Brain reformatting update

I am about halfway through the reformatting process of being able to type on my rearranged keyboard with speed and strength. This means that if I get on a qwerty keyboard I can't type very well on it either.  The brain pain is beginning to go away so I hope that pretty soon things will begin to fall into place and I will eventually emerge with both keyboards functional under my fingers.
If you want to try some simple brain expander try these:
Fold your arms across your chest.  now fold them in mirror image.  Do it until both are comfortable
Lace your fingers together.  Shift them so the other thumb is on top.
draw a picture with your non dominant hand.  Repeat often.
draw a picture looking only in a mirror
brush your teeth with your non dominant hand.
knit in reverse using the opposite hands and going the opposite direction.
Feels really really awkward doesn't it?
Here is the secret: this is how small children feel as they are learning everything all the time.  It takes years to wear those patterns into the brain so that we forget what it was like at first.
I do some of this regularly to remember that learning something new is hard.  It takes time, patience persistence and many many repetitions to be able to do it correctly.
I hope I never stop learning new things and new ways to do the same old ones that I love.

Just a little advice

If you come down with the 24 to 48 hour rat bastard throw up your toenails stomach Flu, You really really shouldn't read Kitchen Confidential to pass the time. 
48 hours. Sick enough to let someone else make me a cup of tea and bring it to me in bed.  Of course, I am mostly over it now.  I have to be.  The Footless Man just got carted off to the E room in the aftermath of insulin shock.
I wafted downstairs in search of nourishment not too long ago to find him huddled in a chair mumbling to the television (it was off) with his substantial lunch uneaten on a plate beside him.  It was one of those combative times where he wasn't having anything to do with being nice about eating  glucose so I called 911.
He will be calling me as soon as his discharge papers are in hand.
Is it silly of me to wish that for once I could be ill and not have to rise to the occasion of another emergency?

Ayyam-i-ha

Tonight begins Ayyam-i-ha, The days between the calendars.  These are the five days  before the month of fasting begins, a time for hospitality, generosity, and small gifts.  It marks the last part of winter and punctuates with celebration the beginning of the Fast.  The Fast ( like Ramadan) is from sunrise to sunset for 19 days.  It is something that should not be missed, easier than it sounds, and re sets the system for the spring.  To my Baha'i family and friends, Happy Ayyam-i-ha, and a joyful Fast.

Blarg

There is a low pressure system moving into the area and trying with some sucess to squeeze my brain out through my ears.  My ears are singularly displeased.  My eyes are now registering a protest and transfering the residue to my stomach.  I am going to bed. Get your own supper and let me know what you had so I can find and eat it later.

Hey Mom

Your socks are ready.  I am not putting the photo up until you put them on your feet and model them.
at present I have a set  in the needles that is so ugly ( in my eyes) that I am unsure if I have the courage to give them to someone  as anything but a complicated joke.  A photo of that will  show up shortly.  Not tonight, it is tuesday and I am tired.

Freedom

Today the Footless Man went back to the prosthetest for a final check and adjust session after wearing the thing for the weekend.  Kudos to Bill the prosthetist, it fits, it works and it is comfortable walking and standing.    Now that mobility has been restored The Footless Man is focussed on altering the big cherry wood box that is taking up most of the living room floor.  I hope he does this while I am at work.  Sometimes coming home to the accomplished fact is the best thing.

Is it spring yet?

 

no? are you sure?

my bad

The Footless Man had a minor insulin shock way early in the morning.  I got up after feeding him glucose and waited until he was alert enough to tell him that he should check his blood sugar.  I was irritable and the exchange wasn't nice. He responded with a particularly nasty mock and I dumped half a cup of water on his head.  I have never done anything like that before and I am kind of shocked.  I could go all self righteous and talk about how he went and tried my patience and deserved the bath, however I think I won't go there.  Nor am I going to beat myself up  and make this some terrible thing I did.  I don't quite know what the hell to think, except that I am not a nice person when asked to deal with emergencies at 5 am and I lapsed temporarily into bad behavior.

The Footless Man gets a new leg

When you wear a prosthesis, and when you depend on it to move around, how it fits is really important.  The Footless Man has two of these suckers and they can really limit his mobility.  From what he says climbing up a ladder is especially hard.
Medicare lets you replace the socket (which means replace the entire thing.) every three years.  The Footless Man was due and overdue on his left socket.  Having a new socket molded means making a bunch of decisions.  How does it attach to the leg?  What sort of revisions will accommodate the new leg shape? What kind of foot and how hard or soft should the springs be? and finally, do you want something special for the outer shell?  

Someone figured out that swimsuit material bonds beautifully with the polymers that make up the socket and so anything that comes in nylon spandex can show up on a prosthesis socket.  The Footless Man chose a rather pretty fabric with an aqua background and eyes on it.  He misjudged the size of the print by rather a lot.

 

He can keep an eye on anything from knee level.    It looks a bit wall-eyed.

After a lot of adjustments

 
 

and walking

 

 

and sitting

  

After a final test drive with a cane, the Footless man was declared good to go. 

He and his googly eyed leg took off and went to lunch.

Another step forword

The Footless Man  climbed up a ladder and removed the last bit of hanging wall.  This left a four inch by fourteen inch hole into the uninsulated attic.  It proceeded to pour a river of ice cold air into the living room.  I studied the problem.  Obviously the hole must be blocked, and what should be used?  I found the perfect  thing sitting in the chair, A multi album set of vinel, titled Polka Party.  Of use for the first time since the 1950's.

Valentines Day

Valentines day is an over hyped commercial pseudo holiday with way too many implications and overblown expectations.
On Valentines Day this year I took on and accomplished the herculean and horrible chore of cleaning  the bathroom that holds the cat box.  Black Michael poor lamb, has erratic aim and a favorite place to pee that happens to be underneath the bathtub.   The results are appalling, and the Footless Man can't reach it.  Happy Valentines day to the Footless Man.  It takes a lot of love to do that one.

tiny steps in kitchen renovation

The Footless Man and I have been having a conflict in values discussion over some of the next steps in kitchen renovating.  The subjects at hand are counters, paint and lighting.  Mostly counter.  I think in part it comes out to be our very different senses of esthetics.  The Footless Man likes very few of the colors that I love.  I would  love to have multi flecked green and brown counters and my material of choice is formica.  Both choices come from a pragmatic point of view.  Speckles hide the dirt, Formica is cheap and wears well. It comes in extruded lengths that would more than adequitely do the job of covering the needed places.  Consumer Reports says that it gives best durability wear and use with the least maintenence.
The Footless Man says that I am low balling the counters and I should invest in better quality in the interests of resaleability  He does have a point there. 
If there was any kind of money to involve he would have a better point.  As it is, Silestone/swanstone, my next choice, is well past my ability to even think of saving up for.
As for the paint issue,  he thinks that white is lovely, the whiter the better.  I think that it would be like living in a bowl of buiscut dough.  The light yellow that I think would lighten up the  rather dark living room  would make the kitchen so bright that I would need sunglasses to endure it.  Maybe a soft green?
Meanwhile, I think that I will deconstruct  the very last bit of hanging wall and get it out of the way.

Middle aged bicycle geek

I can see that the season is turning more towards spring.  I gave serious consideration to riding my bike to  the office even though the yard still has two feet of snow in it.  The spandex clad herds of  thin tired ram handled athletic wheelheads have not yet showed on the streets to irritate the drivers who seem to think of them as fair game. 
I am not sure just what it is about the spandex wheelhead that seems so absurd to me.  I personally wouldn't be caught dead in a pair of bicycle shorts until they make some that look a lot more like a pair of jeans.  My mental visual of myself  never included my rear assemblage in spandex.

If it comes down to it my own bicycling equipment must give people pause.  I tend to retrofit my equipment with an eye to practical use and the result can have connotations  I didn't consider.  I showed a friend my helmet, and as she looked at it she began cackling and singing the flying monkey theme from The Wizard of Oz.
I hadn't thought of that

Thursday's Child

This is Thursday's child. 
He is the Swordsman's best friend.  He comes from tough beginnings and has challenges that could be daunting without his particular combination of grit, intelligence and artistic imagination.
Thursday's Child came into our lives when he came home with the Swordsman, who simply informed me that "He needs to talk to you mom." 
He did, and I did, and over time I came to think very highly of him. 
Thursdays child is much quieter than either of my sprats, who have the ability to be quite outrageous in a performance artist sort of way. Both the Earstwhile child and the Swordsman play to the audience with theater and aplomb, Thursday's child takes an observer stand and watches.

 When the Swordsman decided to play ninja at the high school, Thursday's child was the slightly taken aback audience. 
At the ComiCon he watched and observed and learned and thought, while The Swordsman and the Earstwhile child interacted and performed.
He moves at a much slower pace than you average young man , choosing his time and making his choices  slowly because he has some health problems that can throw up roadblocks.   He is in college now, and headed for a computer career he thinks, Plenty of time to re-think as he gets further along. 
Thursday's child's family comes from so far outside normal  that He thinks of me and my family as so normal  that they are  staid and somewhat stuffy.  I have never felt so conventional as when talking with him about the process of daily living.  I have never felt more uncool and June Cleaverish.
Once he was trying to explain his dad to me. 
He said, " Have you ever been on the bus, and sitting in the last open seat, looking forward to a quiet ride with the seat to yourself?  Then a guy gets on.  He is fat, and a little smelly, and not too clean, and then he sits in the seat next to you and he is just WAY too friendly. Well, My dad is the Fat Man On The Bus."
Ok.  Good to know.
I didn't teach him to knit.  He doesn't want to know.  I did show him that knitting can be much cooler and more art oriented than he had ever imagined. 
He is a good guy going places in his own inimitable way.

imaginary answers to ordinary questions

So what is it that you actually do?
I get this question a lot.  Especially from male engineers.  I have a hard time answering it too.  The shortest answer  ( I am a holistic practitioner. I work out of a medical office) has not sufficed to satisfy curiosity.  I try again.
"I use CranialSacral therapy plus hypnotherapy plus techniques from brain integration to help people  who have problems with headache, chronic pain, back pain and residual problems from accidents and injury to feel better and to heal more."
"Oh.  So how do you do that?"
"I stick a bone in my nose just here, See?  and then I take a knife about two feet long and chase all the evil spirits that cause everything from toothache to halitosis over the horizon."
"Oh.  Does it work?"
"Better than you could ever imagine."
"Oh." silence for a minute.  " So what do you do realy?"

Letters From Aunt Ruth

Dear Aunt Ruth,
It has been five years since your passing.   I still think of you daily and send a little prayer your direction.

The Boys are grown mostly, and James is a certified chef.  Chris had some hard times and is still working away at getting his degree.

I spent a lot of time this year catagorizing your letters to me and mom and dad so of course I spent more time reading them than the task at hand.  Which was to put them into page protectors in order from 1976 to 2004 when you penned your last Christmas card before the stroke felled you.  Time has not dimmed their sparkle, and I must tell you how much I gained from that regular  correspondence.

I learned to write really well from you, and I thank you daily.  I gained the habit of observing and filing away small pictures and adventures to describe to you and make you laugh. 
That brings me to a sort of ongoing endeavor that you would love.

 I now have a Blog where I try to do the same sort of writing.  I will be show casing your letters there every so often.  Thought you would like to know.
Give my love to uncle Bill and uncle Jim,

Love, Cathy  (click on the pages to embiggen them)

metamorphsis

I started a hat a few days ago.  I thought it was a hat anyway.  Apparently the yarn had other ideas for what it was going to become.  The part that was supposed to be the sides ended up like a plate or something elizabethen to go about a neck. The part that began as a hat now greets the world as a nice little neck frill.  Decorative, but not hattish. 
Sometimes you have to go with what happens and I really had no problem letting the yarn decide.    In a day or two I will model my new balaclava with the extra thick ear part.  Bicycling in the spring around here feels a lot like riding into a wall of wet cement.   It is something about the wind.  I despise the wind in my ears, and you can't wear a hat under a bicycle helmet. 

Ok It is finished and I tried it on.   Somehow wearing this emphasizes just how much I am beginning to resemble Mom. 
In observing the manner of things I am fishing out of my head and putting up here, I am beginning to find some order.   I don't intend to talk about it until it sorts itself out a little more.  Then again order may just lurk on the horizon and never show up here at all.


this is Mom

brain rewire in progress, aoeui

I went down to visit my parents, mostly my dad because I see mom much more regularly.  I told him about the blog and suggested that it would save some catchup time if he read  up on it first.   The first thing he wanted to know was how relearning the keyboard was going. 
To be truthful, it's going slow. 
Bless him, he understood very well  why I would embark on something  that so seriously challenges  a well developed groove in my brain, to say nothing of inconvenincing myself. 
This is good. It is hard to explain the attraction when most people have never even tried brushing their teeth with their non dominant hand.
You see, it changes how you think and opens new pathways in your brain.  I like keeping my options open.  Having to struggle to do this helps keep me humble.  It helps me be patient with people learning new things, especially things I find easy.
Rewriting a brain path  takes time.  It takes persistance.  In the end it does pay off in strength and flexibility.
Meantime here I sit.
aoeui snthd aoeui snthd aoeui snthd  ',.pylrcgf ',.py lrcgf   phooo.

re formatting my brain again

Did you ever think about why we use the keyboard set up that we do?  It was formulated with the original manual typewriters as a way to slow people down and keep the keys from tangling. 
It takes a whole lot of dexterity to learn the system and get any speed at all.    I just converted my keyboard to Dvorak and am relearning the new keys.  My brain is twisted into a shape like a yarn skein. Even so I am typing faster and more accurately than I did at first  with the old one.   If you are wondering why on earth I would put myself through this,  It is because this kind of  work helps keep your brain flexible and able to learn new things more easily.  Meantime, typing is s-l-o-w.  There was an unbelievable  amount of cat hair reveiled  when I popped the keys to re-arrange them.  middle line a o e u i s n t h d