New Ears

First of all, HunkyDory paid it forward. Much thanks from the bottom of my heart to all who helped me get my new ears. They’ve been working fabulously! That money that was given to us for the HAs has been paid forward plus some extra. So your gift did double duty, first to me, and now a gift to someone else in need.

Just as I was getting used to the new HAs, I had a setback last weekend. I had sharp, stabbing pains in my left ear on and off all day Friday. I get these once in awhile and really didn’t think much of it. It feels kind of like a bad toothache except in my ear. But when I put in my HAs on Saturday morning, it felt like the left one wasn’t working at all. I tried new batteries, and that didn’t work. I tried sticking the receiver of the left aid in my right ear and realized it was actually working fine; it was my ear that was the problem. I went in to the audiologist today, and when he peeked in there, he didn’t see anything abnormal. He said I needed to go see an ENT doc because he had done all he could do. I asked him if he could just turn up the left so I wasn’t so lopsided. He was all, “Sure, no problem” and we went into the office and plugged the aid into the computer. He said, “I’m going to turn this up about 3db and we’ll see if that does it.” Nothing. No difference. He looked a little puzzled and said, “I’ll turn it up another 4db.” Zip. Like he hadn’t turned it up at all. He looked a little worried, turned it back down, and said we’ll have to see what the ENT says. So I can hear almost nothing on the left and it rings almost constantly and is a lot louder than I’m used to. If you’re so inclined, I’d sure appreciate it if you remembered me in your prayers, because it’s seriously freaking me out. I’ve never experienced a decay this noticeable this fast before. I hope it’s just something temporary that they can fix, because it would seriously suck ass to lose a bunch more hearing when I feel like I just got it back.

New job

I’m working at a homeless shelter now, part-time overnights, on the weekends. The new HAs made that possible. I couldn’t do this before because there’s only one staff member on at a time and you have to be able to answer the phone. Even with the volume at maximum I still can’t catch every word, but I understand most of the conversation.

My very first night, the cops called to see if we could give someone slightly inebriated an emergency cot, and I had to tell them we had already told the person earlier that we wouldn’t; then someone else came in way past curfew all upset and I dealt with that. Talk about getting thrown in the deep end!

I think I’ll like this job a lot. When things are quiet, you can do about whatever you want to, except sleep. So hopefully I’ll have more time to read and write. I’ve been so stinkin’ busy the last couple months, I have a list of post subjects as long as my arm, and I’m really looking forward to getting more writing done. Oh, and call me Captain Obvious, but I just gotta say, overnights seriously throw your sleep schedule all kinds of out of whack!

New phone

After salivating over the iPhone for almost two years, I finally got my hot little hands on one.

It’s so frickin’ hawsum, I want to buy it a shot of tequila and tongue kiss it and ask it if it wants to come in for “coffee” and buy it breakfast in the morning and call it the next day and court it and tell it that I don’t want to have any more kids but I would if it would make it happy and take it to Vegas and marry it in a drive-through wedding chapel with an Elvis impersonator officiating and live happily ever after.

It needs a name. Now taking suggestions.

Since Hunky felt sorry for my poor jilted Tilt, he took it in and gave it a new home on his hip. It’s very thankful. Actually, it runs on Windoze though, so it probably is nursing an arrogant, false sense of entitlement. It totally has Hunky pegged as a soft touch, and it’s all acting out and testing him. I have to step in now and then and use my scary mom voice to coerce it into submission. It’s kind of a snotty little shithead.

New furnace

This came about not because of the tax refund but I’m throwing it in there because 1- It matches with the “New ___” theme I’ve got going here and B- It’s just so hawsum. We applied for energy assistance a couple months ago and, thank God, were given credit on our gas bill. I had to sign something about completing a weatherization thing on our house and didn’t think much of it. So a couple weeks later, this guy came in and said, “Oh, this furnace has got to go.” And I was all, “Because you know the furnace fairy personally and she owes you a favor?” and he was all, “Uh, well, you don’t have to pay for it.” and I was all, *speechless* because I’m quick and witty like that.

Let me just tell you how old our furnace was. The house was built in 1948 and it’s original. It’s a bonafide antique. Somewhere along the line, it was converted from coal to gas. It still had the hieroglyphics on it from when my house was a cave and dinosaurs roamed the earth.

Six estimates later, we have a bright, shiny new furnace and my basement really couldn’t be more happy to welcome the new guy. It takes up half the space. It’s 92% efficient compared to the old 60-ish% efficient dinosaur. It’s handsome and smart and charismatic and sexy.

New computer

My beloved iMac, Edgrr, is four and a half years old, and I was starting to really worry about it pooping out or crashing when I have graphics jobs lined up to get done. Obviously, we haven’t exactly had a couple extra thousand dollars lying around to get a new Mac. Well, my friend Marcia knew that I was a complete mac nut and told me a friend of hers had a Macbook for sale, only one year old and all tricked out (4gb RAM and 500gb hard drive!) to be able to handle graphics work. I told her I was really super interested and she hooked us up. We emailed back and forth on Friday, and the UPS man visited me TODAY! I can’t wait to move into it! *claps hands excitedly* As we speak, I have the Carbon Copy Cloner copying the hard drive on the old computer, and I’ll start moving into the new laptop tomorrow after I get off work and get a nap. This laptop is going to come in really handy when I’m working these overnights. We now have three Macs in our house.

Again, with the name-needing. Now taking suggestions.

New… wait, what?

To wrap up, HunkyDory has done their part. Consider the economy duly stimulated.

Dory didn’t get ALL the good stuff. Just most of it. Hunky got the parts to make his Virago AND his Intercepter run, and the Virago will get some plastic surgery to get a new paint job and take out the dent in the fuel tank. We are still batting around the idea of finding a used Wii so the boys will also get some happy happy from the tax refund even though the little turds probably don’t deserve it. I can’t get them to finish their chore list every day for a week to save their life! We told Rocky that if he would finish all his chores consistently, we would keep him in minutes and texts on his cell phone. It is currently a glorified paperweight.

The rest of it goes to *sigh* BILLS. But I certainly can’t complain. It’s just so amazing to me how God makes sure we have everything we need and even some things we want. We’re so blessed.

What’d you spend your tax refund on?

© Dory for Can't Remember Diddly!, 2009. All rights reserved. This post cannot be republished without express written permission. • Permalink • 4 atta-girls • Join my blog network on Facebook and Rate my blog while you're at it. This means YOU, bub.

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh