OF ALL THE THINGS I'VE LOST

...I miss the hearing in my left ear, sleep, my memory, and my girlish figure, all equally.

In fairness to menopause, of course, I cannot blame tinnitus (ringing in the ear and accompanying hearing loss) on my lack of estrogen, although chances are there is a study out there somewhere that does.

There are hearing aids designed especially to help those suffering from tinnitus, but they are soooo expensive.  I've done price comparisons, and per my budget, it appears I may be able to afford an old fashioned ear horn.

My husband blames my tinnitus on all my years of listening to the car radio at blaring decimals that can break sound barriers let alone ear drums. However, he is wrong, as my ENT guy once told me that if that were the case, it would most likely be my right ear (closer to the car radio, duh) than my left ear.

Actually, I can trace the beginning of my tinnitus to a rather loud office Christmas party about four years ago after which the annoying buzzing began and has since increased. I have tried white noise machines,  but the sound of a babbling brook or a steady rain lulling me to sleep only served to make me have to go to the bathroom again (another menopausal delight). Ergo, bye-bye white noise machine.

A fan is great as a tinnitus antidote because it also serves as the occasional hot flash eliminator. However, the fan has to be positioned so close to my head in order to drown out the buzzing (think Bells of St. Mary some nights), that I end up freezing my face off. 

Bottom line, I have had to learn to live with the tinnitus just as I have had to learn to live with the lack of sleep that naturally accompanies THE CHANGE (sounds like one of those horror flicks from back in the day...THE FOG).

Meanwhile, I have taken to reading peoples' lips, and I tend to squint my eyes while doing so, focusing intently on said lips, even if I am but a few feet from them.  (OK, so add eyesight to the list of things I miss at my interesting age. Ack.).

Lip reading usually works like a charm, save for when getting a mani-pedi where the good folks who attach and dremel-tool my perfectly formed fake nails to my fingertips wear surgical masks to avoid breathing in the toxic acrylic fumes, thus hiding their lips and ruining any chance of  me understanding a damn thing they are saying.

For example, their instructive "Hold your fingernails up to the light bulb to dry" I can only translate as "humyrfgrsndrltblbtdri".  Fortunately, having had more than one mani, I basically know what I am supposed to do. 

The real problem these days lies in hearing and understanding what my family and my co-workers are saying to me. And they generally don't wear masks. They are all starting to sound to me like they are talking with marbles in their mouths. I end up doing a lot of nodding and smiling and praying I am not nodding and agreeing to something I shouldn't.

We have, for sometime now, instituted at our house the hard and fast rule of no talking to each other from another room.  I mean, if you are going to talk to me from another room, you might as well be standing in front of me wearing a mask. Humorous aside: even when my husband forgets and tries to talk to me from another room, I automatically squint while he's talking as if that will fine tune my hearing from afar. Crazy.

Yeah, I'm thinking an ear horn may be the way to go.

Hold on.  I'm in the living room, and my husband is talking rather excitedly to me from the kitchen. Pardon me for a moment while I squint.

"Get off the dang laptop, there's still laundry to do before we drive Daniel back to school (see yesterday's blog post for reference) and I'm busy cooking breakfast."

Yikes.

Heard that. Loud and clear. No ear horn required.

TOP O' THE LAUNDRY PILE TO YA

Oh, Danny Boy! Your dirty clothes, your clothes are calling...

Yes, we drive Daniel back to college tomorrow after a lovely week of  spring break, and there are still two piles of his laundry awaiting someone's, anyone's, attention. I think we may have to draw straws.

My husband, after preparing an exquisite St. Patrick's Day supper -- potato soup, corned beef, cabbage, Irish soda bread (in portions fit for a Teamsters meeting) --  is watching TV; Daniel is off to a movie with friends. I just woke up from an Irish soda bread-induced stupor, having nothing else to do but write, so I suppose I should step up to the plate, as it were, and finish up the laundry.

Or, in the name of submitting a blog post for Day 25 of the 40 Days of Writing Challenge, I could write about needing to finish up Danny Boy's laundry.

Bingo!

Truth is, I'm not much of a laundress. I have probably washed my husband's wallet a gazillion times. And there was that oh-so-memorable time I  somehow washed a box of crayons with a load of his whites...and dried them -- before noticing...

Eeeek.

And who can forget the great ink stain mystery several years back when Daniel was at the wonderful stage of life they call "early teenager". His three favorite NEW t-shirts somehow wound up with strange black ink marks everywhere...

Why, how in heaven's name did that happen?

"Way to go, Mom."

It took awhile, but I got them out.

Extra! Extra!  Read All About It!

Nothing, however, beats the time I started the dryer with what I thought was just a  load of towels inside.

Thump, Thump. Thump, Thump.

Funny, I didn't remember washing a pair of gym shoes or tossing them in the dryer...

Opened the dryer door and MEOW! Out flew our cat, Midget, a skosh frazzled and way fluffier than usual, but otherwise no worse for the spin.

And I fear Daniel may have inherited my less-than-stellar laundry abilities. I recall one of his Facebook statuses a few weeks ago where he confessed he had three loads of laundry going (yay) but he had forgotten to add the detergent (boo).

Hey, like mother, like son.

Good news is, they don't allow cats in the dorms.

I GO BACK

There is nothing quite so magical as the beginning of spring.

It somehow breathes new life into my soul while returning me to old, familiar, and very comforting places in my heart.

Oh, how I go back...

Today my journey down memory's road began when the fresh, warm scent of early morning wafted through my open window and gently nudged me out of a deep sleep. My eyes barely open, I noticed my crisp, white curtain ruffling in the slight breeze, I heard birds singing softly...muffled voices...must  have been kids walking to school...

At once I was, in my mind's eye, transported back to a warm, spring morning at my childhood home -- a yellow/gold brick three-bedroom ranch on Buckeye Crescent in my hometown of Madeira, Ohio. All the windows were open, the drapes slightly flapping in the breeze. I was six years old and I could see my mom in her usual morning routine -- perched on the edge of our old orange chair in our living room, smoking a Salem cigarette and taking swigs from an eight-ounce glass bottle of Coca Cola (OK, so she was no June Cleaver, but she loved me) -- watching The Today Show on our black and white TV.

I wanted to linger there, feel once more the comfort of having my dear and now long-ago departed mother near. But I forced my brain back to real time and pushed myself out of bed. Though a day off from work, I told myself I needed to get going, get things done...

Instead, I decided to treat myself to a walk on a nearby wooded trail.  As I hiked along, my face bathed in sunlight, I was overcome by what I call "that summer feeling." Suddenly I was eight years old and back at the local swim club with my best friend, Valli. School was out, summer stretched far and wide ahead of us, and life was teeming with endless possibilities.

A chatty squirrel snapped me out of my nostalgic trance, and I eventually found my way back to my  porch swing where I sat for some time, rocking, contemplating where I had been and where I might be headed. And I was smiling. It was as if I had just returned from a far-away and enthralling vacation.

Granted, I had been gone only a short while and had not strayed very far.  But for the first time in a long while, my heart was light,  my soul comforted, and life felt full of endless possibilities.

Indeed, there is nothing quite so magical as the beginning of spring.

MOSTLY MOODLIN'

OK, so I lied. Inadvertently, of course.

A few days ago, I blogged that come the first warm day of spring-like weather I would be out in my yard, throwing my back into spasms as I raked and cleaned and picked up sticks...yada, yada, yada.

So here it is, a day off -- with pay, no less -- the sun is shining,  birds are singing, and guess what?

Not goin' out in the yard.

Nope.

Well, that's sort of a lie, too, because when my friend, Karla,  comes to pick me up to go get our nails done I will have to saunter across the yard to get to the driveway to get into her car.

Oh, life is just too short to spend a day off from work, working.

So I'm not.

In fact, I plan not to wash a dish, dust a shelf, or sweep a floor...

Mostly been moodlin' all morning, just givin' the old noggin a break. Writing every day for three weeks straight requires creativity and imagination. And according to one of my favorite authors, Brenda Ueland, freeing the writer within requires a healthy dose of inefficient, mindless dawdling now and then.

Threw in some chillaxin' for good measure... a little Facebook, a little Pinterest, a little Blogger...shootin' the breeze with my son...

Yes, last fall's leftover leaves and other assorted debris will just have to wait.

Did I say I was going to paint a room?  HA!

The biggest decision I plan to make today is what color to paint my nails.

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE

...the more things stay the same.

All evidenced by a decades-old rough draft of an editorial I once wrote and just happened to discover as I was sifting through some old newspaper clips.

I couldn't help but chuckle as I recalled pounding out the think piece on an electric typewriter, then editing it with pencil in hand, applying all those proofreading symbols I had dutifully memorized in journalism school. But that was all that was humorous about what I wrote.

The editorial -- simply titled "Reproductive Rights" -- was written on Jan. 23, 1983, the 10th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. But  it could have just as easily been written on Jan. 23, 2012, the 39th anniversary of the controversial Supreme Court decision.

With all the Republican politicians fanatically ranting against birth control and threatening to shut down Planned Parenthood and curtail access to women's reproductive health services if  they are elected come November, I've decided to reprint my editorial.

Welcome to my submission for Day 22 of  the 40 Days of Writing challenge.

Granted, it's a bit of a switch from my usual lighthearted menopausal meanderings. Just felt compelled to share a little political food for thought from back in the day as women across the country this moment are uniting to battle still those politicians who are not, and will never be, content to let women make their own decisions about their own bodies.

REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS

Just 10 years ago today, the Supreme Court overturned all criminal abortion laws in the United States in the landmark decision Roe v. Wade.


Exactly one week after that ruling, the first Human Life Amendment (HLA) was introduced in Congress. The purpose of the amendment? To overturn the Supreme Court ruling, thereby making abortion and some forms of birth control illegal, and to declare fertilized eggs as persons entitled to full constitutional rights.


The opposing factions -- reproductive rights and anti-abortion groups -- have locked horns ever since.


In 1979, the National Organization For Women (NOW) arranged a summit  meeting of the two groups, hoping to explore areas of consensus. After two meetings, once of which was reported  to have been interrupted by an anti-abortion group, no real consensus was reached.


Today, with the 10th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision at hand, one group continues to celebrate  the ruling, while the other mourns and protests.


There's no telling how this controversy will be settled, or if it will be settled. Nevertheless, reproductive rights advocates take the threat of an HLA seriously.


Never mind that more than 90 percent  have used some type of reproductive healthcare or technology. Never mind that one-third of those seeking legal abortions are 19 or younger, indicating a need for more accessible contraception. And never mind that since the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, public opinion polls have continuously shown widespread support for women's reproductive rights.


Face it, there are still men and women out there who want to turn back the clock to the "good old days" when abortions were unsafe and illegal, and birth control was even less accessible.


It should come as no surprise, really. Women have struggled  throughout history to gain control over their reproductive lives, fighting for centuries against governmental, religious and societal controls.

KEEP CALM AND WRITE ON

Delving  into the second half of the 40 Days of Writing challenge.

Exhausted. But not giving up.

I am a bit behind as I spent tonight, after getting off work from my second job, helping my husband write a letter of recommendation for a mutual young friend of ours about to embark upon the next chapter of what she hopes will become a full-fledged teaching career.

I've also been busy the last few weeks writing other letters of recommendations, editing scholarship applications, and polishing family and business sagas for a commemorative community history book.

It is as if, since committing to writing every day for 40 days, a dozen other writing/editing opportunities have come my way out of the blue. And it feels great rising to each occasion.

So awesome finding my writing mojo again...and it apparently takes a village to keep that magic energy flowing...

My blog posts automatically appear on my Facebook page, via Networked Blogs, where I get lots of wonderful and much-appreciated feedback and encouragement. I also post my writing on the 40 Days of Writing Facebook page, where I have met and read the works of so many talented, interesting, fun writers from across the country. It's been awesome exchanging comments and encouragement with them, too.

Of course, we are all squeezing in our writing between jobs, families and other daily obligations and responsibilities. So many nights, so tired and knowing I have to get up at the crack of dawn to get ready for my requisite day job, I have come so close to just saying, in an exhausted panic, "The hell with it!  I must skip a day!  I can't do this! I have nothing to say!"

But somehow, in the 11th -- or 12th or 13th --  hour, I dig deep, my muse reappears, and though I may be a little late posting each day, I post SOMETHING. Better late than never, as they say.

The real secret to overcoming writer's angst and preventing 40 Days of Writer's Block? Why, my new mantra, of course.

Just five simple words adorning a necklace I recently received from Amy, my longtime friend and former newspaper cohort from back in the day:

SO BRING IT, DAY 22!

SUNSHINE ON MY (ACHING) SHOULDERS

With 70-degree temps predicted later this week, I'll be grabbing my gardening gloves and a sturdy rake as I begin my annual Overzealous Kult Spring Yard Spruce-Up Extravaganza.

Yes, after being somewhat sloth-like this winter (and it wasn't even a typical frozen-tundra-ish Iowa winter) I will insist on overdoing it as the first fresh breath of spring breezes through our little rural town.

It's inevitable.

I will throw myself into cleaning up the yard, and in doing so, throw out my back.

I will continue to hobble about, grimacing with pain, while washing windows, sweeping the porch, dusting off the porch swing and painting at least one room of the house with what little bodily movement I can still muster. Eventually I will collapse in a crumpled heap by the front door. That is where I have the best chance of someone finding me and dragging me to the couch where I will spend the next few days attached to my heating pad and eating Aleve.

That's just how I roll the first warm days of spring.

And so, in a break from my usual prose, I offer you a little poetry in celebration and wild anticipation of feeling those first rays of sunshine on my soon-to-be-aching shoulders:

A Sloth's Lament

Spring! It's Spring!

So I cleaned up the yard!

Spent an hour rakin' leaves!

Man, I worked real hard.

I swept off the porch

And I picked up some sticks...

Haven't had that much energy

Since the age of six!

Thought I'd wash the car!

Paint the kitchen after dinner!

With all that movin'

Bound to be a size thinner...

Then I took a quick break,

Sat my rear on the swing.

Tried to stand moments later,

Couldn't move a darn thing!

M'legs and arms were stiff,

My back was even stiffer;

Had to pull myself up

By leanin' on my Swiffer...

To make matters worse,

In my butt I got a splinter;

Gol dang, I'm outta shape!

'Twas a long, lazy winter!