From Dragonfly: My New Room

I'm getting used to my new surroundings. The room has a lot more light in it at night than my prior two rooms, due to it's location. I may have to crochet myself an eye mask. My bunky still has not said much to me, but she does speak English fluently. She has silver streaks in her hair, so I'm going to call her Silver. She really keeps to herself, but likes things a very certain way in the room. Silver uses the table a lot, so she will put people's stuff on their beds. For example, Blondie had two hard boiled eggs on the table yesterday, and Silver put them in a papertowel under Blondie's pillow (who does that?) and when Blondie went to get into her bed, the hardboiled eggs went flying across the room. Silver also put my water jug on the floor, because she wanted the entire table, and it serves as mine and Blondie's "night stand." The upper bunks can use the top of the lockers as their place to put stuff, but lower bunks only have the small table between them. It is what it is.

My third roommate, Longwinded, loves to tell stories, where she never quite gets to the end. You have to keep prompting her, because she wants to tell every last detail. She's a former student, and still a GED student, so we have some good familiarity. She spends much of the day in bed.

None of my new roommates are very conscientious of each other. Whether someone is asleep, or they are reading, the roommates don't seem to care. The light goes on and off without warning. Locker doors are banged against bunkbeds. Shoes are left in the middle of the floor to be tripped over. I guess I got spoiled being in a room where we were always getting screamed at by one roommate or another if we did anything that was considered "rude" (whether it was or wasn't actually rude). We had learned to put our blanket over the end of the bed, so that the locker door didn't hit and make a loud sound, keep our shoes under our beds, and ask before turning on/off the light. There were a lot of problems in my past room, but at least this wasn't one of the issues. I'm just going to keep being kind, and making no more noise than necessary.

I'm also getting used to how things work differently on the upper floor. People stop by each other's rooms much more often. It is not allowed to have others in your room, but everyone seems to do it. People watch the televisions in the atrium by sitting just outside their room on their trashcan. We can view 2 televisions from our side of the hallway, so people can select which television they wish to watch. Last night, there must have been 15 people watching the televisions from above. Not a bad idea! It's kind of like being at the drive-in, only with a much smaller screen and no snack shop (except for your commissary goodies).

Taz stops by my room each evening to grab my water bottle and fill it with ice downstairs. We only have a hot water spicket on the second floor. Many friends stop by the room on a daily basis and check to see if I'm going to a meal, want to do something, or just to see what I'm working on. I slept most of yesterday - that's the problem of being on my bed all day. But, I did work on the throw blanket I'm slowly making, as well as a couple bracelets for an acquaintance to send home to her kids. I think I'll catch up on reading as well, since I will be spending less time downstairs in the atrium.

At night, I caught up with Lola at indoor rec and we played games. We are currently enjoying Tri-Ominoes and King's Corner (card game). We usually spend at least an hour each night hanging out at indoor rec. Yesterday, I told Lola, that despite our arthropathy, we should try to do a light workout with our arms. So, next time we are there, we are going to start with some simple small weight baring exercises and see how our joints handle it. We are not going to be able to do full body or legs for now, due to pain, but maybe we can do something. Then we can reward ourselves by playing board and card games.

So, everything is going alright. The stairs are difficult, I had to do them 7x yesterday, but I am doing them - one step at a time - ha! I was even able to carry my laundry bag up and down the stairs yesterday, which I couldn't do when I first got here - so that's good as well.