Lee plus food at Open Door

January 16, 2024

Ok, I didn’t do one for yesterday. It’s kind of dumb that the fact that I didn’t write this actually means that I don’t remember the day very well. Today, I did a lot of volunteering. Both of the places I went to were normal, in that I just know that if I were feeling a little better and less depressed I would have really enjoyed them. As it is, I’m kind of just in a low spot now, which is why I have not written these for the last two days. 

I’ll start with Methodist. I went there a bit before 9:30 am, and since I was so early, I stopped at my house and used the bathroom. Then, I left my car there and walked over, since I’d have had to park on the street there anyway. Like always at Methodist, well over 200 people were waiting in the lines outside. Today they did a weird thing where they shuffled the numbers of all the first cards and distributed them randomly. The thought was that doing it that way might stop people coming at 4 am to get their place in line. But since the people didn’t know that was going to happen today, I’m not sure it had any positive impact. The other crazy thing at Methodist was that the elevator was broken. Usually, people use it to bring their carts up and then load food into cars. Really, just the combination of the elevator not working and them deciding to distribute numbers randomly made things quite messy this morning. I left there a little earlier than I often do because Whitney had moved my therapy to 1 pm today instead of trying to fit it in around Mayo appointments tomorrow. 

After I finished the appointment, Papa made us some lunch. It was fish and potatoes with butter. He told me that if I wanted to eat two of the pieces of fish, I could take my meds right then, even though it was only a bit after 2 pm. So, I did that. 

Afterward, I drove over to Open Door. At Open Door, I was thinking about the fact that I hadn’t gotten a single photo at Methodist, not even of the door or something. So, I purposely grabbed a photo of some of the food they had there, specifically their offerings of potatoes, carrots, and onions. At Open Door, I also managed to have a decent conversation with this guy named Lee who was working as a greeter. Lee also has some ability to communicate in Spanish, though I believe I can communicate better. I definitely told him that I was surprised he remembered so much of my story, and he told me that after I’d given him a business card the other day, he’d looked me up and read some of the articles about me. I considered asking him for a selfie but decided not to. I just took a potato picture and a random shot of Lee while talking to him.