Cochlear implant, Deafness, Music

One Day More!!

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I know I should be listening to my Les Mis soundtrack because I’m going to the show tomorrow!! I’m so freaking excited I can’t even say it without exclamation points!!

I was listening to it, until my daughter came home. I had to take a chill out break and pull out my old Billie Holiday CDs, because she came home yesterday and was so excited to tell me they had learned about good old Lady Day.

I hadn’t listened to these in probably a decade so it’s interesting to hear how they sound with mechanical, bionic ears. It’s not pleasant, but it’s not terrible either. I’ve had to lower my expectations with music. The melody, the jazz, is quite soothing. I could get used to this, I think.

Anyway, back to Les Miserables!! We’re going tomorrow!! Though it’s the first day of March, so of course it’s supposed to snow. Typical Michigan. In like a lion. Bleh.

Food, Photos

I’m not a food photographer

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I like taking pictures of my food but sometimes I am so excited to eat, I forget. So here is the aftermath of my lunch today, roasted asparagus with a garlic vegan cream sauce. Made all by myself and it was delicious!! I don’t even like asparagus, really, but you throw on a the right topping and I’m good to go. I found the recipe for the sauce on Pinterest and it looked easy enough to manage so I gave it a shot. I’m so glad it turned out I’ll probably make it again tomorrow.

I’ve been doing more of this, taking risks with food, trying new things, and it’s been kind of fun. I still wouldn’t say I enjoy cooking as a whole, but I’ve discovered one thing I do love making: Soup! With soup you can throw things in and it doesn’t matter how it looks. Timing isn’t super important so there’s no rushing involved. It’s very relaxing, and when you’re done, you have a warm and comforting meal to either share with loved ones (if they’ll touch it) or to supply your lunches for the next week!

Now to find some dessert…

Piper

She sniffed out our hiding spot, apparently

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I have the box with the extra squeaky Kongs hiding in our bedroom closet. The only access to the closet is through our bathroom, so Piper doesn’t ever go in there because she’s afraid of our bathroom scale (watch the video, you’ll see what I mean). It’s good logic, right? Well, somehow she got a whiff of the Kong scent because she won’t stop whining at the bathroom door.

I decided to let her in (i.e. remove the scale) and sure enough she walked straight up to where the box was. Of course it’s on a shelf so she can’t reach it. And yes, I’m sort of torturing her, but it’s really for her own good. If I give her another ball, she stops eating and sleeping.

Coffee, Multiple Sclerosis, Visually Impaired

I’m the boss around here

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So, I was doing the dishes today and as I leaned over to put another clean dish in the drying rack I see that there is a full cup of coffee sitting in my Keurig. I stare at it for a second or two, trying to recall brewing a cup of coffee. No one else in this house drinks coffee, so it must have been me. Yet I can’t recall. The cup is cold to the touch, so it’s been there for some time. This worries me.

I wish I could say this is a rare occurrence for me. I wish I could say it happens every now and then if I’m rushed or exhausted or whatever. Because I know it happens to lots of people. My girl friends joke about it, reassuring me that it’s just a normal part of aging. But I don’t think that’s true. I think it happens more frequently to me than it ought to, and I have to be honest: That scares the S**T out of me.

I have multiple sclerosis, and anyone with multiple sclerosis understands that every teeny tiny symptom could be a start of a relapse, or it could be nothing. Fellow MSers understand that hovering cloud of doom, threatening to take over your body once and for all. I have the relapsing kind, for now, so if I do have a relapse I can hold on to the hope that it may not be permanent. I’ve had lots of symptoms that have popped up for a couple months and then gone away, never to reappear. But on the other hand, the damage to my nerves is always permanent and will always leave the potential for problems down the road. Take my vision for example. We’re calling that episode a relapse, but it left permanent damage that will affect me the rest of my life. I will always be visually impaired this side of heaven. I don’t struggle as much with it as I did in the beginning, because by God’s grace I’ve grown and adapted, but it’s always here as a reminder.

But memory loss? I don’t know, that one seems so much scarier to me. I mean, I can deal with losing physical functions. But losing my MIND?? I don’t know. I just don’t know. It just scares me, y’all, and that’s all I wanted to share really. That though I’ve been in the best physical shape of my life lately, feeling good and having no issues, at the end of the day I still have MS. It will always be a part of me. I just have to make sure that it knows who’s the boss around here.

Funny story, Piper

The Squeaky Kong

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I feel like ‘obsessed’ isn’t enough of a word to cover the intensity with which Piper goes after the squeaky Kong. If you’re not familiar, Kong is a brand of dog toy. We have found that Piper is so skilled at chewing things up, that buying just any old dog toy is a waste. Though I’ll admit, even with some of the Kongs, she’s able to destroy them within a day or so, if we let her.

Last year for Christmas my mom bought a giant Kong shaped like a football and sent it to us. Wrapped in plastic. In a USPS box. We never even opened the box because we were trying to wait until Christmas but she knew better. She could SMELL the Kong. And she obsessed over that box, she sniffed around it, sat and stared at it. She wouldn’t leave it alone. We ended up opening it and let her go crazy, because after all she’s just a dog and there’s no sense trying to teach her a lesson about waiting until Christmas.

When we buy new Kongs, we have to be stealthy about bringing them into the house. We ordered a pack of four this week from Amazon and I made sure to open the box behind closed doors so she wouldn’t know they were there. We figured it wouldn’t hurt to have extras on hand, because she does eventually destroy them. In fact, we gave her the first ball from that pack of four yesterday, and by today she had already managed to remove the squeaker.

On a normal day, sans Kong, Piper settles down in the evening, and is always eager to go to bed by 11 or so, when one of us goes. Not with a squeaky Kong around! If the ball is there, that’s all she cares about. She’s not trying to go to bed. If she has access to the ball, she’s bouncing it around and chewing on it. When we lock the ball up in another room (as we quickly found to be necessary if anyone wanted rest in this house), she’s sitting at the door, glancing back at us in anticipation. When one of us gets up in the middle of the night, she’s up and eagerly waiting for us to give her the ball. She’s ready at all hours to play with that Kong.

This obsession of hers is a running joke in our house now, and we get quite a lot of laughs out of it. Yeah, it’s annoying because the dang thing squeaks, but we know she’s happy, and that’s all that really matters.

Kids, Marriage

Valentine’s Surprise

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As a family, we’re not very celebratory. With Valentine’s Day being kind of a Hallmark holiday, I just see it as another excuse to buy candy and throw parties at school. This year I totally flaked and didn’t plan anything for my husband or the kids, but thankfully my husband remembered. We woke up this morning to a kitchen table full of candy – he even emptied out my favorite paisley bowl and put my candy and card inside it – and a wonderfully clean kitchen. It took me a minute to catch that the mess I had left the night before was gone, but when I did my heart just melted. Thanks Mike, for being my valentine, always and forever. Wuvver!

Funny story, Photos, Piper

Dogs and delivery drivers

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Our dog Piper loves loves loves to meet new people. She’s what I call “aggressively friendly”. When anyone comes to the door, she’s right there yapping and jumping like the crazy dog she is.

Today the UPS driver came to pick up a package we were returning to Amazon, so I had to wiggle through the front door to give him the box. The entire time Piper was jumping at the glass door, just begging to join us. The driver was laughing at her antics and when we were done with our exchange he reached into his pocket and pulled out a dog biscuit! I was so surprised, and I told him thank you. I said she’s really harmless and she’s never bitten anyone, but that the FedEx driver was so scared of her he won’t even come up our driveway.

He said nothing, because maybe he didn’t want to bash the competition, but he gave me a smirky smile that told me he thought that was pretty funny.

I tried to get a picture of her with the biscuit but she scarfed it down too quickly.

Books, Multiple Sclerosis

Slow down, you move too fast…

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This new “job” doing bookkeeping for the church has been a really great thing for me. Missing the work these past four years, and wondering if I was even still capable, really wore down my confidence level. But as I do this job, day by day, my confidence is building back up. This time, however, I’m doing the work with a full reliance on God to help me through.

The only problem might be that I’m taking it a little too seriously. As my husband said to me the other night, I’m going at this like it’s my career. True, I was up a little too late straining my eyes on balancing and reconciling. I forced myself to go to bed and get some rest, but it was too late. I had already pushed myself past my limit. The next day I had some serious pain in my left eye (my ‘good’ eye). It figures the right eye was fine, as she is absolutely useless. The sharp, throbbing pain was surprisingly more tolerable than my regular headache. I just put an eye patch over that eye, sat back with a cup of coffee and my Les Mis soundtrack, and rested for awhile. It was much better by the evening, but hopefully I’ve learned my lesson not to overdo it.

Today the kids are home for a snow day so it’s nice to have the company. They are busy playing their video games and I’ve just been putzing around the house, doing some reorganizing. It’s a lazy day, and I’m loving it. I started reading Lord of the Rings this week and I’m enjoying it more than I thought I would. Humor was not something I expected, but it’s given me a few laughs and I’m only on the third chapter. I’m trying to move away from my normal genre of legal thrillers. I just finished Angela’s Ashes and Cider House Rules and they were both great books. My list of books to read is growing shorter, so if you have any books you would suggest I read, let me know.

I’m struggling to find a smooth transition to a closing, so I’m just going to leave it here. Have a happy Friday everyone!

 

 

 

Friends, Music, Theater

Dreams come true

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I love the theater. I really do, but until recently I have only had a vague realization of this truth. I went to see a professional ballet with a friend and my heart leapt into my throat the moment I stepped into the theater, and that’s when I knew. There’s just something magical about it that I can’t explain. 

Ever since our high school band played a medley of songs from Les Miserables and my instructor sat down and told us the whole tragic story, I’ve dreamt of seeing it on stage. I just really fell in love with the music, mostly. When they turned it into a movie, I went to see it the day after Christmas and I bawled. The movie was great, but the live show has to be better. Because, you know, it’s LIVE.

All of this to say that it’s been a sort of secret dream of mine for over 20 years to see Les Miserables live, and when I saw that it was coming to our area the weekend of my upcoming birthday, that spark of a dream was reunited. I know I’m mixing metaphors, but whatev, it’s my blog lol. When I shared this dream with the ladies in my church group, they squealed. They wanted to go too! We could all go together and it would be magical! Oh my gosh, I couldn’t believe I had found other ladies who felt the same I did about the theater and were totally up for going, and sharing my birthday with me. So, it’s settled. We have our tickets and we’re going to see Les Miserables! It’s going to be so epic, I might even wear make-up.

Food

More talk about food

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I love most donuts, but if I had to pick the one that never lets me down, it’s the apple fritter. Years ago my kooky family conducted an apple fritter taste-off (if I can find the blog I posted then, I’ll add it here). We each submitted our favorite brands of fritters and then voted based on several criteria. It was very scientific and very fun. I come from a family of food loving nerds. It’s part of why I’m awesome.

Anyhoo, my hubby came home today with a box from Cops & Doughnuts, with two large apple fritters included for me. These things will last me a few days, for sure. They are not as large as the fritters from my personal favorite, Sweetwater’s Donut Mill, but they are right up there with the quality. Cops’ exceeds in the texture – soft and chewy on the inside and crunchy at the edges – but I’m afraid Sweetwater’s has them beat on flavor. I could barely taste the apple, sadly.

I reported these observations to my husband about three bites in, and continued eating. A few more bites of that gooey goodness and I had a startling realization: I think this is better than Sweetwater’s!

I don’t know. It’s been several months since I’ve had a Sweetwater’s fritter so it’s hard to compare from memory. It would be ideal to compare side by side but they are in totally different cities. So unless I can find a fellow fritter enthusiast who would find this cause worthy of driving around the state, I’m just going to call it a tie for first place!

Deaf and half-blind runner with multiple sclerosis