Legwork and Life, week of 6/26/19

This is Legwork and Life, where I track the legwork and opportunities in my career as an autistic advocate, and also describe parts of my adult autistic life, including my perspectives on everyday problems and situations.

The weirdness with my diaphragm seems to have worn off entirely, which I'm really glad of.  I don't really understand how this weeklong experience happened without any pain, and still had such important side effects, but the human body is a weird mystery, so whatever. 

Speaking of weird, I went with friends to go cattail pollen collecting!  You can use cattail pollen as flour, and we wanted to try it, so off we went.  It was quite an endeavor, what with it being hot out and having to push my way through the head-high cattails.  It's no jungle, but it's probably the closest I'll get to traversing something like that.  I didn't have sufficiently waterproof footwear, and quickly got soaked socks and such. 

I used a technique recommended by a seasoned harvester: grabbing a gallon jug, cutting a hole in it, inserting the pollen-laden cattail head, and shaking it.  This allowed me to collect mostly pollen in my efforts.  The stuff is bright yellow, as you'll see, and I was quickly covered in pollen.  Fortunately I'm not allergic. 

The results of my labors had to be sifted for bugs and plant fibers, which I did using a sieve to get the big stuff, and then cheesecloth for the smaller debris.

Fiber and bugs certainly won't kill you, but they'll mess up the texture of your baked goods.

The final result!

I want to say I was out there collecting for maybe 15-25 minutes, and we started collecting relatively early in the pollen window, so we had to search fairly hard for cattails with pollen.  Which is probably why the end results only came out to half a cup.  Still, that's more than enough for a recipe of pancakes, and that's fine with me.  If I like the pancakes and flavor, I'll get a larger batch next year.  

Other than that, everything is Summer Games Done Quick.  It's a charity event for speedrunning video games, complete with prizes, commentators, interviews, and lots of happy people.  This one sponsors Doctors Without Borders, which is a very deserving charity that helps people worldwide, and it will likely raise at least 2 million USD by the end of the event, mainly in micro-donations from thousands of video game lovers.  

As a child I was prohibited from playing video games, so I missed the chance to play a lot of the games that come up in events like these.  It's really cool to see them played so skillfully, and for such a great cause.  I've caught the runs of a few games that I did get to personally play, as well as some games I've never heard of before.  

I'm enjoying the event, but I do notice it can be kind of overwhelming on a sensory level.  Having someone almost always talking means my brain doesn't rest and focus as much.  That might just be a me thing, because I know some people put on the television for company or whatever.  I don't know, but either way, I've made sure to schedule in some "I'm not watching" time during games I'm not interested in watching.  Which is how I had time to write this post!  

The event will go until the wee hours of Sunday morning, which is why I tried to work ahead last week.  I mostly succeeded.  Whew.