10 Pretty Cool Things About Hearing Loss

It is only when we silent the blaring sounds of our daily existence that we can finally hear the whispers of truth that life reveals to us, as it stands knocking on the doorsteps of our hearts.
– K.T. Jong

1. I can have peace and quiet whenever I like, simply by turning off my cochlear implant processor – this is particularly useful when a migraine strikes

2. Thunderstorms and other loud noises don’t wake me up in the middle of the night (and David’s snoring doesn’t bother me in the least!) because I can’t wear my processor to bed

3. My iPod brings the music right into my brain, via my processor, and makes me happy that I can still appreciate music I knew before I lost my hearing (and new music that I really work at getting to know)

4. I lost my hearing at the most opportune time in history – after the advent of the internet and text messaging – which has made communicating with others so much easier than it otherwise would be

5. It provides endless amusement when I repeat what I think someone said and it turns out that I was nowhere close to getting it right

6. I don’t use it often, but “the hearing impaired card” occasionally comes in handy, particularly with telemarketers who invariably immediately give up

7.  Being one of only about 150,000 or so people in the world who have cochlear implants

8. Reading lips, a skill I learned after losing the hearing in one ear as a kid and then perfected once I lost the hearing in the other ear, really comes in handy, especially when watching professional sports!

9. The experience of losing my hearing showed me just how much I was loved by the people in my life and allowed me to easily weed out the people who were not worth the energy I wasted crying over losing them

10. Living as a hearing impaired person who normally “passes” for a hearing person made me realize that everyone – literally every person I come across – struggles in his or her own way, whether or not the struggle is evident on a day-to-day basis

This list was, perhaps not surprisingly, much harder to come up with than the 10 bad things.  I’m glad I did it, though – reminds me of how lucky I still am.

10 Crappy Things About Hearing Loss

Forgive me when you see me draw back when I would have gladly mingled with you.  My misfortune is doubly painful to me because I am bound to be misunderstood; for me there can be no relaxation with my fellow men, no refined conversations, no exchange of ideas.  I must live almost alone, like one who has been banished; I can mix with society only as much as true necessity demands.  If I approach near to people a hot terror seizes upon me, and I fear being exposed to the danger that my condition might be noticed.
–Ludwig Van Beethoven

1. Almost always being literally the last person to hear about something

2. Poorly captioned television programs and DVDs (We’ve been watching all the West Wing seasons in order – the first 5 all had English subtitles; seasons 6 and 7 only have French and Spanish subtitles.  They’re captioned, but on our big TV, for some reason, the DVD player doesn’t decode captions, so we’ll have to watch them upstairs on the other TV. I don’t understand it, but it pisses me off.)

3. People who assume I’m stupid when I tell them I have a hearing impairment and ask them to repeat what they said

4. Missing important PA announcements on the Metro or at the airport

5. Baby-sitting the Princess and Conductor after bedtime, wondering and worrying whether I’ll hear them if they call for me (This often results in multiple trips to the hallway outside their bedrooms, waiting and straining to hear something and hoping when I don’t that I haven’t missed anything.  And this leads to worrying what I’ll do when it’s my own kids.)

6. Finding myself without batteries to my cochlear implant processor at rather inopportune times (You’d think, after 5 years, I’d never leave home without batteries, but because I don’t carry a purse or bag as a rule – except to work – this happens more regularly than I’d like.)

7. Not being able to locate the direction a siren is coming from while driving, and often not recognizing that the noise I hear is a siren until the police car or ambulance is already bearing down on me

8. That new (read: post-2002) music is, for the most part, just noise to me (This is probably the one that’s the hardest for me to take.)

9. The difficulty I have now in understanding people with foreign accents (This used to be no problem for me, and I’m sad that its become so hard.)

10. The sheer amount of energy it takes – particularly when I’m tired or sick – to focus on listening to and understanding what people are saying, especially in large meetings or settings where what’s going on is not captioned in any way (like at a play)

I’ll be back tomorrow with 10 good things!  Happy 4th!

Housekeeping

Soul is the ability to manipulate adversity so that it becomes tolerable.
– Unknown

I want to apologize for not being around much lately.  I spent the last two months, up until about two weeks ago, in over my head emotionally, and I just had no energy to spare for anything except getting through the day.  I appreciate everyone’s kind words and encouragement throughout all of this.  It really means a lot to me.

I’m pleased to report that I am finally starting to feel like myself again, and I can’t tell you how relieved I am.  Counseling has helped a lot (and I won’t lie, there’s also a medicinal component to all of this), and I feel hopeful and happy again.  The depression I experienced was clearly situational, which is not to say it was David’s fault by any means, only that moving in with him has triggered some things I clearly need to deal with from my past in order to move ahead with him.  I’m working on those things and looking forward to our future together.  It’s hard work, to be sure, but so worth it, and I feel like the crisis point has passed.

Anyway, I’ve been doing some updating to the various pages here, the blog roll in particular, so check it out.  I also decided to bite the bullet and do National Blog Posting Month, or NaBloPoMo, as you can see by the handy little badge over there on the left.  That means I’m pledging to post every day for the entire month!  That’s kind of daunting, but I’m going to give it a shot in an attempt to revive things around here.  I don’t have any idea where to start, since I’ve been so sporadic for so long, but we’ll see what I come up with!  Wish me luck!

Three Things Thursday #22

Police arrested two kids yesterday.  One was drinking battery acid and the other was eating fireworks.  They charged one and let the other one off. [Rim shot!]
– Tommy Cooper

1. We have tickets to tomorrow night’s Braves-Nationals game, so we’ll get our fireworks in without having to brave (ha) the Mall on Saturday!

2. Trader Joe’s Chicken Tikka Masala – I had this for lunch today, and holy cow, was it good.  And from frozen, even!  So yummy.

3. Summer days just like we’ve had all this week – mid-80’s, sunshine, breezy, not too humid.

What are you happy about or thankful for today?

Someone Else’s Memories

To understand a man, you must know his memories.
– Anthony Quayle

Whenever I visit my parents in central Pennsylvania, one of our favorite things to do together is go to auctions.  You would not believe the stuff people will pay good money for, and the stuff you can get for cheap, too.

Basically what happens is, someone dies and either has no family and no will, or the family has to sell the estate to pay debts or medical bills or something like that.  It’s actually quite sad sometimes.  I once opened the drawer of an old desk and found a half-used roll of address labels and an old to-do list.  I wondered if he died before he got everything done.

Sometimes, if no one bids on an item, they start adding stuff to the lot – a box of miscellaneous kitchen tools, a chipped vase, a box of books; whatever’s not a big ticket item – until finally someone takes the lot for a dollar or two.  This is how I came into possession of someone else’s memories.

What I’ve got is a small box of somewhere between 300 and 400 color slides.  The ones that are dated range from March 1965 t0 June 1976, but there are many that do not have dates.  They are pictures of weddings, birthday parties, Christmases, babies, first days of school, summer vacations, fathers and sons, mothers and babies, and all of the other wonderful things that go into making up a person’s life.

When we got them home, no one knew what to do with them.  I think I intended to look at them once using my mom’s slide projector and then give them away because I hated the idea that this person’s lifetime of memories would be unremembered forever, but I never got around to it.  My parents brought the box to me a couple of weeks ago along with the rest of the few things I’d left in their garage.

I don’t know what to do with them.  I don’t have a slide projector, but I can’t bear to throw them out.  Any ideas?  If anyone wants them, I would ship them to you (my treat); just leave me a comment or email me and we can make arrangements.  Otherwise, I’ll probably pack them up and stick them in the closet and find them when we move out and wonder what to do with them all over again.  I don’t mind being the guardian of his memories a little while longer.

Three Things Thursday #21

The cherry tomato is a marvelous invention, producing as it does a satisfactorily explosive squish when bitten.
– Miss Manners

1. Our tomatoes, finally turning red!

2. Our cucumbers, finally revealing themselves!

3. My (recently) new external hard drive, which saved my computer from being overrun by photos.

Lots of sad news in the entertainment world this week, but there’s still good things happening.  What are you happy about or thankful for today?

Off to Neverland

“If you enter this world knowing you are loved, and you leave this world knowing the same, then everything that happens in between can be dealt with.”
– Michael Jackson

I’m not a fan girl, but anybody who grew up in the eighties lived through this phenomenon, and today is a sad day, I think.

I remember creating dance routines with neighborhood friends to this album and charging our parents (and anyone else we could con into coughing up the dough) a quarter each to see us perform one late summer afternoon.  I also remember being terrified of the Thriller video, especially at the end when his eyes turn green and creepy.

He certainly defied the norm, to put it mildly, particularly in the last 15 years or so, but life could not have been easy for him, even before that.  I hope he’s at peace now, and I wish his children and family solace in what is sure to be an incredibly difficult and trying time.

Three Things Thursday #20 (Very Belated Edition)

A desire to be in charge of our own lives, a need for control, is born in each of us.  It is essential to our mental health, and our success, that we take control.
– Robert F. Bennett

Wow.  Sorry for such a delay.  I wasn’t home Thursday night until late and I was too tired to post, and then Friday I was busy, and yesterday it was on my list of things to do (along with about 20 other things) and it just got lost in the shuffle.

At any rate, here’s this week’s list:

1. Taking charge of your mental health

2. Those giant 6- or 8-seat strollers day care centers use to take their tiny charges out for walks on nice days

3. Wii – I’m not a video game girl, really, but Wii is a totally different experience.  Aimee was here a couple weekends ago and we played for hours, till we were exhausted.  Yesterday, David and I played the new Grand Slam Tennis, where his Roger Federer beat my Rafael Nadal (at the French Open, no less, which would never happen in real life), and our doubles team of Bjorn Borg and Stefan Edberg lost humiliatingly to the Williams sisters.  So fun!

What are you happy about or grateful for today?

The Princess Turns 5

May you live all the days of your life.
– Johnathan Swift

And she’s as princess-y as ever, let me tell you.  Here she is, decked out in her birthday finery:

It’s the shoes that kill me.

There was trampoline fun for everyone!

There was a piñata – princess-themed of course.

David suggested I appreciated the irony of beating the princess-themed piñata to pieces (I’m anti-princesses).  He wasn’t entirely wrong.

There was a cook out and cake.  Before I say anything else, let me once again commend Molly on her cake craftiness.  She asked the Princess what kind of cake she wanted, and she made it happen.  That said:

Hannah Montana?  When did my sweet, innocent, princess-loving niece discover Hannah effing Montana?  God help us.

When I asked Nate if the Princess wanted anything special for her birthday, he told me that when he asked her, she said “Flip-flops,” so I headed to the flip-flop extravaganza that is Old Navy and picked out two pairs.  I knew which ones she’d love most, and I was right.  Here she is, modeling both her new dress from her other aunt, and her new favorite flip-flops:

I wish I’d taken video of this – she was sashaying back and forth in the living room like a model, flipping her hair, with her little hand on her hip like that.  I was dying.  She is too grown.  God, I love her.

Three Things Thursday #19

We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today.
– Stacia Tauscher

1. The Princess, who turns 5 today!

2. Dippin’ Dots.  It truly is the “Ice Cream of the Future”!

3. a comfy pair of scrub pants

What are you happy about today?