Making intelligent adaptation requires ingenuity and a little help from the retail business. For example, I can no longer make a tight fist. I can do things to slow down process, but I can’t reverse it.
Most of the time it's only a mild inconvenience, except when it involves medication, specifically pills. I take very tiny pills that slip from my hand leaving a trail of them in my wake. If so, you may be reasonably asking yourself, why I'm carrying them about the house at all. I dose throughout the day and I’m taking them to the pill case in my purse. I don’t always find the ones I drop, but sometimes the cat does. On those days kitty has one very, very long nap with colorful dreams.
When you live with weak hands coupled with no handy source of upper body strength, the gauntlet to run is opening stuff. For most people in Married-World this is not a problem. No matter how grim the marriage, someone will usually take the lid off the pickles for you if for no other reason than to have one himself.
My first gadget was, you guessed it, a jar opener. It was a decision spawned out of rage. I tried to open a jar of peanut butter and couldn’t do it. In a fit, I took a screwdriver and a hammer and gouged a hole in the top. There were a number of unsatisfactory aspects to this approach not the least of which was picking out slivers of red plastic from the jar lid embedded in the peanut butter.
After a bit of looking, I found this. It has a substantial grip that I can apply enough pressure to turn. See the arrow? That shows the direction to turn should you forget the reminder my 40 year-old son taught me. "Just remember Mom, it's righty-tighty and lefty-loosey." (He is very secure in his manhood.) Guarantee you if you say it out loud a couple of times you won't forget which direction to turn the screwdriver should you be using one for its designed purpose.
The circular bit is a heavy, non-slip material that goes under the jar to prevent the jar from turning and slipping as you are turning the top. The previous photo show it in storage mode and the two pieces actually stay together, even in the junk drawer.
To the left is the wonder tool in action. I shouldn't be flip. It works. There was only one jar I wasn’t able to open with it, and it was because the jar mouth was too large for the vice to get the required grip on the lid. In that case, I merely walked outside and asked the first bearer of upper body strength who came along to take the lid off. Improvisation is a handy skill.
It's an OXO product. Worth every penny I paid for it. They have two other models as well.
MORE FUN WITH OPENERS !
This is for pull tabs. Got to be able to get into my Diet Cokes without tools. I bought this for soups with pull tabs which are bigger and much stronger. Before I getting this,
I was using my trusty screwdriver to pull the tab up and then pliers to pull the lid off, clearly not the one smooth motion the soup canners intended.
A brief pause for reflection on my emotional state. Having soup being flung about the kitchen causes me to weep in frustration, then I get mad because I'm reduced to opening cans of soup, which aren't that good anyway, with pliers and a screwdriver, then I start to howl because I only eat that soup so I won't go eat a Sonic burger with Tater Tots which will go straight to everything below my waist, and that thought causes more crying because my years of a flat belly and firm hips are gone, and if I lose 25 pounds I won't get them back, and that thought sends me and the cat looking under the refrigerator for dropped pills.
But...sometimes the gods smile, and I found this thing which does a pretty good job with soup cans.
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