Trouble Comes in Threes!
As the saying goes, trouble comes in threes.
The first 'trouble' occurred Thursday afternoon. Sr. Mary Daniel, 90 years young, took the mini-vator down to the basement level to go for a walk in the gardens (with her rollator). It was a beautiful day and many sisters had gone outside during recreation to enjoy it. As one group of sisters was returning to the house they noticed Sr. Maria running towards them calling for Sr. Mary Magdalene. ....have you guessed the 'trouble' yet? That's right. When Sr. Mary Daniel attempted to use the mini-vator to return to the ground floor it wouldn't work! The good thing was that sister was able to exit the mini-vator and was not stuck in between floors. This would have been especially treacherous as there is no room for a chair in the mini-vator, just enough room for Sr. Mary Daniel and her walker! The mini-vator refused to budge, so Sr. Mary Martin loaded Sr. Mary Daniel up in a wheelchair and took her around the side of the monastery to use the ancient laundry lift. This 'elevator' was used for bringing the laundry from the basement level outside to hang on the lines. After touching down in the laundry, Sr. Mary Daniel was wheeled to another lift which finally deposited her on the ground floor where the infirmary is.
The second 'trouble' hit yesterday before Vespers while the kitchen helper sister was preparing for supper. Everything was going smoothly until sister opened the kitchen refrigerator and made the dismal discovery that it had broken. A mad dash followed as sisters scrambled to transfer the contents of the kitchen fridge down to the basement walk-in fridge. Thankfully our mini-vator decided to work yesterday which helped with moving the food. Everything was quickly relocated and the sisters were only a little late for rosary.
The third and hopefully final 'trouble' occurred today before Vespers. Interestingly, the same sister who discovered yesterday's fridge fiasco also discovered the third trouble today...that our basement walk-in freezer was a balmy 42F and rising! This freezer holds the majority of our food, so this was quite a problem. Unfortunately, it wasn't discovered until quite a bit of the food was un-salvageable. Our heroic kitchen sisters once again created an assembly line transferring the food from the walk-in to....where to put all this food?! Thankfully we have a few large freezers that are used to keep donated bread 'fresh'. The bread was evicted and the walk-in food took up temporary residency in the bread freezers. It took over an hour to move what could be saved, but the ice cream that greeted the sisters at supper (...though more in the form of a milk shake...) was well-deserved. Update: It took over an hour to move the perishables that could be saved; the sisters went back to work after supper to re-home everything else!