Things I've learned lately...

1. The more I work on memorizing things, the better my memory becomes. I mean, it used to take me several repetitions to learn a song, and then I'd lose it as soon as I heard a different song. I'd have to alternate songs for a while until I could keep the new ones in my head. And now it's not only faster, but I can remember songs even after hearing other things in between.

(Duh, right? Of course exercising my memory makes it stronger!)

2. Toddlers love it when you're wrong. To them, this is just the funniest joke ever. "No Connie! Cow goes mooooo. *giggle*"

3. When I was a kid, I was an ungrateful brat in many respects. No, that's not sardonic mimicking of somebody's complaints, it's a conclusion I came to all on my own after honestly reflecting on childhood gift-giving ceremonies.

4. Times Square is of the devil.

5. Stress can cause hives. Who knew?

And now, for another edition of...

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Ethnic.

of or relating to large groups of people classed according to common racial, national, tribal, religious, linguistic, or cultural origin or background.

It does not mean specifically black. It does not even mean non-white. I highly doubt it's supposed to mean anything from "We don't want to offend you by trying to figure out what you people call yourselves" to "Oh, let's cater to the ethnics by throwing them a single toy made Just For Them!"

And when you segregate the hair stuff into two completely different aisles, nowhere near each other, one marked "hair supplies" and one labeled "ethnic hair supplies" (by which they could only have meant black, unless there's much I don't understand about Asian hair....), you just piss people (me!) off. It's stupid. Stop doing that. I know it's easier to find the hair stuff you're looking for when it's labelled, but why not call it by its function (oils, shampoo, extensions) and stick it in one aisle, instead of having half with the beauty supplies and half with the foot care? At the very least, stop calling it ethnic. That term, it doesn't mean what you want it to mean.

So, another Ana-update...

A cute story or two, and then another thing I need help with....

( Cute stories! )

Onto the request for help.

I'm becoming concerned about Ana's hearing. I started noticing this problem when the baby was born - she's covering her ears a lot for sounds which, logically, shouldn't be loud. She's also getting very upset now if I raise my voice, or appear to, for any reason. "Connie? Don't yell please, okay?"

( Read more... )

Obviously, whether her hearing is too sensitive, normal, or even not sensitive enough (this I doubt), Ana's the one who's going to have to learn to deal with it. We all do.

My hearing is very sensitive. I can often hear things that others can't, at least when it comes to decibal level. I can't talk about frequency, so I don't know if my hearing is normal in that respect or not. I do have trouble with filtering sound - I used to be able to block off my sense of hearing almost entirely by focusing on something else. However, if I could hear something, I could hear everything else - this is still true. I can't hear somebody talking next to me without at the same time being aware of the rain, the train doors closing in the station, the TV that's on, the people in the next room talking. My mother apparently had her suspicions about that from my childhood and did her best to focus me on music on the theory that this'd be helpful. Don't know if it was or not.

I don't know how well Ana can filter out sounds. I do know that whether she can do so well or not, it's not easy living with a loud world :) I've honestly lived as I do for my whole life - I haven't even ever tried out earplugs because I figure "Eh, my hearing isn't *that* annoying that it's worth spending money on (I'll say that about anything if the money can go for a new book)".

No matter how Ana's hearing is, it's clear sounds are bothering her. Right now, she doesn't know how to deal with that other than covering her ears, which is a stopgap solution at best. I want to know what other people do to deal with noise, because my normal method (a. suffer through it while plotting everybody's death/reading a VERY engrossing book or b. leave, fast or c. suffer through it to a point, then suffer massively from the sensory overload because that wasn't really a clever thing to do) probably won't work for her. I'm not sure it even works for *me*, but at least I'm responsible enough to know that.