Messy And Difficult

I woke up hungry today. Or perhaps if I didn't wake up that way, by the time I was finished my morning routine, I was certainly hungry. Not famished, but hungry enough to be willing to make my own brunch. Yes, it was well after noon by the time I was dressed and ready to cook, so I am loathe to claim it as breakfast, notwithstanding that I am breaking my fast.

So I decided I would make myself some breakfast, a real breakfast. Bacon, eggs, an orange broken into segments, some prosciutto and swiss cheese, and of course, a coffee. This is not a trivial task for me. My limitations with respect to the stove, moving about in the kitchen, and handling fine motor tasks make it a bit of a challenge. But I was up for the challenge.

Making breakfast was mostly uneventful, unless you count the small burn on the end of my thumb, the eggshells in the frying pan, and then those self-same eggshells on the floor, and the general level of mess. The burn on my thumb was a function of taking the frying pan from the stove to the sink in order to wipe it clean from grease after frying the bacon. In order to make a move like this, I need to brace one hand on the counter as I turn in my wheelchair from facing the stove to facing the sink. My hand slid down the frying pan handle, ending up with my thumb pressing against the pan itself. Nothing serious, just a little thing.

The eggs were a challenge on two fronts. First, cracking the eggs into the pan is difficult for me. I have to hold one hand on the stove front to make sure I don't fall over into the stove itself. I crack the eggs with the other hand. I've pretty much always cracked eggs one handed so this is not a big deal. On the other hand, my hands have weakened enough, just barely enough, that I have to push a bit harder to crack an egg. This inevitably over-cracks them, putting eggshells in the pan along with the egg. So I did my best to pick out the bits and pieces.

Then I turned to throw the eggshells into the garbage. The problem is that my fine motor skills have deteriorated, so I am a very bad shot these days. The only way I can hit the garbage can for sure is to have my hand, contents loaded, right over the top. I failed in this respect, missed the can, and ended up having the pick the shells up off the floor.

There are lots of little things like this which happen every day. Imaging every time you picked something up or put something down, you stood the chance of shaking, breaking, or missing altogether. I would love to have a day where I didn't spill something, knock something over, or drop something on the floor. But this is my life now, messier and more difficult.