I believe in celebrating my accomplishments. I generally try to make sure my celebrations include food. Such was the case last week after I had gone to the local post-secondary institution, and presented a lecture on "Music Therapy in Dementia Care. Everything went swimmingly. The students were enthusiastic participants. The power point presentation went off without a hitch. I punctuated the more technical information with video (also went over big) and pictures which showed the work of the various groups I run.
I have been invited to share my Music Therapy knowledge for about 10 years in this place. Each class of Registered Care Attendants who comes through the program has been through one of my lectures. Over the years, I have changed from black and white overheads to colored ones; and not too long ago, I upgraded to a memory stick which holds my information. With it, I can just plug in to their machine and look very techno-girl.
My history with doing this lecture includes bringing many kinds of instruments to demonstrate what a Music Therapist does. We have made music with kitchen band instruments, and more ethereal music with the tone chimes. I usually include some sort of song composition where the class members write a verse of a song about their own experience in the Care Attendant world.
The classes have been a little different each time. Most of the time, I have students who seem genuinely interested in the topic and are willing to help me out in my demonstrations. A few times, I have had to deal with students who are more interested in answering their cell phones than in taking part in the class. But that has been the minority of my experience.
When I finished my lecture last week, I emerged from the class room, energized and happy that everything seemed to have gone so well. I don't usually eat before I lecture, because I get so nervous that I don't want to have to run out in mid-sentence because of a bagel-gone-bad in my tummy. So once I was done, it was past mid-day and I was ravenously hungry.
As I said, I decided to celebrate with a lunch at a local drive through restaurant. Once I got my lunch, I pulled into the parking lot to enjoy my celebration as I enjoyed the scenery around me.
That's when I looked down, and noticed that my zipper was undone.
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Joy