Do It Myself Blog – Glenda Watson Hyatt

Man! I have been home for a week now, after an amazing trip and Washington, DC, and I have done next to nothing. After being too busy for several months, my tank was on empty. In fact, after getting home from the airport last Saturday, I slept from 4pm to 10am! Never in my life have I slept for eighteen hours straight!

This week I have focused on refueling my tank:

• I have slept for as long as I needed.
• I have eaten and drank when I was hungry and thirsty. Darrell introduced me to Booster Juice. Those are nummy and could become habit-forming!
• I have vegged on the couch, watching mindless television. Yesterday, with the heat and the air filled with smoke from the forest fires, I managed to veg guilt-free for the entire day! I didn’t have any energy to do anything else.
• I have spent time with my husband without feeling I need to get back to work. We celebrated on twelfth anniversary on Monday!
• I have listened to my iPod on shuffle, with the occasional Christmas carol mixed in. I’m a bit surprised by how listening to my own music, which I haven’t heard for a couple of weeks, has really boosted my energy and is getting my mojo flowing again. 

How do you refuel your tank when you are running are empty?

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Somewhere in my possession I have a letter from a medical specialist, written when I was young, stating my diagnosis – quadriplegic athetoid cerebral palsy, that I am functionally non-verbal and that I require 24-hour nursing care.

That letter surfaced to consciousness while I have been feverishly working on my presentation for the Plain Talk Conference – a conference on communicating plainly and clearly in the health industry – to be held in Alexandria, Virginia, next week!

I have also been making arrangements for the four-day trip. A tour of Washington, DC, may also be on my itinerary! I’ll be traveling alone; without a nurse attached.

Why am I sharing this?

Letters are written, notes are made in files. Sometimes these words are necessary to “play the game” to get the service, the equipment or the medication necessary when living with a disability.

But, those written words do not define who you – or a loved one with a disability – are. Leave those words on the paper, in the file. Only you can choose the words that define and describe who you truly are, your own truth.

The words I’m choosing to define myself today, at this moment, include:

I am a creative and innovative solopreneur who happens to have cerebral palsy and uses an electric scooter for mobility. I do have a significant speech impairment and, because of that, I have developed a unique way to deliver riveting presentations. At times I do require assistance; my virtual assistant and editor have been invaluable these last few weeks. Today I am too busy to be disabled.

What words do you choose to define and describe yourself today?

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Liz Strauss continually shares nuggets of wisdom that leave me pondering and savouring it in my mind until I’ve fully sucked out all of the flavour, all of the meaning. 

During her keynote at this year’s SOBCon (Successful and Outstanding Bloggers Conference), she tossed out another nugget of wisdom:

You’re building a barn, not a coliseum.

I have been pondering, savouring those words since April 30th. While busily building the Blog Accessibility Mastermind course and website over the last few weeks, I’ve realized there are three points to Liz’s words:

1. A barn is not huge.

Coliseums are monstrosities; barns are not. Start with something small.

I had been intending to launch Blog Accessibility Mastermind (BAM) since September, but writing the thirteen lessons was a daunting task and other commitments kept distracting me. Reframing BAM from a 13-lesson comprehensive course to a 6-lesson introductory course made the project more manageable, more doable. The project was then possible to get off the ground; revisions and additions can come later.

2. A barn is solid, not finely polished.

A barn is solidly built and serves it purpose: to house livestock. The walls are not finely sanded and flawlessly painted. This is not imperfection; it’s beauty, in it’s own way.

My main focus is building solid content for the individuals who are kindly paying to learn something new. Although having a forum in which members could discuss course content and share ideas would be nice, finding an accessible forum application and setting it up is time consuming. Using the comment section within the members’ area will work equally as well and is something familiar to the members who are bloggers and know how to interact in the comment section.

3. Actually, it’s a barn raising.

Reminiscing my Little House on the Prairies days, a farmer didn’t build a barn. The community came together to raise barns, with each individual contributing his or her skill or talent.

For someone who, in the past, has tried to do everything herself, to control everything herself, this was the most difficult point to learn. Seeing the strengths and talents in others is easy, but then stepping back to allow them to do what they do best – and accepting how they do it – is the difficult part.

However, in the end, the key to a successful barn raising is accepting the talents and energy from others as gifts and graciously welcoming them into the community. Their wanting to be involved in the project is a testament to the barn being raised.

Once the barn is raised, all those involved join in a celebration meal. Since hosting such a celebration with fried chicken and apple pie isn’t possible virtually, I would like to publicly thank those involved in the raising of Blog Accessibility Mastermind:

• SOBCon co-founders Liz Strauss and Terry Starbucker for inviting me to present at SOBCon09, which laid the foundation for this barn;
• The Random Twitter People (aka Paul Merrill, Deb Brown, Becky McCray, and Jon Swanson) for their brainstorming, clarity-finding and kick-butting;
• Mary-Lynn Foster for her service as a sounding board;
• Oscar Gonzalez for finding the right tool to make a tedious task a breeze;
• Jason Teitelman, Tony and the graphic guys at BlogCatalog for the free ad;
• Charles Pennell for tracking down the "pesky" blue and replacing it with mauve in the sidebar;
• Miss Dazey for being the official PayPal buy button tester and for her energetic cheerleading;
• Grant Griffiths for his enthusiastic tweets and support on launch day;
• Lori-ann Engel for her virtual assistance services – she makes me look good;
• My childhood friend Karen Tsang for writing a rockin’ sales page with me;
• To those I may have missed here, thank you for your never-ending support.
• And, last but definitely not least in any way, my wonderful husband Darrell for his unwavering support, patience and understanding, for keeping me well stocked in chocolate and for the ever increasing runs to Tim Horton’s for a caffeine fix.

When the time comes to raise your barn, you can count on me.

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A few views from around my neighbourhood this week…

I have been watching these two cranes from my home office window:

They are fascinating when in operation. The interlocking pattern of triangles, the arms and the pulleys dance when both are in action. With two more towers still to be built, I’ll be fascinated for several more years to come. Does that make me a geek girl?

With the forested lot next our complex now sadly cleared to make room for more housing, the lot now needs to be connected to sewer and water. That means digging up our road:

With more construction slated for our quiet street, navigating around heavy machinery will be necessary for a while.

Heading into my office this morning to continue building my membership site, the magnet on my board jumped out at me, “The road to success is always under construction”.

I am definitely on the right road to success then!

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Saturday afternoon found Darrell and I making an unplanned trip to the vet and having my Faith kitty sedated for x-rays and blood tests. The results indicate my furry baby has hyperthyroidism and early signs of kidney disease. Oh lovely!

Speaking with the vet about the test results yesterday, there are three ways to treat hyperthyroidism:

1. Medication: one pill twice a day for life, or
2. Surgery: to remove the thyroid, but might not get all of the gland if some is further down in the chest, or
3. Radiation: at a Vancouver clinic. From my crash course in feline hyperthyroidism on Sunday night, cats are then in isolation for two weeks. And, the procedure is expensive.

Leaving hyperthyroidism untreated, at least at this point, can lead to severe illness, kidney failure, seizures and such. Not something I want my cat to go through. Since the last two treatment options sound too drastic right now (I’d need to be sedated first!), that only leaves the medication route.

Now, Faith is a loving, purring, affectionate cat…with me…most of the time. I call her my puppy-cat. But, only when it’s on her terms. Other times, when she is scared or threatened, she lashes out…with all of how ever many claws she has! Getting her into her carrier to take to vet left my left hand looking like ground meat!

The thought of giving her a pill twice a day for the rest of her life (or mine!) was: Yeah, right! How the heck am I going to catch her, pry open her mouth, pop in a pill and make her swallow…twice a day…without looking like ground meat permanently? I love my cat dearly and will anything I can to give her a health and happy life, but let’s get real here!

The vet gave me twenty pills – one per day to start – to try to get into Faith any way I could. He was as skeptical as I was.

On the wheel home, I began doing what I do: creative problem solving. By the time we arrived home, I had an idea.

I still had several cans of giblets with gravy left from several weeks ago when I was trying Faith on different foods after learning the long trusted Purina brand is filled with crap and could be the reason why Faith had been sick and lethargic earlier this year. She didn’t like the giblets, but she loved the gravy! If I dissolved a pill in a tiny bit of water and then mixed it with the gravy, perhaps the medication would end up in Faith without me needing to lose a body part!

I gave it a shot. Faith licked the bowl clean, spitting out the giblets. In theory, the medicine was now in her! I tried again this morning, making sure yesterday’s success was a fluke. Again, Faith licked the bowl clean. Yes! Two for two!

Great. But, there’s not point buying canned cat food for only the gravy. What I need is kitty gravy made and then frozen in ice cube trays. Then I pop out a frozen cube, thaw and dissolve in a pill. Faith thinks she’s getting a treat while, really, she’s getting her medicine without me losing a limb. A brilliant idea, even I do say so myself!

Mom has volunteered to concoct a kitty gravy. (Thanks, Mom!)

Creative problem solving at its finest.

Hopefully, Faith will soon be back on track to being her healthy, playful self and that she will resume her Chief Feline Officer’s duties shortly.

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