A few more thoughts on the cochlear implant.  I’ve lived through brain arguments. Once was when the brain was telling me up was in two different directions at once: the right one, noted visually and muscularly, and the other ever and forever to the left, falling. It KNEW, just KNEW… No you don’t know! Stop it!

After my car got smashed into ten years ago, I had to learn how to walk despite that inner screaming match. I still fall down when there’s too much or too unfamiliar visual stimulus throwing me off unless I can counter it with enough tactile feedback. Hence the cane. Sticks not groans will brake my bones.

And there was a short while there where I had to wear an old hearing aid and a new one with differing sound responses. It was hard not to feel irritable, sitting in church trying to listen to the speakers and music while finding my consciousness being jerked between one side incoming vs the other, unmatched and unmeshed.

So I have some background experience keeping me from rushing into the implant on one side thing. And yet… Writing yesterday’s post showed me I really have been needing to simply go ask more questions and stop hanging back from finding out more. And I need to try to find out during this open enrollment period whether it would be covered.  Some do some don’t.

I also realized, as I answered comments yesterday, that I will always be able to plug the hearing-aid side via wires I already own into an Ipod (note that I don’t quite own an Ipod yet, but that can be fixed) and listen to my music that way. It won’t be communal listening; my children will exclaim, No no that’s *quite* all right, Mom, do NOT worry about that!

Heh.

It’ll all work out.

Meantime. The feeders were deserted today. I didn’t see the hawks, although one had clearly taken prey from one of them before I got up. No sign of the neighbors’ cats. I knew the wildlife is aware of far more going on than I, but it was pretty quiet out there.

So I scattered a few nut pieces outside in the afternoon, bringing me Instant Black Squirrel at last. Just one.

I’ve noticed that if a squirrel pronounces all-ee all-ee in-come free, it’s safe, the birds follow immediately. And so it was. Instant flock.

I’ve wondered about that. Is it because squirrels have a sense of smell for an extra layer of warning, which birds, flying through the clear air, don’t really need and don’t have? Do the birds watch the squirrels for tail flicks? Clearly they do.  Michelle Millar in her “The Birds and Beasts Were There” is convinced that the birds who never returned to her after the great Coyote Fire in Santa Barbara had simply died in the night, asleep and unable to see or smell the oncoming disaster.

Don’t know. I do know, when I’m willing to share a few stale nuts with a squirrel, my birds come back to me.

Meantime, (I know, I’m meandering like bird hops here) I’m picking up steam and back to knitting again. I celebrated with baby alpaca, wanting to wrap this project up before my qiviut arrives.  Knitterly FYI: I bought a skein of their arctic blend, which I’m told will be back in stock in six weeks or so, and it passed my test: yes, it is totally de-haired and very soft, as anything with qiviut in it should be, and so I ordered the 50/50 to try that out too. If you hear a delighted squeal of YES! at the doorstep, that will be me with the box.

And I will crank the music up high and knit.