Author: Steve

You know, sometimes we brag about our kids.  But while we’re doing it, talking with someone about our kids or our families, when it feels like we’re getting too boastful, I’ll quote the final line from Garrison Keillor, as he’s waxing eloquently about his fictional small town of Lake Wobegon.  He would conclude each episode with “Well, that’s the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.”, a nod to small-town pride and self-delusion.  As an acknowledgement that maybe we’ve gone a little far in our praise, I quote that line, “All our children are above average”.

Only recently have I considered that maybe not everyone we talk to is conversant with Garrison Keillor and Lake Wobegon.  After all, the last live broadcast of the show was in 2016.  The people who remember Garrison Keillor will get it when I say it.  For every person who has never heard of Garrison Keillor or Lake Wobegon though, my effort to deflect will have come off as even more annoying.

Oops.

Maybe before I repeat that line in the future, I should first quiz our intended audience about their past PBS listening habits…

I walk a lot.  Most days.  Often for several miles.  Sometimes for five or ten.  Once every few years I walk a marathon distance just to see if I still can.  During the summer though, when we’re here, I don’t walk so much.  It’s the heat.  At 90 or 100 degrees, I go walk around in the sunshine for a mile, 20 minutes, and call it good.  I’m ready to get back inside where it’s cooler.  I know that’s the age factor.  When I was younger, I used to love running in hot weather.

So every fall I have to wonder: When it cools off, will I be walking as much again, or will I naturally walk less because another year has gone by.  Is it just the heat abbreviating my outings or will I find the age factor reigns.  No conclusion this year.  We’ re not there to the cool weather yet.

We’ve been together for so long, I say that I no longer do what the voices in my head tell me to do.  Now I do what the voices in Judy’s head tell me to do.

Judy doesn’t actually have voices in her head, but she does have music.  Uninvited music.  There is such a thing as Musical Ear Syndrome.  It’s not really well known, but it is real, and it’s annoying.  (And it’s not an earworm.  It’s not that.)  Apparently, as a person loses their hearing, it’s not unusual for the brain to continue to look for that stimulation, and if it can’t find it, it just makes up sounds to play for itself.  It’s usually music, but it can be just increased tinnitus, or roaring.  Whatever a person’s head decides to do.

Good hearing aids can counteract Musical Ear Syndrome and tinnitus during the day, but when the hearing aids come out at night, the chaos bursts back to the forefront, which can make it a little hard to sleep.  We’ve been using sound machines for white noise, but that noise can be too consistent to be effective.  It’s too steady to distract the brain, and just turning up the volume doesn’t drown out the noise that originates inside the head.  She sleeps better to the sound of a babbling brook or something else sporadic like that.

We’ve found a really cool solution that lets her get the noise she needs at night, without me having to have the same sound.  Pillow speakers.  We got one for her pillow.  She can play a babbling brook track or anything else that works on her iPad and bluetooth it to the pillow speaker.  Mission accomplished!  The sounds she needs in her head, and not in mine!

We didn’t know.  Until we went outside to see what they were looking at.

It was the Starship launch from Boca Chica.

By the time we went out to look, the contrail was still there, but the earlier arrivals got to see the rocket go up, the upper stage separate and blast on, while the booster returned to a splashdown.  We’re only about 60 miles away, but it never occurred to me that we would be able to see a launch from here.  We’re going to have to pay more attention.

A few weeks ago, I was bemoaning the looming loss of that warm weather hug at 80-degrees when I opened the door each morning.  Well, summer has eased its grip, and the temperature has been in the 70s every morning.  Until today.  I opened the door this morning and there was a six in the number.  67 degrees.  And the high today only in the 80s.  OMG.  How do people live like this!