Merry Christmas!

Sometimes you have to work on Christmas.

Craig Hospital is located next to Swedish Medical Center in Englewood, CO, and is a 93-bed private, not-for-profit, acute care, rehabilitation and research hospital. The approach to spinal cord injury (SCI) and traumatic brain injury (TBI) is wholistic and provides an interdisciplinary approach to recovery. This means Craig provides an intensive program to helping patients and their families cope with their injuries and adjust to their change in life. Some spinal cord injured people do walk out of here; most roll out.

I've worked at Craig Hospital for about 5 years, and holidays are just another day, today is no exception. However, today there's homemade cinnamon rolls, cookies, rice pudding and breakfast burritos for those who get up at o'dark thirty and bypass the traditional morning celebrations.

A lot of people here will wish you a Merry Christmas when they walk by, but there's a few people who are not happy they have to work today. I guess taking their sadness out on others around them makes them feel better, but for those of us who are happy to spend the holiday with the friends we work with, we roll with it.

As is traditional, the auxiliary people are making their way through the hospital giving away hand-knitted afghans provided by their members who have worked throughout the year and today is the delivery day. So many spinal cord injury patients are susceptible to cold since circulation is so poor in spinal injuries and the warmth of the afghans help keep broken bodies comfortable. Patients not only get the afghans, but some Christmas cheer from the volunteers who go room to room. However, if you hated Christmas before your injury, you'll still hate it after your injury.

Volunteers also hand out Craig water bottles that share space with sugar treats and knick-knacks nestled in red fuzzy Christmas stockings. Other management team members are in the process of finding out who's bedridden and who can go downstairs to the cafeteria for Christmas lunch. The only problem with going to the cafeteria is they are using green and red fluorescent lights and they turn any food an unappetizing color.

Some of the patients here have families, and this year the hospital has a lot of kids in it. One of the moms let us know that when they came back from church services last night, there were stacks of wrapped Christmas presents in the room for the children in the family. No cards were attached. She asked me where the presents came from, did we see anyone put them in the room? I told her there was only one possible answer.

So it goes on Christmas Day at Craig.

So, remember that when you meet up with people today who are working on Christmas at theaters, ski resorts, 7-11s, restaurants or anyone you come across in your travels, make sure you wish them a Merry Christmas and say thanks. This also goes for the overworked moms who have wrapped presents, cooked huge meals, cleaned up mountainous messes, wrangled combustible children and made the holiday good for people they care about.

When they work, your world is better.

Merry Christmas!

ESS-Audio Slideshow

Click on the link and go to YouTube. Make sure to watch in High Quality.

Sunset

There was pretty bad light all day long today, but come evening time, the clouds let some sun through. This was the result.

Edmonds, WA

I flew the coop.

I managed to get ridiculous cheap ticket on Frontier Airlines and decided to take a quick trip up to Seattle, my hometown. Kenn was teasing me about starting up a travel agency because I'll book a flight to Seattle in December. Well, Kenn, It's 50 degrees here, with mostly sunny skies and no snow in sight, except on the volcanoes. So, How's the snow? Hmmm?

I drove north from Seattle to one of my favorite little towns, Edmonds, WA, Rick Steve's hometown. Edmonds is a ferry jump to the "other side" of Puget Sound and the Olympic Peninsula beyond. It's my destination tomorrow morning, and I have to check the online ferry schedule to see which boat I can catch. I'm taking my rented Pontiac G6 and heading out to Kingston, Point no Point, Port Angeles, and the Point Dungeness Lighthouse reserve. I have some people to stop and say hi to on the way, but I plan to spend most of the day out there.

Tonight I went to Claire's Restaurant, which one of the best restaurants I've ever visited. The food is awesome, they still serve breakfast at 8 pm, and the waitresses are the nicest you've ever met. I highly recommend it if you're ever in this neck of the woods.

Tonight the town is having its annual "First Dibs" night in which all the stores in the downtown area stay open until 9 pm and there's a ton of people out walking around in the "cold" listening to street madrigals sing Christmas carols under the twinkling white lights that people here seem so fond of. I went into Rick Steve's Travel Store and looked around around, and bought a set of luggage tags. Next door to his shop there's an old northwest style church (wooden, short, white) that was hosting a choir singing Christmas carols. The Candy Cane shop is around the corner and has a wild selection of candy displayed in white stacked cubbies and the owner will offer you a sample of chocolates wrapped as tiny Christmas presents. One store over is the Gardener's Shop and I bought a large brightly painted sign that says, "Trust Your Crazy Ideas" and the owners will ship purchased items for you, although they're a little worried about the odd size of the sign. It's going to hang in my living room, near the front door.

Edmonds looks the way towns did 40 years ago, with individual stores, and shop personnel that are friendly and glad to see you. Most stores have decorated bowls of water for the local dogs to drink. There weren't many dogs out tonight.

Oh no, the news says the temperature has dropped to 40 degrees.

Check out this job ad

I was cruising through UC-Berkley's website and found a link to this want ad. Take a look.


http://www.roanoke.com/editorjob/interactive.html