November 16, 2013

An Early Start to Saturday

November 16, 2013

When I go to bed early (9:30 last night) then  I wake up early (5:30 this morning).  Not good.  I don't mind getting up early, but 5:30 on a Saturday morning is too much of a good thing.  At 5:30 it is not daylight.  The birds aren't out and even if they were, I wouldn't be able to see and photograph them.  So that leaves me with the problem of what to do at 5:30 a.m. on a Saturday.  A lot of people like to do their Bible study early in the mornings, but my eyes don't focus well for a while after I get up, so that doesn't work.  That leaves cooking, cleaning, and sewing.  I did two of the three.  I did not cook.

The birds did show up once it was daylight.  Much to my surprise there were warblers on the waterfalls.  I had not seen any in several weeks!  And look who else showed up!

Next I did grocery shopping and came home and put it all away.  I spent some time in the kitchen working on getting lunch in the oven and cleaning up the kitchen.

I have two Christmas gifts in progress that are sewing projects so I worked on one of them off and on all day today.  I made good progress and am so pleased!  I am notorious for last minute completions.  Maybe this year will be different. 

Ron spent much of the day taking out that tree that was leaning over the Resaca.  It was a chore, but he got it done.  I watched off and on, but it was too hard on my nerves. 

He brought it down exactly where he had planned.  He is amazing!

 

The ducks came to watch Ron work on the tree. 

 



 Then it was time to cut it up and haul it to the brush pile.

I didn't hear it fall. 

Today I heard from two of our kids, well, one son and one daughter-in-law.  It sounds like they are going to be able to have some nice visits here at Christmas.  One pair will be here for more than a week and the other that I heard from will probably be here about 3 days.  It is going to be fun!

While sewing today, I have had the television on to the Christmas movies on the Hallmark channel.  I have seen some Facebook postings where friends say they won't watch Christmas movies this early, but I would enjoy them every day.  I am trying to see how much of the dialog I can understand.  It is enough to follow the story (of course some of these I have seen several times), but I don't get all of it.  I do find I get more if I am actually watching instead of just listening while I am sewing.  I don't know if it is that I am doing some lip-reading, or if it is because I am turning my head so that the sound processor microphones are aimed in the right direction.  It may be a combination of both. 

The Cochlear Implant and the sound processor are strange in that sometimes the sounds are so natural that I forget I am wearing it.  Other times I seem to just hear a rumble.  When there is a lot of noise, I really have trouble picking out what I want to hear from the jumble of noises.  Another interesting thing that happens is with the music.  I told you I was going to try some Christmas music.  I still hear music in my head all the time and sometimes a song will start and say, for example, I know the song is Silent Night.  Unless I really concentrate on listening to it, my mind will put the proper words to Silent Night (or whatever song I am hearing) to the melody that I am currently hearing "in my head".  If I really focus on a familiar song, I can follow the melody, but it takes a lot of concentration.  When I try to sing along, I can't tell if I am anywhere near on key and that makes me sad.  I love to sing.  I will continue singing - alone but maybe not around others - at least for now.