Living La Vida Alpo

Friday Warm Fuzzy

Have a nice weekend, y'all.

I'll be spending mine trying to remember how to inhale. Next weekend hopefully I'll get to the exhale part.

Via Superhero Journal and Jen Gray.

A boob-sling farewell parade

That's right, elves.  I just flashed you an eyeful of brassiere.  Whoocha!  But because I left my chest outta this pic, I figure odds are good I won't be getting any private admonishments.  (Kinda like I did when I blogged about turning on my implant for the first time.  Apparently I'm not allowed to say the word "fuck" on my own blog.)  It's all good, yep.  Fuckin' good.

Wanted to round them up one last time before they all go bye-bye.  'Cause I no longer fit into them. 

Right again, elves!  I did it.  I chopped off my ta-tas.

So they're a bit smaller.  Actually, they're half the size they used to be, but I guess my boobs were so big before I could have them halved and still have so much left over that no one notices.  Not until I tell them, "Oh, I had plastic surgery last friday." 

See, it's my favorite new game, 'cause then I get to stare people in the face and watch them writhe, trying to keep chatting without letting their eyeballs slide down my chest.  I'm watching you, perverts. 

It's kinda too bad, though.  So far no one's had the guts to go right ahead and look.  Which is kinda weird, don't you think?  I mean, when someone says, "HEY!  LOOK!  I WANT SOME ATTENTION BECAUSE I AM EXPLICITLY TELLING YOU FOR NO DAMN REASON AT ALL THAT I PAID SOMEONE TO STICK A KNIFE IN MY CHEST," it's kinda rude to look in her eyes and say, "Oh,really?  Cool!"  Right?!  Riiight.

I take that back.  You're not perverts.  You're fuckwads.

So last I checked, my skin around the sutures was green and blistering over, and my sides are still a deep plum purple.  My boobs themselves are hard as rocks and swelling up so far I'm afraid I look like a neckless person, and I can't feel a damn thing anywhere except right in my nipples, which is kinda irritating 'cause the doc kept flicking them and asking, "Can you feel that?  How about that?"  YES OH YES OH MY GOD STOP TOUCHING THE FUCKING THINGS, I DON'T CARE HOW MUCH YOU GOT PAID, YOU DIRTY OLD MAN!

The only thing I'd change?  Scheduling it a wee bit more than the unbelievably dumb three days I had before starting a new job.  And discovering my favorite coffee machine in the world with coffee pods located exactly a foot above my head where reaching up for a bit of nirvana meant risking ripping my stitches every morning.  Yes, I'm one dumb addict.  Your point?  Well, take it and flick yours.

But it's all good, because I can finally see the upper half of my belly.  Like, hello, other half of the body I need to kick into shape.  And I assume when I can actually feel my boobies again, I won't be knocking over drinks at every table I sit at.  Yep.  Worth it.

Worth, even, taking the fifteen hundred pills I had to take five times a day.  By the time I got done stuffing them down my gullet, I was so full I didn't need to eat, like, actual food.  Nah.  Just existed on drugs and blood-tainted office coffee.  Yummy.

Tab Dump

With absolutely no method behind the madness. 

Deal with it, elves.  Mwah:

• L-word creators break their silence in this fascinating interview.  I'm in love with these brains.  Someday I'll join their club and... create something too.
• Obsessed with this blog by Sara on the way your brain sorts out its info.  I wonder if I'll ever be able to make sense of the world via ranges of dizziness, which is pretty much what I'm experiencing now.
• The fact that this link will take you to Oprah's webpage is NOT a sign of my capitulation, I promise.  Rather, it's a sign of how much I'm in love with Ayelet Waldman (aka Michael Chabon's writer wife).  Her so-called controversy: that she puts her husband at the center of her life, not her children.  I have a bone to pick with her about that, but hey, at least she shook things up, right?
• If you don't already subscribe to Sharon Pajka-West's feed, go, run, click NOW.  She always seems to have the in-info on new deaf books or deaf characters.  Now, this posting she has up on Lance Allred's memoir is kinda irritating me.  I've recently fallen out of love with the memoir in general, especially in the ways publishers market them.  Look!  Mormon!  And raised a polygamist!  Oh!  And he's *gasp* deaf!  And... wait for it... oh, no... he struggles with OCD.   In essence, the memoir marketing game seems to be about how many "oh no, the poor thing" factors you can slap on a book jacket.  Whatever happened to good, accessible, relatable writing!?

Happy Hump Day!

My new role model.

Check it.

This is what I look like when I'm turned on.

Whoops.  I could say I forgot to add pictures to my previous entry, but let's do my good ol' QueenAlpo persona some lip service and say this entry is dedicated to those of you for whom multi-syllabled words are a little... shall we say, challenging? 

In other words: "The Stowy of my Activation" for you widdle kiddies.  Certified curse-free. Illustrations by CK.

Looking for the magnet. That thing's a sneaky little sucker.

The audiologist took over after about three minutes of having four people stare at me while I fiddled with the side of my head, and then it took HER another couple of minutes.

"We're turning it on now."   The big moment, my butt. I was so bored.

And this is the visual aid they gave me while waiting to hear something. Pwetty. *yawn*

When the room started swirling, I turned to Momsie and moaned, "Ohh.... I don't feel so good..."

 

Listening -- HA! -- to the audiologist's mini-lesson on how to take care of my processor, using my back-up as a demo.  How excited do I look?!  Like, OMG!!

Activation Day... four days later

My cochlear implant was turned on four days ago, and I can't hear a fucking thing.

There, now.  Those of you who've been politely bugging me the last few days, take that update and sit on it.

Took Momsie and CK and a camera -- aka the QueenAlpo entourage (taking applications now! Hurry, while space lasts!) -- all the way down to Bethesda and sat in an office with two audiologists for a little more than an hour, which consisted pretty much of:

"It's on now, can you hear anything?"

"No."

"There'll be beeping now. Let us know if you get uncomfortable.   ... Is it too loud?"

"Huh?"

"Do you hear the beeping?"

"No."

"How about now?"

"No."

"Now?"

"NO!"

"Okay, I'm gonna say the words shoe, hot dog, and ice cream cone.  You tell me which one I'm saying."

"Ok."

"Hot dog."

"Shoe?"

"Ice cream cone."

"Shoe?"

"Ice cream cone."

"Ummm... Shoe?"

"That's fine, it's gonna take a little time.  Wear the processor as much as you can without the hearing aid.  That's the only way your brain will get used to it.  We know it's working.  Just give it some time.  If you're too uncomfortable outside the office, give us a call and we'll help turn it down."

"Okay, but seriously, nothing's happening."

"Normal.  Just give it time."

FYI: the next person who tells me to "give it some time" is gonna get an arse-kicking so wicked they'll be able to hear my plaintive "shoe's" through their butthole.  I'm not that mean, though.  I'll be standing by with some tissue, don't worry.

So.  Yeah.  No hearing miracles going on here.  That's okay, I knew this implant thing was gonna be a long haul.  And I'd been advised by other recipients to not have any expectations.  And I guess I kindasorta didn't, except when it became clear I wasn't gonna be Cochlear's next star recruit, I started getting irritated with all the hearing people who wanted to know the wonders of my activation experience.

Which makes my decision to go to a pizza party at Leah's school that afternoon a real dumb one.  Teachers, parents, paraeducators and advocates, all hearing, all very excited about the thing stuck on my head.  "Oh, that's just for the first few days.  Soon you'll be SOOO happy you got it!!"

Really?  Wanna bet?  How about YOU go be deaf all your life, and then YOU go get your head sliced open and drilled into, and THEN you come and tell me just how gol'dang happy I'll be?  No? Aw?  Not joining my club?  Not even if I share my cookies?  Fuck you then.

The one-point-five things I AM able to sense is this awful dizziness.  Vicodin kind of dizziness.  And if I'm to be optimistic about anything, it's that over the last four days, this dizziness has seemed to gradually sync with the noises around me. 

We went out to lunch after activation, and on the way there, I was sitting innocently next to CK, waiting for my "Ephphatha, I can hear!" moment, when suddenly some phantom asshole sitting in the backseat thought it'd be funny to grab a fistful of my hair and headbang me for 15 seconds... until we turned into the parking lot.

Holy fucking turn signal. 

And then CK said something to me.  I know this because I suddenly tasted metal, like I'd been sucking on an old penny.  So I looked up, and asked, "Did you say something?  I tasted it."

Good golly.  No wonder every single fucking kid in Leah's program these days has an implant.  It's just a sheer joyride, and sooooo worth it. *sucks another penny*

On that note, have a nice day, and fuck y'all.  The sound of my typing is making the floor tilt under my ass.

To the hairy-forearmed

Italian gold-chain-wearing man in a house contractor van clearly at least 20 years older than me who helped me clog up a two-lane road for 1.4 miles today:

No, I still will not buy you coffee. 

Nor will I roll down my window to talk to you (which would actually be a slight disappointment for you), go out, marry you, or be friends with you.

And I most definitely will not rip a phone number off the side of your van to call you.

BUT...

I will most definitely smile next time you pull up alongside me and totally make my whole freakin' day.

Was it good for you too?

Peek-a-boo, we see you.

So Momsie and CK and I were on my way into an elevator to get my CI turned on this morning -- more on that later -- when the doors slid open and a guy my age or slightly older came walking out.

But not before letting his eyeballs slide languidly up and down my body while standing right in front of me.

"CK!" I hissed once we got in the elevator. "Did you see that guy check me out?!  My GAWD!"

"What guy?" 

Hello, Craptain Oblivious, the guy who just undressed me while standing 5 feet away, front and center!  But Momsie saw, so I'm simultaneously validated and accompanied in thinking that it was a bit obvious and gross.

Note to all would-be oglers: If you can't at least learn the art of the discreet glance, learn the spin. 

Smile -- pleasantly, not salaciously -- or say something.  "Good morning," even, would suffice.  It'd at least restore the bit of humanity you've stripped from us by grading our T&A.  That, or make me more likely to do an elevator striptease for you. 

I did wear my nice bra today, after all.

It's called parenting in real life.

Sometimes response blogs are the best ones.  Case in point... anna today responds to Penelope Trunk: What if You're Not a Good Mom, But Nobody Wants to be the One to Tell you?

A gem that applies to parents of all genders:

"...[B]eing a mother is fraught with choices about how to best parent your child, and that everybody has an opinion, and that there are no easy choices anymore. I would not call it wisdom, but I would call it developing a familiarity with the concept of things not always being able to go according to plan. Letting go of some control. Accepting that you will have to do things, sometimes, that you thought only a bad parent would do, before you were a parent yourself."