Do you ever feel like momentum is the only thing that’s keeping you from collapsing?
Do you ever wonder if you’ll ever get out of the hole you’ve unwittingly dug for yourself?
Do you ever make lemonade out of lemons and then think, “This shit is fattening! I’m not drinking this!”
Do you ever have a moment when you figure life can’t get any better, and then realize it’s all downhill from here?
Do you ever wonder if you should hit that damned publish button?
I know I’ve mentioned before what it’s like when I visit Alex’s school for a special event. Walking down a hallway, jam-packed with students from Kindergarten to Grade 12, all of them chatting animatedly without a sound but the scuffing of shoes on the floor, is an experience not many hearing people are likely to have. I want to add that the shoe-scuffing is decidedly loud, however. I think that may be because Deaf parents aren’t constantly telling the kids to stop dragging their feet already, like the rest of us do. But I digress.
Unlike the above point, I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned the first time I went with Alex for a playdate. It was back when we lived in the Ottawa area. We only went to a couple, hosted by a Deaf mom, for her kids and some of their friends, all of whom were Deaf. I was lucky to have found them: I was pointed in the right direction by one of my American Sign Language teachers.
My first impression at the playdate, once we got the kids organized and sitting around a table with building blocks, was how eerie it was. If I remember correctly, there were four adults and five or six children ranging in ages from two to six, and the room was dead quiet. What I remember the most was how happy Alex was. At the age of six, Alex was probably more fascinated watching the adults sign and the kids communicate with one another without excluding him than he was with the actual playing. It was at that moment that I realized these were his people and I was not. As happy as I was for him, and still am, that he’s part of that wonderful community, being unlike him is one of the most heartbreaking things I have to endure as his mother.
It’s very strange to give birth to someone whose first language isn’t the same as yours.
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.
It seems the cat has made an impression on the dog.
Do you see it?
How about now?
I noticed the silhouette of the cat’s head on the dog’s side two days ago, while they were having a nap together.
__________________________________________________________________
Good news! The pingbacks were working yesterday. So go ahead and give it a try, but make sure you check a minute or two after you post to make sure your pingback is in the comments.
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
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.
Enjoy.
This post is part of Song Lyric Sunday, brought to you by the lovely and talented Helen Espinosa at This Life One Word At A Time. Click here to see this week’s prompt, and join in!
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.” 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 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!
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:
but the link pinged back to here:
https://lindaghill.com/2013/04/21/how-comments-can-hurt/ – a post of mine from three years ago.
Weird. Hopefully things will be back to normal soon.
Have a good night all!
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: 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!
Though my son, Alex, observes much more than most of us in the family do, there’s at least a quarter, if not half, of what the rest of us perceive that he misses, being Deaf. While we hear things that go on around us without having to see them, (right now there’s a car going by with a rattling trailer on the back, and my other son, Chris, is coughing upstairs in his room) Alex’s world is quiet. He only knows what is in front of his face. I know this, because I often accidentally sneak up on the poor kid and scare him out of his erps.
I think of him in his own little world, not knowing what’s going on around him, and I find it natural that we end up calling him, “Your Majesty.” He’s self-centered in a way that makes sense. And yet he still finds a way to be in tune.
That he has compassion, even though I’m not able to explain to him what compassion means, tells me that teaching by example goes so much further than speaking. Openness begets openness, caring begets caring, and love begets love. This, unfortunately, can also be said for close-mindedness, rejection, and hate. To me, it speaks in volumes about how we all need to behave around our children.
Kindness is as often shown in gestures as it is in words. We can express kind words to one another without meaning them, but the sincerity of a smile cannot be faked. Nor can the act of opening a door, or handing back a lost item that a person doesn’t know he or she has dropped. I’m happy to have not only been able to demonstrate these qualities to my son, but I’m grateful to have been able to expose him to other people who have as well.
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 got new letters! 2 packs of 72 each at Toys R Us in the US! I can write a whole novel on the fridge now!!
Well, as long as the whole thing is punctuated with exclamation marks (aka upside-down “i”s).
__________________________________________________________________
NOTE: Pingbacks are not working this week. If you’d like to participate in the prompt, please manually enter the link to your post in the comments below. Thanks for your patience.
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
I contacted WordPress support yesterday to find out what was going on with the pingbacks. All the Happiness Engineer was able to tell me is that it’s just me. Everyone else’s are working. Mine are, in fact, not working in either direction – I pinged back to Dale’s site yesterday for the photo challenge and he never received my link.
So it seems WordPress doesn’t like me; your guess is as good as mine as to why. At the moment I’m still waiting for a developer to get back to me. I’m not holding my breath that it will happen before 2am when I post my next prompt, so if you plan to participate in One-Liner Wednesday tomorrow, I’m afraid you’ll have to manually enter your link in my comment section, so I and everyone else will see your post.
Apologies for the inconvenience. Hopefully this will get sorted out before Saturday and SoCS rolls around again.
lindaghill.com 