Sunday Stroke Survival: Life as a Nonsmoker...Again!

Well, I'm officially a nonsmoker again. This is as of December 30th. As I said a couple of blogs ago if I want to make life changes, I just do it. Notice I waited until now to tell y'all.

Such is the case this time. After arguing with my health insurance provider, I decided to quit. Their new policy would increase my premium $75 each month starting January 1. I used the cancer free argument and how they should be thanking me, but they still want to charge me any how. Now let them pay the consequences of their actions. And unfortunately, so will I. So I begrudgingly quit. The additional smoking penalty put the policy way out of budget.

"So look at the cost savings," said a friend said. All I can see were the dollar signs that fighting a cancer cost me and multiplied by four. Not to mention the wear and tear on my body, and prescriptions for life for the removal of organs. I'm talking about multiple thousands of dollars, they haven't had to pay out over the past thirteen years and what they've had to pay in monthly/yearly hormone replacement and diagnostic test to see if the cancer has returned over the past forty years! Only recently, Medicare offsets the copays for these which is a huge relief to my wallet. Of course, it could be worse. I could have let the cancers kill me. Nah, I'm too much a fighter to do that.

So, I put down the cigarettes and roll the dice hoping I don't crap out. I bought a bag of sugar-free suckers to combat my mouth-lip fixation. I don't want to switch smoking for diabetes as a risk factor. That wouldn't be smart, would it?

Nothing is impossible.

Sunday Stroke Survival: Changes and Challenges

Well, I officially started being a homesteader this month. Not really,  just an semi urban homesteader because we only have a couple of acres versus dozens. The shift wasn't without drama. I'll spare you most of it. Don't we all have enough of that in our lives? But doing it all post stroke was a major headache!

We, Mel and I, have come up with a name for our little homestead. It's called the Cockeyed Homestead. Mainly because that was Mel's favorite term for what she did...cockeyed. In part, because I'm always thinking outside the box. It's been called original thinking by the kind, and down right insane by the not so kind. In other words...cockeyed. So it fits.

cock·eyed
ˈkäkˌīd/
adjective informal

 1. crooked or askew; not level.
    "cockeyed camera angles"
    synonyms: crooked, awry, askew, lopsided, tilted, off-center, skewed, skew,  misaligned
    "that picture is cockeyed"
  2. absurd; impractical.
        "do you expect us to believe a cockeyed story like that?"
3.  drunk.
        "I got cockeyed"

#1 Pretty much describes us.
#2 Possibly, we are both over half a century old, but we are still gonna do it.
#3 Nah, alcohol rarely passes these lips anymore. But there are plans to make honey mead and fruit based wine in our future. Why? Because we can and will, and there are medicinal uses for the stuff. Always in moderation. Never truly drunk as the meaning implies.

What we started with

Right now, we are getting organized. That's a huge job. Mel's thinking for the last two years was scatter brained, to put it kindly. She wanted it, she got it. It didn't matter whether so was equipped for it yet. It's not really her fault. She has ADD, which I've had plenty of practice with by way of my youngest daughter. She got chickens (6), Angora rabbits (6), a goat kid, started a garden, AND tried to renovate her trailer all within the first year of starting the homestead without any background or experience to back it up. Not to mention YouTube, a website with a blog, selling homestead products, and working away from the homestead. (Sound familiar my blog followers? Is she a Jo 2 or what?) She knew what she wanted and did it with very little forethought. And while she tried, everything fell apart.  She did everything cockeyed and quickly became overwhelmed. As a result, disillusionment and depression set in. While endearing to her following, as is her infectious giggle, it had no possible way to succeed but stranger things have been known to happen.

I had been counseling her for all that time. She needed to S L O W down. One job at a time. Gain experience and a comfort level before adding something new. Enter Jo permanently two years later. So you can imagine the mess. My contribution to this partnership is experience. Thirty years of organic gardening, three years of rabbit care, umpteen dozen years of building, renovating and remodeling, and off the grid skills. Although disabled, I have the same drive and dream as she does. I bring some planning and organizational skills into the mix. I also bring some really helpful tools like a weed whacker and lawn mower. :) Learn and plan before you do it as much as possible. There will always be surprised, but minimize their impact with knowledge and resources to be better able to deal with it. That's my way. So I'll be balancing her out and keeping her on the road to fulfilling our mutual vision.

The first order of business was to cut down the overgrowth to see what we have. That's where we are now after a full week. I have a clear vision of what we want to achieve and how to get there. Mel's property is laid out on the side of a mountain. So slopes and drops are a difficult problem for me. It is also heavily wooded with thick underbrush.The next or at the same time is to layout the gardens. Expanding or better planning on what has been established. We gotta eat. For the first year together, the focus is on finding what will grow well enough to offset half of our grocery bill. We'll improve on it yearly.  I need relatively flat areas for access. I do have a semi-paralyzed leg and walk with a cane most times. So this is an imperative if I've got to access and tend to these areas. So that's job one.

On the behind the scenes action, plans and goals are being set on paper to be put into the works. The nonvisual aspects, as for right now, is also being done.The website and YouTube channel are being revamped. I'm looking at marketing angles for wool, yarn, crochet and knitted goods, and other products produced by us. The homestead has got to generate income to be self-sufficient. Yes this a mid term goal. Little details on things like what we are calling ourselves. what and when we'll do items, how we divide labor and goals verses cost, etc.There are tons of details to be figured out. What I'm basically doing is setting up the homestead as a business. I  spent too many years in college and real business world doing this to succeed. This I know how to do even with brain damage.

Dream vision for bunny outside area

So it's busy, busy, busy. Mel provides the able, although getting older body, and I provide the working orders and help out where I can. The next big purchase is for The Warren. We decided to purchase an out-building for the rabbits. Yes, as income/people food making members of our household, they deserve a house and a proper play area outside. Just because they are working stiffs doesn't mean they will live a dole drum life. Besides, this will also be our temporary living quarters too while our new homestead house is being constructed.

I've been working on a logo. You have got to have an identifier to be branded, right? What do you think?

 

It's just one of the ideas I'm working on. Hopefully by next month the homestead portion will be up on it's new site if not sooner. God's still working on patience with me.

Until next time remember...

Nothing is impossible.

Thursday's Tumbles and Stumbles ~ Adventures in Christmas Baking

Today is Christmas and I pray that each of you have a day full of love and companionship.

I decided that this year I would change things up and challenge myself. No, I didn't offer to do Christmas at my house. I'm still not ready or comfortable enough in my skill levels to take the challenge of 75 people in my home for dinner again yet.

Instead of my usual cake pops, Rudolf and Santas, I decided to bake an 8" cheesecake. Actually two of them. One went to a neighbor who elfed me this year. More on that in a bit.

This was a challenge/ adventure that almost undid me. My cheesecake takes about eight hours to make normally, but this was a twenty-four hour for each one. It's a good thing I started on Saturday) I made Double Chocolate and Peppermint Cheesecakes.

The first challenge was making chocolate refrigerator cookies for the solid base of the

cheesecake. Mixing the cookie dough went fine thanks to the stand mixer daughter #2 got me last Christmas. But rolling it into tube and then in plastic wrap was a nightmare. After two hours of playing with it, I finally got them into the freezer to chill. Yeah, they are refrigerator cookies when you have the time to let them chill in the Fridgidaire overnight, but I wanted to bake these off in a few hours. Once chilled, I sliced cookies off the rolls and placed them on a couple large baking pans. I think this is the first tie I used my big oven this year. They turned out perfect. Transferring to cookies from the pan to e rack to cool was another matter. They stuck to the parchment paper. You wouldn't think that any cookie made with THREE pounds of real butter would stick to anything, but they did. Eventually, they all cooled, and then I crumbled them in my mini food processor.

Then came the decorations for the cheesecake. Yes, I suppose  I could have left it plain, but I wanted it Christmasy. So I bought some Bob's Candy Canes to tie in with the peppermint extract I'd be using in the cheesecake part of this dessert.

I'd figured that a couple of raps on the table edge and they'd break into pieces and tearing their wrapper like any other candy cane. Wrong! This wrapper was heavy duty and it stretched. I had to enlist my hubby to unwrap the darn things and he had to use scissors! I'm just glad I didn't buy this brand for my littler grandchildren. Finally after three hours I had naked candy cane pieces. This decorated sides of the cheesecakes. On top of the chocolate ganache covering the cheesecake, I'd planned to pipe frosting poinsettias. I looked all over town for red royal icing to no avail. They were sold out. I could make  royal icing, but coloring it the deep red color I needed would be a problem. Ninety-nine percent of red food coloring has a metallic after taste when used in large amounts. I settled for more crushed candy canes in white chocolate (peppermint bark).

Making the cheesecake portion went along with little difficulty except getting the cream cheese out of its foil liner. Another, 'teeth don't fail me now' moment. Cracking the eggs one by one one-handed was a task I learned too many years ago as a chef. The mixer blended it up beautifully. The whipping cream added volume to make it extra airy.

So it's about 10 PM on Monday when this first cheesecake makes its way into the oven for an hour and ten minutes cook time. This was followed by a the hour cool down in the oven, and release from the springform pan collar to begin its six-hour chill out flavor meld time.

Tuesday, the second one went way faster because I already had the crust prepped. It went into the oven an was cooking while the other one was chilling out. While the second one was doing its major chill out, I decorated the first one.

Mission accomplished! One cheesecake for Christmas dinner with my family at my sister's house and one for my neighbor.

Now about my neighbor. She and her husband bought the house diagonally from mine. At the time she was raising her 4th grandchild. My youngest daughter  used to babysit him for her. She is now raising her fifth out of seven grandchildren. We got our precious Little Bit from her and she's a great neighbor.

December 1st, a Christmas wreath appeared on our front door. I had no idea who put it there but I had my suspicions. The next day, our mailbox was decorated. Then every other day gift bag were left on my door step. An angel with chocolates, a reindeer with peanut brittle, an LED snowman, and a small chest with chocolate chip cookies magically appeared. But I caught one evening as she was dropping off half a dozen cupcakes.

Well Wednesday was my turn to surprise her. I couldn't leave it on her doorstep because it had to be refrigerated. I placed one of the cheesecakes on the plate that had the cupcakes on it. I never return a empty plate that had a kindness on it to begin with. I reciprocate the kindness. I thanked her profusely for the joy she had brought my hubby and I, and handed her the cheesecake. I told her, "God bless you and yours for keeping the Christmas spirit alive. Merry Christmas."

Her smile made all the hard work of this challenging effort worth every minute.

Merry Christmas, y'all and I'll be back soon.

The Blitz

Oh my goodness! I am being blitzed! I'm part of the Blog Blitz campaign run by none other than DL Hammon. Don, I didn't get the email to Blitz myself. Shame shame.

The joys and headaches of blog hops is 1) there's usually too many people involved to keep track of everyone, and 2) you get forgetful on which one runs when. I am guilty as charged. Yesterday I posted my blog for the Indelibles Indie Life when it should be next Wednesday. All I can say is I lost too many brain cells with my stroke and my schedule went from Abby Normal to Hectic Hanna the past couple weeks, but hey, I'm still blogging.

When I get too frustrated to work on my Work In Progress I blog. It all cognitive practice for me and Lord, do I love to talk. That's the one thing I really miss with my stroke is the ability to form words verbally. But it's just as well because although I only type, one-handed at a new pace of 42 WPM instead of 120 WPM my brain has a chance to work at a slower pace too.

Last test  my IQ=150

On an interesting note, my cardiologist suggested to me that I get a Mensa tutor. I've been a member for more than three decades, but now I'm severely impaired. Yes, I had a very high IQ. Now, not so much. It's not that I don't know what I know, but I have lost the ability to process, recall the information, and communicate it back...in other words my brain short circuits or a brain fart. To say this is frustrating is a huge understatement. I'm still on the fence about this.

But challenges are something we all face. If we didn't have mountains to charge up where would we be? Everyone needs challenges in their lives. If we didn't, how would we know how far we've come in retrospect. I've charged up many a hill in my lifetime. Some I reached the pinnacle and others I couldn't, but that didn't stop me from trying. The learning opportunities and the conquest are the goal.

That's why I call my stroke a bump in the road of life. In some respects it is the most challenging I've ever had to face, but then in retrospect so was walking again after being in a helicopter crash, bouts with cancer, raising two disabled children (1 physically & 1 mentally challenged), and a host of other things that have happened in my life. They are all molehills now in looking back compared to any new mountain I face.

Happy Blitz Day to me. For all of you just finding me...my usual blog schedule is Monday Mailbox where I answer emails and snail mail from readers and writers, Wednesday Writerly Way where I talk about writing and publishing both from the traditionally published and indie view points, Friday Fun where I chat about fun stuff like reviews of books, movies, tv and other fun stuff like family, on Sunday it's Stroke Survivor and it's all about dealing with strokes. Occasionally, like today I'll chat about anything and everything. I hope you'll follow me, comment, and revisit. Any way, welcome to the Murphey Saga.

Keep writing and loving the Lord.

Sunday Stroke Survival ~ The Pity Pot

Yep, I've been really hopping up and down on the pity pot for the past month with all that has been happening at home and abroad, and it's okay. I allow myself the time so long as it doesn't consume my life totally. Although I have to admit I've got an angry, red ring on my derriere from my long stint on it this time. I said all of these statements on the balloons over and over again over the past month.

Quite a few months ago, I told myself I wouldn't get on it again, but I was only fooling myself. Hey, I'm honest. I usually limit my time on the pot to fifteen minutes but this time I couldn't. Somethings are beyond my control. I have to go with it and ride the wave until it's over. Accepting things I can not change, but this is a hard lesson to learn. I'm fast approaching, the 25th, the one year anniversary of my stroke. What a year it's been too. There was no cop out of "look how far you've come" that would console me.

The truth is while I have achieved great progress, this is not where I wanted to be by now in my recovery. I'm terrified that this is all the recovery I can achieve and will be like this FOREVER. I'm afraid of failure. The stakes are too high for me that this may be my life forever more. There I said it.

 I expected more out of myself. Remember I'm the over-everything. I do not settle unless forced to and let me tell you, that's always a fight to the death. Recently, I've been reading anniversary blogs of other long term stroke survivors- five, ten, fifteen or twenty years post stroke. It truly boggles my mind. The courage it takes to be a survivor not just a year but YEARS! To not lose hope along the way and not give up.

Many of the words to the left have been used by others to describe me. Yes, they are all true to the persona I show to the outside world. Many have written me about being an inspiration or being a hero in their eyes.

 I'm not any of those things. Okay maybe, a fighter, outspoken, and intelligent, but the rest is conjecture. I fight to recover daily because there is a possibility. I've seen glimpses of what life can be, wouldn't you do the same? I don't want to admit that this is all there is. Given fifteen years there might be an inkling of acceptance. I'm stubborn.

I speak out because it's not in my nature to keep quiet anymore, even when it is in my best interests to do so. Would it be better to stuff my feelings and not give them a voice? I did that for a lot of years and it made me feel worse not better. It explodes in other ways such as drugs and alcohol...been there- done that- and don't want to go there again!

I shouldn't be a role model or hero to anyone. Everyone has it in them to do the same thing. It is their choice not to. Any excuse in a storm, right? And boy, are most people full of excuses. I taught myself and my children to take ownership of their faults and try not to repeat them. It's left some of their bosses with that opening and closing mouth like a fish in the fish bowl look when they take ownership of their mistakes because they are so used to hearing excuses. I don't make excuses I just tell it like it is in my perception.

I choose to live my life as an open book. Well, maybe not totally open, but as open as can be. Because self preservation beats out total honesty every time. In this age of identity theft, I'd be a fool to divulge everything on the net. But still if asked a question, I'll answer to the best of my hair-brained ability from my point of view.

So if I don't keep to my regularly scheduled blog time table, you know why. Real life is just getting in the way. But I'll get there.

Nothing is impossible with determination

Tuesday Tumbling Term ~ A to Z Blogging Challenge

What is the A to Z Blogging Challenge? What rock have you been living under for the past month? Today all participants are breathing a sigh of relief. It is April 30th. The last day of the challenge.

The A to Z Blogging Challenge as defined by the creator himself, Arlee Bird from his blog post this year...
       
  It all began with my post from Saturday March 27, 2010 when I set forth a challenge to all bloggers for the month of April.   Can you post every day except Sundays during this month?  And to up the bar, can you blog thematically from A to Z?

       Most of the time if you subtract Sundays from April, you then have 26 days--one day for each letter of the alphabet.  When April 1st lands on a Sunday you begin on that day which will be the only Sunday you would post during that month's challenge. 

Each year blogger start lining up as early as December for the early sign up and it's a good thing. While 2010 had 100 participants, this year the number topped over 1,700. Now it involves co-hosts to help keep track of all the participants.

This is probably the fastest growing blog hop on blogspot. It used to be in the early days I'd see one or two of the stylized letters occurring daily during April but this year has been insane with one third of my blog roll participating. Let me tell you, I have a pretty extreme blog roll built over five years of blogging here. 

At last count there were over 180 of y'all just on blogspot. I find on average one or two blogs a month that I'll follow. So the list is ever changing. That's not including tumblr, linkedin, and wordpress. Yes I spend a lot of time reading blogs. No, I don't read all of them because honestly who has the time? Plus some of these blogs have faded into oblivion, or the blogger blogs sporadically.  Thank goodness!

What's it all about? Here's Arlee again...

       Since a big part of the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge has to do with networking, building communities, gaining followers (who you hope will become your regular readers), and discovering new blogs to follow, let's try to give a power boost to everyone we can today.

That's what it's all about and honestly as a blog reader, I'm sad that the month is over. These bloggers will now, most of them, will go back to their regular blogging schedule and I won't be able to enjoy all the posts.

Keep writing and loving the Lord. 

How Much Space Do You Need for Writing?

 I know as authors and writers we are as varied as what we write. I was curious to what everyone else's writing space looks like.

If you've been following my blog, you know that I recently converted one of my spare bedrooms into an office with an 11 1/2-ft desk plus extensions. I've read of other authors who write in their recliners, or at their dining room tables.

So while I have this huge desk space for two, not everyone has this luxury. If they live in a huge city, space is a premium. While empty-nesters like me have tons of room to dedicate to the task.  That brings to mind how much space do you really need to write? Big enough for you and your laptop? Have space to spread out withe elbow room to spare?

I can remember writing my first articles and later a book with on a manual typewriter that I moved off and onto my dining room table. I had to pack it all up and move it every time I fed my children. It was a catch a spare minute to write when I could. Of course I was also in college back then so the same space was dedicated to homework time for me and my children. I wasn't happy about having to pack every thing up and moving it because it meant lost time packing and unpacking in set up time before and after I wrote.

Then came the advent of home computing. With computers you had to have a dedicated space such as a desk to set it up and keep it. Mine was set up initially on a card table off the hallway with one of my dining room chairs which had to be carried back and forth.

This was I first learned programming. I'm not counting the punch cards or magnetic reel to real spool type programming because honestly you couldn't fit one of those computers in your home. DOS had to be installed,  and then your basic word processing software...it had no hard drive. Finally you saved it to a new disk before you shut it down. Still it was easier than typing on the manual typewriter. You could print out your material at the push of a key. You could delete or change text with a backspace or delete key. Gone forever was the White-Out, correction tape, carbon paper and aggravation.

Now computers are smaller than ever. You can access data by doing a search of the Internet instead of spending hours in the library or a microfilm reader. The same goes for books. E-readers are pocket sized. Printers are getting smaller. So how much space does today's author need to produce a sell able manuscript?

For me I gave up my 13x15 office and moved it into a 9x15 room, but I also have a 10x10 library in my home. I still enjoy the smell and feel of real books even with my Kindle. I can't help it I'm a old fart who still takes comfort in the tangible things of times gone by. I prefer to have a dedicated space to sprawl out whatever I'm working on. It's controlled chaos, but it's my controlled chaos. It's the way I can have my comfy chairs, and things I need at my fingertips.

So out of curiosity, how much space do you need for writing?

Keep writing and loving the Lord.

Sunday Stroke Happenings and the Indie Author

Typing one-handed is a challenge, but is doable. It just takes some finagling. But some things on the keyboard is more challenging than others like pressing <ctr, alt, del> at the same time.

Things that normally takes two hands are near impossible. I say "near impossible" because they honestly can be done with a little ingenuity.  I have figure out how to do the little <shift and mouse click> to check all the boxes in my e-mails to delete multiple e-mails at the same time. But I have finagled a way to do it if I place the cursor and mouse in the right configuration. Not so difficult ...try it. Figuring out how to use the shift key and some others while typing was a trip down the yellow brick road in stretching the fingers to accommodate the movement.

My typing speed has grown to a whopping twenty WPM corrected. It has taken me three months to get to this speed using the "f,g,h,j" as home keys. That's longer than it took me to learn how to type with two hands at forty-five WPM back in the dark ages when I first learned to type on a manual typewriter. I remember starting slow and then picking up the speed to sixty, then eighty with two hands.  With one handed typing it's a bit slower but I expect to reach forty-five words a minute by Easter, if I keep practicing. It all depends on how much real life keeps me away from my computer. It's been doing that a lot of late.

Fortunately with keyboards, we have a delete key and backspace key. I've learned to highlight text to delete or change what is typed fairly quickly. Now using the keyboard and the mouse together has been problematic, but I'll figure out a way to do this to or find a way around it. Think editing manuscripts where you move chunks around. So eventually, I'll get my novels back into Amazon Kindle.

I'm always trying new stuff without adaptive equipment. Think of the pleasure I'll have when I break down and buy it to make life easier. My girls asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I told them go in together and get me an adaptive cutting board. Cooking has always been a passion of mine. Not that I haven't learned to cut vegetables and cheeses, and spread butter on toast without it, but it will be easier and faster.

The good Lord knows, I've spent a small fortune on quality knives over the past thirty odd years and to not use them would be a crying shame.  Although the Rocker T Knife is excellent for small quantities, I miss really cooking for a crowd. This was the first 4th of July and Thanksgiving I haven't cooked or prepped large quantities of foods for the generational get together of our family. If this is your first time to my site, on average, a family get together in my family is fifty to three hundred and fifty people depending whose coming. I missed it terribly. Even though my sister did the cooking and she is a good cook, it lacked the panache style but a good time was had by all.

I now am consistently writing on an 8th grade level( standard for novels and non-advanced levels in nonfiction) which is a far cry from the 4th grade I was writing at. Yeahhhh! I'm a teenie bopper once again. <g>  I'm still struggling with spelling and grammar. Can't win them all. Whoever thought I'd be happy to reach a teenage level in writing at my age? So the book is coming along slowly. Like I said in my pastor's blog, God is teaching me patience. And boy, it's a hard lesson to learn!

I haven't given up on my right arm, but realizing my initial expectations were a bit optimistic and am figuring out how to do without until I get it back. Every day the shoulder gets a little bit more movement. It's taken some really hard work to get it to where it was before. Working the elbow is difficult with the bicep muscle weakened from the Botox injections, but I'm managing both active (moving it without assistance) and passive movement (with the help of my left arm or somebody else). The wrist and fingers still nothing. I'm still wearing the splints and braces to manage the tone I've got in my right side, and fighting an up hill battle, but drawing my sword and yelling "Charge!" as I move onward with my life.

So what battles are you facing?

Keep writing and loving the Lord.