my valentine.

My Valentines Day this year was not showered with romantic affection by a significant other. However, my Valentines Day was still spent with some of the people I love the most - focusing mainly on this beautiful woman below:

Grandma Waddell. My 102 year old grandma! Yes, you heard me, this black haired beauty is one hundred and two years old and looks not a day over 82, right?!

Oh real quick, let me note the box of chocolates pictured above. Grandma loves chocolates. I promise you, she would eat that whole thing. Oh wait, too bad her grand daughter left the chocolates upside down and in the car so all of them were melted and stuck to the lid. I scooped one of with a spoon and fed it to her though.. don't you worry.

Anywho... a friend and I went to visit grandma at her nursing home to share a little valentines love with her. Let me just highlight a few moments from that day and really paint the scene for you.

We walk to her room to find it empty - head to the nurses station and ask where she is. Oh, she is probably in the cafeteria! They are having a little party in there! Fantastic. A Valentines Day party...I am so down. We walk in to the cafeteria to find a room filled with old people and some sort of old fashioned music blasting. I mean this may be a bad joke, but everyone looked dead. Nobody was talking, moving, nothing. I am appalled, why are they not partying at their big party?!

What do I see next...? If you guessed a wrinkly diva old lady with a red sequenced shirt on with a microphone in hand belting out those old jams singing passionately into the face of one of the fellow party goers then you are right! This is exactly what I saw. ...that explains why everyone was so quiet. There was a star performer roaming between tables belting out classic love ballad impersonations.

What a fantastic way to party...however we were lucky to arrive just as the party was ending. We then proceeded to take grandma for what she calls "a ride". A ride entails me pushing her around in her wheelchair throughout the hallways and then most likely heading out to the patio for a little chillin time. What was the best part of our ride, you ask?

Traffic jam in the hall. Some sort of medical cart situation to the left. A resident in their wheelchair to the front - using their feet to scoot through the hallway - entirely unattended - 4 feet ahead of us. Clearly we can't really say anything to a slow old person. But wait, a fellow old person can. Suddenly we hear grandma say beep beep!. Thank you grandma for using your sweet little voice car horn situation to settle that problem.

Lastly, I cannot finisih this posting without mentioning grandma's roommate. Who is she? Well, she is a 80 something old Mexican lady who does not speak a word of English. She also is not afraid to hit the nurse people that come to help her. Oops. Poor guy just wanted to help her go to the bathroom - but he has to get slapped and just withstand the slew of Mexican jarble that gets thrown at him from this old lady. bah!

Ah yes, it was a happy day. 

A happy happy valentines day for sure.