Pajamas

Life One-Handed

You may have noticed; despite it’s having half the title of my blog. I don’t really write much about living life one-handed. I know, ironic much. It’s because I started to have weaknesses in my late teens so I had started to adapt.

Mum gave me every hot drink to carry to the lounge room and as I’d spill the drink in my left hand, I’d carry one drink at a time. She was very grumpy and impatient as she would carry two cups at the same time.

“Drop your left shoulder!”

Alas, I started adapting. But mostly when she wasn’t watching, I’d carry one at a time. By the time I was 16-17, I was a full-time student, part-time worker at a supermarket, an unpaid babysitter and was building a portfolio to go to college.

I had NO SOCIAL LIFE!

My first job at a supermarket saw me on the left-handed checkout, I wasn’t super-fast. With the right-handed checkouts I was so fast, forty items a minute, that I often had to call the front-end controller, the Prima packs in the trolley and then reconcile it so that on the receipt because the register couldn’t keep up. The trolley looked like a bomb had hit it, but that’s another story for another day.

Ok, times I’d be growled at for not packing the trolley neatly enough. I argued, you can have fast or neat, you can’t have both! Pick one! The end!

I’m also going to seriously kill the carer who insists on doing up the buttons on my men’s pyjama tops because at 1am when I’m naked and trying to quickly get into my pj’s, I cannot work out why it’s not as easy as it should be. It’s because one of my very caring but not so thoughtful, lovely assistants has done the buttons up on my tops.

Comedy

You have all heard comedy is the best medicine. Well, it’s probably not going to cure cancer or get my Pap Smear done. But however, I’m just suggesting laughing is better than crying.

Patch Adams

I will record comedy on late night TV on my Toppy (Topfield) and these days as my kitchen, lounge and dining area is all in one. I will put on some comedy while I cook, for company. A young Aussie comedian is talking about how hard it is to get a fitted sheet on a bed. So,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWc2tpYRx48

In the last place I lived I had three bedrooms; I know rich right! No, it was a dump, it was hot and the landlord was a creep. But it allowed me to have a study and a spare room with a single bed for when friends or family stayed over.

The sheet changing day, I would have my morning carer take the sheets off, so I could get them in the machine, then on the line. I would usually get out clean sheets and put them on the bed so my next carer could just get stuck in. Mostly. This particular day I had gotten distracted, didn’t get them out. My next carer arrived, no sheets. She asked which colour I wanted and I suggested she choose. Honestly, I am in my ‘Oh white sheets place, I get it now’ faze and the other set I have is say a French Chocolate-grey. (Yes! I’m that chick)

Now, also whatever sheet is in the washing machine, the other goes on the bed. Two weeks on, two weeks off. I wear pyjamas, so it’s not an eeeww moment. I told her to pick.

She called to me from the bedroom to the lounge several times and not waiting to be distracted, I suggested she choose.

I thought I was empowering her to be independent. I’m like so, made to be a mum, right? This carer is still my regular and I really love her. She is often mistaken as my daughter, but that’s another story.

Eventually, she came to me with a barrage of questions and I put what I was doing aside and went with her to the bedroom. I got to the door and stopped.

“Are you sure these are for this bed?” she asked me.

The sheets were light purple, they went on the single bed. Oh, sweet Jesus! I just laughed.

I told her I was laughing with her, not at her and she informed me how hard it had been to get it on the bed.

But she didn’t find it as funny as I had. I suggested I wouldn’t do it to her again, however I did ask if she struggled again, could she come get me so I could watch.

I call this carer my Girl Friday and these days she is also my Girl Wednesday and once a month, my Girl Tuesday. We laugh a lot as we had built up the rapport to do that which is nice.