Tonight’s Trash Story, or “Which hand do I hold the cane?”

“Which hand do I hold the cane?”

Mom ended her daily health update e-mail, which the family started doing about a month into the Pandemic, with this question this morning. She used her cane while walking to the mailbox today because her knee hurt, and she didn’t know if she was doing it right.

I had a conference call starting.  I settled my phone into the $6 reading cradle I bought two of on Amazon because I like the one I got as a gift, but that one is still in my cubicle at work where it got the most use until the day home became the office. So I bought two.  I need one more.

I reminded myself to check on e-mail the next chance I got.

We learned today some do’s and don’ts about working remotely with a team and preparing for virtual mid-year performance conversation touchpoints.

I knew about, “Make video optional.”

I knew about, “Do something non-work related with your team once in a while on video.”

I knew about, “Use the same kind of trust building behaviors you would use in an office setting,” like listening, and not being distracted, and thanking, and asking for feedback, and all the other things nobody in Washington does any more.

I learned that there are company resources on stuff like “Video Ice-Breakers.”

I learned that video conferencing can be more exhausting than in-person contact because the images of the faces on the conference call screen are about the size a face would be on a person standing 2 feet in front of you, and that is so close that it triggers a fight or flight reaction, and living in fight or flight mode all day long can be exhausting, and I thought briefly how it must suck to be a squirrel like the one in my backyard who can no longer get up the greased pole to the bird feeder since I re-greased the pole this weekend.

The most surprising learning for me was “Don’t comment on the background.”

I guess that means I should stop following Room Rater.

Apparently, though, it’s OK to comment if the person’s background is a personal selection.  Who knows what’s right these days anyway?

I also learned that if you frame your questions correctly, you can influence how people answer the questions.  But you knew that, didn’t you?

I also learned that my neighbor’s wife had hip replacement surgery recently.  I kept encountering my neighbor as each of us wheeled our bins out in the same sequence and arrayed them on the curb in the same order with the same distance between them, and we stood 6 feet apart without masks and I asked him, “Are you guys doing OK?” and he told me about Geri’s surgery and he couldn’t go into the hospital and it felt like forever until the doctor called him.  I turned to get my last barrel and saw a human figure coming up the hill towards us with the sun at its back, and I couldn’t see if it wore a mask, and I decided the final barrel could wait in case I generated any more trash tonight.

I also re-learned that there are things you just don’t tell Roommate. Apparently, “Geri had hip replacement” is one of those.  Roommate’s problem with the news traversed many levels, but it wasn’t the news itself. First, I talked to a neighbor, while she doesn’t talk to anyone, except me. Second, I am the one bringing in the neighborhood gossip. Third, she doesn’t like the neighbors, doesn’t like the white vinyl fence they put up, doesn’t like that they once had a dog. Fourth, I would not join her in criticizing the neighbor for telling me about the hip surgery. Fifth, “Did he even ask you how you are doing?” Sixth, “No, I asked him, ‘Are you guys doing OK?’” Which is what we ask our neighbors these days.

I also read that there is a guy – a research scientist at Microsoft who’s considered a world expert in mixed reality. Then I learned a little about mixed reality.

I learned that the reason to keep work and home separate is that work will eventually encroach upon home.  I’ve been letting that happen, too. I’ve been taking breaks during the day, 15 minutes to half an hour, and then working until 7PM, making for an 11-hour day, which coincidentally is what my day used to be when I was commuting.  And the problem is, I’m taking breaks but staying at my work desk playing electronic Sudoku, so where I could have used the commute time for self-improvement, I’m not even getting the exercise I used to get walking to and from the bus stop, and I still don’t have those 6-pack abs. Doc says I need to maintain muscle mass and guard against falls.

I’ve been playing electronic Sudoku for better than 6 years now.  I started playing outside Yang Chow on Christmas Day around the onset of Parkinson’s – or rather the diagnosis, since the tremors started in early-2011, but the diagnosis came in late-2012.  So maybe 8 years.  My electronic Sudoku has 11 levels from Super Easy to Ultra Extreme, and in addition to standard Sudoku it has colors and squiggly shapes and extra regions, and while sometimes it seems I have seen a particular puzzle before, I can’t quite be sure. Tonight, after work, I solved an Ultra Extreme Squiggly Asterisk in 16 minutes.

I started playing Sudoku to keep my brain active, but now I use it to gauge my level of mental discipline.  16 minutes for an Ultra Extreme Squiggly Asterisk is pretty good. Too bad it came at the end of the workday.

Mom doesn’t like Sudoku; she does crossword puzzles to keep her brain sharp.  I used to read The New Yorker, but now the back issues rest in stacks all around my office.  I’m never going to read them, but I have learned that I didn’t get the throw-away gene.

By the time I got to my email, my sister in law had already answered the cane question.  It wasn’t the answer I would have thought. I had to look it up. You hold the cane in the hand opposite the leg that is giving you problems.

Turns out there’s lots of ergonomic instruction about canes on the internet, from how tall should your cane be in relation to you, to which hand do they go in, to how to go up or down stairs or ramps with them.  Turns out all the sites had the same ergonomic instructions, which I found oddly gratifying.   I didn’t think this morning that I would be learning this much about canes.

Then I spent 15 minutes searching to see if anyone had ever made a PSA or commercial with a succession of older people with different accents asking, “Which hand do you hold the cane?”

No spiders in the trash area tonight.