Life in progress

Category Archives: Blogging


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#SoCS – Half

I don’t know why I keep buying books. It’s a compulsion. If I spent just half my time reading all the novels I have on shelves, Kindle, and Kobo, I’m sure it would still take me a year to get through them. And don’t even get me started on my to-be-read list of books that I haven’t bought yet.

As it is lately, I seem to be spending half my time on the computer, whether the laptop or working on my novels. I haven’t done a lot of real writing lately, which is why I’m trying to post every day on my fiction blog. …where I don’t have even near half of the traffic I get here. I wonder why that is? I suppose if you click my gravatar it brings you here, rather than there. Have you clicked your gravatar lately? Where does it go? Actually, your gravatar is only half of it. When you click your picture it should take you to a site where you have all your information, and your blogs lined up in a neat clickable row. If you click your name (we’re talking about in the comments section of any given post where you’ve commented, now), it should take you to your main site. It’s frustrating when I want to find someone’s blog but their information isn’t available.

I’m half of a mind to complain to WordPress about the pingbacks not working, but complaining never seems to do anything. I wonder if their own Daily Post blog is suffering, since it relies on the same idea of pingbacks. Anyway, if it’s not fixed half-way between now and Wednesday, I’ll go through the process of bitching about it.

That’s at least half of what I can come up with at the moment. The other half would be forcing it. Happy weekend, all, and don’t forget to manually add your link to the prompt post this week!

SoCS badge 2015

This post is part of SoCS. Click here and join us today! https://lindaghill.com/2016/04/08/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-april-916/


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Pingbacks are NOT Working Today #SoCS

An important announcement for everyone participating in Stream of Consciousness Saturday: There are no pingbacks! I have no idea what’s going on with WordPress – I’ve checked my account settings, and nothing has changed. I should be receiving your pingbacks, but I’m not.

If you’ve already written a SoCS post, please come back and enter your link in my comments here: https://lindaghill.com/2016/04/08/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-april-916/

If you plan to write a SoCS post, please make sure to comment on the above linked post, and include the link to your post in your comment.

Thanks for your cooperation. And no thanks to WordPress for the latest glitch. :/


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The Friday Reminder and Prompt for #SoCS April 9/16

Edit: Pingbacks are not working today! (Saturday, April 9/16) Please manually include your SoCS post link in the comments below.

Well, all is back to normal after your unfortunate scare of last Friday. Sorry, but I couldn’t resist. 😀 The internet won’t tell me when April Fools Day will fall on a Friday again, but I believe you’re safe for at least another five years. Just time enough for you to forget… 😉 Anywho, it’s time for your Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt! I’m going to do my bit again to 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: “ha.”  Use it as a word, or find a word that starts with those two letters. Enjoy!

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!!

SoCS badge 2015

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 you’re going to write.

2. Your post can be as long or as short as you want it to be. One sentence – one thousand words. Fact, fiction, poetry – it doesn’t matter. Just let the words carry you along until you’re 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 “Write about dogs”; the prompt will be more like, “Make your first sentence a question,” “Begin with the word ‘The’,” or simply a single word to get your started.

4. Ping back! It’s 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.  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 person’s blog who has linked back their post. Even better, read everyone’s! If you’re the first person to link back, you can check back later, or go to the previous week, by following my category, “Stream of Consciousness Saturday,” which you’ll find right below the “Like” button on my post.

6. Copy and paste the rules (if you’d like to) in your post. The more people who join in, the more new bloggers you’ll 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.

8. Have fun!


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Grammar – #AtoZ Challenge

You might think that American Sign Language is an extension of English, and therefore the grammar is the same. It’s not. This creates a bit of a sense of multi-tasking whilst trying to speak and sign at the same time, but with practice it can be done. I know my Sign grammar is not great, but there are a few things that are easy to remember, and a few that are necessary.

One thing I learned fairly quickly NOT to do, is say to my Deaf son, Alex, “Look at that!” when I want him to notice, say, a bird flying overhead. If I say, “Look, a bird!” it’s totally wrong. Why? Because if I sign “Look!” or even point at something, I’ve lost Alex’s attention on myself, so he has no idea what he’s looking for. If he could hear, he’d listen for further instruction. But he’s Deaf. So while he’s gazing out he window at the trees, I’m wildly signing the word “bird” for my own benefit. The proper way to do it in ASL is, “A bird, look!” Alex will then know what to look for. ASL grammar is important.

Another instance is the verb “to be.” It’s pretty much eliminated from ASL. Unlike Signed English, which, to quote Google, “…is a sign language dialect which matches each spoken word of English,” ASL, as you may have guessed, has a grammar unique to the needs of Deaf people. If I want to say “I am going,” I sign, “I go.” If I want to say, “I went,” I sign, “I go finished.” For a visual https://www.signingsavvy.com/sign/WENT/6576/1 I often speak to Alex out loud when I sign to him, and many times, since my brain is rarely up to multi-tasking, I’ll say exactly what I’m signing, which must sound quite funny to anyone listening.

Because tenses are pretty much non-existent in ASL it’s important to mention the “when” at the beginning of a sentence, when the action will take place in the future. For example, “Tomorrow, we go to the toy store.” This has become an ingrained part of Alex’s sentence structure. Which means if I say it backwards: “We’re going to the toy store tomorrow,” Alex gets his coat on first, and then waits to find out what we’re doing tomorrow.

It really takes grammar-nazi-ism to a whole new level.

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.


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Facts of Life – #AtoZ Challenge

When learning any language, we start with the basics, introducing ourselves, explaining where we live, etc. Then we begin to learn the names of things so we can ask for them. All of this is fairly straightforward. But when we learn a new language, we’re normally doing it for ourselves, for travel or to communicate with a native speaker. We’re not usually learning it in order to teach a child his or her first language.

While pointing and naming is all well and good, children ask why things are the way they are. It’s practical. How do we know the difference between the consequences of stealing a cookie versus running out into the middle of a busy intersection? Hopefully not by experience. Obviously, the consequences of getting hit by a car was something I learned to communicate to Alex early on. But what about the more innocent stuff?

Why is the sky blue? How do wireless electronics work? Why is this Russian/Korean/Indian show on my laptop but it’s not on TV, like The Price is Right is? (He watches shows from all over the world; spoken language is of no consequence to him.) I have no way to answer many of his questions, short of becoming completely fluent in Sign Language. The closest place to receive such an education is in Toronto (Ontario, Canada), which is too far to commute to, to take classes I have neither the time nor the money for at the moment.

I might have advanced my education more after Alex was born, but the courses in Ottawa only went to a certain level. On top of that, we lived in the Province of Quebec – a province that has its own Sign Language (Langue des signes du Québec). Finding a professional to teach Alex American Sign Language in Quebec was next to impossible, and the only Deaf school for children in Ottawa teaches LSQ. So we packed up and moved to Ontario, to a city with a school whose primary language is ASL.

I do hope to learn more Sign someday. For now, I’m doing the best I can with help from his teachers.

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.


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Eyes – #AtoZ Challenge

My A to Z theme concerns the joys and challenges of being the hearing mother of my Deaf son, Alex.

They say being deaf makes the eyesight better, but I had no idea what that meant until I took American Sign Language classes. Not hearing doesn’t improve the quality of a person’s eyesight – no one is going to from 20/200 (being able to only read the giant “E” at the top of an eye chart) to 20/20 because they are deafened. “Having better eyesight” simply means the brain works faster with visual stimulation. Take, for instance, the alphabet. Say it out loud as fast as you can possibly say it, and then consider a native signer can fingerspell it as fast as you can say it, and the average Deaf person can understand every letter as well as someone who hears can understand your speaking of it. Mindboggling, isn’t it? I used to come home from my three-hour classes once a week exhausted like I’ve never been exhausted before, and just because of the level of concentration required.

A to Z in ASL

What this means for me as a parent is that Alex doesn’t miss much. Even as a toddler, he was far more observant than the average kid. His attention to detail was such that, even before he knew what the letters of the alphabet were, he could match seventy-odd black VHS tapes by the labels together with their covers. It also means that he can easily pick up on facial cues.

Alex watches the show Ellen every day. He loves the way she dances and often mimics it. Sexy hip-grinding stuff? He’s on it. He’s also the size of a six-year-old, even though he’s fifteen, so he looks very cute doing it. This makes it very difficult for me to tell him to stop dancing like that in public. No matter what I sign, (stop, that’s rude, etc.) there’s a part of me that finds it funny. It’s easy for him to ignore what I’m saying with my hands, when the slightest twitch of an eyebrow tells him that he’s amusing me.

Believe me, you never want your teenagers to be able to read your mind. Mine can.


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One-Liner Wednesday – Some conversations go downhill faster

A conversation between myself and one of my kids (unnamed to protect his future employment prospects … his future anything prospects).

Son: Is it okay to give a dog undercooked meat?

Me: Traditionally, dogs don’t cook what they kill over a cab fire… I mean a camp fire.

Son: Cab fire?

Me: I know.

Son: Hey! I’m not pulling over for that dog!

Me: Shut up.

Son: That dog’s got raw meat!

Taxi! Winston, Alex, and John

Taxi!
(Winston, Alex, and my friend, John)

____________________________________________________________________

Anyone who would like to participate, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” title in your post, and if you do, you can ping back here to help your blog get more exposure. To execute a ping back, just copy the URL in the address bar on this post, and paste it somewhere in the body of your post. Your link will show up in the comments below. Please ensure that the One-Liner Wednesday you’re pinging back to is this week’s! Otherwise, no one will likely see it but me.

As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS), if you see a ping back from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.

Unlike SoCS, this is not a prompt so there’s no need to stick to the same “theme.”

The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:

1. Make it one sentence.

2. Try to make it either funny or inspirational.

3. Use our unique tag #1linerWeds.

4. Add our new, very cool badge to your post for extra exposure!

5. Have fun!

#1linerWeds badge by nearlywes.com

#1linerWeds badge by nearlywes.com


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Communication – #AtoZ Challenge

My A to Z theme concerns the joys and challenges of being the hearing mother of my Deaf son, Alex.

When I discovered Alex was Deaf, I knew I would have to learn Sign Language. However, there was no point starting a formal education too early. I knew from experience that if you don’t use a language, you lose it pretty quickly. So in lieu of classes, I devised a few logical signs of my own. I think the first I ever taught him, before he came home from the hospital at the age of eight months, was to let him know when I was leaving and coming right back. I simply held my index finger up as I walked out the door. When I was leaving for the evening, I waved goodbye so he would know the difference. It didn’t take long before he needed to know why people were exiting his room; he began to cry whenever a nurse left, even for a moment. “Just a second” was the first of many I would have to teach the nursing staff over the years. I found the signs for “mom” and “dad,” and a few others so I could add to both my vocabulary and that of the people caring for him in the hospital when I couldn’t be there myself.

Even now, fifteen years later, it’s necessary to teach the nursing staff how to sign whenever he stays in the hospital. And not just one nurse, because signing is usually the last thing they have time to relate to each other when they change shifts. They normally have 15 minutes to go through the medical history and changes of all the patients on the floor. If Alex is admitted for a few days, there’s a fair bit of staff rotation. When a hospital is close to a border, such as the Ontario/Quebec border in Canada, the staff are expected to be bilingual, yet there is no provision for teaching hospital staff Sign Language. At the very least, it should be mandatory to have a reference book on every floor. I had to buy one of my own and lend it, always hoping it would come back home after Alex’s stay.

For a child without diverse medical needs, this would only be a problem occasionally. For us, it’s an ongoing concern. I honestly don’t understand why it’s not mandatory to teach Sign in schools. If you follow my A to Z, you may agree with me by the time the end of April gets here that they should.


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Song Lyric Sunday – Yellow Ledbetter by Pearl Jam

The first time I heard Yellow Ledbetter, I absolutely loved the music. The lyrics, on the other hand, I would sing for years before I finally looked them up on the internet. In the meantime I, like probably millions of people around the world, sang in the car at the top of my lungs (when I was alone) what I thought they were.

Here they are:

“Yellow Ledbetter” Pearl Jam

Unsealed on a porch a letter sat.
Then you said, “I wanna leave it again.”
Once I saw her on a beach of weathered sand.
And on the sand I wanna leave it again. Yeah.
On a weekend I wanna wish it all away, yeah.
And they called and I said that “I want what I said” and then I call out again.
And the reason oughta’ leave her calm, I know.
I said “I know what I was the boxer or the bag.”

Ah yeah, can you see them out on the porch? Yeah, but they don’t wave.
I see them round the front way. Yeah.
And I know, and I know I don’t want to stay.
Make me cry…

I see… Oh I don’t know why there’s something else.
I wanna drum it all away…
Oh, I said, “I don’t, I don’t know whether I was the boxer or the bag.”

Ah yeah, can you see them out on the porch? Yeah, but they don’t wave.
But I see them round the front way. Yeah.
And I know, and I know. I don’t wanna stay at all.
I don’t wanna stay. Yeah.
I don’t wanna stay. [x2]
I don’t… Don’t wanna, oh… Yeah. Ooh… Ohh…

Now that you’ve read them, here is the song… with one of the most priceless sets of misheard lyrics I’ve ever come across. After you’ve watched/listened to the video, let me know which set you prefer.

Song Lyric Sunday is brought to you by Helen Espinosa at This Thing Called Life One Word at a Time. Please stop by her blog here: https://helenespinosa.wordpress.com/2016/04/03/song-lyric-sunday-homegrown-by-zac-brown-band/ and consider joining in the fun! You can even use her cool new badge!!!

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#SoCS – Be

What do you want to be when you grow up? I used to hate that question. I never had a real answer because I had no idea. It, to me, was an impractical question. I’m ten! How would I know? Hold on, while I weigh my options… I used to be envious of the kids who could just spurt out a profession like it was what they were born for. How about, I want to be a caring, compassionate human being. It’s something else to know how you want to occupy yourself when you reach a certain age, isn’t it?

Right now I’m occupying myself with my laptop, awkwardly typing with the puppy’s head on my lap, and my kid is making weird gurgling noises at his own computer while he feeds from his pump. The tv is on but there’s no sound – nobody is watching it. Not even the dog. Is it true that dogs can’t see tvs? Is that a myth? Or was it just true of the old curved screens? Because Winston seems to be able to see my flat screen.

I had to get up to feed the dog. He made me put the computer down. I’m almost out of milk. I panic when that happens, because it means I’ll either have to drink my morning coffee black or not at all. And that last option is not an option. As my best friend observed, I don’t exist before coffee. I am not.

To be, or not to be? Ask me after coffee. I think my brain just exploded.

SoCS badge 2015

This mind-bending post is brought to you by Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Click here https://lindaghill.com/2016/04/01/theres-no-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-april-216/ to find out how you can join in!