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“Real isn’t how you are made. It is a thing that happens to you. Once you are Real, you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.”
— the Skin Horse, in The Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Williams

This is my mouse. I’ve had him as long as I can remember. I don’t sleep with him anymore, but it’s only because, as you can see, all his stuffing is falling out.

Everyone thinks he’s a girl, because he’s pink, but he’s not. They also always have to ask if he’s a rabbit, which I don’t quite understand, because he clearly has short, round ears and a long, skinny tail and not tall, skinny ears and a round tail, but whatever. He also doesn’t have a name. Is that weird?

When I studied in Spain in college, I took him with me. I lived with a family and one day I came home from school and he was not in my room. My “mom” had taken it upon herself to wash him with the rest of my laundry, and when she brought him back to me, he had shrunk to about half his size! But he was definitely clean, and he eventually fluffed back up, which was a relief. I don’t remember if he’d ever been washed before that, but I know he hasn’t been washed since, because I fear that would be the end of him.

He used to rattle, but he doesn’t anymore. I’m not quite sure what happened; it’s a mystery. I’ve sewed his holes several times, but I think patches are the only thing that might save him now. Maybe I’ll look into it, because he lives on my bookshelf now and I kind of miss him.

Courage is the discovery that you may not win, and trying when you know you can lose.
— Tom Krause

Ok, if Marlee Matlin can dance on TV in front of millions of people, surely I can sing karaoke in a bar in front of 30 drunk people, right? (Which would, hopefully, be a prelude to something more official and public.)

In all seriousness, I’ve never watched much of Dancing With the Stars, and I forgot to watch last night, even though I meant to, but I saw this video today, and it actually brought tears to my eyes. I was so proud of her.

And leaving aside the deafness issue, how hot does she look? She’s in her 40s and has 4 kids; I’m 31 and childless, and I wouldn’t look half that good in that dress. Good for her!

The heart must speak, and its search for the perfect outlet is the premise of all artistic expression. When words are insufficient or impossible, and physical gestures fall short, music is a language by which the soul can be heard. But when music itself is unattainable, the silence can be more than one spirit can stand.
— from Music to My Ears, by Timothy White

I was watching Once last weekend – have you seen it? It’s amazing. It’s a love story about an Irish street performer and a Czech musician, and it’s told largely through the music they write and perform in their roles. If you haven’t seen it, you are really missing something wonderful.

The day after their first meeting, she takes him to the music store where the owner lets her play the piano for an hour at lunchtime. He gives her the music to his song, Falling Slowly (the Academy Award winner for best song this year, by the way). He teaches her the basic parts of the song, then he begins to play on his guitar, and she joins him on the piano. He sings the first verse, and she comes in on the chorus, and it was at that point that I started to cry. I just sat there watching in the dark, listening, with tears streaming down my face. The thing was this: I could tell that the song was gorgeous and full and beautiful, but I knew I wasn’t hearing it all, if that makes any sense.

Ever since I lost my hearing, music isn’t as rich of an experience for me as it used to be, and that makes me unspeakably, and sometimes unbearably, sad. Most days, I’m good – this is just how I go through life now, you know? It is what it is, and it doesn’t do any good to lament what I lost. But there are moments every once in a while where I just get blindsided by the heartache of growing up as a hearing person – someone whose life was enveloped in music, who used to play instruments and dance, and more than anything else, sing – and being reduced to this.

I haven’t sung in public since I lost my hearing because I’m afraid that I won’t be on key and I’ll embarrass myself.* Some days I’m sure I could do it, after almost 5 years with my implant, but I never take steps to try, because if I fail, I’ll be devastated. Once, about 9 months after I lost my hearing, a friend asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday. I told her I really wanted to get people together and go do karaoke, but that I was afraid because I was never sure if I was on pitch when I sang along with the radio. She looked at me sadly and said, “You aren’t.” She said it gently, and she meant well, but it broke my heart then, and it’s always in the back of my mind when I think about trying now. I still sing – my nephew has his own theme song that I made up for him, the Princess loves to hear “Winnie the Pooh” (House at Pooh Corner, by Kenny Loggins), and I sing out loud to myself when I’m alone – but singing for yourself is a distinct experience from singing for an audience, and I miss that so much.

And I can’t just turn on the radio anymore, because without context – the title of the song on my iPod screen, for instance, or knowing the order of tracks on a CD that I’ve owned since before I lost my hearing – new (meaning post-2002) music is mostly just noise to me. I’m am very much out of the loop when it comes to whatever’s hot these days. I’ve downloaded a fair number of songs I didn’t know before I lost my hearing, but to recognize them without cues requires finding the lyrics online and listening along multiple times. Even then I’m never sure if the melody I hear is the true melody of the song.

So this, you see, is the great sadness of my life. There’s nothing like music, is there? I read The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers, several years before I lost my hearing, and looking back over some of the quotes I copied from it makes my spirit ache a little bit:

She had just drawn whatever came into her head without reason – and in her heart it didn’t give her near the same feeling that music did. Nothing was really as good as music.

I’ll say.

But all the time – no matter what she was doing – there was music. Sometimes she hummed to herself as she walked, and other times she listened quietly to the songs inside her. There were all kinds of music in her thoughts. Some she heard over the radios, and some was in her mind already without her ever having heard it anywhere.

I copied that down when I read it because I think it describes me to a tee, even now. And I do still have music – anything I knew before I lost my hearing is mostly readily available in my memory, and when I hook my implant up to my iPod, the music fills my head and I can still hear that opening guitar riff from Boys of Summer or the organ on Hear Me in the Harmony, the clarity of Celine Dion’s voice (shut up; I’m a sucker for a power ballad) or David Gray’s wavering tenor, the perfect harmony on the chorus of When I Said I Do or the gorgeous piano melody of Mandolin Rain. It makes me cry and uplifts me all at the same time, because just knowing that music even exists at all is really something, isn’t it?

* Edited to add: I just remembered that I have done karaoke once since I lost my hearing, in law school, but I didn’t sing by myself, so I don’t count it.

Women are afraid of mice and murder, and of and very little in between.
— from The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, by Mignon McLaughlin

I was walking home from the bus last night and as I passed my car in the parking lot, I noticed a note on my windshield. I picked it up, turned it over, and found that some nice neighbor of mine had kindly advised me that I had a flat rear right tire. I went around to the passenger side, and sure enough, I did. Closer inspection revealed a screw lodged between the treads in the middle of the tire. I was inexplicably ill at the time, however, so I didn’t do anything about it last night.

Today, though, I was able to leave work early to come home and take care of it. Now, I’ve never actually changed a tire before, and I wasn’t convinced I could do it. I tried once, about 6 years ago, but I couldn’t get the lug nuts off no matter how hard I tried, and I sat in the parking lot and cried until someone took pity on me and stopped to help. (I’m not proud of that, but in my defense, it was three weeks after I lost my hearing, and two weeks after I’d fallen and torn my rotator cuff, and I’d just come out to the parking lot to discover I had a flat, so I was just about at the end of my rope.)

Anyway, luckily, there was no one in the space next to me, so I unloaded my trunk and strategically placed the removed items outside the empty space so that someone wouldn’t come careening into the space and kill me before I could triumph over the tire. See?

The stool I brought down from my apartment so I wouldn’t have to kneel on the pavement; I was glad more than once that I thought of that. Then, I carefully followed the instructions in my manual – so nice of them to provide that, I think – and popped off the hubcap, and was able, with a fair amount of effort on my part (that torn rotator cuff is going to be sore tomorrow, that’s for sure) to loosen the lug nuts. That’s when I knew I was home free.

Once the lug nuts were loose, I carefully placed the jack under the car precisely where the manual said to:

And then it took about 100 years to crank the thing up because I had to keep taking the wrench off at the end of each revolution because it would hit the ground. There’s probably a way around that, a secret that only boys know or something, but whatever. I got the big tire off and the little, puny, sad-excuse-for-a-tire spare on, lowered the jack, tightened the lug nuts and I was done! In under 35 minutes, and all by myself! I was quite proud; I even had axle grease all over my hands.

Then I drove to CostCo to see about replacing the tire. I was so psyched when the guy told me the screw was in the “perfect” place and I wouldn’t actually have to replace the tire, I could just get it plugged (the tires were close to brand new when I bought the car in November, so I was not happy at the prospect of having to replace one, if not two, of them). He couldn’t do it for me because I didn’t buy my tires there, so I drove to a service station to see if they could. They could and they did, and it only cost me $20! I gave the guy an extra $5 for himself because he did it so quickly and then spent about 10 minutes getting my jack and spare securely back in the trunk.

So, yay me! I feel oddly accomplished. This is the kind of thing I think a lot of women would automatically outsource, either to a significant other or to AAA, and I feel proud that I did it myself.

Maybe for an encore I should learn to change my own oil.

* with apologies to Mindy Kaling (aka Kelly Kapoor, on The Office)

The quickest way to know a woman is to go shopping with her.
— Marcelene Cox

Ok, here’s a brief list of things I’ve bought recently that I adore, and want to share with you in the hopes that you might love them too:

• Gap Essential cut jeans: I’ve had to find new places to shop since losing weight, because I sized out of the places I relied on for years. That’s a great feeling, to be sure, but it’s also been kind of a pain in the ass, because before, I could walk into a store, pick my preferred style of jeans in the size I’d worn forever, pay for them and be done in under 10 minutes. Now I actually have to try stuff on, and I have to take three sizes of everything into the dressing room because I don’t know how the sizes run in “normal” stores. Anyway, when I was in Houston with Aimee, we went to the Gap at the Galleria and she patiently waited while I tried on about 20 different pairs of jeans – different sizes in different cuts and different washes (shopping is hard) – but it was worth it, because these are the jeans I was meant to wear.

• Naturalizer Leisure Plus knee-high boots: I have been on a quest to find knee-high black boots for I don’t know how long. Apparently I have freakishly large calves, because I could never find a pair that I could zip up. I tried everywhere, even Zappos, the online shoe mecca. Everything I bought, I had to return, and I was convinced I just was not meant to wear knee-high boots. But then one day, I was perusing Zappos again, convinced it was hopeless, sure I’d tried every boot they had to offer, and lo, I came upon this pair. I ordered them without much confidence (but with great security – Zappos offers free overnight shipping and returns, so I wouldn’t be out any money if they didn’t fit), and they arrived the next day. I opened the box with trepidation, slid them on, and then, the heavens opened up, the sun shined down, and angels started singing – they fit! I wish they were leather, but hey – beggars can’t be choosers, huh? Now I just need to find a brown pair and my life will be complete.

• Canon Powershot A720 IS: This was my birthday present to myself, as you may know, and I love it. 8 megapixels, 6x zoom, video capability, and a ton of other stuff I don’t even know how to use yet.

• Cadbury Creme Eggs: Maybe this one’s a little silly, but I know Spring is just around the corner when I see these at CVS (who, luckily – or not – sells them for the low, low price of 2 for a dollar). I know some people are repulsed by them, but I love them better than any other Easter candy (except maybe jelly beans, but you can get jelly beans all year round). In case you’re not familiar with these, Wiki helpfully explains: “The egg has a thick milk chocolate ‘shell’, with a white and yellow fondant filling designed to resemble the yolk and albumen of an egg.” Sounds gross, tastes great!

• Trader Joe’s Organic Jasmine Rice: This is genius. It’s a box of three bags of frozen rice – no additives or preservatives or anything. All you have to do is cut a small hole in the bag, pop it in the microwave for three minutes, and next thing you know, you have perfectly cooked rice for two! They also have brown rice, which I love as well – the brown rice I cook from a box does not turn out like that – but they never have both at the same time. The guy said it had something to do with customs, I don’t really know.

• Simply Enjoy Thai Peanut Asian Sauce: I think this is the store brand from Stop & Shop, but I bought it at Giant, and I think it’s available at Safeway as well. It’s delicious – it’s the only store-bought dressing I’ve found that comes anywhere close to the peanut dressing on my favorite salad in the world, the Santa Fe Chicken Salad at the Cheesecake Factory (I have them leave off the cilantro dressing and just bring me the peanut dressing). I’ve not actually used it on salad myself (but now that you mention it, I think I might try to recreate that one at home), but I dip pot stickers (another Trader Joe’s favorite) and egg rolls in it, and I add it to chicken stir frys. It is delicious, and not bad calorie-wise (70 cal, 4g fat – no saturated or trans fat – per 2 tablespoons, which is more than enough).

• Cover Girl LipSlicks: This isn’t a new find, but it’s really the only lip stick/gloss I’ve worn for 5 years (I remember that I bought it for the first time to wear in Nate’s wedding) so I thought I’d spread the gospel. I wear Daring, which is a wine/red/burgundy color, but there are lots of others to choose from. It’s sheer, not sticky, and gives plenty of color and shine. It’s the perfect lip color, in my opinion; I keep one in every bag.

That’s it for now. But tell me: do you love any of these products, too? Or is there something else you’ve loved forever or just discovered you can’t live without? I want to know!