Not Quite Right

 

Hey! It’s the Christmas Witch Doctor!

If I am boring myself enough with all my health related thoughts that I can’t stay awake to write them down, then there isn’t much chance that anyone else will find them gripping.  Or helpful.  Thus my procrastination when it comes to ending this blog-neglect thing I have going on.

But I seriously have NOTHING much else happening in my life just now.

Except maybe for Facebook where I read this little story about a nurse who was bathing her patient when he asked her, “Are my testicles black?”   So she checked them out for him and reassured him that everything looked just fine down there.

“Well, that’s great,” he said, “But what I asked you was ARE MY TEST RESULTS BACK?”

This is a perfect example of how I hear things, all mangled up and misconstrued and just not quite on the money.  W requested the other day from another room that I put play dough on the grocery shopping list.  That’s what I heard.  I think it could have been bagels or maybe Leggo.  I don’t know.

And when I went for more needle biopsies on my neck last week (follow-up from a year ago in case there are changes) the doctor told me when he was finished to keep the band-aid on for fifty hours.  That sounded odd, so I wondered if maybe he meant fifteen hours, but that seemed a strange time frame too.  A few hours??  Then he went on to talk about pain killers and results and another visit and I had to pay attention to all that so I forgot to ask for clarification on the band-aid issue.  I took it off when it started to itch.  I am still alive.

Whenever I ask W to repeat himself he gets annoyed and on my case about getting a hearing aid.  But I don’t want one yet.  And here are some of the reasons why I’m being stubborn about it.

1.  I have inherited my dads intolerance for noise.  He didn’t like the television or the radio blaring away either.  Or people who shouted when they talked.  Or a lot of different types of racket going on at once.  He liked peace and quiet.  Me too.
2. At night I can still hear clocks ticking and faucets dripping and dogs barking and husbands snoring.  I’d like to get deaf enough to NOT hear those things.  Then we’ll talk.  And I won’t be able to even wildly guess what you’re telling me, so won’t that be fun?
3. When I was an optician I found people in denial about their need for progressive lenses to be the most apt to dislike them and not adapt to wearing their new multi focal glasses.  I’ve heard it’s the same with hearing aids.  I don’t want to spend all that money on something until I’m sure I need it and really want it and will wear it and like it.  The option of being able to turn it off at will is certainly appealing.
4. Part of my hearing “problem” is no doubt my inability to pay attention.  My mind wanders off on tangents.  I zone out.  Teachers often remarked about how much time I spent day dreaming.  I’m still doing it.  Sorry, did you say something?
5. The things I hear are often way funnier than the things actually being said.  Who would want to give that up?

So, how do you like my new lazy Christmas decorating method where you don’t take anything ordinary away but simply add some holiday stuff to the junk you already have lying around?  Whoa, Martha’s got nothing on me.  If you’re disagreeing with that, I can’t hear you.

Nothing says Peace quite like an alien giraffe.

What Did You Say?

Today the weather was blustery and cold and I didn’t feel much like venturing out for my walk. It’s only going to get worse before it gets better and walking outside on the icy sidewalks will soon become treacherous. So today seemed like a good day to switch to plan B and do a fake walk on my mini trampoline. It’s low impact and makes me sweaty and short of breath, so the results are definitely similar. I just switched my weight from one side to the other in a bouncy fashion and then got my arms working as well (and after awhile couldn’t believe how slowly doing that made the clock move….)

Later when W asked me if I had gone for my walk I said “No, I did some dancing on the trampoline”. And he said “You did WHAT on your hands and knees??”

OMG, both of us being half deaf is going to be so much fun.

Dear Frankie

Last night I watched the movie “Dear Frankie”, a 2004 British drama available on Netflix.  That was the easy part of the “watch a movie” challenge for today – and the hard part is writing about it without giving away the entire plot.  So SPOILER ALERT!  I’m just going to go ahead and give away the entire plot.

Frankie is a 9-year-old deaf and mostly mute boy on the run with his mother (Lizzie) and his grandmother from an abusive father.  Frankie doesn’t know what they’re running from or the truth about his psychotic father (whose physical abuse is what caused Frankie’s hearing loss as a baby) (but we don’t find that out until much later) because his mother has been encouraging him to write letters to his absent da (Davey) and fabricating letters back in which the dad describes his exciting life at sea.

Well, no good can come of this kind of deception in the end, right?   Frankie becomes convinced that his father is taking a break from his exotic adventures and making his way back home to Glasgow, and that he is going to surprise them with a visit.  So Lizzie must make a tough decision: find another way to pacify Frankie’s desire to meet his father or tell him the awful truth.

With the help of a new friend Lizzie concocts a scheme to hire a man to impersonate Davey, and in walks Gerard Butler.  Well.  Who doesn’t love Gerard Butler??  I can’t think of anyone.  Lizzie gives him the letters after he accepts what she can pay him and he agrees to spend a day with Frankie.  Then both of them decide to spend a second day together, this time including Lizzie. It’s awkward, fun, strange, and a little heart wrenching in places.

When Gerard at the end of day two asks her how her husband could ever have left the two of them, Lizzie explains that she is the one who ran away and tells him the reasons why.  Lizzie has all kinds of self doubt about her decisions, saying she has kept up the letter writing thing because it’s a selfish way for her to ‘hear her sons voice’,  but Gerard says he thinks she’s a great mother for protecting her son.  Lizzie and Gerard share a kiss goodbye, and when he walks off down the street (with Frankie waving from an upstairs window) Lizzie discovers he has returned her payment envelopes, slipped into her jacket pocket.

Then Lizzie learns that the real Davey is terminally ill, agrees to visit him, finds out he’s still a complete asshole even though he’s dying and what’s the point, but she has a good enough heart to give him a picture of his son and a note and a picture that Frankie has made for him after being told how ill he is.  The real Davey dies.

Frankie turns out to be a lot smarter than the adults have given him credit for with all their deceit and little white lies.  He writes another letter, this time with the things he says letting his mother know that he has been aware for awhile that the stranger was not his real dad.  He lets them both know he will help his mother to get over her sadness, talks about school and his friends and football, and then closes the letter by saying he hopes the stranger will visit them again sometime.

And that’s how it ends, with Lizzie and Frankie staring off into the sunset.  Well, not really.  They’re sitting at the end of a pier looking out to sea.

Now all you need is a trailer to fill in the blanks and you can say you’ve seen the whole thing since I’ve effectively done it all for you.  You’re welcome.  Watch a movie for me sometime.

For Cin’s Feb Challenge/Witchy Rambles

Just Jazzy 149

“Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.”
― Mark Twain

Your words have power – speak kind ones.

Blue Music

…..easy come, easy go

Little high, little low

Any way the wind blows

Doesn’t really matter to me……

(Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen)

Bohemian Rhapsody

When I’m feeling down….

It’s rare for me to feel down unless I’m sick, or crazily tired, or have run out of coffee beans. And the last thing I’d think of doing when that happens is to pump up the music. Silence and darkness and sleep (and a trip to Starbucks) will make for a cheerier tomorrow.

The world is such a noisy place, sometimes my head pounds with the racket. W. turns on the radio and I switch it off. The tv is in the basement so I rarely hear it. I haven’t downloaded any i-tunes onto my phone yet….maybe I never will. When I lose my hearing I will no doubt be the happiest deaf person alive.

It’s not that I don’t love music; I just don’t want to be bombarded by it all the time. I think Bohemian Rhapsody is the best song ever written. I love Queen and a dozen other groups and artists, but in small doses.

And then there’s the music that can make me laugh – 2nd best song ever written – Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, Monty Python style.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlBiLNN1NhQ

I’m having a better day than these guys! Woohoo!

What Keeps Me Up at Night?

 

Sleeping (Photo credit: soylentgreen23)

Sometimes a book I can’t put down, or a computer or DS game I’m playing, or a painting or some other project that’s just this close to being finished. And now of course this Plinky site with all its damned compelling questions!Other than that, nothing really, I’m happy to say. I can sleep through thunder storms and ringing phones and sirens that wail. Barking dogs, midnight snacking husbands, wild parties on our street, or maybe even in our house, for all I know. I am little Miss Oblivious with a head full of nothing.

When I had babies one after the other (they were eighteen months apart in age) there was a long stretch of years where eight hours of uninterrupted sleep was a rare luxury. Then when they hit their teens I don’t know how they could have survived without such a sleep deprived worry wart for a mother.

So now maybe I’m making up for those lost nights when slumberland eluded me. I experience a wildly superior quality state of dormancy, where nothing short of the house catching fire can disturb me.

Or I’m going deaf. That’s also a possibility.