Sunday Stroke Survival: Adapting Using YouTube

As I've said, I've become a YouTube junkie since my strokes. Most videos are short and to the point. Some offer in depth details on how to accomplish certain things. There are also a pile of videos on anything you can imagine. For many, this is a untapped resource.

Now I don't think everyone that makes a video is an expert on what they are showing. Far from it. A lot of YouTube creators are novices just like me. Me, I'm Abby Normal so I enjoy quirky creativity. Otherwise known as thinking outside the box. If there was only one way to do things, let's face it as a stroke survivor, we'd be up the creek without a paddle.

I like options. I guess that's my saving Grace. I don't like things to be the same. I honestly like change as long as its for the better. I know life is about adapting to change. Otherwise, I feel like a smelly, stagnating pond yearning for a refreshing input of clean water.A chance to rejuvenate into something more. That's not to mean I welcomed my strokes. I would be certifiably nuts to want that. But still, being paralyzed, recovering, the spasticity battles, and everything else has been a challenge to overcome. I've never faced a challenge without giving the old college try of beating it. This was has been daunting. But I still haven't given up.

I watch assorted YouTube channels and think, "How can I do that?" If I reach a decision that it's impossible right now, I watch several others and see how that creator did it. If I watch enough ideas, I eventually figure out a way to do it or not. Somethings even with adaptation isn't possible without help.

sweet potatoes

Last week, I harvested sweet potatoes and left them to dry. It being Sunday, homesteaders never have a day off, it was either process them or start to losing them. I wasn't going to allow that. They weren't huge, but enough that two would make a nice side dish. We are still amending our soil for better harvests. Next year, will be better.

I wanted to leave the nicer ones whole and store them in a box for fresh baking. I do love baked sweet potatoes. I could make a whole meal with them. Meanwhile there was a slew of them which were misshapen and sliced by my shovel that had to be canned. I've never frozen sweet potatoes before so I didn't even consider it.

left whole for storage, >than 1/2 the harvest

Now as a person with one usable hand, I have extreme difficulty peeling vegetables. Most times I leave the skin on and just scrub them. But sweet potatoes have to be skinned before canning. I asked Mel to peel them and she was disinclined.  I placed them in my big 23-qt water bath canner and boiled them for 5 minutes to soften the skins. I was hoping to loosen the skins enough too peel them with my fingers. It worked. I sat by my jars and peeled, sliced, and filled my jars. After about an hour, I had filled five pints jars this way. Mel took pity on me and peeled the rest with a paring knife. Soon, my pressure canner was full of 18 pint jars of sweet potatoes. It took Mel an hour to peel all the rest. It was so much faster with her helping. Not that I couldn't have done it myself, I was getting it done. I did adapt, but allowed for expediency.

Today, it's on to the corn. I saw a YouTube video on how to make a cut corn off the cob easily with a drill and thought, I can do that.

Of course my buckets were larger than my corn device so it took so adaption for me to do it one handed. Although I could have built it.  I left it to Mel to build. Up until now, I froze the corn whole in its shuck, but now I have corn kernels and creamed corn canned too!

With YouTube I've relearned how to garden, knit, spin wool, cook, and assorted other skills I thought were lost to me forever since my strokes.

So if you've ever sat in wonder of how I do all that I do living post stroke, now you have the answer.

Nothing is impossible.

Monday Mailbox ~ Older NOT Ancient

It's Monday. Time to visit Tilda and answer your questions. Today's email is one of the type I really dislike answering, but here goes so it's out in the open. It has to do with my age and it's a negative letter.

Jo,
Are you insane! You are talking about living off grid, continuing to write, and a host of other things after a stroke. Don't you realize that all these are warning signs of your advancing age and you just can't do it anymore? Get a grip woman! JT

My response...

Well JT, you have a right to your opinion and I'm thrilled to say that I don't agree with yours.  Insanity and age are just a state of mind. :oP

All my decisions are based on long hours of research, dreams, and logically thought out weighing both pros and cons. Ultimately, they are in the best interests for everyone involved.

On the other hand I'm the Queen of Abby Normal. All hail the Queen. Granted it's a self proclaimed title. I tend to have dreams which are doable in time. Some are far fetched but with a little ingenuity can be altered a bit with hard work but ultimately doable. I think outside the box whenever possible when faced with a wall and always have with whatever I have to work with.

Too old? Advancing years? Getting older? Can't do it anymore? Who says? I don't.
My favorite quotes are-

"If you fall behind, run faster. Never give up, never surrender, and rise up against the odds."

Jesse Jackson 

 and 

 

From the movie Galaxy Quest.

  Words to live by. I know I do.

This One Was So Weird~ Dreams

I don't dream much or at least I rarely remember them when I wake up. I'm not talking about the visions I get in prayers, but actual sleep time dreams. Those dreams I do remember have a point. This one was so weird, I have to share it.

This is one I remembered so vividly. It was about this blog and the writing in this blog. Maybe I've been focusing too hard on it now that I have two stroke organizations reading it. Or, that it finally sunk in that almost 300 people a day are clicking on my site. Or maybe, I noticed how many times I've used "I" and filler words in writing my blogs. Or maybe, my English grammar is kicking in with all this writing I've been doing. I didn't honestly know, but now I do after pondering it for twenty-four hours.

But here's how the dream unfolds...

 I get emails when someone writes a comment so that's the first things I do in the mornings over my cup of Earl Grey tea. I'm reading the comments to my blog and other emails. A person with the handle of 'Abby' writes: "And you call yourself a writer?" Then she proceeds to point out every time I've used the word "I" to start a sentence. As if that was not bad enough, she points out every time I used "ly" as a modifier and "that!." If it was just one post it wouldn't be so bad, but it went back two weeks on every blog I'd written! I'm scrolling past comment after comment.

I awoke with a start. I was so flummoxed I didn't even get dressed. I powered up my computer and fixed a cup of tea. I searched my emails for any comments by Abby. Whew! There were none, but I carried it a step farther. I searched all the comments on my blogs including the spams under Blogspot. Satisfied and breathed a sigh of relief, it was in fact only a dream. No Abby was found.

But the dream wouldn't let go of me that easily. It haunted me even though I was wide awake and for the past twenty-four hours since. My brain hasn't functioned right to let me edit text since my stroke. It was a quirky cognitive brain function I'd lost and was very frustrating to me. Then I realized, think flash bulbs going off in my head, it was exactly how I did a critique on a first editing pass. Every time I found "ly" as a modifier, I'd cross out the "ly" and jot in FBW (Find Better Word) and used the "find" function for every "that" which was used improperly as a filler.

This morning I opened my WIP and edited what I had written. I am EDITING! Wahoo! The dream was finally sorting itself out.

I've called myself Abby Normal since I saw the movie "Young Frankenstein" with Gene Wilder in 1974. I love that movie. The term Abby Normal just fit me me to a "T."

Dr. Frankenstein: Now... that brain that you gave me... was it Hans Delbruck's?

Igor: [Crosses arms] No.

Dr. Frankenstein: [Holds up hand] Ah. Good. Uh... would you mind telling me... whose brain... I did put in?

Igor: And you won't be angry?

Dr. Frankenstein: I will not be angry.

Igor: [Shrugs] Abby...someone.

Dr. Frankenstein: Abby someone? Abby who?

Igor: Abby Normal.

Dr. Frankenstein: [takes a deep breath] Abby Normal?

Igor: I'm almost sure that was the name. [He and Dr. Frankenstein laugh]

Dr. Frankenstein: Are you saying... [Stands] that I put an abnormal brain... [Puts hand on Igor's hump] into a 7 and a half foot long... 54- inch wide... [Grabs Igor by throat] GORILLA?!?!?! [Strangling Igor] IS THAT WHAT YOU'RE TELLING ME!?! 

< copied from Wikiquote>

The 'Abby' in the messages was my subconscious mind telling my conscious mind how to edit my own work. Now I can't wait for Abby to visit me again in my dreams, and tell me more. Maybe I won't have to hire an editor for my book after all. Well, I still might.

So have you had any weird dreams lately?

Keep writing and loving the Lord.