As I have mentioned in previous entries, hubby and I are taking sign language lessons. During the summer we had a nice Christian man, who was a free-lance interpreter. I will use his sign name of Turtle. We had about 8 lessons with Turtle. It really helped us to get started. With Turtle we learned about 400 signs. So about the vocabulary of a 4 year old, except that we could count to 100, but could not say our colors or the months, but we could have a small conversation. LOL Well turtle had to stop our lessons as him and his family will be a missionary soon, and to get ready for that there are alot of things he must do. That is fine, so I put out some feelers for another instructor. Another SSP, from our DB group volunteered. Well not volunteered but was available to instruct us. We do pay them a small amount, of course not as much as they would get on an interpreting job, but a small amount. I will call this new instructor CD, because she lives in south Philly we also give her gas money. She comes about once a week. We have been having lessons with her since the beginning of September. She is an awesome lady, and gets right down to the task at hand, not too much chatter. We go through, learn about 40 to 60 signs at a time. So as you can see our vocabulary is growing by leaps and bounds.
The reason for me writing about all of that was that up until September 16th, when our living room was finally done, we could not have our lessons in there, but in the basement. After work, hubby and his dad put all of the big furniture back into the living room. Pieces like the piano, couch, red chair recliner, love seat, coffee table. So on this night we had our first lesson in the living room.
On Tuesday I spent moving other items back into the living room, like the lamps, the end tables, the speakers. I also had the task of cleaning up the dining room, the room in which all of the living room items went and were while our living room was being fixed up. It was two months since we began the fixing up process. I was extremely happy to have back our living room and dining room.
The funny thing was that we had something planned for every single night of this week but our nights began to become open. Like hubby had an elder meeting, but because an unfortunate death in the Pastors family, the elder meeting was cancelled.
On Wednesday, September 18th, hubby’s mom and SFIL came into town from RI. They arrived late in the afternoon, before hubby got off of work. We went out to our favorite Italian restaurant again with them that night. It had been planned that hubby had worship team practice, and we would just go to dinner, but that was cancelled. It was a blessing in disguised that it was cancelled and we spent the time with family. After dinner we took a quick trip to Costco. After our Costco trip we headed back to our house. Hubby’s brother came over and we hung out until late. Hubby’s mom brought with her Wisconsin cheese, and some other yummy treats. As if I was hungry, which I wasn’t after eating such a big meal, but I did try some of the yummy treats.
By this time, I was able to open up the house and keep it open during the night. It was more perfect weather.
So now with the living room, its more open design, we needed a few more furniture items. Eventually we will be getting a TV, and at some point a fireplace. Not a real fire place, but probably a gas one. Right now I am using wood, TV trays for end tables. And although fine for now, I would like more normal end tables. So on Thursday afternoon, MIL and I did some furniture shopping. We could not spend a whole lot on the furniture so we went to all of the consignment shops. We did not find one thing. I was very upset about this. Later that evening we met up with hubby’s sister, and all five of us went out to TexMex, a nice Mexican restaurant here in North Wells. It’s nothing of course like the real texmex from Texas, but it’s the best I have found up here. Just like the night before, we went back to our house and hung out with SIL. We didn’t stay up as late, but it wasn’t early that we went to bed either.
Friday, MIL and SFIL had plans to play golf with my SIL, so they went off to do that. I hung out at home. That evening we had a life group. Hubby’s brother and his kids, the in laws were all going up to spend time with them at his house, so they left right before we left for lifegroup. MIL and SFIL would go home the next morning.
Saturday, hubby had a men’s breakfast planned, but was cancelled. I thought I would be gone all day, as I had planned on participating in a walk to raise money for hearing loss. But I just got the date wrong; it was actually Sunday and not Saturday. Ooooops!
So instead hubby and I hung out at home, enjoying a nice day.
Sunday September 22nd, would have been a normal church day for us. Well it was for hubby. He was playing on the worship team, but I was off for my walk. An SSP picked me up at 8:15am, yes too early. And we were met at my house by another DB gentlemen who was walking with us. The walk was being put on by the HLAA organization. HLAA is the Hearing Loss Association of America. The DeafCAN group, which was about 12 of us, met at Riggly Park, which is in Chester County, about a 45 minute drive from my area. The walk began at 10am. It wasn’t one of those walks that you were racing others; it was a walk to raise money. It was on a trail that was 3.1 miles. I was guided by an SSP the whole time. The crazy thing is that, there were alot of hard of hearing people, alot of deaf, hearing impaired people there, but it was extremely loud. I had a hard hard time hearing anyone. Again the weather was absolutely perfect. We walked at a leisurely pace, not in a hurry at all. There were alot of families, the young and the old there. The hearing and the hearing impaired. There were only 2 of us DB people there. The rest were SSP’s or interpreters. One of the team members made T-Shirts for us, as each team had their own design. By the time we headed home, I was pooped out, tired.
Like I said hubby went to church, played on the worship team, went to discovery class, and then home. After church BIL, BIL’s kids, BIL girlfriend, and SIL all came over with food. They had a nice lunch. I arrived home shortly after they had finished lunch. They hung around for another hour or so, and then went on to their own things. Hubby and I laid down for a nap. A nap that was supposed to be only one hour and a half, but turned into several hours. We both needed it apparently, as it was hard for both of us to get up.
The rest of the day was relaxing.
The only other few things for the end of the month is that hubby and I attended another funeral, this time for the Pastor at our church, his brother. In a small world, that family is related to the blindness organization president’s family. It was a beautiful service.
We did have one more sign lesson of the month, and learned 60 more words. More words that have kep hubby and I just finger spelling things to each other.
Hubby and I started reading a book, called Shouting Won’t Help: Why I — and 50 Million Other Americans — Can’t Hear You.”by Katherine Bouton. It was a book we downloaded from the Library of congress. It was a long book, about 15 hours to read. We would read at meal times, breakfast, lunch or dinner. Of course not when other people were around, but when we had meals together. The lady who wrote the book, had been a journalist at a New York paper, and then had lost her hearing in her 40’s. She talks about her challenges, her adjustment, and how she dealt with it all. She was not deafblind, and had only the one disability. But it was very very interesting. Reading through the book was very hard in some ways for me, mainly because it made me think about my own troubles. Because I have many if not every single other problem she has or had. It did make me feel as though what I describe with my hearing loss to be the same, like I wasn’t the only one, or that I was crazy. When she would describe that if she is having a conversation with several people, she could not follow, but if it was a one on one conversation, then she was fine. She describes the lengths she goes to fake, deny, and get by not telling others of her hearing loss. In the end she did get a CI. The book was a real world description of the process, and I had almost been sold to just get an evaluation, until she said she can’t hear music with an CI. Not that listening to music is the most enjoyable thing for me to do now, but I still love love music. She also talks about the grief process she goes through. In many ways we were very similar, she worked up to getting a CI, I work to just function as a now deafblind person. Just to mention she could lip read, so there was alot of things she could do with her vision, that I do not have the luxury of being able to do. I plan on writing to her.
Other plans that were sorted out in September were our plans to go to Texas for Thanksgiving. I will be at HKNC by this time, so hubby is going to come up and we will leave from JFK and fly to DFW. We will leave on Wednesday and return on Sunday. I am extremely excited for this little get away to spend time with family and the kids.
Well that ends September. I hope I didn’t leave anything out. More to come…
Thanks for sending your blog- I am happy to catch up with how you’ve been doing via this format- and I look forward to your return to campus next year!