HO HO HO

I just read my post from last December 14,2006—the last time I played the Santa person at the Independent Living Center where I used to work. It’s been a year and here I am again: Santa Clause. I brought the van in today knowing I was doing the Clause thing and even though I could make it to the Center with public transit I thought I would be responsible to myself and work and drive over. The morning progressed well with light call flow till about an hour before I had to leave and I started getting calls and some intense calls taking more time then I had today and the new girl TT is still too new to let her walk into some of these type of calls—she is taking the calls way too serious.

I wanted to be out of the office by 11:30—in fact Kim had called to remind me and I told him I was leaving right then. But just as I was leaving a cruncher call came in and TT was freaking but I finally had leave TT hanging and I dashed out to the van. I had left the van open with the lift down so no one would park next to me. I guess this was a bad idea so when I got on the lift and tried to raise myself up, the lift would not rise. I was effectively locked out of the van. It took me a few minutes to realize that the battery had drained some how. I drove in-in the dark-so I may have left my lights on, or maybe there was a dome light on that I did not see which drained the battery. I dashed back into see if someone could “jump me”. TT was still in phone hell so I could not ask her and I tried Sandra our front desk temp and sure enough she had a vehicle and a jumper cable and she knows how to use it. Sandra was way cute, she is a very short native American, a little wide, a great smile and likes to help. She just backed her car up and whipped out her cables, hooked them up and soon had my vehicle going. I was late but not so late as to be too messed up. I jumped out of my chair and on to my power seat in the fan and the “forward” motors would not work!!!! Now I was beginning to sense stress. I don’t know what is wrong with my power-seat but the motor seems to struggle forward and back, very slowly, but usually the seat gets me close enough to drive safely. I have found when the seat get to a point when the seat just will not move if I wait and be patient eventually the seat will move or if I can get close enough to the steering wheel and throttle that I can get out on the road , there seems to be something about the van in motion the seat will move more freely. I am going to have to take the van in again and have Justine look at it and hopefully get the seat fixed. I was finally able to get the seat moving forward enough so I could get out on the road A and then the seat worked just fine. I took the Interstate to 33^rd and soon was at the Center. I was forty-five minutes late. Kim met me at the doors and took me to the Director’s office where I would change in to the red suite, feeding me chili.

Ten minutes later I was out on the floor smiling and yelling “HO,Ho,Ho,”. The consumers crowded round and the picture taking began—one image for each consumer and child—lots of babies on my lap and a couple of family images but it was a long two and half hours. They were happy I came, I was glad I came, mostly, hopefully I earned enough karma to get me home tonight…ho, ho. Ho.