Update: enough with the ears, and can't get enough of the family

Life continues to be rich and full here in Enoughsville.  

For me, the big news is all in my head: I snagged an early appointment with an ENT, checking out the increasing ear/jaw pain and the ringing I've been dealing with.  He had good news and . . . well, not bad news, but he didn't have the magic wand I was hoping he could wave and make this all go away.  The good news is that we've managed to rule out lots of things that might be problems.  In particular, my ringing is not currently caused by

• DBT (my knee-jerk, go-to, self diagnosis of "Deadly Brain Tumor"; I'm glad that that my ENT appreciates the humor in my both jumping to this and also that I know that it's irrational);
• Ear infection;
• Ear wax (I'm squeaky clean, thanks to the ear-rigation I had earlier);
• clogged Eustachian tubes (they're clear now, apparently);
• hearing loss, probably (I have some asymmetry, especially in the high frequencies, but I'm still mostly hearing well in the speaking range).

All of this means, there's no easy fix.  However, one of the oddities my ENT did see is that I've been clenching my jaws, unbeknownst to me.   In other words, the gold star for long-distance diagnosis goes to my uncle who wrote to me to suggest,

Only thing I can say is that I find that if I'm clenching my jaw muscles a lot, that can cause a lot of tinnitus for me. I have to consciously relax the jaw muscles and keep them relaxed to make it go away. But this may have nothing to do with what you're going through. I hope it goes away soon! 

I've been clenching so unconsciously and so consistently, apparently, that it's hard for me to figure out the difference between doing it and not doing it.  My ENT says the way to stop is to "be a detective"; I also read some advice on the internet that if we relax our jaws into the right position when we pronounce the letter "N".  So I've been doing a lot of the Batman song ("na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na") and saying "Nnnn" to myself at night as I prepare for sleep.  And so far, it seems to be helping (although being obsessed with where my jaw is happens to be another learning/life experience!).  I have a lot less discomfort in my ears and jaw now --- it hasn't gone away completely, but it's subsiding.  The ringing is still there, but even that seems less . . . oppressive and overwhelming, I guess.  So, I'm grateful for this week's developments.

Moving on to out-of-my head topics, I'm tardy in sharing these cute photos from attending a performance of Grease with two of my daughters last week.  I know it seems all sappy to say so, but I love seeing how my kids have turned into awesome, fun-loving young adults, and even more so that we enjoy spending time together.  

Kinderling and Inkling dress appropriately for the show.

Aren't they adorbs?!?

(Inkling, good luck in the Tour de Fleece!)

Even my kids who are farther away share activities with us from afar.  We'd grown up dancing to Footloose in the living room, and here's Gosling hoofing it up to the same song.  She writes,

Went to a Three Sheets to the Wind, concert last night. They are a yacht rock cover band. They played footloose... I think I take after my father

Gonna get loose, footloose,
kick off your Sunday shoes!

(By the way, Gosling, I hope you got the car window fixed, and so glad that the rock that flew out of the lawnmower didn't hit your leg!  Plus, I know I owe you a letter.  I think now that my head is settling down, I'll have the headspace to write.)

Nelson called me up to ask me for advice (I love that) and then again to thank me for the advice (double-love!).  Then he sent this photo of sharing a meal with Sizzling and her fiance -- I'm so looking forward to seeing them in a month for the wedding!

Yummers!

And I don't have a photo of my guy, but he's been having fun traveling to the armor museum and doing more protest stuff.  The most recent was today; he was with a group who were escorting women safely past anti-abortion protesters.  While much of his group was doing the escorting, he and one of his friends walked over to two of the protesters and had a nice conversation about what drives their beliefs and behaviors.  It sounded very cordial; he says he really enjoys being able to engage like that.

And that's the news from our family, which continues to be wealthy in our adventures.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous.  

My gravity-powered meditation clock

I just dug this out of my drafts folder; not sure why I didn't hit "publish" a long time ago!  It has nothing to do with July 4th, and it's a bit outdated by now, but since I do still love my little hourglass (which is really a 10-minute glass), I'll go ahead and share.  

When I start getting overwhelmed, when I have trouble managing so much to do, when I want to do anything other than that huge task that's been looming over me, . . . when I start to feel like circumstances are controlling me instead of the other way around, that's when I pull out my telephone's 10-minute timer.  Ten minutes is powerful.   Ten minutes of email; ten minutes of research; ten minutes of stretching; ten minutes of memo-writing.   Those focused bursts end up being more productive than the alternative hour of foggy slogging along.  

One of the things that I started doing about four years ago was a ten-minute mediation before I left the office.   It's been (on those days that I actually do it) a balm, and a chore.  It's a chore because it's hard to make myself sit down and do it (work is calling, baby!), and it's been a balm because I feel approximately 85 times better once I've actually done it.  

I've been only mildly twitchy about using the same timer for my meditation as for my work-related tasks.  Honestly, it's mostly been just fine; so I guess this next thing I'm going to talk about is truly splurge-y:  I've gotten myself a meditation timer.   It turns out (the amazing internet informed me) that it *is* possible to get a 10-minute hour glass, as oxymoronic as that name is.  I shared that particular piece of information with my husband, who was super happy to go ahead and buy it for me.  After all, he loves buying, and he loves me, and those two things don't get to go together very often, so he celebrates when they do.

Maybe I'm drawn to holding an hourglass (10-minute glass ) because of Mrs. Flanagan's 10th grade English class, in which we read Return of the Native.  There's something in Thomas Hardy that appeals to angsty teenagers, I gotta say. I was particularly mesmerized by the character of Eustacia Vye, who wandered the heath carrying an hourglass so she could hold in her own hands the tangible evidence of her life slipping away, wasted in remote places, while she yearned for something better.  I've had a much more fulfilling life than hers, but I still think about the symbolism of carrying an hourglass.  

And so, ever since Christmas, I've gotten to carry my beautiful little sand timer into whatever corner of the house calls to me at the moment.  My sister has been a "sit on the floor every day" kick (getting up and down from the floor is an indicator of longevity, and we're a health-kick kind of a family), so I often sit on the floor.   I breathe in "Grace" and breathe out "Faith".  

A few years, I wrote to my running buddies:

And in these dark, cold times, there's still so much to be grateful for: warm houses, warm friends, warm clothing, bodies that warm up as we keep moving them around.  It's hard to get out there, and yet we do, because somehow we have faith that getting our swaddled bodies out into the freezing, dark morning is going to somehow end up bringing us joy.   We breathe in grace; we breathe out faith, and somehow we make it up that Duke Street Hill.

My body is gravity powered like that sand timer: I'm an amazing down-hiller, but I am often the first to walk when we turn around and head back up.   Maybe that's another reason I am drawn to this beautiful little thing.  

I love to see the little thread of sand stretching from the top to the bottom, connecting future to past or something.  The glass catches the light -- sometimes there's a mini-sunset inside the hour-glass that echoes the larger sunset I see through the glass of the window.  The sand that falls makes piles that do mini-landslides and shimmying downhill dances.  

And, since I promised myself I'd stop when I'd gotten to 10-minutes of blog writing, I guess I'll end right here and go do something else now.

Update with protests and purple and and a bit of dancing

Life continues to be rich and full here in Enoughsville.  My own life happens to be kinda full of noise still; most of today was tolerable, but as I sat down to write this letter I was reminded of how the ringing definitely still shapes how I spend my days.  I also still have a bit of stuffed-up pain in one ear, and I'm holding out hope that my upcoming ENT appointment (3 or 4 weeks from now) will diagnose that and miraculously solve both problems at the same time.

Our area had been under a mild drought (we'd instituted a burn ban, and local officials had started to urge people to conserve water), and so the thunderstorms and rains that have come through have been incredibly welcome.  We've had hard rains interspersed with bright sun, which is exactly what farmers had been hoping for.   The terrible temperatures that have been whomping the south haven't made their way here.  It does get hot and humid during the day, but overnight the temperatures have dropped back down nicely -- one morning I ran with my friend in 60-degree temps.   Alas, later in the week, the smoke came through and turned the air quality to red, which meant I canceled a bunch of other outings with my friends.

In these not-too-miserably-hot days, OfSnough is putting his protest muscles to work.  The group that calls themselves "Mothers for Liberty" is meeting in Philadelphia (ironically, in the same Marriott Hotel with another group -- the Federation of Jewish Men's Clubs, who was not particularly happy to find who they were cloistered with).  My guy has been part of the crowd outside asserting their support for . . . um, actual liberty and justice.  

Last week, I wrote that I *thought* Inkling was Square Dancing; turns out I was right.

"This year was my 22nd nationals!"

When she got back, she got to join our "Thriller Thursdays" group again.  By now, we've made it all the way through Michael Jackson's dance moves, and so we're to the point of just learning to put it all together and practice to get it smooth (if "smooth" is the right word for a dance about zombies).  At the end of this past Thursday's session, we ran the dance through at 50% speed, . . . and then 75% speed, . . . and then at 100% speed (with LOTS of laughing and fumbles, but still, 100% speed!).  Go, us!

This year's purple dress dinner was a lovely gathering.

And, that's our news, or at least as much as I could squeeze in before I go find a way to bathe my ears in brown noise and such.  (Drat this goblin who sits on my shoulder, hissing and squealing in my ear!  And thanks to those of you who've offered encouragement and sources of optimism.)

Maker spree (a dog halter and a bedroom reading light)

I've been nurturing the "Rubbish Rescue Artist" portion of my psyche lately.   I came off a spate of making birthday cards for the year (ingredients: cards my dad had received from charities, manilla file folders with the tabs too worn for anyone to want them, brass-colored buttony things), and somehow just kept going.

I'm tickled with how well these next two projects came out: I've been putting both the new dog halter and the reading light to use, and they're working great (which is not always a given with improvised projects, so yay!).  Details below.

Dog Halter

I hadn't intended to make a dog walking halter, but I keep seeing these around and thought I might appreciate using one for Prewash.  I was on the verge of heading out to buy one and realized Wait: I have a drawer full of straps; I could probably make one!  And sure enough, with a bit of inspection of photographs on the internet, it seemed like a pretty straightforward design.  This project probably took all of 15 or 20 minutes.  There's $25 I won't spend at the store, right there.  

Ingredients:

• four straps (one for under the dog, one for in front, and two for going over the top, where they'll snap together)
• two rings, one for each shoulder of the dog (I used key rings)
• a D-ring to attach the leash
• a fastener to snap the dog in,
• thread for sewing the straps to the (key) rings
• a dog

The ones in the stores have more hardware, to make the harness even more adjustable, but I could just measure the straps for the dog I happened to already have handily available.  

And the dog, she seems to like this. She doesn't paw at it like she does with the gentle-lead that goes over her nose, and she's very happy to go for walks wearing this and then to pant in the warm weather when the walk is done.

Bedroom reading light

This project is one I've been plotting for a while, and the only reason it's taken me so long is that I just needed to opportunistically find the right materials.  A few years back, we had our favorite house carpenters work on the main light in our bedroom -- the old owners had installed a very small light screwed directly into the plaster (no ceiling box!!!), and we wanted something more substantial so we could replace that wussy little light with a combination light and ceiling fan.  We definitely did NOT want to screw that into the plaster and then have it crash down on our heads in the middle of the night! 

While our carpenters were mucking about in the ceiling anyway, we had them add an outlet on the ceiling near the far wall, with switch near the door, so we could add reading lights, style to be determined.  And then several years passed, while I hunted for suitable lights and suitable ways of mounting them to the ceiling or wall, depending.

Our new reading lights on the far wall.
You can see the cords from our ceiling fan/light dangling down.  
I love our ceiling fan!

A few weekends ago, I popped into our nearby Habitat Restore shop, and they were having a moving sale (they're moving closer to us: I'm quite excited about that!).  I found a fixture I thought I might be able to make use of, plus some sconces to go with it, all for the price of $4.19.   I scooped them up!

The fixture was designed to screw into a wall box, which we don't have (and I was pretty sure I didn't want something permanently fixed in the wall), so I decided to attach it to some block of wood that I could mount on the wall . . . and while searching for a beautiful slab of wood, I ran across this weird thing that was a cross between a crate and a tray, almost palette-like in its construction. It seemed perfect! I painted that the same color as the wall on the opposite side of the room.

Ingredients

• Preowned light fixture and sconces from Habitat Restore ($4.19)
• Crate/tray, trash picked
• Leftover paint, to make the crate/tray match the opposite wall
• Machine screws and nuts to attach the fixture to the crate/tray ($2 ish, from the hardware store)
• Cord clipped off a trash-picked appliance that no longer works
• electrician's tape, for connecting the cord to the fixture
• Light bulbs
• L-brackets and masonry screws for attaching the crate to the (plaster and brick) wall

I like how this came out a lot -- it's quirky, which matches me, for one thing.  It's a really nice amount of light just where we need it, for another.  And if I ever decide it needs to go somewhere else (or become a completely different fixture) I'll only have to plaster over two small holes in the well.  

It's a double pleasure to make things that are so useful -- the actual making is fun, and then when I strap the dog into the harness or switch on the lights, I get a little ping of "I made this" pride.    Makes me want to spend even more time with my toolbox, I tell you.

Doing dishes and rolling along

"Wow, we're being fancy today!"

That's what a small kid at my church said during fellowship hour this past weekend. He said that because we switched away from using paper plates and Styrofoam cups to melamine plates and melamine cups. His mom explained this mean he shouldn't throw the plate in the trash when he was done.

I'd bought these plates and cups for my church a few years back, but we don't have a dishwasher (yet) so it's not entirely surprised that we have been using the paper plates instead. Through one of these lovely circuitous path of causes and causation, the reason that we were switching back to reusable plates is because of my running group. A handful of us run together every Saturday morning, and it's one of the things that we all look forward to every week. It's running, yes, but it's also companionship and therapy and so many things social.  

The dishes coming home for washing, in buckets,
in a shopping card I'd trash-picked a few years ago.

The week after the smoke from the Canadian wildfires blew in and then back out again, it's not surprising that the topic of conversation turned to  environmental issues.  My friend Becca was explaining to a newcomer, Jenny, that my wedding gift to her had been to do dishes for her reception, and that we'd used the church plates for this.  (I hadn't remembered that at all, even though I totally believe this because it sounds so much like me.  I love that I did this!  Yay, past me!)  At any rate, we all agreed that doing dishes for the right environmental cause is an easy lift, so we contacted the person in charge of the fellowship hour and offered to set up a dishwashing rotation among ourselves.  The organizer was entirely agreeable, so we got to be fancy in the eyes of six-year-olds.

It's a rickety cart, but it does what it needs to.

Part of what I loved about this is that it's a small nudge in a direction that making so many people so happy.  I try very hard to be Eco without driving other people crazy. When the melamine plates came out, people who knew me well came up to me to thank me. One guy said, "I saw the plates, and I knew my sister had been here!" (And by "sister", he meant "sister in faith": me).  How sweet!  Another person who didn't know me before, but who found that I was the one organizing the dishwashing rotation, begged me to let her know if there is anyway that she could help: she wanted to do more, and didn't know how to be involved.

I think sometimes it's hard to suggest change because we think there will be so much resistance to it but the effort will be futile, or at the very least uncomfortable. But sometimes suggesting a change is like nudging a boulder that's at the top of the hill, and the gravity of our shared will to do what is right ends up meaning that the boulder just keeps going of its own accord.

Next challenge: 

Figure out a way to wash communion cups.  I've seen dishwasher racks for these that hold small numbers of cups and are very expensive.  So, that's a "no" unless I run out of other options.  I want to figure out how to build racks that can easily transport the used cups between sanctuary and someone's dishwasher.   

Updates, grand enough

Life continues to be rich and full in Enoughsville.  It's been two weeks since I did the update, partly because of so much happening last weekend, in fact.  

The leitmotif for this middle-of-June is probably "grandchildren and children".  The fortnight started off with grandkids; the midpoint was grandkids; and the end of the fortnight was (you guessed it) grandkids again.  It's been grand, folks!

The specific grand-activities were (beginning) birthday party, (middle) dance concert, (end) cherry picking.  I'll just intersperse pictures of some of those events sporadically while telling you about other stuff. 

The birthday party theme: "Where the Wild Things Are".
Kinderling made wild cupcakes.

Health and Financial maintenance have gobbled up a bit of my time.  Health-wise, it's been the time of year for my annual check-ups (what my husband and I call the "Annual Celebration of Health").  Indeed, pretty much all seems to be ticking along just fine in this body of mine, with the exception that I still have ringing and ear clog issues.   [The doc I saw tried clearing out ear wax, but when that didn't resolve the issue, referred me to an ENT who I'll see in about a month.]  I am apparently passing into a new phase: for the first time ever, the doc used the phrase with me, "As we get older . . . ".   Okey, dokey!  Let's do it!  Let's keep getting older!  I'm ready.

Pin-the-Tail on Max
(although, actually: Tape-the-tail somewhere near Max)

Financial-wise, I've been chatting with various TIAA reps because next year we'll go from putting money into our accounts to taking money out.   I like my rep, but she suggested I get an accountant as well, so I've also started conversations with a fee-only advisor.  Man, it's fun to chat with someone who likes to get into the weeds of finances!  I'm kind of enjoying geeking out over this. 

Kinderling attempting to tape the tail on, 
with help from another grandmother.

Speaking of geeking, I have also of course been enjoying the wide open spaces to think about math.  I got to have lunch with a collaborator who shared his camera lucida with me -- a cute little prism device that allows you to see both your paper and the thing you're drawing in the same place, so you can essentially trace the thing in front of you.  It's both very entertaining and very tricky to use, and I'm kind of thinking of getting one for myself.  

Gathering after the dance concert. 

In addition to seeing Achild's dance concert, I got to go to Inkling's choral concert.  This was at a lovely outdoor venue, amid a bunch of quaint shops (shoppes?) and ice cream parlors.   Not only was the concert itself a lot of fun, but it also felt like a happy tradition -- it was at this same concert two years ago that Inkling happened to walk into a nearby yarn store and found her dream job.  This year, after the concert (and ice cream), I got to have a personal tour of the yarn shop, including seeing a bunch of cute samples she's made for the place.  Nice!

My attempt at a selfie (us-ie?). 
Three performing artists!

And lest you think that Achild and Inkling are the only passengers on the song-and-dance train, I'll happily add that my impromptu "Thursday Thrillers" crowd has now made it all the way through the moves of Michael Jackson's Thriller dance.  We'll keep gathering on Thursdays through July, but from now on, it'll be more about rehearsing and cementing the moves than about learning them.  I'm having so much fun with this.  

And that's a lot about me . . . sheesh. To expand a bit, here are some other family updates. 

My guy and Inkling separately and together attended a bunch of Juneteenth and Pride events.  OfSnough is also becoming increasingly active in Ukraine fundraising committees.  Inkling is heading out this week for (I think?) square dancing.  I think it's square dancing; it could be yarn/wool related, but it's probably dancing.  Shoot; I'm supposed to remember these things.

We really got into picking cherries;
the cherries really got into (and onto) Bchild!

Nelson is enjoying his new job.  He has been working night shifts at the gas station, and he says he likes these shifts:  he finds them relaxing, because there aren't a lot of people, but the people who are there are generally pretty chill.  I am so glad to hear these updates from him, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing him in person in a few months.  

Xavier, in Haiti, is recovering from his foot surgery.  He says he's sleeping a lot (not surprisingly), but all seems to be going well.  Phew!!

The maiden voyage of my new electric water bath canner 
was highly successful.  I  love it!

We're not the only ones whose efforts have borne fruit: Gosling has literal fruit growing in her yard.

Gosling:
"First blueberries of the season from Amelia's blueberry bush 🫐"

And that's the news from our family, which continues to be wealthy in our adventures.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous. 

Adventures in Tinnitus: weeks three and four, plus a bit of five.

 Week three.

My ears keep ringing (especially the left one), and my ear-jaw connection on the left remains tight.  But maybe it's not as bad as earlier?  Or maybe I'm getting used to it?  It's hard to tell.

A friend of mine at church calls me her "accountability partner"; we meet up once a month to recite to one another the scripture that we've been working on memorizing.  I've been working on Psalm 33, which in short is basically about how God, not us, is in control of things.  The conjunction of practicing this particular psalm with my ringing ear comes together in this way: I'd been planning and planning (and planning) on how I'd have lovely "me time" and "quiet time" to do math and such this summer, and then life had other plans in store for me.  My ringing ears becomes a reminder that I need also to take time to meditate and pray for reasons larger than myself.  It's like a telephone bell in my head, calling me back to the source of grace and faith.  So, I start praying quietly again -- which is hard because my head is ringing, but also that's kind of the point, right?

Also, I have more and more friends and neighbors tell me about their ringing ears and their allergies.  As always, having community and reassurance is a big help.  My friends give me recommendations for good allergists and ENTs.

Late in the week, I get a big test of how my head is doing: the Canadian wildfires send so much smoke this way that it's not a good idea to work outside where I can get ambient noise, and the internet in our house dies, so I can't pull up white noise on You Tube.  And yet, somehow, I'm okay.  Definitely, the ringing is getting less severe than before (although it's definitely still present, especially when I'm in quiet rooms).

Week four.

In the middle of the week, I get to see my doctor for my annual physical.  I tell him about how bad I am at self-diagnosis,  but that now I know it's neither DBT (deadly brain tumor) nor ear infection: it's allergies.   He takes a peek in my ear canals and says, actually, it's ear wax.  [So really, really, I am bad at self diagnosis!]  The doc is not particularly good at empathy, I have to say;  I keep getting the vibe that I'm petty for worrying about all this. I ask about visiting ENTs.  He brushes that aside; he prescribes ear drops and tells me to come back in a week so he can irrigate my ears and check them again (earrigation?).  The ear drops are a slightly stronger acidic mixture than hydrogen peroxide, he says, so I start telling people I'm dropping acid.  

The noise hasn't gone away: I know that "glass" isn't a noise, but that's the way I describe it to myself.  It's definitely becoming less annoying; sometimes I forget that my ears are ringing.  I haven't used white noise You Tube in a while, and often I don't even play music while I'm working.  That's a huge contrast from a few weeks ago, when I needed that extra noise just to keep my sanity.  

Week five.

Maybe, the ringing is getting worse again?  Ugh.  I drop acid (rather, put ear drops in my ear) and continue with Flonase.   I start music back up while I'm doing math.

On Tuesday, I head back to the doc, who squirts large quantities of cold (!) water mixed with hydrogen peroxide into my year.  Noisy!  When he's done, my ear is stopped up.  He looks in my ear; there's still wax on the sides, he says, but my ear drum is clear.  I tell him my ear is stopped up and I can't hear out of it.  He looks at me like I'm a space alien -- this guy is really, really not good at empathy, I have to say again.  

I shake my head to try to clear it.  He asks if I'm dizzy . . . maybe?  He asks if I can hear anything at all out of the ear, and I check: yes, but it's like I have ear plugs in.  Or like getting water in my ear from back in my swimming days.  I look at him, like, "can you fix this?"  He asks, "Is there anything else you need from me today?" and I'm taken aback.  Like, dude, when I walked into this office I could hear, and now I can't . . . I repeat that I can't hear out of that ear.  He says he'll set me up with a referral for an ENT, but they're booked up and it might take a while, and I think about how last week I'd asked about ENTs and he brushed it off.  Okay, this doc clearly, clearly missed the Intro to Empathy Class.

I bike home, and eventually, as I putter around, the water drains out and I can hear again.  Phew.  And the ringing returns.  Dang it.