A MAN'S HOME IS HIS CASTLE

There was a time when that was true. Not any more.

A man in his home would have a place of refuge from the world. He could hide from the worries of life, safe and secure with his wife and children by his side. His home provided a place to ward off the marauding hordes of Visigoths and Huns, Barbarians and Mongols, Indians and desperados, traveling missionaries and cable TV representatives.

But not all dangers are outside the walls of a man’s castle. Some rise up unexpectedly from within. Thanks to the Internet and Facebook there are dangers that can separate a man from his family; from his wife, from his son, and from his daughter who has her own castle.

My wife is on Facebook and some friend invited her to play a game on the net. That in itself is not bad but my wife has shared that interest with others. Now our daughter is playing the game. But worse than that, right here in my so called castle, our son has joined in.

I am not part of the group. I am an outcast in my own castle. My wife and son sit on the couch playing the game and discussing strategies, sending information and game pieces filled with energies and potions to other gamers. While my wife and son are bonding in their shared love of the game, and my daughter is joining in from the other side of town, I wonder if this digital intruder can be driven from my castle.

I don’t know that the intruder, this game they play, can be defeated. All I can do is sit in the living room and listen to the plotting and planning as they build whatever they are building.

The website for the game they are playing has this promotion:

Create your Happy Ending
Build your very own Kingdom in a magical land.
Banish the Gloom and nasty Beasties while you’re at it.

While they are building their CastleVille, my castle walls are crumbling around me. John Wayne and Fess Parker had a better chance of defeating Santa Anna at the Alamo than I do in banishing the Gloom and nasty Beasties from my castle.

Bring on the marauding hordes! The enemy I can see…

DO YOUR EARS HANG LOW?

Almost three months have passed since I got my hearing aids. Time flies when you’re having fun? Or maybe it flies because now I can hear.

The morning of the 19th of April I went to the audiologist for my new ears. The first 45 minutes were spent learning about the devices, proper maintenance and how to insert them. “Stick it in your ear!”, takes on a whole new meaning.

Once I had shown the audiologist that I could insert and remove the hearing aids without asking for help, he hooked me up to his computer.

He clipped a transmitter, with a blinking red light, around my neck. It links to the hearing aids and sends the signal to the computer. While the transmitter is operational, the audiologist has complete control over my hearing aids. So I am sitting in the chair with a transmitter hanging from my neck feeling like I was one of the androids in the Star Trek episode, “I, Mudd”. “Harcourt Fenton Mudd!”

Once the transmitter, hearing aids and computer were linked, the audiologist started pushing buttons on his computer and sound came into my ears. Magically. All sorts of beeps and blips and burps. When the audiologist was satisfied that I was hearing and that the sound was balanced I was free to take on the world of those who hear. He promised me that I would hate him for the next two weeks as I tried to get used to the hearing aids. (I made it until 4 that afternoon. I was back at the audiologist’s office to have him turn the volume down. It was too loud and he had set it at 80% of full volume. He turned it down to 75%.)

When I left the audiologist that morning I headed to my wife’s school to see her. I figured I owed her the first hearing. She saw me coming to the front door of the school and met me there. “What are you doing here? Oh! Your hearing aids!” She checked out my new ears and gave her approval. Then, just to make sure that the hearing aids were working in the real world, I had my wife say something to me at a close distance and again at about 15 feet away. I closed my eyes and she spoke in a quiet voice. I heard her!

I didn’t respond with, “What?” I answered her statement. She said, “It is sunny outside.” I said, “Yes, it is.” I should have repeated her statement to just prove that I heard her exact words. It turned out okay, though. I scored big points by going to see, and hear, her first.

My daughter, always a person of great insight, had this to say on her Facebook page, “My Dad is getting hearing aids today. Somehow I think this makes him terribly adorable. He'll hate hearing that.” Her cousin responded with, “At least he will be able to hear it.”

The two most important women in my life are pleased with my having hearing aids. My wife thinks I’m sweet and my daughter thinks I am terribly adorable. Life is good.

I have been back to the audiologist several times to get my ears tweaked. The hearing is better each time and I have graduated to Remote Control Operator: Level IV. I have the basic volume control and three new buttons for controlling range, direction and effects of the sounds coming at me. This means I get to listen to whomever and whatever I want!

Learning to hear again is an interesting experience. I had forgotten so many sounds. They are coming back to me now and they are wonderful. Birds really do sing pretty in the early morning hours!

EARS TWO

I went out for my morning constitutional about 5 o’clock. The air is finally full of that early morning springtime crisp, cool air that allows sounds to travel well. The birds are singing to greet the day. It is, as Neil diamond says, a beautiful noise.

I wonder though, “What I am missing?” Since my visit to the audiologist last week I have been more aware of what I have missed from the high frequency sounds of life. Tomorrow morning will be different as I will have my new ears in then. Will there be more beautiful noises from the birds? Or will there be all sorts of background sounds that I haven’t heard from some time? It is all unknown.

Sleep last night consisted of a lot of tossing and turning. Worry about the visit to the audiologist this morning kept me from useful slumber. I am sitting here now, yawning up a storm I cannot hear. Maybe tomorrow I will be more alert, not yawning and hearing more. I have been told that I will sleep tonight. I will be exhausted from the work of listening to all those noises and sounds I have forgotten that existed.

In a few more hours I will have my new ears. The sounds I am looking to hearing the most are the ones from my wife. I will be able to have a conversation with her that doesn’t begin with my asking, “What?!”

'EARS TO YOU!

“You have ears to hear but you hear not!,” Father Ignatius would tell us in English class when we asked what the assignment for tomorrow was just moments after he had told us what the assignment for tomorrow was.

My wife thinks like Father Ignatius. She believes I can’t hear; that I am losing my hearing. My children will tell you that I just don’t listen.

It doesn’t matter. I get my new ears next Tuesday. A new one for each side of my head.

I spent two hours at the audiologist this morning. I was there to keep my wife happy and to prove to her that my hearing is fine and that she needs to speak up. She is right, I am wrong.

The testing proves that I can hear lower frequencies. It is the higher frequencies that I do not hear. Female voices. No wonder my wife thinks I can’t hear her. I can’t.

When the audiologist said he had a variety of hearing aids for me to choose from I immediately thought of the huge, flesh colored molds that fit in your ear and have size ‘D’ batteries attached to the back of your ears. A passing thought, fortunately. Analog is dead! I am getting the top of the line digital hearing aids. The particular model I am getting will best suit what I am doing work wise as well as listening to my wife wise. And it comes with a remote. I can casually slip my hand into my pocket and turn the hearing aids, and the speaker, off.

The audiologist is giving me (supplying, at a nominal cost) hearing aids that go into the ear tube but do not block it. My ability to hear the lower frequencies is fine and he doesn't want to interfere with that. And, with all these new techno things, he can adjust for all sorts of gain and frequency and hertz. The only real hurts that he can't fix will be how my pocketbook hurts.

My wife says she is excited for me. She says I won’t be so cranky because I can’t hear her. I figure she won’t be so cranky that I’m cranky because I can’t hear her.

I asked my wife if she would still love me with my hearing aids. She said she would love me even more. Gee, if I had known that…

BREAKFAST OUT

This morning, just to have some fun by myself, for myself, I went out for breakfast that I didn’t have to fix at a local old-fashioned restaurant, one with a counter. I decided to sit at the counter, just to be old-fashioned. There are six stools and I chose on from the end of the counter. That put stools between me and the patron at the other end of the counter.

My wife doesn’t know I went out to breakfast without her.

After I had ordered, an older gentleman in his eighties sat down on the stool next to me. So much for creating my own little space.

He was all by himself. I began to wonder. Was he out for breakfast without his wife? Was his wife was still alive. I soon found out.

The man’s cell phone rang. I heard his side of the conversation.

“Hello?”
“No, she isn’t in right now.”
“Can I take a message?”
“Then I will have her call you.”

Ain’t technology grand? I found out that his wife is alive and she definitely wasn’t in right now. The gentleman was telling the truth.

INSTRUCTION MANUALS

My son and I were walking home from a trip to the coffee shop yesterday. We were talking about nothing in particular when he asks, “Did God give you instructions for me when you got me?”

I thought a moment before I answered. “No. We didn’t get instructions for your sister either.” After a few moments of silence, I added, “Love ‘em, feed ‘em, change their diapers until they don’t need their diapers changed anymore.” Beyond that, it is one adventure after another.

Children don’t come with instruction manuals or trouble shooting guides. They should. That way when your child says, “You ruined my whole life!” you can refer them to the manual God gave you. It will be his fault.

CAR SHOPPING

I spent a good part of the last week of the old year car shopping with my daughter. Car shopping is rarely a time of great fun. It takes work. Traveling across town, taking test drives, talking with owners and salespeople and trying to make sense out of a process you don’t want to partake in to begin with.

It all began with an email. “Daddy, I need your help…

...and maybe Uncle Johnny’s too. I need to buy a car. I'm thinking a Subaru station wagon. Used, cheap, etc...

But where do I begin? and even more importantly end.”

When my daughter says she needs my help, I listen. When she starts off with, “Daddy,…” I am done for. I have no choice but to help. She knows what works. She always has. From the first moment I held her in my arms, she was in charge.

The car shopping began in the usual way. There was lots of looking on the internet in dealer inventories and craigslist. There were cars that met some of her criteria, but not all. When she finally found a car that really interested her, it was Christmas Eve Eve. The used car dealer said he would be closed on Friday but would open the shop if we wanted to look at the car. She made arrangements for the Monday after Christmas.

We looked at the car, a VW Golf, and made an appointment to have our mechanic look it over. The mechanic didn’t have great news for us. While the car looked cute and was practical for a landscape designer to haul some plants, it had some mechanical problems. So we kept looking.

A Toyota Matrix was on the agenda for the next day. Another trip to the mechanic for evaluation followed. While the car is dependable, this vehicle had some body damage that was beyond cosmetic.

Frustration was setting in for both of us. Especially for my daughter. Buying a car goes against her grain and not finding one that was right for her business needs made the experience an ordeal. The only reason she was looking for a car was because her business coach told her she needed one to grow her business.

She has been looking for a car that will be economical to operate, reliable, practical and cheap. The last item was hard to meet. The cars in her planned spending amount were not reliable and wouldn’t be cheap in the long run.

Taking one on the chin for the American economy, my daughter expanded her price range. Her uncle helped convince her of the need to do that.

The next day we were looking at several cars in the higher price range. This time we were at new car dealer and looking at their used cars. No luck. The feel of the first car we drove wasn’t right. You knew it in your bones as you took the bumps but the car didn’t. So we tried another car and it didn’t feel right either. In fact, both vehicles had something in common: Lots of moisture on the inside of the windshield. The defrosters didn’t do much to eliminate the problem. A resounding ‘No!’ to both cars got us a different salesman.

The first salesman was at the end of his work day and was very tired. The sales manager jumped in to help and said he was off to check his inventory for us. What arrived was a second salesman who was not as tired as the first and was the high-pressure specialist/sales leader. New cars, bigger cars, pick-up trucks masquerading as vans and SUVs’. He showed them all. None of them met the criteria.

It was time to go home. On the way to my daughter’s apartment I told her my schedule for the next few days. This was Wednesday before New Year’s. “I can go tomorrow and then I can go out on Sunday afternoon.” Her response was short and to the point. “I am going to have a car by Friday.”

Thursday morning she had found several more cars to look at. Two cars were in her price range and they were on a used car lot. Neither was acceptable. There were too many obvious problems. One wouldn’t even start without the dealer hooking up the battery charger.

Both of those cars were Subaru wagons and I made a phone call to our mechanic while we were looking at them. The mechanic had good things to say about the Subaru Outback wagons. That helped even though those two particular cars were not in the best of shape. There was, however, one car on the lot that met the criteria. A 2004 Subaru Outback that is in good shape, with a defroster that works. It cost more than my daughter wanted to spend but it did fall within the prices given in the Kelley Blue Book.

So my daughter has her first car. An adventure in shopping? Probably not near as much fun as when she goes clothes shopping with her mother. It was certainly a more expensive shopping experience. Throw in a phone call to the insurance agent and a trip to DEQ and you have an excuse to celebrate with lunch at Burgerville. On the menu? A Tillamook Cheeseburger and a chocolate shake. A hazelnut chocolate shake for my daughter. With whip cream!

Fortunately, my daughter sees a car for what it is. A tool for her business. She has begrudgingly accepted the car into her lifestyle. I think she is beginning to like the car and feeling good about her purchase. It is a practical vehicle for a landscape designer to haul plants to the client’s site. Her words on her Face book page say it all:

“She'll hold 3 five gal pots, 10 one gal pots, 4 flats of 4" pots and some garden gloves. She'll do.”