I didn't mention it, but this year we hosted the day program at a new school. For my first two years, day program was hosted at St. Mary's high school. For my second two years, it was held at St. Dominic Savio elementary, and was also held there last year, which I didn't attend. This year, both St. Mary's and St. Dominic's were under construction, so the day program was held at St. Paul's.
St. Mary's was larger than St. Dominic's, and St. Dominic's was larger than St. Paul's, so every time we've changed location, it's been to a smaller area. St. Dominic's was the only place with an air conditioned gym.
We're at a new overnight location this year as well. Like with day program, I've been at two other locations, Camp Impeesa and Camp Kimbercote. Kimbercote was a rustic location far from the city which was a ton of fun but was eventually deemed too inaccessible for us. Impeesa was a site near the village of Ayr, which was fairly accommodating and accessible, but it's been booked by someone else this year.
So this time around, we'll be going to Camp Everton, a location just outside of Guelph. I've never been, but it looks like their cabins are far larger than what we're used to. We'll have our own outdoor pool, the kitchen looks like it could fit our whole camp into it, and the bedrooms are immense.
For some reason this year, there has been more need for physical interventions than in years past. I've had to perform three hair pull releases (AKA "The Worm"), which is a technique taught in Safe Management for helping someone else escape from a hair pull. Until this year, I have only ever had to perform physical interventions in the group home. Feels weird having to write an Unusual Incident Report at the Summer Program. At least now I know The Worm works in a real-world environment. We can add that with the J-Roll for intervention techniques tested and proved reliable in a real-world setting. I know that there have been interventions that I wasn't involved in as well.
Between the Summer Program and Direct Support, I have been so exhausted. One day, I went out to water my garden, and I fell asleep in a lawn chair! I realized this as I woke with the sun in my face. That means I slept the whole night outside completely unintentionally. Today I am enjoying my first day off for the past seven weeks. I was going to have last Saturday off but someone called me in to be a relief worker. I get tomorrow off too, since Prep Week is only three days long.
I'm spending my days off in Guelph. This would be the first time in seven weeks that I've seen my family, but last week my cousin drove me over and we had dinner with them.
The group home that I used to work at shut down. Not the organization, just the house. I don't know details.
Over the weeks, the Summer Program Coordinator has been bringing in regular treats for the rest of the staff, with little messages with puns based on the treat, such as "You all deserve extra 'BROWNIE' points!". Most of the other staff have given it a go as well, leaving me as one of the ones not to contribute, which was irritating.
All their stuff was store bought though, so I figured that the only way to make up for my late contribution was to put a bit more effort into it.
For Hidden Talents week, I baked banana bread and pumpkin bread, with the message "Sometimes you might feel like you're going 'BANANAS' but I know you 'PUMP-CAN' do it!" and this past week I made a batch of tarts, including blueberry, lemon, cherry, and pumpkin variants, along with the message "Every great day s-'TARTS' with a great team!"
Ha!
...I haven't even talked about this past themed week yet.
The weather was forecasted to have thunderstorms every day last week. It would have fit the theme of the week, as it would be pretty wacky and full of water outside, but it would also be pretty inconvenient as all the water-based activities were scheduled to be held outdoors so as not to get the gym floor wet. Luckily, the forecast was flat wrong, and all we had was a bit of rain on one of the days and it didn't even interfere with our schedule.
Our special guest was a Drum Fit instructor. We have this every year, but we used to have them for Get Your Game On week, which we now have X-Movement for. Our old water week guest used to be a clay art instructor, which we no longer have.
If you haven't heard me talk about it before, Drum Fit is where an instructor gives out exercise balls and drum sticks to people and leads them through a series of exercises based on drumming. It's surprisingly intensive. One highlight this year was when the instructor told us all to jump in the air and shout "YEAH!" and for some reason I was the only one who did it. That was pretty awkward.
Our day trip was to Bingeman's Water Park. We used to go to Wild Water Works in Hamilton, but the trip was always long and there was always something that happened to make us late coming back. One big reason we didn't go to Bingeman's in past years is because it's close enough that it doesn't feel "special". But whether or not the novelty of going somewhere far away is worth the inconvenience is up for debate.
Wild Water Works had three stations: water slides, wave pool, and a lazy river. Bingeman's also has three, but instead of having a lazy river, it has a splash pad. The waves in the wave pool at Bingeman's are also far less intensive. I hit up each station but only went down one water slide.
One stand out activity we had this week was Reverse Paintball, which is also something we do every year. The participants have the opportunity to paint us head to toe, and then they have to shoot us with water guns and throw sponges at us to knock the paint off.
Here's a pic of the team all painted up:
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