experiences during programs such as: music care, guided imagery, meditation and group exercise. They are noise cancelling, which eliminates distractions so luckily, the participants can hear my soothing voice directly into their ear canal. 

Thank you for attending my sales pitch. There are no time for questions because I do not have the answers since we haven’t actually used them yet.  

After we received the equipment, we had no idea where to begin so, we set up a virtual meeting with the real salesperson.

The first half of the meeting went great. I felt like a magician. I was on camera and when he mentioned another piece to connect, my co-recreation therapist’s hand appeared with the said item.  However, at one point during the meeting, we were struggling with the audio mixer (surprisingly we are not as magical as Dr. Dre) until he asked the important question, “did you power it on?”

We had not.

I looked down at the power button and thought it slid over. Even though it was clear after the first try that it did not slide, I continued to try. On the third try a small plastic piece popped off and flew across the table. I exclaimed, “Ah! I think I broke it!”

With a shocked expression he stated, “Really? I have trained many people and I don’t know of anyone who has broken something on the mixer.” 

“You have no idea what I am capable of,” I explained. 

Fortunately, the piece that broke off did not have any real significance and the audio mixer powered on with the push of a button. Thank goodness because I always feel a little worse breaking things that are thousands of dollars.

I should check myself before I wreck anything else.