These May Help.......

here is a link to the audio version, in case you would rather listen to this blog: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdq5MT_Kr7E


Over the span of my life, I have been many things. Now, some of these things were, admittedly suggested to me while being shouted vehemently by other people and cannot be repeated in this venue, or in any other polite conversation. In fact, I would be pleased if they were never mentioned again. However, when I think about my life, all the things that I have become and accomplished, a few truths about myself do become glaringly obvious. One of which is the sobering reality that I am NOT an inventor. Oh, I have had my share of ideas over the years. In fact, one of those light bulb moments happened when I was in my early twenties. Back in the late 80's, a friend and I had the brilliant idea of putting a pizza on the barbecue. We used barbecue sauce, and the cheese had a very rich smoky flavor. It was delicious, a true stroke of culinary genius. But a month later, as I was driving past a Take-N-Bake pizza restaurant, I saw a sign that invited people to take home one of their pizzas and try it on the barbecue. I couldn't believe what I was seeing! That was MY idea, and at that moment I saw the potential earnings balloon from a successful invention begin to deflate. I saw profits and company stock swirling down a rather large drain.  One thing I do know for sure, though, is that my wife is probably pretty sick of hearing the whine in my voice whenever I tell that story, although I am not sure why. I have only repeated that particular tale of great tragic woe several thousand times to family, friends, strangers, and even neighborhood dogs. Basically anyone or anything with two ears that I can hold captive for five minutes.

If you have been reading the blogs that I have been writing for the past two and a half years, then you are familiar with all the ideas and thoughts that I have had. Gadgets that I have dreamed up that would simplify my life, from the Pants-Put'er'onr to the Back-Exploding Parachute. I imagined a restaurant, named Che'SpaZtic's, to a form of Ataxia karate, named Attack-Cia Karate. In my everyday journey through life, with Ataxia along for the ride, I continue to see and imagine things that could be possible, in my thinking anyway, and that could be used to help me along the way. Here are several more that I have recently come up with:

The Venetian Stairs.- Stairways everywhere, in every part of the world, would be required to be fitted to have this capability. The idea would be that every stairway would have a rod at the top and one at the bottom that could be accessed by a handicapped person and twisted so that the stairs would fold flat, like window shades, and become a ramp. Not a bad idea, huh? There should be an official watch group set up to go around and identify all the public hazards that are caused by stairs. Maybe I should form a group, named, Be Aware, Don't Forget Ataxians Living Life, or B.A.D. F.A.L.L. for short.

Spray On Clothing.- It has been argued that life is becoming too simple as we lean more and more on technology that is being designed to make our busy lives easier. That we are actually becoming dumber, while our phones and various gadgets become smarter. But what I am talking about here is not just another gadget or convenience for the general public. It is for those of us who, to varying degrees, are handicapped and struggle with every day chores, like getting dressed. The idea would be that another setting would be placed on the existing shower head which would allow a person to select their clothing for the day from their wardrobe. Once finished with their shower, they could again stand or sit under the spray, twist the knob to the last setting, and have the desired clothing applied. I am also thinking of a hand-held unit for those quick changes on the go.

Skinless Food.- More and more with the unrelenting advancement of time I am finding that a choke-free eating experience is, like a lot of other things that were so easily taken for granted, going into hiding, (they have gotten really good at this too because no matter how hard I look I can't find them). It's getting so that I can't even enjoy a cup of coffee without occasionally going for the violent liquid-spewing record. Actually, I think that tacking on a Liquid Emissions Event to the Olympic Iron-man competition would be appropriate. Contestants would run four miles, bike uphill five miles, swim in a strong current for two miles, snipe targets at a thousand yards, and then blow a mouthful of liquid thirty yards. But I digress. My main desire in this category would be apples that are grown without that pesky skin. I'd love to be able to pick up an apple and take a worry-free bite, like I did when I was a kid.

Self-Made Beds.- I know they freak out and worry some people, but I personally love fully-automated stuff. I know that right now several companies are working on the self-driving car. This would be really cool, and of the many benefits to this, one big one would be traffic safety and a reduction of all sorts of wrecks and preventable accidents. The only way I can see it working though is if everyone adopts the concept, and these cars don't have to try and share the road with people that will insist on driving themselves. But I'm not thinking about what could benefit me in a few years. I'm thinking about what could benefit me RIGHT NOW! After having just laundered and spent time making the bed, I can, with complete conviction, (imagine at this point that I am looking you right in the eye), say that I would unabashedly love to throw clean sheets on the bed and have them stretch themselves out, and tuck themselves in.

Self-Driving Screw Tops.- I know that I have written about my battle with the screw lid before, but at the danger of repeating myself, I feel that this particular topic cannot be overstressed. The screw top invokes in me a reaction that is much like Superman's response to Kryptonite. My legs go weak,(weaker), my vision blurs,(blurrier), and I get shaky,(shakier). Seriously, it takes me so long to accomplish this task that I could start to put a lid on a bottle around Valentine's Day and walk into the living room after a victorious struggle, only to find my family decorating the Christmas Tree! Okay, so that's a bit of a slight exaggeration....I would more likely find the family putting up Thanksgiving decorations. Really, it's not just the placing of the cap onto the bottle, which is also a problem not to be overlooked, it's the screwing of the cap so that all the grooves line up and the lid is sitting straight. Not at some kind of forty-five-degree angle, which is what usually happens during the first dozen attempts. Whenever I remove the angled lid so that I can take another run at it, I will always lose my grip and drop it. The worst is when I've dropped it for the fourth time and it rolls under the hutch in my kitchen. Well, then I just have to prepare for an extended journey down to the floor to retrieve the cap. It is a huge process, and all I am saying is that it would be nice if I could just hold the lid several inches from the bottle, it would attach itself, and begin to rotate its own way down the neck. That's all I'm asking...would it be so hard for someone to invent this?

Speaking of automated items, that leads to the last item that I would like to mention:

The Self-Removed Tamper-Proof Seal.- I realize that these are used for public safety, and they do give us a piece of mind to see the seal and know that no one else has been using our items in any way. But come on, the struggle to remove one has become, for me, a time to reflect upon my life and come to terms with whether or not I really need this particular item in the first place. I usually end up using my teeth, and that doesn't help either because I end up just getting a nasty paper/foil taste in my mouth and I give up. Maybe if the manufacturers would make the safety seal taste like the product hidden behind the armored covering it would act as a motivator. I'd be like," Hey, that's pretty good, I'm gonna keep going!" I'd then be motivated to do whatever it takes to get past the security barrier, instead of moving on to easier pickings. The way I see this happening is to have all products with a safety seal tied to an internal locking mechanism. Only when the item has been purchased, the bar-code has been scanned, and the item has left the store will it finally unseal itself.

I could keep going because there are literately hundreds of banes to my existence. It's funny, but I never noticed all the things I encounter that were never a problem until.....well, until they became a problem. But like always I find the best therapy to get me through is my ability and willingness to keep laughing at these things, and my attempts to overcome them.

Zipper Wars And The Great Power Cord Rebellion

here is a link to the audio version, in case you would rather listen to this blog: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rvq9xIe8iYA

There have always been skirmishes, conflicts, and battles, but THIS is a war. There is nothing as frustrating to me as a stubbornly entrenched zipper. On the surface it looks to be an easy ordeal to go from an open zipper to a closed zipper, but therein lies the problem.  For a person who doesn't have steady hands,  just successfully getting the two sides lined up together can be a major undertaking. After trying to get the little tine into the little receptacle five or six times, I look around for the hidden camera. I just hope I don't turn on the television one day and see some poor, sad little man comically struggling with his zipper, only to realize after laughing hysterically that the man on t.v., is in actuality, me!

Sometimes I wonder if the zipper was an invention that came from the mind of the person who invented the gag birthday candles that never go out no matter how many times you blow them. Just when you think you have them out they come back to life. As soon as I think I have the zipper beaten into submission and on it's knees it comes back to life and shows me that it still has some fight in it and a few tricks up it's sleeve to make my life difficult. This is usually shown by the two halves separating as fast as I can join them together because they were not lined up correctly, or the zipper will grab a piece of wayward fabric and shove it into the path of the closing teeth, much like the villain who ties the heroin to the train tracks, which will always result in the halt of any continuation of forward progress. I can almost hear the evil little zipper chuckling to its self, all the while twisting it's little black curly mustache, as I tug and pull to free the fabric so the forward momentum can continue.  Even after the zipper has been conquered and successfully taken all the way to the end, it still won't admit defeat and give up the fight, because zipping it up is only a partial victory. For example, I have a leather jacket, and all the zippers on it seem to think it's funny to twist the little pull handles so they are hanging in a direction that makes unzipping any of the pockets impossible. If I need to retrieve anything from these particular pockets I need to first excerpt myself and lose a pound of sweat before being allowed to gain entrance, because they've bound themselves into an impossible angle. It might be easier if I could just give a loud verbal command, like,"Open sesame"!

Now, before you suggest anything, let me just say that I know there are easier ways to go about this, and as much as possible I buy things with snaps, buttons, and/or velcro. But all of these, despite their levels of convenience, seem to always come with their own unique attitudes and special problems.

Cords are another thing that I have issues with.  If they are not jumping up off the floor to try and trip me as I am walking by, or stepping over them,  they are forever wrapping themselves around my ankles. I really don't understand their problem because I treat them nicely. I never harshly yank them out of the wall sockets or use them for a quick pick-up game of jump rope. I always keep them nice and straight and never twisted or allow them to become kinked. And I always wrap them up properly and store them with the equipment when I am done. But for some reason they have decided that this is not good enough and over the last several years they have begun to seriously miss-behave. I feel like I need to be a snake charmer just to vacuum my carpet. I'm not sure, but I think the problem may be that they overheard me talking about how nice it would be to have battery powered equipment. I think they feel their time is limited. And maybe it is.... but what do I know, it's just a theory!

Yes I know I could make my life a lot easier by just simply avoiding zippers and cords. But where is the adventure in that and where is the challenge, or fun?  Sure my poor coordination has made lots of things more challenging and hard to do, but to simply give up on everything because it has become difficult would mean to admit defeat and that I will never do. It just means that as my condition progresses I need to continually rethink the obstacles that lay before me, and draw up new battle plans.



























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Should You Choose To Accept This Mission.

here is a link to the audio version, in case you would rather listen to this blog:www.youtube.com/watch?v=jg_jTJP9dBU

As I grew up and experienced the sometimes wonderful, and at other times completely baffling world of childhood, I quickly realized that I was not as physically skilled as the other kids. This is an area that I have already extensively covered in previous writings, so I will not re-visit the subject. However, one of the ways in which I DID resemble all the other children was in my love for television. I grew up spending three solid hours most Saturday mornings sitting in front of the tube in my pajamas, eating cold cereal, and watching Bugs Bunny elude Elmer Fudd, Scooby Doo solve mysteries as he cruised around in the Mystery Van, and Johnny Quest go on all sorts of adventures. Those were the days that were ruled by t.v. networks, and our available choices were limited to five channels. One of those was a public broadcasting station, which catered mostly to adults, so in my world there really were only four channels. That is until the day that I discovered that the public station showed Monty Python every Saturday night at 11 p.m. Then my world expanded and it was back to having FIVE viable channels.

Really though, the other four networks showed most of everything that my young mind could want. From The Wonderful World Of Disney, and Gilligan's Island, to The Six Million Dollar Man, and Mission Impossible. I loved Mission Impossible, and when I wasn't pretending to be Steve Austin, a man barely alive who was rebuilt and could now pull a cement-encrusted metal pole out of the ground and throw it like a paper javelin, I was accepting the newest mission from my superiors because my team and I were the only ones who could get the job done. I was always on the lookout for the next tape recorder, the one that would self destruct after a few seconds, or any other method that my boss would choose to relay my instructions. These things only ever existed in my make-believe world, and I never did receive the outside summons to embark on any clandestine missions, impossible or not.

I never received any external summons, but thirteen years ago at the age of thirty eight, I did accept delivery of an internal call to a version of Mission Impossible, named Ataxia Impossible. Actually, I didn't so much as accept the delivery as I had it thrust upon me, and over these last few years it has been like watching a movie. A movie where the main character will be pardoned and not sent back to prison if he will just successfully perform a task that seemingly only he can perform. You know the kind of story that I'm referring to. There is always lot's of action, and usually at least once or twice things will really look bleak for the main character, but in the end everything comes together in a neat little package and the hero gets his pardon and lives happily ever after. I accept the missions, but I never get the pardon.

An aspect of the Mission Impossible show that kept me enthralled as a kid were all the gadgets that the team got to use. My favorite would have to be the rubber masks that they made. When they put these disguises on, they transformed themselves into another person, and literally could, and would, fool anybody. Unfortunately, the missions I am called on to engage in do not require me to do, or perform, the same kind of visual trickery, but to just look like my boring self. I am a master at gaining weight, but sadly, this is not a skill that will help me complete a tough assignment. Tough ones, like the weekly cutting of my nails, shaping my beard with an electric trimmer and unstable hands, or brushing my teeth with a tool that could either be used to clean my teeth or continually prod and jab my gums are unfortunately not currently useful to anyone else but me. It's too bad, and it makes me feel like having a snack.....maybe even three.

I am considered to always be on active duty, and as such, can be presented with a mission at any time of the day or night. Usually my day is made up of dozens of operations, ranging from big to small. Just one example of a task that I have been internally called on to do in the past, and probably will be again in the future, is to jump up and answer the door. The mission is presented to me in a way, that should I accept,  may lead to a stubbed toe, a bruised shoulder or hip from walking into things, or a out-of-control dance followed by an epic fall. I could of course refuse to accept these missions that are presented to me throughout the day. But to do so would mean that I would absolutely do nothing. That's not an option. I just need to think about what I am doing, move slowly and with purpose, and modify how I do things while achieving the same results.

It's not Ataxia Impossible, it's Ataxia Possible, so never give up my friends. As always, I wish you all the best.