I was torn between writing about the shed which is falling down or the dog, who is shedding long white hair on my nice, clean black shirt.
Let’s go with the dog.
We didn’t have a problem with the two Scotties. Not only do they mostly match my clothing, but they don’t really shed. They get dirty and disgusting, but they don’t shed.
Mostly, terriers don’t shed. They have to be clipped or they look like a pile of dirty rags.
Now the Duke? HE sheds all the time. This year, probably his first full coat, he has been shedding more than usual. I do not believe that either Garry or I ever go anywhere without a light to heavy coating of dog hair on everything.
He gets especially cuddly when we are dressed to go out something. I feel like we need a plastic bag over us as we race for the door!
Hey, you know the difference between a pure-bred dog and a mutt? You ready?
More than 40-years in professional broadcasting and Garry still can’t post for a still portrait. He is so used to being shot on videotape or film, he feels he has to move and while that may look good on television, it doesn’t look great on a still camera.
He admits it, too. Point a moving picture machine at him and he lights up like a 100-watt bulb.
But a still camera? Nervous. Tense. Eyes darting side to side. A portrait? It’s like pulling teeth. Yesterday, to get one good show I had to move him physically into position and tell him to put his lips together and smile. Also, keep his eyes open and stop moving.
Isn’t that funny? The man who has stood before cameras for his entire career twitches in front of a still camera.
As for me? I just hate getting photographed. That’s why I keep the camera in MY hands!
Today was Garry’s 3-month post-operative surgical appointment at UMass hospital.
He hasn’t had any problems at all with the surgery. Actually, he has not had any trouble with the process, except for the minor detail that every day is a surprise. Each new sound is something he has to recognize, then classify.
He hears the squeaky ball that Duke is chewing. He hears the trucks pulling into the driveway. He recognizes the opening and closing of the gate downstairs. He can hear his own breathing and finds it distracting. We all assure him he will learn to filter that kind of sound, as well as many other ordinary sounds that the rest of us automatically don’t notice.
It takes a lot of work to learn to hear when you are 76. Sounds that the rest of us have always recognized, he is hearing for the first time. It’s a lot of work and a lot of mental processing.
Garry and Dr. Remenschneider. When your doctor is not much older than your grandchild, you know you’ve put on a few years.
It can be a bit exhausting for him. I suspect sometimes all he wants is that old familiar silence where no one expects him to answer because they know he didn’t hear them.
Today he picked up the phone when it rang … and he heard it. He hates telephones and has for a very long time. It has a lot to do with getting calls from work at all hours of the day and night. Over the years it became a bit of a phobia. Hopefully, he will get over it. Because all of us deserve to have to listen to the other electric company’s spiel on how they will lower our rates (no they won’t). At least the political season is over for a couple of months so the surveyors won’t be calling. That’s something.
Dr. Aaron Remenschneider – and a great surgeon!
On the positive side, I am (finally) not the only one who wonders what that weird noise is in the basement. Also, when we have an argument, he knows what I said — which is not always ideal.
He is not the only one who has to learn new things. I have lost my role as permanent interpreter, which to be fair, I’m glad to lose. I have not lost my role in telling people to please speak up, especially the receptionists in the Hearing Clinic.
They speak so softly, I can barely hear them. Meanwhile, the people they are talking to are actually in the process of trying to learn to hear. I figure they should speak up. Put a little diaphragmatic air into your larynx and push it out through your vocal cords. That’s what makes it possible for others else to hear you.
It’s what speakers are taught. Actors and reporters, too. Sometimes, you don’t have a microphone. You just have you.
Okay, among other things, I was a speech major. Actually, I have a degree in it. I have never used the degree for anything except telling other people to “please speak up!”
Doctor and patient. Hint: the doctor is wearing white.
Garry is quite the star of the Otolaryngology Department. He can hear remarkably well for just three months into the program.
I expected him to be a star. When Garry works at something, he really works at it. He had to learn to speak properly with significant deafness. He learned it well enough to be on television every day for many years. So given this challenge, I knew he’d work at it as hard as he has ever worked at anything else in his life.
The hard work paid off. He can hear. I wish he had this option in his life many years earlier but if ever the expression “better late than never” had relevance, now is that moment.
Next week, he has his three-month audiological checkup. I bet he’s going to be a star.
Sometimes complaining helps. All the people who complained that they can’t use the new format have been offered the option of retaining (forever, apparently) the “classic format.” I was up at the Forum and there were tens of thousands of complaints, mostly from long-term bloggers.
The thing is, there IS a Classic Editor plug-in, but you can’t use it unless you are a Business Plan user — which is a $25/month hit for retirees. Most of us really can’t afford much more than we already have.
I certainly can’t do it. Forget about the minor detail that I don’t have a business nor have I any plans for one. WordPress is going whole-hog for getting a lot more money. I guess they figure Google, Amazon, and Facebook are rolling in the big bucks, so why shouldn’t WordPress be rolling in it too?
WordPress is not hard up for money. They are earning more than enough, but in today’s world, there’s no such thing as enough money.
Greed is good.
Remember when “good” meant doing something kind and generous for someone else? Now “good” means getting it all for yourself and keeping it while making sure no one else gets any.
It’s an international trend. Not, I think, a healthy one.
But — just this once, WordPress is willing to offer anyone who asks for it (you have to go to the forum and complain officially, but they may make this available for everyone soon) the option to dump Gutenberg and keep the classic. They admitted there’s a strong possibility that even business users may not want such a complicated formatting app, so probably they will keep the classic format intact and let only those who prefer Gutenberg use it. The Forum shows an incredible number of complaints and I suspect I wasn’t the only one who said either I can use an application that makes sense in the context of what I really do, or I will finally give up.
They heard me.
So now, if I genuinely need an application this complicated, I will wait until it is properly tested and then do my own testing. See if it works for me. I’ve got a lot of stuff packed into this site.
WordPress’s search engine hasn’t been sturdy enough to deal with the thousands of photographs, images and 8,400 posts in the “old” format and the new one is worse.
Anyway, if you have somehow gotten yourself into the Gutenberg loop and you don’t like it, you can get out of it. For once — for the first and probably only time — WordPress heard us. I didn’t think it was possible.
Golden flowers in the bouquets of yesterday. Orange and dark yellow. It’s very gray and cold outside. I needed something warm! It is awfully cold out and there’s snow on the way. You can sniff it in the air.
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We didn’t have a problem with the two Scotties. Not only do they mostly match my clothing, but they don’t really shed. They get dirty and disgusting, but they don’t shed.
