Are you sure it wasn't a LEMUR?

This last weekend we went up to the Cincinnati Zoo to celebrate Father's Day with the Farleys. We had a grand time wandering about showing our resident turd-muffins all of the cool animals that they had only seen on television and in books before now. They were at least amused ( the kids ) and were not the least bit cranky. Keegan got to see her favorite, the crocodile, which we found quite by accident in the Manatee exhibit. Funny thing is that there were no sea cows in the exhibit - go figure.


Cherri and Cynthia did see a flock ( gaggle - peck - cluster? ) of lemurs. Now lemurs, generally speaking, don't really pop up on anyone's zoo radar but they certainly made these two folks' day. You see, there is a long running tale from an unnamed niece -TRACY- who lives in Florida and who is known to relay a funny story, the punch line of which is: Are you sure it wasn't a LEMUR?


In her honor I will post this rather poor picture of a LEMUR!



And yes we are sure that the sign said that they were lemurs.



Cute booger isn't it!





On the trip home I was dialing around the AM radio to find the news at the top of the hour when Cherri started repeating some of what was being said! She wasn't able to catch enough to make sense of what was being said but she caught lots of snippets!

She got pretty good at phone numbers and bits of the conversation. The cool thing was that, because of the type of show that we were listening to, she could not just 'figure out' what was being said. She had to take each word as an individual item which means SHE ACTUALLY HEARD !!! Love my baby, I am so proud of her!

Hear on girl!

Behold, the power of CHEESE!

Occasionally I get migraines. I can't help it because it is just the way I am wired ( or mis-wired ). Last night while at work I had one. It is usually no problem because I keep my Excedrin Migraine tablets in my lunch box.

If it is always good to be prepared then last night was not good.

While in the throes of the migraine onset, I head to my trusty pill box only to find that I precisely one half the dosage required to re-attach my head. Not good. Not good at all. The night just got much, much longer.

I take my one half dosage in the hopes that I can survive the rest of the shift.

I have long since learned what to shy away from and what to get next to while having a migraine. Unfortunately, where I am and what my needs are one hundred and eighty degrees out of phase. Life is starting to suck and suck big.

Unlike most folks that experience migraines, I crave sound to help alleviate the pain. I guess it occupies my throbbing head. The kind of music that I really, really need is not here at work. In fact at this time of night ( deep into third shift ) there is no music on the plant wide system and my contraband FM radio picks up only country and top 40 and neither of them very well.

No music means no respite from the pain until the medicine kicks in. So I decide I must walk and walk I do.

For those who do not know, I work in that little car plant on the north side of Georgetown. The biggest part of the plant is one hundred forty four acres under the one roof that covers my aching head. That is one roof and there are several roofs from which to pick. That means lots of room to walk. Walking passes the time as my head tries to decide to completely detach or just plain explode. Luckily it does neither and after a while I feel the caffeine hitting my system which means that the pain should start to subside soon.

As I walk along the pain begins to subside. Then the cravings kick in. Did I happen to mention that I also get strange food cravings when I have a migraine? They usually hit as the pain begins to pass just as they did tonight.

I finally make it to the end of the shift. I have some running to do on the way home so with my intense cravings I must exercise some restraint while walking the expansive aisles of the local Walmart. No need to buy five pounds of beef jerky and a gallon of chocolate milk if I don't really need it. I get most of the stuff on the list and head home.

One of the first things that I do when I get home is to give Joe-Dog his morning pill that I wrap in a half of a slice of American cheese. The other half comprises part of, what for me is, a midnight snack.

After giving Joey his little daily helper pill I begin to put away the fridge stuff and I spy a small portion of Monterey Jack cheese. I decide that would be a nice thing to nibble on until I stumble on something better.

In short order the groceries have been put away and my head is feeling much better but now I need something crunchy from the snack department.

Snack crackers would hit the spot and I just happen to have three boxes to choose from. The one I choose is the closest to me. I have chosen it because... well, it is the one closest to me and my body is deficient in crunch foods. As I happily munch away I happen to notice that the crackers are Mozzarella and Sun-Dried Tomato flavor. Good! I will have more cheese but with a vegetable flavor on a cracker.

In the unlikely case that you have not been keeping count, I have had three different types of cheeses within the half hour that I arrived home. Life is good. I just hope that I have some fiber pills to take before I head off to bed. Cracklin' Oat Bran cereal would be better 'cause it tastes good while keeping me regular.

I have now been sitting here at the computer for an hour updating the blog while my head gets back to mostly OK but while I also try to burn off a substantial caffeine buzz. I have my music ( Joe Satriani - Flying In A Blue Dream ) and life is much more survivable at this point. I may even be able to sleep soon.

The sun is shining into the bedroom and the weather outside is warm - perfect sleeping weather. I hope for restful sleep with good dreams that contain cheese and snappy music.

This shadow brought to you by the letter "L"...

Well, we survived our most recent excursion to Las Vegas. Barely but we did survive.

First, there was the mad cup bomber at the Luxor - right down the strip - and then there was the massive fire that took out what amounted to a whole city block in area. That mixed with the normal sin and debauchery that is prevalent in that part of Nevada and we were lucky to see central Kentucky again!

But we are back and have the pictures to prove it!

The Bellagio Hotel (where we didn't stay)

The Bellagio fountains are cranking up...

Who is that cutie pie?

The second day of our week long Vegas excursion we were staying at the Planet Hollywood (the old Aladdin). We had gone out for our 4 mile run/walk/wait for the traffic lights/walk/dodge traffic/run in the morning and then we got ready to head out to the pool.

At the Planet Hollywood the pools are on the sixth floor on the side of the hotel facing the Strip and the sun rises on the opposite side of the building. Hence, the sun doesn't get to the pool until about 10:30AM. We are all layed out and freezin' our butts off because even though the temperature was in the nineties the week before we arrived, global warming has dictated that the temperature should now be in the upper 60's. I guess we were being punished for not purchasing carbon offsets from Al Gore's company.

Anyway, I am all kicked back pretending that I am warm and that I do this all the time (even though the pasty white skin covered with goose pimples was a dead giveaway to the opposite). I am gazing at the part of the pool deck that is now lit and enjoying some warmth (that would be the part that we are not on) and I begin commencing to cipher just how long it would take for the sun to reach our chairs. No matter what number I come up with would likely be wrong but since I told my guess to no one I can pretend to be right one no one is the wiser.

I am ruminating of just how tall the hotel is, the angle of the sun, how fast the earth is turning (or how fast the sun is moving if you are a flat earther) to try to come up with how long it will be until Cherri and I are basking in the rays of the southern Nevada sun. I come up with a figure of a half hour give or take 30 minutes and I begin to wait to see how close I am.

I read or look around or do whatever and now my thoughts have wandered off to something equally as geeky when I realize that we are surrounded by sunshine. We are not IN the sunshine but we are surrounded by it. I am now somewhat confused by this and I decide to do the one thing that I have been told by people that are concerned with preserving my eyesight tell me not to do - ever - .

I look up. That would be at the sun. At the very sun that is shining all around us but not on us. That is when I see them, the sun and the "L" that it is now firmly ensconced behind. The "L" in the Planet of the Planet Hollywood that we are staying in. The very "L"that is keeping us in the dark while the rest of the word allows all those around us to shed the towels that they were using for blankets up until just a few minutes ago.

Under normal conditions I would insert a good natured "life sucks" in here but we were in Vegas and that made life good, not sucky.

Although it seemed like an eternity, albeit a brief eternity, the shadow finally moved off to annoy some other pasty white, goose pimple skinned tourist and we got our share of the toasty, low seventies weather that we had hoped for.

We didn't spend long at the pool however, because it was windy and even though the sun was finally shining brightly, the temperature plus the wind chill encouraged us to head back to the room and get ready to head down to the local P. F. Changs for some lettuce wraps and szechuan beef.

Life is indeed good.

Nothin' but fur babies!

Snack time!

Floozie Lucy!

Scarlet

Baxter catching a few zzzzzzzzz!

Sylvester

Still floozin'

The family that eats together...

More, PLEASE!

Just cleanin' up

Sleepin' it off...

Where's Lucy?

We don't care!

This is just half of the young uns'.

The other half may show up later...

It has been a good day...

Wednesday was a good day for Cherri and me. We went to the Audiologist for the 'two week after turn on tweak of the software' which is normal and expected for implanted folk. I don't actually remember if the software was tweaked or not but we got to take part in some tests that proved that the implant was alive and well and firing on all cylinders.
A bit of background may be in order so here goes.
Before and after the implant was, well, implanted, Cherri went through large batteries of tests. I will mention only a few of them here.
In one test was the Audiologist reciting at random a list of six two syllable words.

GEEKSPEAK: These words are called spondee words and consist of words that equal meter and equal stress on the syllables. Words such as baseball, hotdog and ice cream.

Before the test started she (the Audiologist) went over the list by saying each word. She would then place a knitting hoop covered in black cloth over her face and would begin to recite the words. Cherri would then relay the words back. At the initial turn on, Cherri was able to pick up exactly zero words. This was not unexpected. When the test was performed Wednesday, Cherri was able to get six of seven words. FANTASTIC! It may be a simple test but the results were profound! I was really impressed by my punkin'!

The next test was a Ling six sound test.

GEEKSPEAK : A Ling six sound test is used to isolated phonemes to target low, middle and high frequency sounds. The sounds are: [m], [ah], [oo], [ee], [sh] and [s].

The Audiologist used the same snappy black hoop in this test too. In the initial turn on test, Cherri got either zero or one correct, I cannot remember exactly (I am sure that she will fill me in later.) At Wednesday's test, Cherri got four of six. A respectable showing on any day but the exciting part was that she got the [sh] and the [s] sounds! These were sounds that Cherri has not heard in decades!
We then went to the sound chamber to test Cherri's response to different frequencies. She passed with flying colors! The Audiologist came in and showed us the resulting audiogram and compared it to the results before the implant. We were stunned! The results of the tests showed a basically flat response across the frequency used by speech. Cherri's normal hearing results in what is called a "corner audiogram". It simply means that her hearing ability is confined to the lower left part of the audiogram. She can hear up to about 850 hertz with some help but beyond that there is nothing and no amount of amplification would help.

All that gibberish means the implant is picking up lots of groovy sounds and sending it to her brain. She was given some tools by the Audiologist to help her start to discriminate all of these new sensations into usable words, phrases and sounds. Time is the watchword here. It will take time for her to make good use of the implant and no amount of poking, prodding or impatience will help. It will come on it's own in it's good time.



Life is good! Let's head to the beach!

What this blog is all about...

I am not much of a blog reader.
I have to admit that I am old and getting somewhat older most every day. Some days I age more than others but it all seems to average out. Being my age makes me want to have a piece of paper with the print and the images on it. That way I can move it about so it can hit the sweet spot on my bifocals without craning at unnatural angles such as I would at a monitor trying to catch enough pixels to make sense. I will read blogs of friends but that is about it. It takes time too much time for my neck to recover.
I am not much of blog writer either. This is my first blog and I will likely spend most of my time spell checking on Dictionary.com and rewording my sentences so that I may give the appearance of being a reasonably sane person. I would settle for any flavor of sane but reasonably sane is my goal. I have big aspirations in life.
This blog mostly will be about my experiences with my wife and her 'condition'.
My wife and good friend Bionic Fruit recently underwent surgery for a cochlear implant.
She is a saint pure and simple. She has never once said an ill word about anyone, anything or about her lot in life. She married me some twenty four years ago and has suffered mighty indignations since. I do believe that she saw me simply as a charity case in need of primping and preening so that I might become sociably acceptable. I also believe that she misunderstood my marriage proposal as a question to whether she needed another foot massage or not. In any event she said yes and here we are. All that being said, I married up and I am forever grateful to her for that.
She began to lose her hearing as a young person and has spent most of her adult life profoundly hearing impaired. That is not to say that she is totally deaf. She hears naturally only frequencies of about 850 Hertz and below. That isn't really enough of the sound spectrum to derive intelligent conversation. Maybe that is why we seem to get along... Anyway, the consonants in the English language ( The part that imparts the most meaning to the words ) lie in the sound spectrum well above her highest perceived sound. That said, still she does remarkably well -better than most- in the day to day world. She is an accomplished lip-reader and can understand most of her friends on the telephone.
Life sucks but you can learn to adapt.
Back to the cochlear implant. -Short version- Hearing bad, hearing aids don't help, cochlear implant might, therefore cochlear implant it shall be. And so it is. The implant surgery was successful in that the implant was installed and she she survived it. Beyond that is where we are today.
The implant was 'switched on' almost three weeks ago and she is deep into the learning process that it takes to learn how to hear again using electronic input instead of acoustic input. Everyone that she converses with that has had the implant tells her that it will take time and lots of it to get to a level of reliability even remotely close to natural hearing. Even now she is listening to children's books on tape with the accompanying books to re-learn the simplest sounds and forge the new pathways in her brain and yet she does not once complain. Did I mention that she is a saint?
In the coming weeks and months the squeaks, beeps, boops and other noises that she hears will begin to work it's way into being intelligible. My hope is that when she can understand what I am saying that she won't kick me to the curb. Maybe I should offer her another foot massage...