One hand clapping? Maybe not But here’s what you can do when your wing’s in a sling

Even though my broken arm is out of the cast, I’ll be one-handed for yet a while. Meanwhile, I have discovered a number of things I can do with one hand. For example:

. Crack an egg. Place the egg in a cereal bowl, smack it smartly with the bottom of a spoon and crunch it a bit with your fingers to make the egg-y contents spill into the bowl. Throw away the eggshell. You may have to fish out some stray pieces. Pour the egg into frying pan or cookie dough.

. Bake cookies. The key here is feet. Use your good hand to measure flour and other ingredients. This is tricky because the measurements won’t be exact, but close enough. The cookies will taste just as good as long as you don’t lose control of the salt box.

When you get to the point where you need to start mixing stuff together, such as the egg, sugar and shortening, sit down in a chair, place the bowl on the floor between your feet to hold it steady and using a sturdy wooden spoon, stir as hard as you can. Go back to the counter, add the flour and the other stuff to the bowl, sit down and mix some more. Use a scoop to fling the cookie dough onto the cookie sheet.

. Open jars. Feet also come in handy for opening jars and bottles. Place the container between your feet, bend over, grasp the cover firmly with your fingers and twist. One of those circles of rubbery grip material helps. If the container is a plastic bottle, be careful not to squish it too hard between your feet, otherwise it will gush out and you’ll end up standing in a sticky puddle of iced tea.

. Get ice cubes out of the tray. For this amazing move you’ll need to employ your knees. Place the ice cube tray between your knees and twist, but not too hard. Otherwise the ice cubes will go skating across the kitchen floor. Once you have loosened the ice cubes, pour them onto the counter and place them in a resealable plastic bag, which you will discover you can close with one finger of your good hand if you use the elbow of your cast to hold the bag down. Toss the bag into the freezer, but be warned that to get it open again, you will need to use your teeth.

. Work. I am writing this column using voice-activated software called Dragon Naturally Speaking 7 Preferred. Yes, I’m talking to my computer and as I do so what I say appears as text on my computer screen. It is technological magic that costs about $150, but requires someone with two functioning hands to install.

At first I wasn’t sure I would be able to compose a piece of writing by dictating it, but with a little practice I found it easy. If I stutter or say the wrong words, I can say “scratch that” and the offending sentence goes away. If I tell Dragon to copy, cut and paste text, it will do so. It lets me navigate, select, format and insert text using only my voice. If I want the microphone to come on, I can say, “Wake up.” If I want it to shut off I can say, “Go to sleep.” Or I can press the + key for those functions.

Dragon is not always as accurate as I would like it to be. Often it struggles to recognize proper nouns – such as Wytopitlock. When I need to use such words I simply stop speaking, type the word and resume speaking. However, Dragon is astonishingly accurate at giving the correct spelling of many other proper nouns. An emergency room physician at St. Joseph Hospital told me that Dragon Naturally Speaking 9, which he uses for dictating medical notes, is very accurate.

Dragon has been trained to recognize only my voice. It will not pick up other voices and add that chitchat to my opus. Training Dragon to recognize my voice was simple, easy and did not take much time.

Dragon, it seems to me, could play a part in preventing repetitive motion stress from gumming up ligaments and connective tissue in wrists and elbows. In my opinion, Dragon would save a bundle on workers’ compensation costs if those of us who keyboard for living used it even part of the week.

One last thought about my current state of one-handedness: By the time the cast was removed from my arm on April 1, I was very tired of opening stuff with my teeth.

Snippets

Visit www.maran.com/eknitting.html to access online, for free, “Illustrated Knitting and Crocheting.”

Visit www.lionbrand.com to find free prayer shawl patterns.

Learn the Lost Art of Sock Darning with Michele Goldman 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday, April 12, at Fiberphilia in Orono. The cost of the class is $35. Call 866-3423 for more information.

ahamlin@bangordailynews.net

990-8153