Before my hearing loss, I loved to do what most people do.\u00a0 I loved\u00a0to go to the movies, watch\u00a0television, listen to the radio, go to shows and concerts, explore new neighborhoods whevever I am, shop, you know – the normal stuff.\u00a0 Let’s\u00a0call that life before hearing loss BHL since it’s less typing for me.<\/p>\n
AHL (after hearing loss) a lot of that changed.\u00a0 Going to a movie meant sitting in\u00a0the theater waiting for it to end.\u00a0 We switched to videos and now DVDs, which are usually captioned.\u00a0\u00a0But, of course we have to wait for them to come out on DVD, which isn’t while it’s still in the theater. So when my friends are talking about a movie they’ve seen I can’t join the conversation until a few months later. Luckily, they have good memories.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I do have\u00a0captioned television, but the captions are so poorly done and messed up most of the time, it’s annoying to watch.\u00a0 Most of the time I give up and do something else.\u00a0 What’s up with HD television anyway?\u00a0 The captions for\u00a0Hi Def are worse than most. And oh boy, the people who caption sometimes get creative.\u00a0 Just the other day I was watching something and the person knocked on a door three times.\u00a0\u00a0 The caption read, “knocks thrice.”\u00a0 Thrice?\u00a0 Who\u00a0in North America\u00a0says thrice?\u00a0 But I digress.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I’m not going to go into each thing I loved to do – I think you can get the idea.\u00a0 And, I do still try to do them sometimes.\u00a0 Just the other night we saw “West Side Story” in New York.\u00a0 I don’t know if I really heard it or if I just listened in my head, but neuroscience has already proven the effect is\u00a0almost identical so I had a great time.\u00a0 But I do want to note that I’ve changed as time has gone by.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Doing more visual things was a given.\u00a0 I’ve always loved\u00a0things like puzzles, word games, writing, photography, \u00a0drawing, and painting,\u00a0and I was able to add computers to the\u00a0list. When PCs started to bore me, I got an Apple.\u00a0 There are always challenges to keep me entertained.\u00a0 But something else has happened and I (along with my family)\u00a0have begun to wonder who I am.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
You see,\u00a0for most of my married life, I’ve hated cooking.\u00a0 When our house was being built, I didn’t want a kitchen.\u00a0 I thought a telephone, a microwave oven and a toaster would be sufficient.\u00a0 (And a fridge, of course.)\u00a0\u00a0My family\u00a0didn’t come home on time, food sat and dried out,\u00a0the kids didn’t like something.\u00a0 It just didn’t seem worth it\u00a0so I cooked as little as possible.\u00a0\u00a0Plus, and this is a big plus, I always got injured somehow.\u00a0 Once I even cut myself opening the take out container.\u00a0 A burn or a cut while preparing a meal was a given. (I’ll tell you about my trips to emergency in another blog.)<\/p>\n
I had no interest in how food was prepared, what went with what, what to substitute if you ran out of something, how to get it all ready at the same time, etc.\u00a0 I could make the things I knew how to make but my repertoire was limited.\u00a0 When we felt the urge for a home cooked meal, I wondered where we could get one. (My husband pointed out that I could probably cook one for us.)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Well, things were going along very nicely but then we decided it was important to eat healthy.\u00a0 That lets out most restaurants and take out food, so the idea of cooking came up again.\u00a0 With\u00a0morose resignation, I realized I had to cook.\u00a0 It was not uncommon for us to have the same thing night after night.\u00a0 I could do it decently so why take chances? Plus it was easy if I just made chicken every night.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Here’s the odd thing – I’ve always wanted a gas stove.\u00a0 Electric is the most common in Toronto and I’ve hated it since I moved there. Our house, of course, had electric so I really wasn’t enthused.\u00a0 Well, we finally put in a gas stove and a new me emerged.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Not only am I cooking, I’m enjoying it.\u00a0\u00a0 I might even go out on a limb and say I’m loving it. \u00a0I’m reading about cooking, I bought cookbooks, we’re even taking a hands-on couples course in surf and turf!\u00a0 Last night I loved the movie Julie & Julia.\u00a0\u00a0And, wonder of wonder, there have been no injuries since we got the new stove.\u00a0 I’m still very afraid of my knives, but I’m working on that.\u00a0 Now I want to try new dishes.\u00a0 French onion soup no longer has to be a restaurant treat.\u00a0 I baked Lemon Meringue tarts for company last week.\u00a0 I’m inviting people to my house to eat and we aren’t ordering in!<\/p>\n
And there you have it?\u00a0 Who am I?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Before my hearing loss, I loved to do what most people do.\u00a0 I loved\u00a0to go to the movies, watch\u00a0television, listen to the radio, go to shows and concerts, explore new neighborhoods whevever I am, shop, you know – the normal stuff.\u00a0 Let’s\u00a0call that life before hearing loss BHL since it’s less typing for me. AHL […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lostmyhearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lostmyhearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lostmyhearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lostmyhearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lostmyhearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lostmyhearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":479,"href":"https:\/\/lostmyhearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions\/479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lostmyhearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lostmyhearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lostmyhearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}