Things are coming along well with the new book, Frankly, My Dear. IāveĀ receivedĀ positive comments from the beta readers now and it has startedĀ going out to advance readers in anticipation of theĀ April 29th release.
Here is a special offer for my followers:
Iād like to have more advance readers. My goal is to release on the 29th with 50 reviews on Amazon. I know that, in order to do this, I need to put more advance copies out. If youād like toĀ be an advance reader, please send me an email at don@donmassenzio.comĀ and Iāll send you a PDF copy. Once I reach an acceptable number, Iām going to cut off this offer, so if you want one, please email me soon.
As an advance reader, I am sending a copy of the book at no charge. In return, I only ask three things:
Buck-Tick is a Japanese band who I was so impressed with right from the first time I heard them, that I’ve traveled to Japan to see them in concert. Twice, in the case of the lead singer, Sakurai Atsushi.
I thought I’d share the first song I ever heard of theirs. It’s called “Long Distance Call,” and was written about Mr. Sakurai’s mother and the last time he talked to her before she died. The band was out on the road, and he couldn’t get home to see her. Honestly, I don’t know how he keeps it together when he sings it.
Unfortunately I’m not able to copy and paste the lyrics. It’s sung in Japanese, but the translation is available; the lady who translates them prefers to have a link back to her site, which is here. However, if you watch the video, the subtitles are there and easy to read. You just have to click on the settings button (the cogged wheel) at the bottom of the video and you’ll see how to access them.
As you probably know, my theme for the A to Z Challenge this year is parenting a Deaf child as a hearing mom. I decided on this theme mainly because I hope one day to write a book on the subject. The A to Z seemed an easy way to compile my thoughts into something that could be organized into chapters. I’m not including every aspect of what it is to be Alex’s parent since not everything fits. But most of it is or will be here.
My plan is to market it as much a guide for people who have Deaf children, as for people who have hearing children. I hope to provide insight into behaviours, reading and understanding body language, and generally to teach parents and children how to spot and be compassionate toward those with limited abilities. Hopefully, without coming off as preachy. The book, if I write it, will be entitled, Don’t Talk With Your Hands Full.
I’m not going to ask you if you’d actually buy my book – I’m not here to put you on the spot. But if you saw something like it on the shelf, and hadn’t already read as much as I’ve written, do you think you’d be interested enough to at least read the back cover? Do you know anyone who doesn’t read my blog who might buy it? Basically, do you think it could be a worthwhile endeavour?
I appreciate honest opinions. Don’t be afraid to hurt my feelings; I take criticism well, as long as it’s constructive.
Nighttime is much different with a Deaf child than it is with a hearing one. Just how much, I wasn’t able to imagine until I experienced it. When I had my first two kids I quickly learned what their cries meant. I knew whether or not they needed my full or immediate attention, or if they were just whining for a bit of company in the middle of the night. In the case of the latter, I would call out to let them know I was right in the room next door, and that they weren’t completely alone. With Alex, of course, this wasn’t and still is not, an option, even though he’s fifteen years old. So whenever he calls, no matter what the reason, either I have to get up or he comes to me.
The next difficulty: signing in the dark. People who are both deaf and blind learn to sign while touching, but try as I might, I can’t convince Alex to attempt it. So on go the lights which, in the dead of night, blinds us both. And speaking of lights…
They are one of the two things that will wake him up when he’s fast asleep, the other being vibration. I can go into his room and talk normally with no problem, which has been great at times when he’s been in the hospital. The neighbours can party all night long, fans can rattle, his feeding pump can beep, the phone can ring – none of that disturbs him in the least. But if I touch his bed or shine my cell phone in the wrong direction because I’m looking for something, and he’s wide awake. For anyone babysitting, it takes a bit of getting used to. As it will for me, if I ever look after someone else’s child.
My A to Z theme concerns the joys and challenges of being the hearing mother of my Deaf son, Alex. To learn more about his beginnings in life, click here to go to my first A to Z entry.
I think I write better when I’m hungry. It seems almost like when there’s no food in my stomach, I’m not full of unnecessary things. It could also be that I can relax better on a full stomach, which makes me feel more tired. I do need coffee though. I have a hard time writing when decaffeinated.
It’s like the air, the atmosphere I’m in: I don’t need quiet, in particular, but I do need to be free of distraction to write. So if I’m in a busy restaurant, have a television on in the background, or music, I’m okay to write away. If I have Alex asking me questions every 45 seconds, I can’t concentrate. I’m almost afraid to try to write when I’m in the room with him – which is why I’m so far behind. He won’t allow me to go to another room. His insistence on getting attention is worse if I’m not beside him.
The other night my eldest one lined up the magnetic numbers on the fridge in order. I rearranged them to 8675309.
He got the reference. That made me happy, since he’s only 21 years old.
It’s Friday! And time for your Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt. The pingbacks still aren’t working here on WordPress. This means we’ll still have to do things a bit differently. Remember, if you don’t add your link to the comments below, the other participants (and I) might not see your prompt. Please continue to include a link to here in your post though, in case they magically come back: at this stage I’m wondering if it will take a little prestidigitation. The instructions to create a pingback are still listed below. What I can still do, is potentially help you out if you’re participating in the A to Z Challenge. Here’ your prompt:
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “no.”Ā Try to think of a specific number, as “no.” is often used as an abbreviation for “number,” and write about it. Or, use it as a word. Have fun!
After you’ve written your Saturday post tomorrow, please link it here at this week’s prompt page and check to make sure it’s here in the comments so others can find it and see your awesome Stream of Consciousness post. Anyone can join in!
To make your post more visible, use the SoCS badge! Just paste it in your Saturday post so people browsing the reader will immediately know your post is stream of consciousness and/or pin it as a widget to your site to show you’re a participant. Wear it with pride!!
Here are the rules:
1. Your post must be stream of consciousness writing, meaning no editing, (typos can be fixed) and minimal planning on what youāre going to write.
2. Your post can be as long or as short as you want it to be. One sentence ā one thousand words. Fact, fiction, poetry ā it doesnāt matter. Just let the words carry you along until youāre ready to stop.
3. There will be a prompt every week. I will post the prompt here on my blog on Friday, along with a reminder for you to join in. The prompt will be one random thing, but it will not be a subject. For instance, I will not say āWrite about dogsā; the prompt will be more like, āMake your first sentence a question,ā āBegin with the word āTheā,” or simply a single word to get your started.
4. Ping back! Itās important, so that I and other people can come and read your post! For example, in your post you can write “This post is part of SoCS:” and then copy and paste the URL found in your address bar at the top of this post into yours.Ā Your link will show up in my comments for everyone to see. The most recent pingbacks will be found at the top.
5. Read at least one other personās blog who has linked back their post. Even better, read everyone’s! If youāre the first person to link back, you can check back later, or go to the previous week, by following my category, āStream of Consciousness Saturday,ā which youāll find right below the āLikeā button on my post.
6. Copy and paste the rules (if youād like to) in your post. The more people who join in, the more new bloggers youāll meet and the bigger your community will get!
7. As a suggestion, tag your post “SoCS” and/or “#SoCS” for more exposure and more views.
It’s heartbreaking to me, as a music lover, to have to tell my Deaf son, Alex, that there’s no use buying a music video featuring his favourite characters because he can’t hear it anyway. That’s not to say he doesn’t appreciate music in his own way. But my television and sound-system are incompatible, so there’s no way for him to feel the beat as he watches. The same goes for video games. Often they rely on sound. When he was very young, he would see his brothers dance to the music at the end of a movie. He began, then, to associate movie credits to music. To this day he still dances and “sings” (repetitive, monotoned, wordless chants) whenever he sees them.
Alex isn’t totally deaf. If I put headphones on him, he can hear at least a little, but he doesn’t like it. He has a fantastic sense of rhythm, as do many Deaf people – see the current “Dancing with the Stars” for evidence. But unless the music is cranked enough for him to sense it, one could say for the most part, he dances to the beat of his own drummer.
My A to Z theme concerns the joys and challenges of being the hearing mother of my Deaf son, Alex. To learn more about his beginnings in life, click here to go to my first A to Z entry.
As I’ve mentioned before, it wasn’t long (30 seconds?) after I found out that my baby, Alex, was deaf before I decided I’d need to learn American Sign Language, though I didn’t start taking classes until he reached the age of about two, if memory serves me right. I knew the alphabet and could count to twenty before I started, so I was ahead of the class in these things. The beginner’s class was basic – learn to spell our names, talk about our families, say where we lived, worked, and how we got there and back. Great stuff if you’re an adult. However, that wasn’t why I was going.
During the second level we learned, among other things, relationships, a few different objects, counting to one-hundred and beyond, and professions. So I was learning the sign for “secretary,” while what I really needed was the sign for “squirrel.” There is nothing on earth quite as frustrating as not being able to explain to your toddler what the simplest, most common things are. For instance:
“What’s that?”
“It’s a bird. Wait, let me look it up.”
(Three minutes later) “It was a bird.”
“What was?”
Obviously neither of us had that much of a vocabulary if we didn’t know what, or how to sign what, a bird was, but you get the idea.
Had I known about Baby Sign, I might have taken the classes. But I didn’t. If it was a “thing” in Ottawa in 2002, I didn’t know it. By the time I finally made it to a Baby Sign class, I was at Level 4 in ASL, and Alex knew all the signs they were teaching the parents. It was interesting though. I’ve heard it’s a wonderful tool for parents–if they’re able to teach it to their kids–to understand their baby’s needs before the child is able to form spoken words. I’d be interested to know if anyone out there used Baby Sign, and if so, how it worked out for you.
Why, if I wasn’t learning anything obviously useful, did I go all the way up to Level 4? Because they were teaching me to see. For three hours a week I had to communicate without using my voice. We sometimes played games where we had to get up in front of the class and fingerspell something, and then another of us had to write it on the board. Tests were signed to us and we had to write down our answers. It was crazy difficult, but it was fun. And it gave an appreciation of how focused a Deaf person must be to understand his or her own language. The Canadian Hearing Society had one program I would have liked to have tried, in which they deafened hearing people. Participants would go in first thing in the morning and have silicone put in their ears. Then they would go out into the community–coffee shops, restaurants, stores, services–with someone from CHS to help, and just survive for the day. The rules were no speaking, and no note writing. It was apparently a real eye-opener, so to speak.
Alex and I muddled through those early years of communicating. I felt lucky to have someone to ask questions of once a week if I was really stuck. Youtube wasn’t around until 2005, (yes, believe it or not we survived without Youtube once upon a time!) and typically, computers couldn’t handle the bandwidth of a video anyway, so I was stuck with books with awkward drawings if I had no human to help. There’s really nothing better than having a native speaker in any language to guide a new learner. I’ve watched hearing people who knew no sign try it for the first time – most will do it wrong when shown. As easy as it looks, it’s not.
My A to Z theme concerns the joys and challenges of being the hearing mother of my Deaf son, Alex. To learn more about his beginnings in life, click here to go to my first A to Z entry.
I just talked to someone at WordPress support, and they said the problem only seems to be affecting custom sites. That means, if you have .wordpress in your site’s address, you shouldn’t be affected. If you pay for your site and you don’t have a .wordpress.com site, and your pingbacks don’t work, please let support know.
Proof that they’re doing something: I got a pingback tonight. Problem was, it was from Margret’s post here:
It’s more widespread than I thought. Please check first if your posts allow pingbacks before you complain to WordPress. Here’s how:
Thank you to Chris, The Story Reading Ape, for the visual:Ā https://thestoryreadingapeblog.com/2016/04/13/experiencing-problems-with-pingbacks-on-your-wordpress-blog-then-please-read-this/
If you’ve checked the above settings and your pingbacks still aren’t working, please let WordPress know.
Remember – it might only be your incoming pingbacks. If you’re expecting some, like I do with my prompts, you’ll know. If you’re not expecting any, ask a friend to try linking to one of your posts to see if you get a notification. If I get time later, I’ll help you. Please let me know in the comments.
Got all that? Great! Please click on the original post to read Hugh’s thoughts on the matter!
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