17 July 2011
Last night I had all the single females from the base(F, D, G K, V & A) over for dinner and games...I am working to get to know my people better by relating to them outside the workplace setting. One of the criticisms of my leadership has been that I do not interact enough with my people so my aim is to have staff over once a month for this social time. It is not something I am comfortable with or good at …but maybe that will change if I do it more often.
I served a green salad with Caesar or Ranch dressing, green beans cooked with bacon & onion, and a casserole (rice/beef cubes/leek/carrot/celery/mushroom soup). Since it is not safe for females to walk after dark around here I had ordered a tuk-tuk (a motorbike rickshaw) to collect them at 7:30. My timing was a bit off. They arrived at 5pm and there was 45 minutes of me trying to make conversation. V & A, the 2 westerners, carried the ball..V is good at asking open ended questions. She and A also went next door to look at Fred’s his art work and then upstairs to look at my book & DVD library. We sat down to eat at about 6:15; everyone took seconds of the casserole and V & A inhaled the salad so I guess that part was a success. At about 6:45 I cleared the table and got out the Sequence game. No sooner did I get the board set up than the power went out. My re-chargeable lantern did not work so I gathered 4 candles and scrounged for matches. The game was new to all but A so explaining took some time…and the board was a bit hard to see by candle light, but it did achieve the goal of getting people relaxed and interactive. We were just really getting into the spirit of the thing when the tuk-tuk honked at the gate. Then there was a mad dash to find my purse and give them money for the tuk-tuk.
I picked up a couple of things I will put into practice next month when I have the single guys over.. think I should start the evening with the game !
Yesterday Mom was really on my mind for some reason. Maybe what triggered the memories was cooking green beans like she used to do with bacon and onion. I was remembering how during the years that our family lived in Duvall, Mom & I both worked the night shift at Virginia Mason Hospital on “Pill Hill” in Seattle. We would drive in together, chatting and keeping each other awake throughout the hour long commute. Because I was in the float pool and she had a permanent floor assignment we didn’t often work together, but we did try to take our dinner break at the same time as often as possible and would go down to the cafeteria and get something out of the machines or heat up what we had brought from home in the microwaves. Every other Friday morning, at the end of our shift, was pay day and we would go with a small group of other night shift nurses downtown to Eddie Bauer’s to get our payroll checks cashed and then go to The Dog House restaurant for breakfast. Mom has been gone for almost 10 years but I still miss sharing with her…she was my closest friend and strongest mentor throughout my school years and into college. When I joined YWAM and moved to Kenya she was my biggest fan, most frequent communicator, and one-woman PR promoter.
