Howie Day 2010 tour

So many things have been influenced by a single vacation.

When I was in Colorado, I rented a Ford Escape (which may be our next car!!) and Ryan and I spent a lot of time driving to places that he liked or that he'd been camping the summer before. Naturally, Ryan needed some tunes to listen to while driving and he put in a CD by Howie Day called "Stop All the World Now." I'd look at the mountains all around and listen to the music of Howie Day.

Immediately after I came home, I went out and bought all the Howie Day's CDs I could find. I went back to the grind of my hour-long commute, listening to Howie's music...visualizing the Colorado mountains and thinking about Ryan.

Not too long after that, I learned that Howie Day was coming to the Birchmere in Alexandria, Va. Watching him play and create the music is just as interesting as listening to his music. It's fascinating to see him hit the electric guitar to create a percussion sound, then use the effects pedals to loop the sound, while playing the guitar. He'll layer the looped sections for a complex and interwoven sound. And his live concerts give him the opportunity to jam and experiment with songs.

Howie Day is in his 20s and I worried that he'd attract a younger crowd and I'd be a middle-aged standout among a crowd of teens and twenties. But I needn't have worried. When we got to the Birchmere I found people of all ages wearing anything and everything. There were the cute twentysomething couples who sat next to us that I envied and the white-haired gentleman a few tables over. The Birchmere features a bar with a sculpture of a gentleman playing a harmonica, and the main room has a chandelier.

In listenig to the concert, I decided to try the hearing aid along with the cochlear implant. I'll come out and say it...This year marks my seventh year with the CI and I'm no longer a hearing aid user. But I dug it out and bought some batteries. At first, I was reminded of everything I dislike about the hearing aid: the feedback and the ill-fitting earmold that didn't bother me nearly so much as when I was wearing it all the time. I decided to wear the hearing aid turned off for a few hours to get used to wearing it, and then turned it on. The acoustic sound gives me a nice bass boost, mainly because that's all I can hear with a hearing aid. The devices have very different and imabalanced sound, but by the end of the concert, I was enjoying the two devices together, and this may be the best (and only) opportunity I have in this life for binaural hearing. Music is best enjoyed in stereo. Of course, you knew that all along...but I'm a late bloomer.

The most surprising thing was that I could understand the lyrics better live than on the CD, even though I'd listed to it many times. The stage lighting made the microphone cast a shadow on his mouth, so lipreading was impossible. My mind kept telling me that I shouldn't be able to understand the lyrics--lyrics were always someting that were nice, but that I counldn't make out unless I memorized the song. But I realized that I was understandng much more of the lyrics and I told my mind to just enjoy them, and so I did. And when Howie Day sang our favorite song, my husband reached over for my hand.

I now have every CD made by Howie Day. I listen to the music and visualize the mountains of Colorado.

I miss you Ryan.

I love you.

The Birds Outside the Window

I wasn't going to post about my cochlear implant, but it's part of my experience. I've had the CI for four years now, which makes me an "old timer," but even so, I still have some CI moments. Here are some I'd like to share....

Sometimes at work I hear new sounds, either because of processor reprogramming or serendipity. At work, my cube is several feet from a window, and this spring I've begun to hear the birds outside, which I don't remember hearing before in the nine years I've work for this organization. I couldn't believe I was hearing the soft, high-pitched sound of birdcall from inside the building.

I like to ask co-workers about new sounds that I'm hearing, but I've learned to be careful because sometimes they think I'm crazy. After all, how would you feel if a fourtysomething person came up to you and asked about the sound of birds, which you've taken for granted your whole life? People don't realize that having a CI is an ongoing experience that brings new discoveries, even four years later. But this time I picked a safe person to ask, and she responded to my questions with an e-mail describing when and why one might hear birds.

The same thing happened at my home. I heard a low-pitched noise while sitting at the kitchen table that I hadn't noticed before and turned to ask my kid. It turns out that the ice maker periodically makes ice.

Even though I rarely talk about the cochlear implant with others anymore, it's something I always enjoy -- and never take for granted. No matter how difficult the listening situation, I'm always able to keep my spirits up and see it positively because I know how poorly I would have performed in that same situation without the implant. And there isn't ever a time when I come out of a movie theater that I'm not grateful to have this.