Better Hearing Consumer

Warning: Some readers may find this blog a bit too gushy and mushy for their taste. This weekend is Canadian Thanksgiving, a holiday based on the English harvest festival of pumpkins and hymns. The earliest North American Thanksgiving was celebrated by the explorer Martin Frobisher in 1578 when he and his men managed to escape the fate of becoming human

I am totally driven by battery power. A battery houses one or more electric cells that produce electricity from a chemical reaction. Cells make things work, including people.  The human body is composed of 100 trillion cells that turn food nutrients into energy that allows people to move and function. So as a human being, I am a battery; I

If I want to understand speech, I have to hear it, or see it, or use an exquisitely-performed marriage of the two.  How I decide on the ratio of hearing-to-seeing depends on the speaker and the medium. For example, the telephone uses 100% hearing because I do well with the voice coming directly into my ear, and with the volume control

It’s EASY to convince ourselves that we’re doing ‘fine’ with our hearing loss: That we’re catching most of what’s said, Well, at least the important stuff – the rest’s not really worth listening to And no, we don’t intend to do anything about it Like getting a hearing aid or cochlear implant – Those are for other people, who have

Hearing loss changes lives. I know this because without hearing loss, I’d be married to a completely different guy and my son would look very different – like a girl, maybe?  And I know this because of the secret vice that interfered with my marital selection process. My dark-and-dirty secret is that I’m a bluffer. Yup, I pretend to understand

It finally happened. The most significant, life-changing, tear-duct emptying, hallelujah-raising event in the life of parents finally arrived for the Hearing Husband and me. Yesterday, we delivered our baby boy, Joel, all 6 feet 5 inches of him, to university for the first time. On top of being both exciting (for the child) and emotional (for his parents), it was

Wow! WOW! As of this week, wow has taken on a new meaning, thanks to a book called Help, Thanks, Wow. I picked up this short and unusual book on prayer simply because it’s written by one of my favorite, funniest authors, Anne Lamott (to whom I’m eternally grateful for this new life-dimension).  She describes wow as: “… often offered

“You want me to WHAT?” he asked. I tried again. “For this week’s blog, I would like  you to answer some questions about what it’s really like being married to a woman with hearing loss.” “ANY woman with hearing loss – or just YOU with hearing loss?” “Well, since you’re married only to me, and I’m hard of hearing, feel

I’m not very psychic. I have to be knocked flat on my butt before I see  things coming, although often it’s  because I didn’t hear them. I don’t believe in astrology, either, but like many zodiac pooh-pooh’ers, I do peek at my horoscope now and then. Sometimes it hits the bulls-eye and other times it’s so far off I wonder

No cottage vacation is complete without games – playing on the dock, on the porch late at night when it’s too hot to sleep, or inside around the kitchen table during a thunderstorm.  An old Ontario favorite cottage game (almost as much fun as holding your breath underwater for so long that your mom jumps in, fully dressed and holding her drink, to