Year Seven, Day One

Today is l'astronave's seventh birthday and my first day of my new job: 
I leave in an hour to go lead activities with seniors ...and toddlers.

TODDLERS?
WTF?

No one told me in the interview that I'd be responsible for activities when the little kids from the on-site daycare visit the "grandfriends" on the memory care floor where I'll be working with people with Alzheimer's and other dementias. 
But I am.

("Memory Care." Ugh. There's no way to name this, I suppose, that doesn't mean to be kind but sound condescending. 
I like instead how Denny Crane, the old lawyer in Boston Legal whose mind is losing its edge, goes around saying he has Mad Cow. 
Maybe it could be the Mad Cow floor? Same initials.) 

The thing is, little kids frighten me: 
tiny sociopaths with high-powered motors and minds like vacuum cleaners that suck up and remember everything.

See > > >
Advertisers know.

The other things is, my new boss e-mailed me yesterday to ask if I had an activity we could do with the kids today.

She had told me she'd handle the first couple toddler meetings, but I guess she's too busy--she doesn't have any assistants until I start.  She didn't say that, but then, she didn't tell me I'd be doing it in the first place either. 

via

Have I mentioned she is very young?

I think I see the lay of the land here.

At first I was annoyed:
I don't even know what supplies we have, how can I plan an activity?
But then I decided to suck it up and ask instead,  
How Can I Help?


I may only be paid to be the lackey, but in truth, I do kind of want and am capable of handing the power and self-direction of a boss. Ridiculous though it is, I'd prefer to plan activities even before my first day than to walk into a tightly planned unit I have to conform to.

And also, I may feel uncomfortable being in charge right away, but I do have a lot of life experience . . . and the Internet!
I can think up Mad Cow activities myself, but I don't know what little kids can do.

I googled "toddler activities with leaves" and a few thousands ideas popped up. 

Today, we'll trace hands onto construction paper (there must be construction paper around, right?), cut them out, and staple their stems together to made a leaf chain we can hang up.

This sort of thing, but you know no child or Mad Cow made such a tidy item. >

I can do this.
I think I'm going through a Mid Life thing: feeling like a beginner but really being the old hand.
Mad Cows or Miniature Sociopaths, Bosses or Minions---we all have more or less the same hand shapes.

So, off I go!