(knicked from Joules blog:)
//Turns out today she said he should take off the armbands as she was sure he didn't need them any more, and try really swimming. So he did - and not the normal starting length of 5 metres, oh no, not my bratling... No, he swam 10 metres (that's one length of the pool), had a minute's breather, then the teacher suggested he do it again to prove to himself he could - and he did. 20 metres in total. Proud? Damn right!!//

Aya! Well done, bratling! *g*


I really do need to get my hearing checked. I first noticed there was a problem when the cubs were babies and I was sleeping through their crying when I slept on my left side - my left ear having the better hearing I found. (I experimented - when I covered up my left ear there was a noticeable reduction in sound, with my right, there was hardly any difference.) No problem, you compensate for little annoyances, don''t you? If I had to sleep when the cubs were awake I did so on my right side so I could hear them. Eh.
7 years on and I still haven't done anything about it. I don't think there's been any further drop in how much I can hear, but other things have started sliding. Making sense of conversations when there's more than one person speaking, or there's a lot of background noise, is hard sometimes, and frequently I've been caught out with an inappropriate response because someone didn't say what I thought they did. A lot of the time I find myself simply sitting back and not participating cos I'm missing every 4th word and it's too much effort to keep up. (Why do I spend so much time online communicating via a keyboard? Well, der.. : ) And I think I'm getting a reputation for rudeness, or at least standoffishness, because people sometimes speak to me (usually softly, or mumbling - for fuck's sake people open your mouth to talk and shut it to eat!) on my right side and I just don't hear them. I've also started having trouble locating where sounds are coming from. For instance, as I'm sitting here typing, I can hear a noise which sounds like the fan from the heater, which is on my left. It's not, I've checked, it's noise from the computer, which is on my right. A benefit of all this, though, is that my cubs generally have good diction - it's been commented on : ) - well, they need to or I'd not be able to understand them...
Now, how hard is it for me to get to the doctors or the hearing test centre? Not hard at all, all I have to do is ring and make an appointment. So why don't I do it? I have no idea...

The next 'l/L chapter is almost done (yay! that means I can have another packet of Angel Delight! *g*) I'm going away for the weekend - with the cubs, up to my mums - be nice if Joules and I can get it finished before then. Then what? Don't know - might try finishing one of the stand alone fics, ie: the ones that aren't part of a continuing plot. Hmmm.