Methodist, Open Door with Mikell and me at Open Door

October 3, 2023: Ok, not doing til the end of the day. Well today was a day FULL of food shelf volunteering. First things first, I took some Zofran for nausea at 7:50am and took my meds with banana and strawberry yogurts at 8am. I also did my pre-check for the MRI I have tomorrow, and emailed Chloe to move my upcoming training to a different day, since I have the MRI in the morning, and seeing Hannah on that day now. I also made a bit more of a plan with Hannah, to maybe go to Half Price Books, where Talia will be working, tomorrow. Then, I went to leave for Methodist, quite bit earlier than they had asked me to come in. Today was the day that Anne had asked me to be the main Spanish-speaker in the afternoon. I got there right after 11am, and today they actually allowed me to use the computer to mark all the names down, which I've wanted to do for a while and they said I needed “training” to do. I didn’t need training. It was just knowing how to operate a laptop. The funny thing is that they don’t make a habit of simply doing the keyboard shortcut for “save” all the time. They usually type everything into the Excel document for hours, and don’t save anything until the end. I don’t know why. It’s not hard to hit “control+s” while you’re working. At the end of volunteering, I was the only Spanish speaker present, so I felt nice and needed. I didn’t get a picture of myself in front of the laptop, even though I was sitting there in the place that the Mexican volunteer Angel is in the photo. Also, the ladies Barb and Jean taught me how to close things up, and copy the Excel document on a flash drive to save it. I left a little after 3pm, after we got everything saved. The end wasn’t very busy though, and we think it was because it was the beginning of the month, and a lot of people get their benefits at the beginning of the month.

I had been planning on maybe walking over to Jodi’s house after Methodist, but I ended late enough that I decided not to. I walked back to my apartment, and ran into the lady who also had a TBI, named Cheryl. When I was home, I also realized that I was the tiniest bit hungry because I hadn’t eaten pizza at Methodist since I was being trained, so I had a single mango yogurt. Sadly, that was one of the only things I ate today. I’d actually also stopped into the basement of Methodist when I left, to see if they had pizza like they always do, but I was a bit late for it because I’d been being trained, so there wasn’t any left. The other important thing I did at home was I checked my mail, and today I’d been sent updated car insurance cards and a bill for car insurance from State Farm. I almost threw the bill away because I didn’t realize what it was, but then, after I sent my mom a picture of the new cards, she told me there would be a bill with it. So I sent her pictures of the bill too.

After that, I decided it wasn’t too early to go in to Open Door for my afternoon shift. I went in, and first things first, I realized that I’d lost my locker lock that I’ve had since Lunds. I asked Sean about it, and he said he’ll keep an eye out. I also had a really good conversation with the communications person, Mikell. She said that I might be able to take pictures at more end-of-year fundraising events, and that she was also looking for a way to take photos of clients “shopping” in the pantry. She told me that she’ll reach out to me with more details by the end of the week.

Today, there were also two new volunteers, named Avery and Leila. They go to Inver Hills Community College, and they’re in their first year classes doing a project with Open Door. It sounded kind of like communications, so I asked if they’d talked to Mikell yet, and they hadn’t. Also today, I noticed that my name wasn’t on the volunteer board and asked Sean why I’m not on the board when I sign up as a “bilingual client support volunteer.” As a result, he put me on the board with stars around my name. I also answered like 12 Spanish voice mails today, and I left a note for Sean with a list of information they’d included. I also worked quite bit with Italia, who is working there full time, is around my age, and used to work at Valleyfair. Today, I learned that both of her parents are from Tamaulipas, Mexico.

Then, I drove home, and funny enough I just started to have a headache on the way home, even though I hadn’t really had one all day. It might have been because I didn’t wear my sunglasses for most of the time at Open Door, even though I had them on when I was talking to Mikell at the beginning. Then, my night got interesting in a bad way. I decided to eat the food for taking my meds, which was like 6 potstickers and some rice. They were quite good, but unfortunately, right after I ate them I threw them all up in one of my throw up bags that we recently bought. I hadn’t even taken my meds yet, partly because I had been just thinking that I’d like to have them closer to 8pm, like the morning. Good thing I did that though, since I didn't throw up my meds at all because of that. So what happened was I threw everything up, and then I took another Zofran and waited a couple minutes until I felt ok, when I took them again at 8:36pm with more potstickers and rice. Honestly, even though I threw up, it was a pretty good day. Felt kind of like a successful day that I can have post brain injury.

Today, I’m grateful for Open Door, which has people who respect me, and who I might get to know better as time goes on too.