See, I told you I was gonna be scarce for a while. I still am, but I thought I’d give you a little Hand Update. It’s easy to forget when I’m in a fit of premenstrual, pre-election crankiness, but overall I’m pretty dang cheerful these days, because I recently realized that my hand is no longer the defining limitation of my daily life. This is truly amazing. I can actually do a lot of things without thinking too hard about how, exactly, to do them. I ironed some clothes the other day! I cut an Asian pear in half! (Those cores are very dense & hard, much tougher than most things I have occasion to cut through.) I schlepped that Asian pear & its brothers & sisters home from the farmer’s market all by myself (along with sweet peppers, eggs, apples, lettuces, pasta & ROMANO BEANS oh my gawd romano beans!!! & dry-farmed tomatoes & so forth).

Part of this blissful freedom from microscopic hand awareness & “oh well I can’t do that”-ness is due to great improvement of actual hand ability. Part of it is because I have been living with this problem for long enough now that a lot of those initially-annoying adaptations have become habit, so I don’t have to concentrate so hard on every little thing. I have learned how to open jars (there actually is a process & a technique to it) & I have also learned how to assess very quickly whether a particular jar is un-openable, in which case I just move right along to asking somebody else to open it.

There are still plenty of things that trip me up. Vacuuming is my Challenge Of The Moment: can I vacuum more than one and a half rooms (including crown molding & odd little corners & crevices) without my hand getting all tuckered out & anxious? Driving to Montana is still out of the question. Getting a job, ha Other things too just have to wait a little longer.