. . . shouldn’t mix! What follows is another brief tale of my nursing home adventures. If you have been reading this blog very long, you probably know that every few months I do a little jewelry show for residents and workers at the nursing home where my mother has been for 7 1/2 years. It’s always an adventurous day and last week was no exception.

My show corresponded with a fundraiser being held in the same room. For a mere $5, folks could partake of salad and their choice of 10 different delicious soups. It was really hard to decide what to eat and the aroma that filled the room made us all feel hungry. The fact is that we had all the senses covered in that room. The smell of good food was compounded by the eye candy provided by my jewelry, the murmured accolades of the customers and the tactile pleasure of handling the jewelry. The latter is what caused the trouble.

In addition to the food previously mentioned, cupcakes were available (wonderful, gooey cupcakes covered with mounds of sticky icing and various sprinkles). There were chocolate cupcakes with luscious chocolate icing, carrot cupcakes piled high with cream cheese icing and many other choices.

Since I have a family of musicians, I know that after a good meal comes the entertainment. I think that on this day the jewelry and I were supposed to be the entertainment. Things were going well at this little show until I got a good look at the hands of several residents who were carefully fingering the jewelry. The hands held the fingers that had just finished the cupcakes that had covered the fingers with sticky icing (lots of sticky icing!) The closest jewelry to the front of my display table and wheel chair viewing were the small items such as the rings and bracelets. Of course each ring had to be tried on by each looker and the bracelets were carefully fingered while they were examined. Several deep breaths after discovering this phenomenon I decided to just ignore the sticky problem. Those residents were having a wonderful time and I knew that I could clean things later. I had to breath deeply again when people realized they could go back for a second cupcake and then return to the jewelry. Again, I just let it go.

Last night, I got all the remaining jewelry out and cleaned the pieces that were sticky in hopes that the ants wouldn’t find them in my storage trays. You know, this didn’t hurt me a bit, but asking the residents not to touch my pieces would have hurt them. I’m not one to just “let it go”, but it seemed appropriate in this situation.

I guess you just never know when you’re going to learn things from your elders. The lessons I learn from these nursing home visits usually stem from the fact that I really need to think about what’s important before getting my dander up about those that are insignificant.

Speaking of dander . . . thanks to those of you who wrote to me about my cat scratch fever. My hand is much better following antibiotics. Soon I’ll be able to solder again with both hands.