Hello everyone and happy summer to you! \u00a0 Forgive my long absence, but I needed some time and space to recover from my medical ordeal last fall and winter. \u00a0I’m happy to say I’m in good health (knock wood) and ready to rock this summer! \u00a0Seriously rocking it – two concerts this weekend and yes, even though I’m deaf, I go to concerts!<\/p>\n
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Most people don’t realize that even though I’m deaf, I can still appreciate music and live theater. \u00a0And that I can dance. \u00a0I’m always amused when people watch Dancing with the Stars and say things like, ‘How can they\u00a0have a deaf dancer? \u00a0Deaf people can’t dance. They can’t hear music.”<\/p>\n
To that I say, HA! \u00a0 Funny thing is, I’m a much better dancer now than I ever was, because now, in slow dancing, I can’t get distracted, so I \u00a0let Darling Handsome Hubby lead and I’m not\u00a0thrown off by what I hear. \u00a0In other dancing, I can feel the beat, which is also better for my dancing than when I could hear, and got thrown off by the music. \u00a0 \u00a0Dancing with the Stars, well that’s another thing. \u00a0I couldn’t have learned all those routines even if I could hear, so I totally applaud all the contestants.<\/p>\n
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At concerts, I can feel the rhythm \u00a0and the bass. \u00a0If I know the songs, it’s even better. I can use my memory as a guide and feel like I’m hearing the music. \u00a0If I don’t know the songs, it’s not as easy, but still enjoyable to feel it and let it run through me.<\/p>\n
Darling Handsome Hubby and I try to go to as many open caption performances as possible. \u00a0Sometimes we go when\u00a0it’s not captioned, so we developed a system<\/em> for those shows. \u00a0It goes like this:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Act I<\/em>: \u00a0I watch everything like a hawk and try to read their lips as much as possible.<\/p>\n Intermission<\/em>: \u00a0I tell DHH what I *think* is happening, and he either fills in the details, corrects anything I got wrong, or both. \u00a0There’s actually less and less that I’m getting wrong. \u00a0How ’bout that!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Act II<\/em>: \u00a0I take what I know from Act I and Act II makes more sense. \u00a0I enjoy\u00a0that, then when it’s over, I stand up and clap like hell because I love theater, and DHH tells me the rest.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Because I can’t hear, I think I particularly notice the scenery and I’ve become a huge fan of set design. \u00a0Good job, set designers!\u00a0You keep taking me to new places and worlds, giving me new experiences, and I’m in awe of you. \u00a0You mesmerize me.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Meandering a bit, our little Brooklyn is going to be 20 months old tomorrow, and once again, time is flying by for us. Our\u00a0little puppy is now a bigger puppy, still mischievous, playful, and fun, \u00a0but now when I look in her eyes, I see a maturity developing that \u00a0entrances me.<\/p>\n According to her trainer, she’s brilliant. \u00a0I don’t doubt it. \u00a0It took her no time at all to figure out that I’m deaf. \u00a0And to learn that you wake Daddy in the morning, not Mommy! \u00a0But that’s just a little braggy aside. \u00a0\ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We’ve never had our dogs trained to be assistive dogs – somehow, they miraculously pick it up on their own. \u00a0Charlie, Zeus, and Brody (all boys, by the way) picked up on it as it happened or worsened. \u00a0Brooklyn is the first girl we’ve had, to come into the situation where I’m completely deaf and it’s a done deal. \u00a0 Sometimes I see her looking at me with her head tilted. \u00a0I see her mouth move,\u00a0and if my hearing aids are not in, I don’t hear any sound. \u00a0I wondered what she was doing, until she did it when my hearing aids were in. \u00a0And then I realized she was trying different sounds and watching to see if I reacted. \u00a0I truly believe my little girl was trying to understand my loss.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And guess what! \u00a0She loves to dance. \u00a0When DHH and I are dancing, she jumps up and has to join in. \u00a0Either we hold her paws as she sways against us, or we pick her up and keep dancing while she smothers us in kisses. \u00a0It’s a joyful experience that she seems to have ‘picked up’ from our Beloved Brody, and I hope this continues forever.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Speaking of the little girl, we have “adolescent training” tonight, so I better get her ready for school. \u00a0And myself. \u00a0To quote an old line in an old movie, “I’ll be back.” \u00a0(Maybe not today, but check back often!)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hello everyone and happy summer to you! \u00a0 Forgive my long absence, but I needed some time and space to recover from my medical ordeal last fall and winter. \u00a0I’m happy to say I’m in good health (knock wood) and ready to rock this summer! \u00a0Seriously rocking it – two concerts this weekend and yes, […]<\/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-197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lostmyhearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197","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=197"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lostmyhearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":439,"href":"https:\/\/lostmyhearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197\/revisions\/439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lostmyhearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lostmyhearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lostmyhearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}