 Good morning. I'm Mary Ellen and today I'm going to share with you some of the things that I learned in 2021 I'm going to continue talking about the jobs I had in the past. I had several people request that and I am going to give you an update about Jim. So I'm gonna go ahead and get started. I have loved silk pillowcases long before I knew YouTube videos existed. I think they're wonderful. I think silk caps are wonderful for your hair, but I always thought it was pretty silly to have a silk pillowcase on the top and to have cotton on the bottom and I realized why people do that because when you're stacking pillows in bed, if you want to put a couple pillows behind your back and sit up and read, it won't slip. The cotton won't slip on the other silk pillowcase. So I was excited that I learned that. I love my Nespresso and I have learned that if I take the pods out of the back and you can send those back to the company, they recycle them, if I take them out of the back and if I do the really quick cleaning hit it three times, I haven't had to use that the cleaner that you buy. So I was anticipating needing that like after about six months and I just use tap water. I don't buy special water. I think you're supposed to, but mine works perfectly and I'm gonna keep doing it. Also, on my life, I have washed my clothing on a normal or delicate just a full wash. I started thinking the clothes that I wear do not really get dirty. You know, I don't sweat and I mean, I don't really have really dirty clothes. So probably a few months ago, I started just doing quick wash and my clothes come out clean. They smell wonderful and it takes about half the time and probably a lot less water and electricity. The other thing I learned with my dishwasher, I know now that I can do express wash and dry if I want or I can open it up and let it dry and my dishes are just as clean as they were when I did the full two hour wash. I'm not ever gonna be the kind of person that puts a dirty plate in the dishwasher and I know you're supposed to, but I just can't do it. I rinse them off and it has worked great. So I'm pretty proud about that. Now, this is kind of like with my slacker ways. I have a pajama top that I like. It's from Soma and what would happen is the bottom button would come unbuttoned and so the whole top would come undone. And I thought, oh God, I don't want to go and make each button a little smaller. Well, I just did it on the bottom one, put a couple stitches here and there and it has not opened up since. I also learned that the box that was 30 years old that I thought was in my closet, it's not there. I either opened it some, I mean a couple years ago or it's upstairs. I had my daughter get up there, my closet, my brother-in-law built it for me and it's like two boxes deep all around and I just knew that it was still there but it wasn't there. And I've got to admit something to you. Well, I didn't do skincare until I was 57 and from 57 to almost 61 when I did my skincare, I usually wore my hair like half bangs. I didn't even pin it back. I just didn't do skincare on this area right here. So, but since I was almost 61, I do it on my whole face. So anyway, I thought I'd share that with you in one of my slacker ways. Okay, now I want to talk about the rest of the jobs that I had. I think I left off when I talked about being a waitress. Well, I'm gonna go ahead and say my kid's name because it is so hard for me to say, you know, but anyway, my son is Jeremy and when he was two years old, I enrolled him a half a day at our local college in the Child's Study Center and while he was in school, I was in school, I was taking classes and my children are two and a half years apart. So there were times that both of my children went at the same time and it was kind of like a preschool. It was really a child's study because the college students studied the children made, you know, it worked out real well. So I got some of my general studies done that way and I was a stay-at-home mom and one day I was sitting on the front porch of my mom and dad's house and we lived right across the street from the hospital and the administrator came over and said, what are you doing? He knew my mom and dad and I said, I'm staying home with my children and he said, would you like to work a couple of days a week? And I said, doing what? He said, we'll work in the business office, you know, there's switchboard, there's a lot of things to do and I said, well, let me think about it and I thought about it and talked to mom and dad because they were going to help me out with the kids and Jeremy was in grade school in Gretchen, that's my daughter's name, she was in kindergarten. So I thought, well, I have time to do this. So I went to work part-time and after I had been there about nine months, the administrator called me to his office and he said, I'd like you to apply for the secretary to the director of nursing. And I said, I'm not a secretary. I don't know how to type. I don't know how to take dictation. I don't know how to do, I don't know how to do anything, you know, secretarial. I just never was good at it. Never did tape typing. He said, well, really, what he needs is an administrative assistant. Well, I did not really like the director of nursing. I didn't think I liked him. Anyway, I interviewed with him. I told him, I said, well, I can't start right away and I need to have flexible hours because I have children in school and I told him what I needed to make an hour. And I really, really, really felt that I wasn't going to be offered the job. And lo and behold, I got a letter and I still have that letter to this day. And he agreed to my terms and said that it would be flexible within reason. And it was one of the best experiences of my life. He was excellent and I liked him. And I stayed in the nursing office. I worked for four different director of nursing. Our offices were side by side. We had just a doorway between us and it was wonderful. I worked a lot on policies and procedures, did scheduling, anything that needed to be done. And one of my very favorite things to do was to go over to the floor and just check on patients. Sometimes we had patients that had like a mental health crisis that were there for a short amount of time waiting to be transferred to a different facility. And I'd get a call from there's there were three nurses in particular that would say this is a patient for Mary Ellen. So whether they had schizophrenia, depression, anxiety, whether they were bipolar, even alcohol withdrawal, those were my people. And I'll tell you what, I think the smartest people I've ever seen in my life were those people with schizophrenia. I could not imagine the things that they talked about. It was so far above my comprehension. So I did that for a while. And I enjoyed it. I mean I just I just have every opportunity. I'd help the nurses give baths you know I just I just enjoyed being around the patients. And when my daughter was a senior in high school that was in 1994, I started back taking all the prerequisites for any healthcare program that I wanted to get in. And since I had taken classes you know when my children were little they still transferred. I got all my prerequisites done for LPN school. And I maintained my full-time job and I went to LPN school part-time starting in 1995, fall of 1995. So I worked Monday through Friday days. I'd go to school every Tuesday, Thursday evening and all day Saturday. That's when we did our clinicals. And I graduated from the LPN program in 1997. But I had one class left for my prerequisites and it was in the summer. And it was microbiology. And in summer you take everything. It's twice as fast. Microbiology is a hard class if you take it in the fall. But if you take it in that short amount of time in the summer it's really hard. I didn't make an A. But anyway it was the only year that our college did not have any air conditioning. During three quarters of that class there was no, I mean three quarters of the semester there was no air conditioning. And there were no windows that could be opened. So you're over bunts and burners. You're doing all this stuff and you're miserable. And I went over my lunchtime. I took some vacation time along with my lunchtime and I'd go out there and then I'd have to go back to work. Fall of 1997 started. I started in the RN program, continued working full-time and had the same schedule. And what was really nice everybody that went to the LPN program and to the RN program almost everybody was working full-time. So everybody who wanted to be there wanted to be there. So in RN school I was supposed to graduate I think in July of 1999. I started in 97. But I took some classes with the full-time students. I used like my lunchtime and then I'd take an hour hour and a half of vacation time. And I went out to the college too. I continued in the nursing office. My job description changed. I would I loved it. I get to go help with admissions. I get to go help with patients if they needed. I always wore a lab coat. Had a lab coat in my office. A white lab coat. So if I needed to go over to the floor I would go help in ER, car wrecks. And you know we got everything in our ER. And I could help. But I liked better helping the patients families. And I stayed in the nursing office until 2006. And I applied for a job at our hospital. There was an outpatient adult behavioral health program that opened up. And it dealt with adult patients that were depressed, anxious, grief, and guilt. And I did that from 2006 to I think it was 2009. And our program director took a position with a company that oversaw our program. So I applied for the program director and got it. And I was a program director for four years. I worked side by side with the psychiatrist. I had several counselors. All the counselors were master level counselors. They all had their masters. And I had two unit clerks that took care of everything in our unit. And a full-time RN and a part-time RN. And I'll put my little thing up here on how I lost my job. But that is my career. That's I haven't worked since December. It's coming up pretty soon. December 2013. December I think 30th is my was my last day. But that's it. Well, I messed up this part of this video. So I'm going to insert some photos here of my family. But first of all, I want to wish you all a very merry and blessed Christmas. And if you don't celebrate Christmas, if there's another occasion that you celebrate, I wish you the very, very best. This was the first time that my children and all my grandchildren were together in almost two years. Jim was not able to go to Thanksgiving dinner. But we did cook a Thanksgiving dinner before Thanksgiving because he does love turkey and dressing. The first photo is my daughter Gretchen. She is 44 years old. And that's my son Jeremy. He's 46. The next photo is my son's family. The first young man is Kendra's son. But he's been with this for a very long time. So I consider him a bonus grandson. And he will graduate next year from SIU Edwardsville. The next person is Kendra, followed by Jeremy. And this is Jeremy's youngest son. And he is a junior in high school. And the next young man that you cannot see his face is Jeremy's oldest son. And he is a junior at SIU Carbondale. Next photo is Gretchen's family. The first young man is 24 years old. He's my very first grandson. And he graduated from ISUE in Evansville and is working full time in his field. And the next young man is a bonus grandson that has been with us since he was before he went to school. That is Joe's son. And he is a freshman in high school. And next is Gretchen. And this is her youngest son. And he is a freshman at Millican University in Decatur, Illinois. And the next person is Joe. And the last photo is me surrounded by all of my grandsons on my side of the family. And I just wanted to share everybody with you. Now I want to tell you about Jim. We do have a date scheduled. And I don't want to say when it is because you have no idea who's watching you. It could be some crook in town that goes, oh, this is a date. You know, we can, you know, but anyway, I don't want to say. And he's going to have his left hip, a total hip. He has never been in the hospital. He has never had any type of surgical procedure. So he's, he's, you know, a little nervous. So what my plan is, is I'm going to upload a video on January 2nd. And then I'm going to take a break. I may try to, I don't know, I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm not big on, I mean, I don't put hardly anything on Instagram. At some point I might once it's over or put up just a little video. But I really anticipate great results because he is in so much pain. It's terrible how much pain he is in. So I want to let you know about that. I'm wearing my earrings that are probably 40 years old. You just, I don't think they ever go out of style. But little thing, one more interesting thing. I'm kind of in the process of seeing about the watchman. I've been, I've met with my electrophysiologist and I told him about my allergy to a lot of metal that I can't wear costume jewelry, that it has to be 14 karat gold. And I'm going to be going to an allergist and they're going to see what metals I'm allergic to and desensitize me because at some point I'm, I am going to get a device that goes into my heart so I can get off kumitan. That is my goal. So I'm kind of excited about that. And guess what? He said I could wear costume jewelry if I got desensitized. I can't wait. I look at all this costume jewelry, even bracelets and necklaces and all that and I want them and I can't, can't get them. And if you're staying this long today, it's going to be a giveaway and I will announce the winners on January 2nd. I bought, I love, I've got Lisa J's lipstick on today. Passion, no lip liner. It just feels so good. And she sent it to me. But I liked it so much. I bought these myself to get to one person and they're all five of her lipsticks. I've never, I haven't opened up any of these cases, but I'll show you what they look like. They are, I mean, I love them. They're in a nice substantial tube. This is passion what I have on right now. They're so easy to apply. And they are have a magnetic lid and I love them. So anytime when I put in the information section below my videos, if I have not purchased it, I put a star if it was given to me. Well, if I purchase it for you all, when I put list what lipstick I have on, I don't have to put a star by it because I bought it. If you kind of understand what I mean. So one person's going to get this. And several months ago, I had a giveaway for the Hello Light. It's a really nice cream aluminizer. And it has a great brush to go with it. And no one claimed it. So I'm going to also put this in the giveaway. So all you have to do to be in my giveaway is be 18 years older, older. And in the comments section below, if you want the lipsticks, just use in a sentence, I'd like to use a sentence, use the word lipstick. And if you'd like the aluminizer, just use the word cream cream. It's cream, but I'm going to say cream. So lipsticks, cream. And if you are interested in both, just use the name put just put the name of what you prefer first and whoever gets drawn first gets what they want. And that is it. It is all good. We are just about ready to hit 2022. And I appreciate y'all hanging with me so much. I really do. And I'll see you in my next video and take care. So I didn't do skincare till I was 57. And you know, now I'm but from 57. You know, you get and I like that it and it makes me happy.