Speaker 1
Good Saturday, everybody, and welcome to your next chapter, a production of The Heights at Avery Heights, a one-of-a-kind senior living community centrally located near the most entertaining and historical spots anywhere in Connecticut. Now, this show is dedicated to empowering older adults with helpful resources, ideas, inspiration, and tips to encourage them on life’s journey. Now, our production is also dedicated to the younger generation so they can better understand how to develop greater communication and enjoyment for those elders in their community.

Speaker 1
Along with Siobhan Mattingly, Senior Living Specialist over at the Heights. I’m Gary Byron. Siobhan, good to see you.

Speaker 1
How are you this morning?

Speaker 2
I’m good, actually.

Speaker 1
You look fantastic.

Speaker 2
Thank you.

Speaker 1
You’re beaming, and I know why you’re beaming, by the way. You clue our listeners in. Prior to going to air, you were showing me some.

Speaker 2
I have another grandbaby, Alina. She’s beautiful.

Speaker 1
Alina.

Speaker 2
She’s beautiful. She is. She is. I fell in love with her instantly.

Speaker 1
How could you not? Hello.

Speaker 2
I know.

Speaker 1
All those pictures that you were, should you have a favorite or two?

Speaker 2
My favorite is the one where she’s wrapped in the orange blanket.

Speaker 1
Yeah, that was. She’s adorable. She is.

Speaker 2
She’s so smart already, too.

Speaker 1
And she’s got a brother.

Speaker 2
She does, Adrian.

Speaker 1
Adrian, who’s about a year and a half old.

Speaker 2
He is, he is, he is.

Speaker 1
And they’re just loving life.

Speaker 2
Yeah, they did it really well. They actually introduced her. They gave him two toys. So they gave him a toy car and a stuffed elephant. The stuffed elephant was probably a good idea. the toy car maybe not as much because he tried to give it to her and that didn’t go so well so so that they took away but then he gave her the elephant but he keeps saying bye to her like she’s leaving like bye oh they’re like oh come see your sister and he goes over and then he goes bye

Speaker 1
you’re stuck the rest of your life bud i know right so a little over a week and a half ago yeah um yeah right yeah yeah thursday of last so yeah thursday the 8th yeah thursday the 8th so Not this past Thursday, Thursday before. Yeah. Just, what is it, what does it mean from a grandmother’s perspective? I would imagine you never want to separate yourself from it. You want to be around this baby constantly.

Speaker 2
It’s amazing. It’s amazing. Yeah.

Speaker 2
I was so grateful that I got invited right away to come see her. Oh, wow. Yeah.

Speaker 2
She’s beautiful. And I want to help out as much as possible because it’s tough having two. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2
Yeah. They’re both very little too. And they got two dogs, too.

Speaker 1
So two dogs, two babies.

Speaker 2
And a boy and a girl dog-wise, too.

Speaker 1
This is an active household.

Speaker 2
But they have a huge house in Rhode Island.

Speaker 1
All right, so let’s go there really quickly, and then you can introduce your guest. Rhode Island, a grandma. And I say a new grandma, even though it’s not brand new, because you’ve been a grandma for a year and a half, at least. Okay, but still, even though Rhode Island is only one state over, It’s not like it’s just a town or two over.

Speaker 2
No, it’s like an hour and a half drive. But it’s not as bad as before. They weren’t Taunton before. And that was almost like two hours plus. And this doesn’t get a lot of traffic either.

Speaker 1
But you still can’t just go over there for a quick visit to see.

Speaker 2
We wanted them to be in Connecticut. Because I would. I’d be over there every five minutes.

Speaker 2
I’d bring the strawberries. The in-studio strawberries. That’s right.

Speaker 2
I’d be like, look.

Speaker 1
I’m happy for you.

Speaker 2
Yeah. It’s exciting. It is.

Speaker 2
I think the second time around it feels more exciting. And I think that’s because Adrian was born during COVID, so it was more like hands-off. I didn’t see him for six weeks.

Speaker 2
It was more challenging.

Speaker 1
How’s your daughter doing?

Speaker 2
My daughter-in-law, she’s doing good. Daughter-in-law, excuse me. Yeah, she’s doing good.

Speaker 2
She does CrossFit. She worked out like a week before. Yeah.

Speaker 2
She’s very fit. Yeah. Which is good for you.

Speaker 2
That’s kind of the way to do it.

Speaker 1
Really?

Speaker 2
Yeah.

Speaker 1
All right.

Speaker 2
Yeah, she’s very… They’re both very fit. They’re like models. Everyone thinks they look like models.

Speaker 1
And they’re in their 20s, I think.

Speaker 2
They’re 30. They both turn. Well, she’s not 30 yet.

Speaker 2
He turned 30 in March. She’ll turn 30 in October. So she’s not listening because I think I got that right.

Speaker 1
I think it’s easier to do CrossFit when you’re 29.

Speaker 2
Yes.

Speaker 1
Yeah.

Speaker 2
Well, there’s a lot of older people that do it, though. There’s the competitions and older people do it. Yeah. Really? I think it’s a lot.

Speaker 1
It’s intense.

Speaker 2
It’s a lot. People break their knees. They break their elbows because it’s all that weight that they’re lifting. And it’s kind of it’s intense.

Speaker 1
My luck.

Speaker 2
Yeah.

Speaker 1
Day one.

Speaker 2
Yeah. It’s very competitive, but yeah. I like to work out kind of, I don’t know, by myself.

Speaker 2
I like to just do my thing. Yeah. I’m right there with you.

Speaker 2
I don’t like a lot of people yelling at me and go, go, go. And I’m like, no. I’m not competing against anybody. Yeah.

Speaker 1
I go to the gym three days a week and I’m in my own zone.

Speaker 2
Exactly. That’s how I am now, too. I mean, I tried CrossFit and I used to be into the competitive stuff, but now I’m just…

Speaker 1
Like in my 20s? Yeah. I could eat three Big Macs at 2 o’clock in the morning, and I’d still have, I kid you not, I’m not exaggerating, I had a 29-inch waist.

Speaker 1
Yep. Okay? Now, if I see the commercial, I put weight on.

Speaker 2
Did you ever see Kevin James in stand-up? He’s hysterical. Was he the king of queens?

Speaker 2
Yes. And he talks about eating, I think, a quarter pounder. And he’s like a walrus.

Speaker 2
He’s like, because he ate it, and it’s like, he just wants to roll over.

Speaker 1
I can’t tell you the last time I had a quarter pounder.

Speaker 2
Or a Big Mac or anything.

Speaker 1
I can’t.

Speaker 2
I just can’t. I mean, I used to love quarter. That was my thing. I wasn’t a Big Mac person because I didn’t like that sauce, but quarter pounders was my thing. But I could never, never eat a quarter pounder now. I’d be, I wouldn’t, you wouldn’t see me for weeks.

Speaker 1
Yeah, I was going to say, I think I’d probably feel ill.

Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1
It tells you how infrequent.

Speaker 2
Like that movie, Super Size Me. That was good.

Speaker 1
The documentary, I did see that.

Speaker 2
For 30 days, he ate McDonald’s.

Speaker 1
Was it one time a day or three, or breakfast, lunch, and dinner?

Speaker 2
Everything, everything. Any snack, breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Speaker 1
But he almost had a heart attack, right?

Speaker 2
Yeah, because he was very healthy because he was vegan. And then he ate it for 30. He had the before test, and then they had the test, and they said that he was like, his kidneys, almost like kidney failure, heart failure. He was a mess. And anytime they said supersize, he had to supersize it.

Speaker 1
Do they do supersize anymore? You never hear that anymore.

Speaker 2
No, and I think that’s because of the movie. Oh, yeah. Well, something good came out of it.

Speaker 1
Well, there you go.

Speaker 2
Yeah, and how they make the nuggets now. I think they make them more with actual chicken, because remember before they had the byproducts.

Speaker 1
No.

Speaker 2
Yeah.

Speaker 1
Wait a minute here, Siobhan. Yeah. So there used to be chicken McNuggets without any chicken? Yeah.

Speaker 2
I know what you’re telling me.

Speaker 1
I think there was some chicken.

Speaker 2
I think the ones that are round, I think those had the white meat chicken. But the ones that aren’t round, I think they had other meat in them. Allegedly. I don’t want to get sued by McDonald’s. Allegedly.

Speaker 1
Okay. This is the first I’ve heard of this.

Speaker 2
I watch a lot of Law & Order. Way too much TV.

Speaker 1
My goodness.

Speaker 2
Speaking of entertainment.

Speaker 1
Yes. Yes. Yeah, I know, right?

Speaker 1
What a segue that was. Right? Yes.

Speaker 2
My radio days. Please introduce your guest to us. So this is the wonderful Teresa, and I do mean wonderful.

Speaker 2
She is our life enrichment director. She is amazing. She has taken this activities calendar, which is in front of you.

Speaker 2
We have activities all week long, seven days a week, and she is beloved, and I love her. She’s amazing. Well, welcome, Teresa.

Speaker 2
She’s my buddy. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1
Your job sounds incredibly fun. I thought I had a fun job. I think this, you may have. She’s the director of fun. Beat me, yes.

Speaker 3
I tell people I’m the Julie McCoy of The Love Boat, if you remember.

Speaker 1
Of course. Lauren Tweese.

Speaker 3
I don’t know. I don’t know. I mean, obviously it’s more involved than that.

Speaker 3
But that’s the, you know, drinks on the promenade deck at 5 o’clock and shuffleboard, you know. We do have a shuffleboard for that. Are we there?

Speaker 3
We do. We do. We do.

Speaker 3
We have it all. We really do. We have it all.

Speaker 1
There’s so many questions I have here. How is this something? Did you always know that this is something that you wanted to do? I mean, how do you get into a fun job like this?

Speaker 3
Well, funny you should ask that, because if you had told me five years ago that this is what I would be doing, I didn’t even know this job existed, to be honest. Really? I was brought into the Heights, Avery Heights.

Speaker 3
We have a gift shop in there, The Villager. Lovely little gift shop. And I was actually hired about seven years ago to run that gift shop.

Speaker 3
And I did that, like I said, about six years part-time. And then this position opened up full-time. My kids were older.

Speaker 3
I was fortunate enough to be able to stay home or be part-time when my kids were younger. But now they’re all grown, and this opportunity presented itself. And I just, you know, I’m there.

Speaker 3
I know everybody there. And I just went for it. And I’m loving it.

Speaker 1
I just love it. What did you do prior to the gift shop? Because you said you did the gift shop for about seven years. What were you doing prior to that?

Speaker 3
I was always in retail, part-time. Like I said, I was able to stay home with my kids, which was nice.

Speaker 1
Yeah, but I mean, how would you even know what the intricacies of this position are coming from running the gift shop and prior to that retail? And I could see that maneuver because they’re very similar. But wow, I mean, you’re going from selling at the gift store to now running. I’m selling activities.

Speaker 3
I’m selling entertainment, socialization, a community feeling. It’s all with the same people that I already have relationships with.

Speaker 1
Where do you get your ideas from?

Speaker 3
A lot of things were already in place prior to me coming on board in this position, but we have brought several new things in since. But, you know, Siobhan has brought a lot of things to the table for us, a lot of new ideas that we do. And we have, you know, bingo is the favorite, the staple. You’ve got to have bingo. Never fails.

Speaker 1
Good old bingo.

Speaker 3
You know, I tried to, when I first came into the position, my number one goal was, aside from streamlining everything to get in a routine, which is very important for people of this age to plan around doctor’s appointments and the gym and the salon and everything else. So I wanted to streamline and have a set schedule, which we have for the most part. But also it was very important to me after two to three years of almost complete isolation of these residents to really get them out and get them back in the community and get them back to enjoying life and going to see a piano show or going to do a craft. Or, you know, we play word games and we have outings to restaurants. And it was just very important for me to get everybody back out.

Speaker 1
Because I got to be honest with you, I was not even familiar with what the term life enrichment even meant. So I like how you used a cruise director as an analogy. But really, that’s kind of what you are, right?

Speaker 1
I mean, you come up with the activities, but you’re showing them also how to perform these activities? I mean, anybody could put something down on a calendar and go, it’s bingo. Self-explanatory.

Speaker 1
But you could actually come up with some activities that are out of the box, that are intriguing, where a person would go, whoa, what’s that? Well, obviously, you would have to know what that is because you’d have to explain that. Right.

Speaker 1
So you’re pretty hands-on.

Speaker 3
Yes, for the most part, yes. Definitely. I don’t play the piano or sing because nobody wants that. But I get them down there for the performances, and that’s challenging as well.

Speaker 2
And how to play card games and stuff like that, which I really like. Because you’ve got to remember, a lot of these people worked, and so they had full-time jobs. So they weren’t back in Bewitched, like we’ve talked about, sitting there playing Bridge, right?

Speaker 2
But it’s nice. She has that on the calendar. So if they’re looking, oh, Bridge, I don’t know how to play that.

Speaker 2
And she’ll have them tutorials on stuff like that.

Speaker 1
I mean, you talk about bingo and you talk about card games, but at a senior living community, remember, I mean, maybe it’s a little bit easier on a cruise ship, but you can’t quite do all those activities at a senior living community, right? So how do you see the role of activities then as it pertains to senior living?

Speaker 3
How do I see the role of, well, like I said, it’s important to me that they come out and that they socialize. And it’s important to me. One of the challenges was finding that balance for residents that may be a little bit more independent and can participate and do things, as opposed to some of the residents that may need a little extra assistance to even get to an event. So I don’t want to be patronizing to any of the more self-sufficient people, but I want the other people to feel included and welcome and want to go to something and not feel like I can’t do this.

Speaker 1
I’ve got so many questions. Okay. I’m sorry. You knew coming here, you’re stepping out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Speaker 3
I wrote down a lot of things because I could talk about my job forever because I love it, but you’re going to ask me questions and I’m probably going to be like, um.

Speaker 1
No, no, no. All right. I’ll be easy on you. Okay.

Speaker 1
This time. All right. How do you come up with these ideas?

Speaker 1
Anybody can come up with bingo. Okay. I don’t want to hear about that.

Speaker 3
Well, like I said, a lot of things were in place already. I’ll give you an example of something. Facebook.

Speaker 3
Facebook is a godsend. I follow all the senior living pages and all the things that are out there on Facebook. And actually, my son is a student at University of St. Joseph’s in West Hartford.

Speaker 3
And they had a post about Tales of Joy, the dogs, the pet therapy dogs that came to the school for the students before their exams. And I reached out to my son. I’m like, I need to know who’s in charge of this.

Speaker 3
Give me a contact name. And he did, which he never answers my text. So that was kind of nice that he answered me.

Speaker 1
Because it wasn’t about him.

Speaker 3
Yeah. And I reached out. He got me the info.

Speaker 3
I reached out. And they came and brought Obi to visit our residence, a pet therapy golden doodle, I want to say. And, oh, my gosh, adorable.

Speaker 3
Yeah. Adorable. I had a bell choir come in a few weeks ago.

Speaker 3
I used to ring bells, hand bells at my church. So I had a little in way there where I knew it existed. And I brought the hand bell choir in on a Sunday afternoon.

Speaker 3
And it was phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal.

Speaker 2
And the storytelling.

Speaker 3
And the senior seminar series with the storyteller. That was a lot of fun, too, getting people to converse about their childhood.

Speaker 1
How do you get an introvert more involved in activity? How are you able to pull that out of them? Or do you not let them come to it when they’re ready?

Speaker 3
Well, it’s funny because a lot of things at the Heights are word of mouth. They’re dining together. They’ll talk about something they did today.

Speaker 3
And, oh, that was really good. We’ll have to go next time. So a lot of things are word of mouth.

Speaker 3
If I do have somebody, especially if it’s a newer resident, I’ve knocked on doors and said, come on, we’re going to go do this. I’ve done that. I will continue to do that.

Speaker 1
And when you’re met with some resistance, how are you persuasive? Are you persistent?

Speaker 3
It depends on the resistance. If it’s a medical reason, if they’re not feeling well, I don’t want to pry too much. I don’t want to be too intrusive.

Speaker 3
But if it’s just shyness, you know, if I can’t get them to come, I’ll be like, all right, well, we’re doing this next week. I’m coming back for you. Just to give them a heads up that this isn’t over.

Speaker 3
We’ll give you a pass this time.

Speaker 2
Yeah.

Speaker 3
But just know this happens and you’re going to love it.

Speaker 2
Trust me. And she finds out what they like as well. So she knows that she’s not just going to show up, you know, with painting for someone who may like writing or acting.

Speaker 2
You know, she finds our planting. She finds out what do they like. So when she’s being encouraging, it’s because they like that.

Speaker 2
And like she said, if they’re just shy, she doesn’t want them sitting in the room just because they don’t want to kind of venture out.

Speaker 1
It’s so interesting you bring up painting because I was thinking of that a moment ago. You had mentioned some activities that may not require anything hands on listening to stories or playing with a dog, a therapy dog. But there are activities where it’s engaging, where you’ve got to be proactive and you’ve got a duty or a task at hand, such as painting. Do you bring artists in and a la Bob Ross, where you’re just watching somebody?

Speaker 3
We do have somebody that comes in twice a month on Friday mornings and does its oil painting. And he brings all the supplies and they can go down to the hobby room. And, you know, they work on it each session. They don’t finish it in one session.

Speaker 2
And then, you know, he’ll frame them for them.

Speaker 3
And it’s just.

Speaker 2
And then we have the paint and sip, the watercolor lady that comes in as well. Yes, we do that as well.

Speaker 1
Are there favorites other than bingo?

Speaker 3
There’s a lot of favorites. We have a lot of favorite entertainers for sure. Really?

Speaker 3
That come in that are, you know, that people don’t miss. Like what? You want me to name names?

Speaker 3
Well, no, not any.

Speaker 1
Like, are they? It’s not the mafia. No, no, no. Witness protection. Jugglers, comedians, magicians.

Speaker 3
No, singer. I have a lovely cabaret woman that comes in with her boas and her maracas, and she gets everyone involved, and it’s just… She’s good.

Speaker 3
I will survive. You know what? The best part is just sitting there watching the residents interact with her and watching residents that you don’t… Maybe not see much communication with or much reflection.

Speaker 3
They’re so into it.

Speaker 2
And dancing, too.

Speaker 3
I love to watch them have a good time. I love it.

Speaker 2
She did an Elvis thing last week. She did Elvis last week. It was fantastic.

Speaker 3
I’m a huge Elvis fan, so it was fantastic. I was singing right along with her.

Speaker 2
And we have great relationships, too, like with Trinity College and folks like that that come in. And Playhouse on Park, the theater.

Speaker 3
We do.

Speaker 2
We host there. Really?

Speaker 3
Look at that. Yeah.

Speaker 2
We’re fancy.

Speaker 3
Some of the actors stay at Avery Heights. Yeah, they stay at Avery Heights, and then we have tickets that the residents can go see a show.

Speaker 1
Is there like a suggestion box? Like if residents have ideas themselves and say, you know what? Look into this. Can they do that? I hear it every day.

Speaker 3
All the time. We do have a program committee that meets once a month. That’s really where you’re kind of Not always with that approach, though.

Speaker 3
No, they’re good. They’re good. I love it.

Speaker 3
I’m like, bring me it. Bring me everything. You know, I’ll just bring it.

Speaker 3
But yeah, we have a program committee. We meet once a month and go over like, this was a hit. This wasn’t a hit.

Speaker 3
This is what we’d like to do. See if we can go here.

Speaker 1
What makes something a success and what makes something where you have a feeling? I don’t know if this will go over so well. If there’s people in the seats.

Speaker 3
I always say when I have a full house, I look good. A lot of people that come to something. And again, it’s how you promote it too.

Speaker 3
We have the calendar and then the weekly, which is a little bit more involved. And I put my signs up every day. And we have a new, I call it hoteling.

Speaker 3
But it’s like Touchdown and it’s on your TV, your cable channel. Every day I put stuff in there and they can just go right on the channel in their apartment and see what’s going on. Inspirational quotes as well, which is kind of cool.

Speaker 3
Yeah, that’s nice. She’s amazing, right? And then I just round them up in the lobby, too, if they’re all sitting around.

Speaker 3
Come on, we’re going to do chair yoga. Follow me. Off we go.

Speaker 1
Folks, I’m so engaged in this, I lost track of my time over here. Folks, you are listening to your next chapter, a production of The Heights at Avery Heights, along with Siobhan Mattingly. She is the Heights Senior Living Specialist.

Speaker 1
I’m Gary Byron. Our guest is Teresa Guerin. She’s Life Enrichment Director.

Speaker 1
Are there favorites that you have?

Speaker 3
Oh, my goodness. There’s some that I don’t like as much as others. Okay.

Speaker 3
All right. I like the wee bowling. Well, that’s a Mark thing.

Speaker 3
That’s not me. That’s Mark. He does the wee bowling.

Speaker 1
What are some of the most successful ones or maybe some ones that you gravitate more towards?

Speaker 3
I’ll tell you something that we have that I think is kind of unique, but maybe not. We do something once a week, and the residents want me to do it more than once a week. I just don’t have the time, but it’s called Word Games.

Speaker 1
Okay.

Speaker 3
And it’s so simple. I have a big whiteboard, and I put a word or a phrase on the board. It has to have all the vowels in it.

Speaker 3
That’s the only requirement. It has to have all the vowels. And then they have to make words from all the letters on the board, and they love this.

Speaker 3
And I’m looking up words like, how do you spell that? What does that mean? So we’re always learning.

Speaker 3
Everybody’s learning new words during this time. It’s a good brain exercise. It’s a great brain exercise.

Speaker 3
And we do easily over 200 words in an hour I have written on this board.

Speaker 1
So I’m looking at this calendar for just for this month, actually, June 2023. Folks, this isn’t like an activity a day. I mean, this is a pretty filled schedule here.

Speaker 3
We have a lot going on. And, you know, I’ll have people say, well, I wanted to do this, but you had this scheduled at that time. And I say, life’s about choices. You just pick what you want. If you miss out this week, maybe next month you’ll have something similar to that.

Speaker 2
And there’s shopping trips as well, which is nice. You take the show on the road. We go to restaurants on Tuesdays. Outings like the cemetery, like the Catherine Hepburn Cemetery.

Speaker 1
Oh, in Artford.

Speaker 2
Oh, yes.

Speaker 3
That was in Newington, I want to say. It’s on the Newington border. We just went to Iwo Jima.

Speaker 3
Am I saying that right? Iwo Jima. We went to that memorial.

Speaker 3
Have you ever been there?

Speaker 1
It’s my town.

Speaker 3
It’s very small, but it was very moving. That was incredible. We did that after our ceremony for Memorial Day.

Speaker 2
That was tied it all in. It was nice. It’s nice because stuff is on the weekends, too.

Speaker 2
So a lot of those trips are like to the symphony and that stuff is on the weekends. So the weekends, we don’t go dark and have a couple activities. And church.

Speaker 2
And church. Exercise and different things. A lot of the activities are run by the residents as well, which is nice.

Speaker 1
What are some of your biggest challenges as a life enrichment director?

Speaker 3
Well, like I mentioned earlier, it’s finding that balance, getting everybody involved in something. Whether, like I said, whether they’re fully capable of going to an on an outing or whether they need an aid that they can schedule that aid and still feel comfortable going on an outing. I just want everybody to have something to look forward to and be involved in.

Speaker 3
And I probably go from one extreme to the other with the residents. So that’s my challenge. I don’t want to be patronizing, but I want everybody to feel excited and welcomed.

Speaker 1
Are you finding different people at different activities? Or is it the same cast of characters at every activity?

Speaker 3
We have our core that go do everything, which I love. I mean, that’s what we’re here for. And then, you know, we have certain ones that are a little bit more choosy.

Speaker 2
And it’s neat, though, because they might do that one thing all week. and that’s their thing.

Speaker 1
All right. So a new resident comes in. Okay.

Speaker 1
And they’re bright eyed and they’re like overwhelmed and they keep hearing about this food. They hear everything. They’ve already tasted it when they took their tour.

Speaker 1
They don’t know anybody. I mean, this is a great way to actually get to know people. But in order for that to happen, they’ve got to take the initiative to come.

Speaker 1
How do you break the ice? And I know you say, oh, you’ll knock on the door and you’ll give them a pass. I know you said that a little while ago, but how do you get somebody to do something that you know they would enjoy, but there’s still some trepidation, I guess?

Speaker 3
Well, you know, Roseanne, our social worker who you’ve interviewed before on here, she does the initial, she’ll go to their room, she’ll present them with the activities and kind of go over the lay of the land and whatnot. And I usually run into them in the hallway or in the lobby or if I see them on their way to dinner. So I make sure I see them so that I can introduce myself and say, you know, we’re going to have fun.

Speaker 3
So I’m here for you. If you have ideas and things, just let me know. But here’s the schedule.

Speaker 3
Here’s how you can find out what’s going on.

Speaker 1
And give me a dream activity you haven’t done. And you’re just like, oh, if I had it my way, this is number one. What’s a dream?

Speaker 3
The casino?

Speaker 1
Casino? No, I don’t know. Really?

Speaker 1
What’s wrong? A day trip? A bus trip to the casino?

Speaker 3
I’ll tell you one thing we did do in the past that I absolutely loved, and it was right when I started in this position, and I didn’t know what to expect, because again, I was new to the position. It was right after COVID. We had our Kentucky Derby Day.

Speaker 3
And before that, I got the hats and the flowers, and I had a volunteer come in, and we decorated. We had them. We had them.

Speaker 3
You had the mint jewels, yeah? My husband was the bartender. I’ll get to that.

Speaker 3
I’ll get to that. But we decorated the hats. And I had like 16 ladies show up for that, which I had tears in my eyes.

Speaker 3
I was so happy because I didn’t know what to expect. So we decorated the hats. They loved it.

Speaker 3
And I think that was a Wednesday. And then Saturday was the race. And I have a very supportive family.

Speaker 3
My husband and two of my three children came in and assisted. We had all kinds of games. And we did your horse name.

Speaker 2
And so we had name tags with our horse names.

Speaker 3
The ladies all wore their hats. My husband was the bartender and made mint juleps. And I had a bouquet of roses for the winner that picked the winning horse.

Speaker 3
And it was just, it was a late Saturday afternoon and it was just lovely. That was my favorite so far. My favorite.

Speaker 1
All right. So I’m running out of time. What do we have to look forward to in the future as far as, you know, coming events, maybe the rest of this year?

Speaker 1
I mean, I would imagine there are seasonal events too. Correct. You talk about the Kentucky Derby and so on and so forth.

Speaker 1
There’s summer activities, fall activities, holiday season activities.

Speaker 3
We’re hoping to get out to the Lavender Farm. I think, I’m not quite Killingworth or Killingly, I’m not sure, but they have a lovely little lavender train that you can ride and go through the lavender fields. So that was something that the program committee wanted to do.

Speaker 3
So that’s going to be new, and we’ll see how that goes. And then always the holidays, always Christmas time. I love, you know, this past Christmas we finally had our friends and family event that we hadn’t had for three years.

Speaker 3
And we had Victorian carolers. We had my husband dressed as Santa. I hope the kids aren’t listening.

Speaker 3
And it was just, it was lovely. It was lovely.

Speaker 1
Well, let me tell you, it’s fantastic meeting you. I’m jealous, actually. I’m sorry. Maybe we do, let’s swap jobs for a day.

Speaker 3
I love my job.

Speaker 1
I know you do. How would you not?

Speaker 3
I’m blessed. I feel honored to be where I am, and these are special people, and I’m grateful.

Speaker 1
I want to thank our guest. She’s the Life Enrichment Director over at the Heights, Teresa Guerin. Folks, you have been listening to the latest edition of your next chapter, Senior Living, with Siobhan Mattingly, the Heights Senior Living Specialist.

Speaker 1
Avery Heights is a beautiful senior living community nestled within 43 acres of nature, right smack dab in the heart of the junction between West Hartford, Newington, and Hartford. Now, those who live there have access to a full continuum of care, including independent and assisted living to memory care and even more. Please visit AveryHeights.org or call 860-953-1201.

Speaker 1
Again, that’s 860-953-1201 to learn more about their own special brand of community unlike any other in Connecticut. For Siobhan Mattingly, I’m Gary Byron. Thanks so much for listening.

Speaker 1
Until next weekend. Have a good one, everybody. So long.