My BAHA Rant

Micah's bone-conduction hearing aids are relatively simple devices. There is a rolling dial that adjusts the volume (amount of vibration conducted into his skull), a very tiny switch that adjusts to accomodate for a noisier background or to accomodate an FM system, but usually the tiny switch should be left on "1" . If it gets switched to the "E" setting for use with an FM system and no FM is connected to the BAHA, you feel no vibrations transmitted when you speak.

None of this is rocket science. I cannot program a VCR, but I can manage two BAHAs.

So today Micah gets off the bus with his hearing aids in the ZipLoc bag because it's raining and the bus driver and aide understand that the BAHAs do not get wet. Period. This is good.

But Micah loves his BAHAs - he now will shriek that he wants "helps you hear" put on immediately when he gets inside or into the car if the BAHAs are off. He is absolutely insistent, and this is also good. So today I transferred him from the school bus into my car, the minute that I buckled in, he wanted his BAHAs on. So I pulled out the ZipLoc bag and dialed the volume up from "O" to "2" and felt no vibration from one of the BAHAs when I was talking to Micah. Steve said that one of the batteries was a little iffy that morning, in the middle of the green zone, so I just assumed that it was time to replace it when we got back home. One was better than none, and it would just need to be taken off when we got out of the car to go get Thea from school because it was still raining.

There have been a few times when he's come home from school with one or the other BAHAs tiny switch on "E" which means that he's not getting anything from that BAHA; I've written several notes to remind staff that the switches should also be rechecked after naps when the volume is being dialed up. Not rocket science.

Today's snafu is difficult to pinpoint who is at fault since the bus staff could've taken it off or the school staff, but the whole idea that no one seems to be checking the tiny switch starting to annoy me. Why make a small child work that much harder to hear when all it takes is a little diligence to check out the equipment?

Another Weekend Update

. . .of nothing much in the way of excitement to blog about. This week was a recovery week from being away last weekend - getting all the laundry done, getting back into some shred of a routine, and seeing Steve's family.

We went to see Monsters vs. Aliens, all four of us. Thea actually knew a few of the characters through friends at school who've already been to see the film, and it was definitely more interesting than "Hotel for Dogs" so she managed to make it through the movie without the previously heard "Mama, I'm bored. . . ."

Micah actually managed to sit for about a half hour, maybe slightly longer. Until the popcorn and Coke ran out , at least. Then he got a case of wanderlust and had to try out various other seats, until I was ready to dig my old scuba diving weight belt to anchor his butt to one spot.

Today the kids and I went to visit their grandmother. Thank goodness for GPS because Steve's "it's easy just exit here, go there, turn here" directions which failed to include the really useful "stay in the middle lane" type details. Good practice, since we'll be going to Hackensack for Micah's CT scan.

And there's a weird sort of symmetry to having to make a trip to Hackensack to get something for Micah. In 2007, just a couple of weeks before our trip to China I had to make a Saturday morning run to the USCIS office there to be re-fingerprinted for our adoption paperwork. Back in the days before GPS (or my owning one, at least), going to find a hole-the-wall, utterly nondescript storefront office.

I'm crossing fingers that we can get the CT done during the spring break week, then get an appointment with the ENT surgeon to find out if atresia repair is possible and which ear will be first.

I've gotten semi-hooked into watching "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" on HBO. Sort of makes me wish I'd read Alexander McCall Smith's book first. "True Blood" is back in mid-June, one month after the ninth book in the series is published. It's going to be a good summer.

Next weekend is Easter - and I've already got the stuff for Thea's and Micah's baskets. We're into the more pagan and chocolate-fueled aspects of the holiday, and will probably be one of the few families having matzoh ball soup after the Easter egg hunt. Thea and I make a mean matzoh ball soup.

600 Hits in Six Months, Etc.

I've said I love the little counter widget that keeps track of visits to the blog. Yesterday six months and one day after I installed it, the number hit 600. Which is relatively tiny compared to some of the blogs I read, but most of what I write is very snore-worthy and intended for a niche market of family and close friends - my guess is that at least half, maybe more, of the visits are my husband, which seems to save him the time of actually engaging in conversation though what he does with that saved time remains a mystery to me.

I love the ten little foreign flags on the Feedjit map, too. Canada, France, Portugal, Greece, Qatar, Kazakhstan, India, Viet Nam, China, Philippines. Still hoping for that hit from Germany or Spain, but I will be patient.

Yesterday was also my mother's birthday. Forgot to send a card, but I did mail her one of the invitations to the party which arrived yesterday, so I'm not completely horrible.

The hideous behemoth (aka the minivan) arrived Wednesday night while I was at the PTA meeting for Thea's school. Oh joy. I have no intention of driving it until the first weekend in May when we go to Oma's; my mother is thrilled that she can bring a friend along to the NLH Spring Festival.

Evil Children

Today was going to be such a good day. A house to myself, errands unencumbered by a little man who thinks that every stuffed animal and Beanie Baby in every store is meant to be his, some time on the laptop getting patient letters re: labs and x-ray results ready to send.

A triptych of annoyances over a relatively short time:


The children came home from school. Thea had to sit on my chair in the living room and then proceed to point out that someone used a ballpoint pen to draw a very large circle on the cushion. Lining up the usual suspects, Micah denied committing this heinous act, saying "only draw on PAY-per. . ." with fierce conviction. Since his artistic talent these days are circles of varying sizes, I remained totally unconvinced of this professed innocence. Fortunately after putting various ballpoint pens through the dryer in 2004, I had hairspray on hand managed to get quite a bit of the mark out.

Micah is now restricted to the kitchen as far as pens go. Which was where he was when Thea wanted to cut paper. So both had scissors (Micah still in the kitchen, if you are on pen restrictions, scissor privileges are even more limited.)

Thea came into the kitchen to ask if she could cut up a magazine "with people on it" from the coffee table. This could have meant my nursing magazines (automatic yes), catalogs (ditto) or a few other things that I would prefer not to have sliced up. This very polite question would have been the right thing to do, if she hadn't already cut half of the cover off of my barely-read April 2009 copy of Washingtonian magazine. And when I saw that she'd already cut it and was a little annoyed with her, she had the gall to tell me that she did it because I didn't tell her not to do it fast enough.

We'd made some popcorn after school for a snack, and Thea hadn't finished it and put the bowl on the counter. She wanted to dump it in the trash but I asked her to ask her father if he'd want it later. Then when I stuck my head out into the living room to see what the answer was I find both she and Steve munching away, as dinner sits ready to serve on the stove and me needing to get on the road to the PTA-ish meeting at Thea's school. I could have clubbed them both over their heads but took the less violent path of yelling my lungs out at them. They deserved it.

Bad day to forget to take the blood pressure medicine.

The End of the Hope of Cool

I have always been a nerd, but a nerd with the hope of one day, achieving some small degree of cool - even if that turns out to be racing stripes on my walker. A shred of optimism in my otherwise cynical and sarcastic heart.

Today that hope is on life support, and likely by tonight, the plug will be pulled.

The subtitle of today's post should be: Enter the Minivan.

A Toyota Sienna. Seven seats, which should increase our schlepping-people power by a factor of almost two.

This past weekend on the way down to Mom's, Siennas were all I saw on I-95, it was like they were on some sort of southern migratory pathway. It was the universe's way of conking me over the head and telling me that my biggest nightmare is about to come true.

We are going to become one of 'those people.' Surburbanites, soccer parents. There were two things I told Steve while we were dating: I will not change my surname when married and I will NEVER drive a minivan.

This will be Steve's car, FYI. Not that a Honda CRV is a huge step up the ladder toward cool, but small steps are better than no steps.

And I still use the name I was born with. So all is not lost, yet.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

The cake from Charles Street Bakery, with the image from the invitation on it.

This weekend was the surprise 80th birthday party for my mother. My brother had plans in the works for months, and the closer it got to the actual event, the more afraid I became of spilling the beans because with age it just seems harder to hold all the threads of the half-truths, lies and deceits that were told. What came easily in adolescence is much more difficult with the passing of thirty-some years.

The first lie was that my husband had a seminar at one of the DC-area universities so he was also coming down for the weekend. Most of the time it's just me and the little heathens making the trip. Next since the "seminar" was work-related, there could be a hotel room for us - necessary because my mother's cousin was coming into town from Florida for the party, so she would be moving from the hotel to Mom's guest room on Saturday so it would not have been a good idea to have my little army invade for a night and then decamp for a hotel. Mom was already going to stress that her house was not ready for company, and so Hurricane Micah would need to make landfall elsewhere.

Second lie, if we're only going for the majors, we were going to be having lunch with Lorrie, my friend and former housemate, but it would need to be later in the afternoon because she had plans for the morning. This was the cover story for not going out until a little bit later than we usually do. I also said I wanted to go to the Blue Crabs' stadium to get t-shirts (a small truth amidst all of the fudging.) Then I mixed into that another falshood that I had spoken with my sister-in-law and she had said that there was an event at the stadium where they were giving away free passes to the children's play area. She wouldn't be able to go (another small truth, she had a class), but my brother and nephew would be going and they wanted extra passes so could we time our stadium trip to the time they would be there.

Meanwhile, after having dinner at Mom's Friday, we went back to the hotel and met up with Mina, Mom's cousin who came from Florida for the party. And the kids met her as well - now we had another cat that had to be kept bagged up. Fortunately Thea claimed she was so tired that she had already forgotten Mina's name.

Saturday morning Thea and I were up early to run errands; ATM machine, gas up the car, stop at the bakery to pay off the cake (which my brother had already done by the time we arrived at 8:10.) So we had croissants and went back to the Best Western to have breakfast with Mina, Steve and Micah before heading over to Mom's Saturday morning.

At Mom's we're making up our agenda for the day: SafewayBlue Crabs' stadium store, Kohl's, lunch with Lorrie. As we're getting ready I'm trying to stall a little bit because the longer I have to keep everyone in motion before our arrival at the stadium, the more likely it is that I am going to let the cat out of the bag.

Thea picked that moment to come unglued about not being able to play a round of Candyland at Oma's and she pitched a rather spectacular hissy-fit. Tear, recriminations, snot, more tears, all with major splashes of whining. This DID NOT help with plans to get on the road because my mother was not going to sit in the car with a fit-throwing child. So as Mom is getting ready and gathering up her stuff, I am hissing major threats in Thea's ears about what will happen if she blows the surprise.

I tossed both kids in the car with a few more threats heaped on Thea's head and went in to tell Mom that everything was fine. By the time she ambled out to the car, everything was not fine, we were on to Round #2 of Tears/Snot/Recriminations, but by then I was hissing at my mother that SHE wasn't going to make me go through this alone, so she'd better get her butt in the car. NOW.

It is now 12:40 pm. The stadium is about five minutes from Mom's house. I am starting to sweat, because even with a stop at the SunTrust ATM at Safeway, we have time on our hands. Time the guests need to find their way to the party suite. Fortunately Thea is almost back to her pre-hissy fit state after being allowed to go with me to the ATM and punch in the PIN, etc.

So we head to the stadium, and instead of taking the ever so convenient back roads, I take Route 301. As we are heading about half way to the turn off, the lightbulb goes off: Mom, do you think that the White Plains post office still might have the Lunar New Year stamps? (And you thought that I wasn't going to mention LNY again until 2010!) So we pulled in to the post office: Closed as of 12 noon. Then Mom comes up with the idea to try the Waldorf post office. Genius! It will take at least ten minutes to get there, a few minutes in the post office, and ten minutes back. Amen, problem solved. Further erosion of my newborn ulcer averted.

Except that my mother knew that I bought quite a few sheets of LNY stamps during our last trip. So add another lie to the pot, there are fewer stamps per sheet (true) and I've used them up. (I did use a couple of sheets to mail out the invitations to her surprise party, but I still have at least three or four.) At the post office, again I let Thea come with me, because she's gotten her act together so I need to enlist her help at the stadium and heap a little praise on her head to do my bidding at when we get to crunch time. We also bought two more sheets of LNY stamps - and with rates going up again in May 2009, I will probably be buying one- or two-cent stamps to be able to use them all up.

Now we head to the stadium. It's a gray, cool, drizzly day. The weather was not festive in the least. So when we arrive in the parking lot there are a few cars - which does give it the appearance of something going on. I pull in and swing wide through the lot not knowing how much (or little) my mother would pay attention to the other cars there (cousins with NC plates, more cousins with Virginia plates, a set of Pennsylvania plates, her neighborhood friends' cars).

I'm ready to head in and get this over with. Let's shout SURPRISE and be done. Let Karl take over responsibility for Mom as the organizer and host of the party. Someone, buy me a drink.

But we are talking about my mother. "You go and find out where this thing is, because I am not getting out this car just to wander aimlessly through the stadium." So I go out on the reconnaisance mission.

Thea and I trot out into the drizzle right as one of my mother's friends is coming up the other part of the sidewalk. I am hoping that my mother is chatting with Micah and not looking in the rear view or side view mirrors or we're screwed right as we're heading to the finish line.

We stop into the stadium office, a staff member points us out to a suite along the third base line, the friend goes off to join the guests and Thea and I head back to the car to get Oma and Micah. And Micah is out cold, fast asleep. Nice. I have to fold up the lump and stuff him into the umbrella stroller.

So Micah gets unceremoniously plunked in his stroller and Oma gets to push him (versus using her cane), and we make the trek back to the party suite.

Right as we're coming to the building, two ladies, one carrying a helium container (giving me the clue she's the person my brother made arrangements with to do the decorating) start heading our way. But she was on the ball when she saw my face, she comes up with, "Are you here for the coupons? They are SO disorganized, everyone's waiting around, I'm going off to have lunch and come back.) Nice cover story, promising future in covert ops if her party decorating sideline goes belly-up.

So we head in to the foyer area, Thea and I in the lead, Mom and the stroller-bound Micah bringing up the rear. The last thing I said to her before she got to the doorway was "Come on, Mom, I want to get in line!" Mom comes in, blows right by the giant banner with HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARGARET on it, says something like "Oh, look at all the balloons." Everyone yells SURPRISE and she still hasn't truly processed what was going on. You can almost hear the synapses firing in domino-like fashion. Since I was behind her I missed seeing her face as the lightbulb went off when she first took in everything.

There were old neighbors from when we lived in Hyattsville, there was her cousin from Florida, cousins from the Baltimore area, Aunt Mary, Donna and Bill from North Carolina, friends of hers who came all the way from Delaware, a friend whose mother worked with Mom's father, so many of her local friends this posting would go on forever it I tried to account for everyone. Even though I sent out the invitations, it was mind-blowing to see everyone there, so I know it was a huge surprise for Mom. Sometimes it doesn't take much to boggle her mind, and this did it and did it well. My brother did good, really, really big good.

Nothing like cake to cure a bad mood!

Meanwhile, it took most of the three-hour party for my stomach to completely unknot. When she turns 85, I'll pay for the party and my brother can concoct the stories needed to get her there.

Mom high-fiving it with the little cousins: Elise (2), Micah (3), Bailah (5) and Willi (3)

Evil Moments

Today we headed down the NJ Turnpike and on to my Mom's house. The kids were relatively good in the car, on minor spat with the obligatory whining, but otherwise a smooth trip. For variety we took a vote and decided to go through the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel instead of taking I-695 and the Key Bridge. Thea thought the tunnel was pretty cool stuff. Score one for Mommy.

Since the kids only had one break at the Chesapeake House rest stop, the first order of business was getting some running around time in before dinner. And my mother's neighbor's dog is the perfect source of some exercise. Thea loves walking Chelsea (or being walked by Chelsea) because of the retractable leash. We start out by going up and down the fire lane exit to my mother's development so that Chelsea's done her business before walking through the neighborhood.

We also give Micah a chance to 'walk' Chelsea by putting him in the umbrella stroller and clipping the leash into the seat belt. Then Thea holds the back of the stroller so Chelsea (who is a Boston Terrier) doesn't take Micah on a wild ride. Though sometimes I think she loosens her grip on the handles to see what might happen.

OK, so that's the preamble and set up for the actual story. The three of us are heading back into my mother's little townhouse community with a dog that has done her business so thoroughly that there couldn't be a drop left in her if her bladder were wrung out like a sponge.

We start off down the little court, Micah and the stroller have the leash, I'm trying to keep Chelsea from running like a lunatic into the street because Micah has no grasp of how the retractable leash works. Pun intended. We pass a townhouse where a little Yorkie is at the storm door looking out, Chelsea spots her and makes a dash across the lawn to see the little yapping scrap of bad shag carpeting.

Then Yorkie owner comes to her door and tells us to keep 'our' dog off her lawn. With the little yapping provocateur right there. As I had just come from four hours in a car trying to keep two kids happy, I was not in the best of moods, so I just snapped and said, "Oh, get over it." Thea looked at the lady and said, "Yeah." And we kept walking.

Considering my employment history includes two years working in the NJ prison system "oh, get over it" is fairly tame. Nevertheless I immediately felt guilty because I don't want to cause problems for my mother.

After we finished the walk we returned Chelsea to her owner, and I had to ask her who lives at 203. And it turns out that the person I snapped out at is the neighborhood busybody who everyone in this little community despises for numerous and varied reasons. The infamous CeCe. I have hear so many CeCe stories, and I do remember a lady with a Yorkie stuffed under her arm barging in when Mom's neighbor was being treated by the paramedics and readied for transport to the local hospital. (Just what one wants is in the middle of a medical emergency to have someone come nosing around, and with her ratty little mutt, too.)

So after a brief discussion with Dorothy as to whether my mother has any inkling about her surprise birthday party (another vote for 'no'), I hightailed it back to Mom's to tell her about our encounter.

Needless to say, my stock in my mother's eyes rose and she was wishing she'd come out on the walk with us. . . .

And I'm glad we're at the hotel tonight. Mom's guest room faces the street, and I'd rather not be sleeping there when the Molotov cocktail a la CeCe gets lobbed through the window.

And while I'm on the subject of sharing what a horrible person I am, here's another foot-in-mouth-via-email moment:

The set up for this story is that Micah's ENT said last May that we would proceed with a CT scan after he turned three. Our only contact with him since that visit was via email to ask him for a letter supporting Micah's second BAHA (which he responded to in something under a nanosecond and had the letter sent out within a day or so of the request. He rocks.)

So I called the office on Wednesday to set the wheels in motion for the CT scan. And was told that we need to make an appointment for an office visit first. Whatever for? Until Dr. Choe has the CT scan results, another appointment is a waste of his time and ours. But I made an appointment anyway, and then emailed the doctor (who I was told was on vacation this week, but I figured it would be in his email in-box when he got back next week).

This is what I wrote:

"Thank you for your help with Micah's second BAHA; he is doing amazingly well and is now at Summit Speech School for its full-day preschool program for just under one month. I called the Englewood office today to ask about setting up the CT scan for Micah. The staff member I spoke with said that we would need to make an appointment first. I had been hoping that we could begin to make arrangements for the CT scan, and then follow up with you after you had had the opportunity to review the results. I attempted to explain that other than being a year older, a bit taller, a few pounds heavier and much more verbal, his atresia is unchanged. (She had asked,"How is Micah feeling?" which struck me as a slightly odd question; he's three years old, and blissfully unaware that he's any different than anyone else, atresia is his version of normal.)"

It's not all that bad,really, except that the doctor in his response to me saying we did not need to come in for an appointment until after the CT scan, also CC:'d the message to his medical assistant and asked her to pull Micah's chart and put it on his desk, with all of my entire message forwarded with his response. Ouch. The front desk staff is going to hate me, at least one of them is.

And he responded within a few hours of my sending the message to him. So much for his vacation, time to back away from the computer. Dr. Choe. . . . .