Gingerbread houses and PDE are TOMORROW!

This morning I went to Costco to get my tires rotated & balanced, and met a non-OT friend to shop at Costco while I waited. Then OTS Virginia came over and we sat on my landlord's kitchen floor and played with their adorable new golden doodle puppy, I almost died it was so cute. But it peed a lot. 🙁 We came armed in true OT fashion with towels to protect us.

Then we went to the Dollar Store since we had planned out a special Tuesday morning event for a Karen-Virginia bonding experience, and we needed to get supplies for our gingerbread houses! We got graham crackers, icing, and a bunch of random candies, carefully discussed and chosen for their colorful properties. Unfortunately, we got stuck in line behind someone buying about $90 worth of chips and cookies. I swear he smelled like he was wearing a sweater that had been sitting in cat pee in an old closet for six years. The smell of ammonia was so strong it almost made me hurt!!

Then we hung out at her house a while and she made me a delicious lunch…then I came home and future OTS (FOTS?) Talli, my little OT sib, called and said she wanted to bring me a special white chocolate macademia cookie from Miss Cordelia's, and coffee too! She is so thoughtful and sweet. So she picked me up and we ran by Starbucks. She got a normal decaf coffee, I got a decaf nonfat eggnog latte. I know that is so wrong. I am sorry. I guess I just realized I didn't eat dinner though. Oops. AHAHHA

Anyway, we hung out for almost 4 hours, talking about some random stuff and a lot of OT stuff. She is going to be like the coolest OT ever because she is really overly competent and smart. She can do things like make bamboo wind chimes without blinking an eye. She makes me sick. She has a unique name, so if you meet an OT named Talli, you should be filled with joy, ok?

Tommorrrowwwwww….Virginia and I have our special breakfast/ginger-bread house morning, and then I have my PDE (professional development evaluation) at 2pm…I hear it isn't so bad. I need to figure out something professional to wear. I'm thinking torn jeans and a shirt with a kitty on it…or maybe black pants and a nice top…I don't know yet…

THEN I am meeting at least OTS Kerri and her husband, possibly others for a celebratory post-PDE event of Costco hotdogs or pizza and the likes. Pretty fancy huh. Then I am spending some time with some non-OT friends, THEN I work 9 to midnight. It's fun getting to finally have time to do a bunch of non-stop social stuff after being in class since early July!!

My house is a wreck. I should probably be cleaning it right now instead of writing out every detail of the next day. But no. I am writing about this stuff because it makes me really happy and proud to get to have so many social experiences with my OT classmates. We have so much fun together and I hope every OT student gets to experience this with their classmates!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just realized gingerbread houses might be a really fun activity to do with a client/patient/consumer. You could grade the activity by either providing the house part already made, or making the patient problem-solve the house structure, or provide hints, or whatever. You could also put the icing in different types of squeezies to make it easier/harder, and provide lots of little candies to work on fine motor skills. You could even work on some cognitive stuff like color sequencing, patterns, you name it. Activity analysis is the friend of any OT!