Alarming

There are many sounds here at the Transitional Care Center - hereinafter called the Rehab center, maybe. Whenever one of us "residents" wants assistance, we press our little red button and somebody magically appears. There is a blinking light on top of our door indicating this is the one, and a beep beep sound. Some residents need a little more monitoring. They get a sensor clipped on their bodies somewhere. When the resident falls or otherwise causes a disruption to that sensor, an alarm goes off, a rather more serious siren-sounding alarm. People really jump at that one. Just recently a new system has been installed, an alarm system for the building. Since I have been here - since last Thursday afternoon - it has gone off several times. On at least one of those times a sliding door closed off our side of the building. That is more of the "get out" type alarms that we hear in schools, and we usually look around to see if it's the real deal and if we all need to hobble on out of here. So far it's all been testing or mistakes. Televisions play a pretty big part of life here. There is a large-screen tv in each living room, and in the afternoons (sometimes mornings too, but that is usually for some kind of game) the set goes on and one or more people sit around watching it. And it tends to be quite loud. If we are watching our own sets it is sometimes necessary to shut our doors to hear them. And yet, as I mentioned in a post some months ago, no piped in music. So I continue to be very happy at the choice of noises offered here. IF one of them gets to me (and usually that's going to be some other resident talking too much) I do have a couple of ear plugs.