Hello fans,
The first MeetUp Mishap I will share with y'all is the very reason I am blogging this adventure. Everything that could have gone wrong did, and its funny looking back on it now.
So a little background first: I love to dance. Whether it's dancing in the mirror, dancing with my friends at da club, or in a class, I love it all. In college my friends and I went to Zumba for fun, and holy moly was that a workout. We were sweating and sore by the second song, it was great! The instructor was fun, the music was fun, and it was a great workout. I mean who doesnt love a good twerk workout, amiright?
My next Zumba experience was when I worked for the Y and got to take free classes, again this was a great dance class. The instructor was full of energy, he was very attractive, and man could he shake it. For those of you who have never been to a Zumba class, its a mixture of Latin, African, and Indian dance techniques. So you could be doing a salsa one dance, and a jai-ho the next. So when I saw there was a Zumba MeetUp I thought "How perfect! I already know how to Zumba, this will be fun, and girls my age will be there!" I grabbed my bestie and made her come with me while making promises of fun, new friends, and good music. Boy was I wrong.
So lets start from the beginning of the Mishap. On the app an address for where the MeetUp happens is available, so we plugged that into our GPS and saw it was pretty close to my friends house. Off we go, listening to music and singing in the car, when we got close to where the studio was we slowed down and were looking for a business sign for the dance studio, we looked and looked, and looked. And drove right past it. We were in a residential neighborhood, so we were kind of confused. After pulling into a drive way we realized it must be in someones house or something. So we went back to the address that the app gave us and saw a very small sign was printed off a computer saying "dance studio in back." Great. I was still optimistic at this point so I was like lets just go park and go in. We parked the car, looked around and saw more small signs. It was literally a house. We came to do Zumba at a strangers house. We went up to a door and it was locked, and then tried another door and it was open, we go in and it was a basement....
...And there were 3 women already dancing. They looked at us, and kept on dancing. The instructor did not even acknowledge us or say hi. We went in awkwardly and shyly, went to a corner to put our bags and water and just stood there for about 3 minutes before other people started coming in. So far we were the only people under the age of 45 there. More people come in and line up on the studio floor in front of the mirror so we do the same thing. By the time everyone arrived we were the only white girls in their 20s, and we stood out like sore thumbs. A lady came up to us and asked us who we were and if we registered and we said "No, we're here for the free Zumba we found on MeetUp" and she was confused for a second and went over to the instructor and was talking to her for a few minutes meanwhile were thinking we wont even get to Zumba at this point. She comes back and says we're good, we just have to give her our email and sign up for a Zumba package at the end of the class (I'm still getting email alerts as to when the next classes are, and theres no way to unsubscribe AHHH). Then the class finally starts...
The dancing is all a blurr at this point, but it was not good I can tell you that much. At point I remember looking at my friend and giving her the "what the hell is this?" look. Now my friend had a harder time with this class than I did, shes actually a better dancer than I am. It looked like she had no clue as to what she was doing and she looked so uncoordinated, like an old lady who only dances when shes drunk at weddings. It was funny for me but she was miserable. I am 95% sure our instructor was not a real certified Zumba instructor, because the dancing was not Zumba dances, there was no Salsa, no bollywood dancing, no two-step, no ball changes, I couldn't even tell you what we did. It was like nothing I've ever experienced or seen in all my Zumba classes. It was like she just downloaded some music and made up random dance routines in her basement. Since they weren't actual dance steps it was super hard to follow her, and the dances weren't very repetative so you couldn't learn it to follow along. It was basically a free-for-all, and the characters who were at the class definitely took advantage of that. There was one song called "Dessert" where the only man in the class obviously loved, he was singing along and made up his own dancing. It was quite the experience.
Once the hour of non-Zumba Zumba was over, we literally grabbed our stuff and ran out of the dance studio as fast as we could. There was a straggler in the parking lot as we were cannoning out of there who asked us if we were coming back, and since we are nice, polite young ladies, we said "Yeahhhh". The second we were in the car though we started laughing from shock and making profane exclamations like "WHAT___WAS THAT?" We drove to a bar after that to recover from the strange dancing experience. My friend told me she's never going to another dance class with me. Which means I will going to the bollywood dance class alone this week....
So friends, this is my first Mishap Chronicle. I hope enjoyed my experience more than I did. I also hope you never have a Zumba experience like we did. So adieu until next time!
Wednesday, January 6, 2016
Tuesday, January 5, 2016
Friendless: a MeetUp Mishaps Chronicle (Intro)
Hello beautiful world I'm back!
After a long hiatus from blogging I am coming back to the game and do I have a fun post for y'all!
In October I relocated from the middle of nowhere, upstate New York to the warm and very populated city of Raleigh, NC. I moved to join my best friend and to try my luck on my ever unfortunate job search. After spending several months substitute teaching, working in a restaurant, and nannying I packed up my little car and drove 700 miles to a brand new shiny city.
It's now the New Year and I hoped to have had a) a job, b) lots of friends, c) a very cool apartment, and d) a soccer team to play on, by now. However, so far my goals are only halfway reached: I have a very cool apartment, and play soccer every week. Which leaves me unemployed and friendless. So what better way to solve my friendless problem than to utilize the wonders of the app store on my smartphone. Thus I downloaded the app "MeetUp" to try and make some friends, do some fun stuff, and learn more about this new fun city! So I present to you the MeetUp Mishaps Chronicles because lets be real, this will not go smoothly *crying from laughing emoji*
So my dear readers here is what you can expect from this:
I will go to one or two MeetUps a week,
I will be open to suggestions of what kinds of MeetUps to go on and,
I'll keep it fun and entertaining for y'all (see I'm a Southern Belle now)
After a long hiatus from blogging I am coming back to the game and do I have a fun post for y'all!
In October I relocated from the middle of nowhere, upstate New York to the warm and very populated city of Raleigh, NC. I moved to join my best friend and to try my luck on my ever unfortunate job search. After spending several months substitute teaching, working in a restaurant, and nannying I packed up my little car and drove 700 miles to a brand new shiny city.
It's now the New Year and I hoped to have had a) a job, b) lots of friends, c) a very cool apartment, and d) a soccer team to play on, by now. However, so far my goals are only halfway reached: I have a very cool apartment, and play soccer every week. Which leaves me unemployed and friendless. So what better way to solve my friendless problem than to utilize the wonders of the app store on my smartphone. Thus I downloaded the app "MeetUp" to try and make some friends, do some fun stuff, and learn more about this new fun city! So I present to you the MeetUp Mishaps Chronicles because lets be real, this will not go smoothly *crying from laughing emoji*
So my dear readers here is what you can expect from this:
I will go to one or two MeetUps a week,
I will be open to suggestions of what kinds of MeetUps to go on and,
I'll keep it fun and entertaining for y'all (see I'm a Southern Belle now)
Monday, March 2, 2015
Ballys Nightmare
Hey everyone so for those of you who know me pretty well you knew I was spending way too much money the past year on a personal trainer through the gym Ballys Total Fitness. Although I have a few new workouts up my sleeve and more confidence that I am strong, I would consider the past year a complete waste of my money and my time.
I remember getting the day I got swindled and harassed into my membership like it was yesterday. I was walking in the mall to pass time between class and a late night soccer game when a guy in front of the gym approached me. Normally I would just nod and keep walking but I felt BAD for them, because NOBODY ever say "Yeah Ill come hear what you have to say," and like I said, I had some time to kill so I figured I would hear what they had to say to humor them and then just leave. Well the guy was very nice, gave me a free 2-week pass, and he showed me around the gym. I was not at all impressed at what I saw and was anxious to leave. So at the last leg of the tour he sat me a table and tried to get me to sign up for a membership. I vehemently said No for the first 20 minutes, I even tried to get up to leave and he blocked my exit. So I sat back down after half an hour of not being allowed to leave and was brought a membership packet to read which promised meal planning, personal training assessment every 3 months, and a personalized fitness plan. All of those were something I was interested in so I finally gave in. So the nice tour guide left and in came this DISGUSTING excuse of a man. He had a thick Boston accent, he was eating a sandwich and had mayo on his mustache, and he was fat. Like a gross fat.--side note: turns out he was the manager, yikes-- He was loud and scary and I was trying to negotiate memberships to get a cheap one and he was so creepy I just started nodding so I could leave ASAP. SO I ended up signing up for a year membership. Left and played my soccer game went to bed.
And immediately the next day I had buyers remorse. I was a first semester grad student with a below-minimum wage job, a gym membership was the last thing I needed. SO there was a clause in the contract and you can cancel within 3 day of signing, IF you do everything the contract says which is:
Send a certified cancellation letter, containing your contract, and your key card to a P.O. Box in Washington DC. Needless to say I didnt expect it to work. Especially after I had googled Ballys and saw some scary things about their business practices. So for about a month I didnt go to the gym at all, but one day I was at the mall with my friend and I stopped by at the desk just to see if I was indeed still a member. I told a white lie and said I lost my key card, not that I sent it in when I tried to cancel my membership. They started to look me up and were giving me a hard time already and my friend was giving it back to them, thank god she was there or I probably would have done something else stupid. So after some lip they gave me a new key card (which I found out 7 months later wasn't even registered to my account, I was literally punching in to nothing. great) and then I had to make an appointment with the personal trainer to be "evaluated" which, was part of the initial agreement I signed so I did, happily, because I wanted someone to motivate me to workout.
The year with my personal trainer came and went and I learned some good new workout ideas such as how to do deadlifts (which I have to admit are my favorite exercise now). My contract was winding down and I brought it up to my trainer that my membership would end before my contract with him would end and his solution was "just let it end and you can pay month to month until ours is up." Um, ok. Our contract was up only a month after my membership was so I started sending off my certified letters (again) that stated "my year-long gym membership is up and I do not wish to renew it. as well as the contract with my trainer." The instructions in my contract and online said to send it to some random PO box in DC and that I would be notified when my membership was canceled....guess what didn't happen? From reading comments on message boards and yelp about the way this company runs I put together that this was going to be harder than sending off two letters, this company wants to leak every penny out of you as possible.
I remember getting the day I got swindled and harassed into my membership like it was yesterday. I was walking in the mall to pass time between class and a late night soccer game when a guy in front of the gym approached me. Normally I would just nod and keep walking but I felt BAD for them, because NOBODY ever say "Yeah Ill come hear what you have to say," and like I said, I had some time to kill so I figured I would hear what they had to say to humor them and then just leave. Well the guy was very nice, gave me a free 2-week pass, and he showed me around the gym. I was not at all impressed at what I saw and was anxious to leave. So at the last leg of the tour he sat me a table and tried to get me to sign up for a membership. I vehemently said No for the first 20 minutes, I even tried to get up to leave and he blocked my exit. So I sat back down after half an hour of not being allowed to leave and was brought a membership packet to read which promised meal planning, personal training assessment every 3 months, and a personalized fitness plan. All of those were something I was interested in so I finally gave in. So the nice tour guide left and in came this DISGUSTING excuse of a man. He had a thick Boston accent, he was eating a sandwich and had mayo on his mustache, and he was fat. Like a gross fat.--side note: turns out he was the manager, yikes-- He was loud and scary and I was trying to negotiate memberships to get a cheap one and he was so creepy I just started nodding so I could leave ASAP. SO I ended up signing up for a year membership. Left and played my soccer game went to bed.
And immediately the next day I had buyers remorse. I was a first semester grad student with a below-minimum wage job, a gym membership was the last thing I needed. SO there was a clause in the contract and you can cancel within 3 day of signing, IF you do everything the contract says which is:
Send a certified cancellation letter, containing your contract, and your key card to a P.O. Box in Washington DC. Needless to say I didnt expect it to work. Especially after I had googled Ballys and saw some scary things about their business practices. So for about a month I didnt go to the gym at all, but one day I was at the mall with my friend and I stopped by at the desk just to see if I was indeed still a member. I told a white lie and said I lost my key card, not that I sent it in when I tried to cancel my membership. They started to look me up and were giving me a hard time already and my friend was giving it back to them, thank god she was there or I probably would have done something else stupid. So after some lip they gave me a new key card (which I found out 7 months later wasn't even registered to my account, I was literally punching in to nothing. great) and then I had to make an appointment with the personal trainer to be "evaluated" which, was part of the initial agreement I signed so I did, happily, because I wanted someone to motivate me to workout.
The year with my personal trainer came and went and I learned some good new workout ideas such as how to do deadlifts (which I have to admit are my favorite exercise now). My contract was winding down and I brought it up to my trainer that my membership would end before my contract with him would end and his solution was "just let it end and you can pay month to month until ours is up." Um, ok. Our contract was up only a month after my membership was so I started sending off my certified letters (again) that stated "my year-long gym membership is up and I do not wish to renew it. as well as the contract with my trainer." The instructions in my contract and online said to send it to some random PO box in DC and that I would be notified when my membership was canceled....guess what didn't happen? From reading comments on message boards and yelp about the way this company runs I put together that this was going to be harder than sending off two letters, this company wants to leak every penny out of you as possible.
The month that my contract with my trainer was over came and I was getting very anxious because I hadn't heard back from corporate. Then the month ended and I got charged again for a monthly fee and the training fees so this time I called 1-866-402-2559 (member support) and emailed the support team and got this answer "your Ballys is a franchised gym, contact them to cancel your account" aka some local idiot is running this joint and DC can't do anything for me until the idiot gives them the go ahead. Now I had to track down the idiot in charge of upstate NY gyms, it ended up being Syracuse. I called the Syracuse gym and when I told the boy, yes he sounded like he was 12, on the phone what was going on he told me that he would put me on the list for Bob the Accountant to call me back writhing 3 days. 3 days came and Bob never called me back, so I called them and found out Bob only works after 7pm and I'm on the top of his list still. Aka never happening.
Upset and with nowhere else to go I called my trainer and he told me HE NO LONGER WORKED AT MY GYM!!!! I burst into tears and he finally told me to call my gym and talk to "Justin" and he will handle it. It was 3 months after my gym membership was up and 2 after my training one. I called up "Justin" and I told him that my contract I was over, I did what it said: I sent my certified letters to DC, gave a copy to my trainer, even addressed one to my trainer about the training and that I've been trying to get this thing cancelled for 2 months with no luck. (I also stopped going to that gym when my contract was up to prove my point). Justin was the first helpful person in this whole mess. He looked up my account and said "oh yeah you're not active anymore", he removed me from the system and promised
I would be reimbursed for the $$$. I practically could've kissed him through the phone I was so happy! Then he said he would call me back in 2 days and check if I got my money back. Cool, sounds good. Then the next best thing happened: I got a cancellation confirmation email from headquarters the next day and I was on cloud 9. I thought my Ballys nightmare was finally over and I would be one who actually got out...
Justin didn't call me back,
which was ok at the time because it was all worth it just to be done with that mess. I also was never reimbursed. Maybe that should've been my red flag? Well it is now May, this all happened in Dec-Feb. Last night before I went to bed I checked my bank account to see if my paychecks went through and I saw 3 pending payments to Ballys for amounts that I have never paid them before. I was so sick I couldn't fall asleep and I woke up way too early for a Saturday because I'm stressed out about it. I'm calling my bank this morning when they open and going to the gym this afternoon looking for an explanation.
I feel helpless and taken advantage of, I was basically bullied into a membership and I don't even go there anymore and I'm still paying for it. Moral of the story: DONT GO TO BALLYS
Friday, January 16, 2015
OMG PANCAKES
I like to consider myself pretty creative and I also believe that necessity is the mother of invention. Today I woke up and had a hankering for pancakes. Not just run of the mill, use the pancake mix pancakes. I needed thick, fluffy, melt in your mouth pancakes.
So I have lately been interested, like every other 20-something girl it seems, in making basic recipes more healthy. One of the ways to do this are make some substitutions, my favorite example is plain greek yogurt instead of sour cream. Yesterday was also leg day and so today I'm nursing my pain with protein so my first ingredient of amazing pancakes was greek yogurt. I also decided to add a scoop of vanilla protein powder for an extra kick.
I next couldn't decide between what I wanted in the pancakes. I don't like plain pancakes, that's wrong. The competing flavor were between berries and chocolate, my two true loves. Instead of picking sides I just threw them all together and came up with a combination of blueberries, chocolate chips, and white chocolate chips. I went heavy on the berries and light on the chocolate and it was amazing.
These pancakes were the most amazing thing I have experienced in all of 2015. The consistency was just what I wanted, even a little gooey which was fine with me. I'm not even good at cooking pancakes, some of them came out a little burnt but that didn't even matter the flavor was just incredible.
Here's my recipe:
1 cup of pancake batter(box or your own recipe)
1 cup of greek yogurt-can be any flavor I used black cherry
1 scoop of vanilla protein powder
1 egg
2/3 cup of water
As many blueberries as you want
Handful of white chocolate chips
Smaller handful of chocolate chips
Cook and enjoy!
Saturday, January 10, 2015
January Blues
Unemployment during the month of January is possibly the worst month of the whole year to be unemployed. It has not been warmer than 25 degrees since the New Year. Our thermostat never goes above 64, and our fireplace only heats one room in the whole house. AKA IM FREEZING ALL DAY EVERY DAY
...I go through wool socks like they are underwear now, and fleece leggings and long johns are my new best friends. This is not a joke people, this is a war on cold. All I want to do is go for a run outside, but I don't think frost bite and hypothermia are worth it...
So on top of the bitter cold dragging me down, I am also having no luck with this job search thing. I'm starting to wonder if this is even the field I want to go in. Everyone keeps trying to give me job search advice and bestow their wisdom on me, but it's getting really annoying actually. So when people ask me how the job searching is going, I try to find a new topic to talk about ASAP.
Part of the problem is the jobs themselves often look for a few to several years of experience, so I dont even qualify for most of them. Secondly, its a competitive field and I'm low on the totem pole, I can't even tell if my resumes are being looked at. The third problem is, people keep telling me that its my time to do anything I want. Well what I want is to be on a boat and follow Orca Whales in their migration and swim with them and love them (basically real life Free Willy) but I have 0 experience in boating, whale research, marine biology sooo why would they hire me at all? Also-those jobs are rare and there is like no chance of me ever finding my way on a whale research boat, unless I start up my own crew. But I'm poor. And have student loans I have to pay off....
I also want to own a house on a beach and be in walking distance of the ocean...im too poor for that also. Or I want to explore space, but I'm not an astronaut.
So I've spent about 2 or 3 weeks on the couch watching Netflix where I finished rewatching the Office, saw all the animal documentaries. I have read 4 books, 2 were great, and 2 were kind of bad but I couldnt put them down. I've slept enough to catch up on all the sleep I missed during my Master's program. So basically now I am just really bored. This would all be easier if I had more friends who were home, I cant count my friends who are left on one hand, but they all have professions and have started their lives...P. Sawyer from OTH said it first: "people always leave" and its depressing being the one who is left behind. I just need a one-way ticket out of here, unfortunately the ticket needs to have benefits, a rate of pay I can live off of, and hopefully a fun place where I can actually start living. There isn't even a bar around here for me to go to and have a little fun, last night was a Friday...what was I doing? I finished a book and watched a movie with my parents. Who both fell asleep within the first twenty minutes...kewl. Anyways, I'm so bored, I might actually clean the house.
So yeah cold, bored, and lonely...Happy January, the most depressing month of the year. It can only get better from here right?
...I go through wool socks like they are underwear now, and fleece leggings and long johns are my new best friends. This is not a joke people, this is a war on cold. All I want to do is go for a run outside, but I don't think frost bite and hypothermia are worth it...
So on top of the bitter cold dragging me down, I am also having no luck with this job search thing. I'm starting to wonder if this is even the field I want to go in. Everyone keeps trying to give me job search advice and bestow their wisdom on me, but it's getting really annoying actually. So when people ask me how the job searching is going, I try to find a new topic to talk about ASAP.
Part of the problem is the jobs themselves often look for a few to several years of experience, so I dont even qualify for most of them. Secondly, its a competitive field and I'm low on the totem pole, I can't even tell if my resumes are being looked at. The third problem is, people keep telling me that its my time to do anything I want. Well what I want is to be on a boat and follow Orca Whales in their migration and swim with them and love them (basically real life Free Willy) but I have 0 experience in boating, whale research, marine biology sooo why would they hire me at all? Also-those jobs are rare and there is like no chance of me ever finding my way on a whale research boat, unless I start up my own crew. But I'm poor. And have student loans I have to pay off....
I also want to own a house on a beach and be in walking distance of the ocean...im too poor for that also. Or I want to explore space, but I'm not an astronaut.
So I've spent about 2 or 3 weeks on the couch watching Netflix where I finished rewatching the Office, saw all the animal documentaries. I have read 4 books, 2 were great, and 2 were kind of bad but I couldnt put them down. I've slept enough to catch up on all the sleep I missed during my Master's program. So basically now I am just really bored. This would all be easier if I had more friends who were home, I cant count my friends who are left on one hand, but they all have professions and have started their lives...P. Sawyer from OTH said it first: "people always leave" and its depressing being the one who is left behind. I just need a one-way ticket out of here, unfortunately the ticket needs to have benefits, a rate of pay I can live off of, and hopefully a fun place where I can actually start living. There isn't even a bar around here for me to go to and have a little fun, last night was a Friday...what was I doing? I finished a book and watched a movie with my parents. Who both fell asleep within the first twenty minutes...kewl. Anyways, I'm so bored, I might actually clean the house.
So yeah cold, bored, and lonely...Happy January, the most depressing month of the year. It can only get better from here right?
Friday, January 2, 2015
Adieu to 2014
Phewwww I am glad 2014 is over. What a crazy and stressful year...there were many ups and downs and lots of lessons learned for sure.
I brought in the New Year with some of my college friends, we call ourselves The Dumps, and we celebrated it in true Dump fashion: with lots of booze and a big party. I was drunk as a skunk on New Years Eve and dead as a door nail on New Years Day. That was a hangover I never want to live again. So my first lesson of 2015 will be to remember I'm not a sophomore in college that can handle a handle of vodka, I'm a classy lady with the tolerance of a toddler. Maybe this year I will learn some self control with alcohol...lolll we'll see. 
Ok so it's a new year...I don't want to be cliche with the whole new year new me thing but 2015 will bring a lot of changes and experiences my way so literally a new me. Now that I have finished my Masters the main task of 2015 will be putting my degree to use and finding a job I can enjoy. I'm searching all over country for a job in my field, except in New York because I am ready for a new state. I literally don't know where I'll be in 3 months, it's making my life a little hard to plan! But hey I'm ready for it!
In March I'll be going to Europe with my very best friend. I can't wait it's going to be a trip of a life time. One of the places we are going has a teach English as a Second Language program and I decided that if by the end of our trip I don't have a job and loved where we were I will pursue that path and live in Euorpe for a year. How cool would that be?!!!
I finally decided a resolution for myself for this year. One of my downfalls is impatience for others and I get pretty grumpy and snappy. I don't like being that way so I'm going to work on my new mantra: kill 'em with kindness. I'm going to be fucking bubbly and happy no matter who bugs me. Putting smiles on bitches faces from 2015.
Here are a few of mah goals for 2015:
1. Smile more
2. Stop beating myself up
3. Do new things and be more adventurous
4. Learn to love my life
Ok, the end! Best of luck on your own New Years resolutions and goals and may 2015 bring you lots of happiness and good fortune, cheers!
Friday, May 9, 2014
Being the "deaf" friend
As some of you know, I am a proud wearer of hearing aids. They are in both ears, and I have needed them since day 1.
The story of my parents figuring out I was hearing impaired goes like this: I was a wee lass, napping in the middle of the afternoon-pretty typs for a baby. My mom was vacuuming and don't ask me why, but thought it was a good idea to vacuum the room I was sound asleep in. By the time she realized what she was doing, she also realized the obnoxious noise did not wake sleeping little me. In fact I didn't even stir. So that raised the question. Lucky for us, one of our closest friends is an audiologist (hearing doctor). She did some exams and turns out, Hannah is slightly hearing impaired. I don't know the exact terms of my hearing loss, but its not enough to be qualified as deaf but I'm not part of the hearing world either...basically I can't hear below certain decibels, so I can't hear whispers, low tones and certain high pitches.
So what happened next? I dont know! Between birth and 3rd grade nothing was totally done to help my hearing, but in third grade I got my first pair of hearing aids. THEY WERE AWFUL! I hated them, and through my hate I did not wear them. The school nurse often scolded me for not wearing them, but I just couldn't. They were uncomfortable and the were easily visible. I mean they were hot pink and green, and like the pair your grandfather wears, its hard to miss them. On top of that, I already had pretty bad asthma, and I had a nebulizer that I made frequent trips to the nurses to use, so I didn't want to add hearing aids to my machine-for-life list. I was nervous that I would be made fun of for having them to wear them so I just did not hear very well for the first thirteen years of my life.
"What?" is a very common phrase in my vocabulary. I asked "What?" several times throughout the day, because I could not hear what anyone was saying. My schoolwork suffered because I couldn't hear what the teachers were saying, and I didn't care, I just wanted to fit in. So my solution was to get really good at reading lips, which I did, and in fact I can still read peoples lips across the room and know what they're saying (so watch out y'all). But the worst was at sleepovers; when the lights went out I could no longer see the lips, and that's when everyone started whispering the good juicy stuff, like what their older sisters were doing, what they would do if they were Rose on Titanic, and who the cutest boy in the 4th grade was. So sometimes I would strain to hear and try to add to the conversation but then I talked so loud I usually got us in trouble with parents for still being up. But sometimes, when I had no idea what was being said I would just pretend to sleep. That sucked, it really did, I'm still bitter about missing the good gossip.
Then there were the times were when people would be talking to me and I couldn't hear them so I would just nod and smile and then they would be waiting for an answer, that was always a "What?" moment. Or the reason I don't know a single correct song lyric from a song prior to 2003-deaf me could never figure out the songs, unless they were reaaaaally slow. My solution to this was humming the tune of the music and not even making words but noises that sounded like they could be words, I thought I was sooo clever. Haha that must've been really funny to see/hear. But I HATED getting called out on it, like I'm sorry I can't fucking hear what these people are singing at me, it's not my fault I'm deaf... I also, and to this day, did not like answering the phone. I do not like not being able to read the lips of who is speaking to me, it is just uncomfortable and I get anxious that I wont be able to hear everything and then I have a slight panic attack. Then there were the times I was scared of getting lost or left behind in stores because I wouldn't be able to hear my mom calling for me. But the worst was when I was scared of the house burning down while I was asleep. I didn't think that I would be able to hear the smoke alarm go off and would sleep through it, thus burning to death. I went to sleep scared of this every night until I was old enough to realize that there was NO way that I would sleep through that. So most of my irrational fears stem from my hearing loss, the only one that doesn't is my weird fear of my teeth falling out, I haven't figured that one out yet.
Fast forward through elementary school to the spring of 2003. I'm in 8th grade and my two best friends are AWL and MM. We were WEIRD to say the least. They were the first ones who got me realize the hearing aids were to help me, not to put a stain on rep and make me a loser...but that is probably because I already was one,hahaha. Anyways, my parents and the family friend-audiologist put their feet down and made me start wearing hearing aids. Lucky for me, the designs from 1997 have drastically changed and a new pair of hearing aids were constructed. The looked like the ones I have now, fit right in my ear, instead of wrapping all around and all over the place. These were more discrete and much more comfortable. So in the early weeks of getting my hearing aids we decided they needed a name. We were in an assembly and I was showing them to people, and when you close your hands around them they make a REALLLYYYY annoying noise (feedback) and thus they were dubbed "Squeaks". I'd like to send out a thank you to AWL and MM for helping me find the humor in these things, if I didn't learn to laugh at them they would probably be on my "my life sucks because" list instead of the "things that make me unique" list.
Squeaks in the early days went through some rough times, I did not really have a place to put them when you take them out, so they got lost, eaten, and forgotten about. (Side note-these get taken out for sleeping, and for going swimming, or showers, or if you are playing in the rain). Let's start with the funniest story:
It is now the Summer of '05, my neighbors have a pool that we spent every day at. Like I said, no container for when I take them out, so I would usually just put them on a table with my rings and towel. Well, did you know dogs like the smell of ear wax? I didn't! So we come in from swimming all day, and after my ears dried out I was looking for Squeaks to put them back on so I could hear again...welp, the right one was missing! We found it near the dog's food dish, allllll chewed up hahahaha it was hilarous. They felt bad, but I thought it was a riot.
In high school I was on the swim team, I did winter league for the school and a summer league. So everyday Squeaks got a break from work during practice and meets. Well this had 2 main issues, 1 it is hard as fuck to hear in those pools with 2+ swim teams of kids between the ages of 4 and 18, regardless of having hearing aids or not, those places are not built with acoustics in mind. 2, sometimes I forget to take them out before jumping in the pool :X WOOPS. So then I would feel like a fool, have to dry the aids out, and more than once this had permanent damage on Sqeaks and I have had a few replacement Squeaks, (RIP to all those Squeaks lost at sea). Even last summer, as age has made me the wiser, I still forgot to take my ears out when my JOB was to lifegaurd and that was part of my everyday routine...ugh, still paying for those replacements almost twelve months later. NEW EARS ARENT CHEAP! Speaking on last summer's job, my co-workers loved my deafness, haha I even had a rap name, cause you know during breaks lifegaurds rap...anyways my nickname was Deaf Bananas, so be on the lookout for some sweet beats..
College and Squeaks mixed nicely, even on my sloppiest nights I remembered to take those bad boys out when I went to bed.(PS by this time I finally got my shit together and got a little box to put Squeaks in when they were not in use) However, it was on nights of sleepovers that it was weird. If I didn't bring my box, Squeaks either stayed in, ugh and made the awful feedback noise in my ears all night, or I had to hide them. I hid them under pillows, in my shoes, sometimes in little spaces I found like on window sills or dressers. But I hid them because it was just easier to pretend I didn't have them, then have to explain to someone what they were since hearing aids aren't something every 18-21 year old would be accessorizing with...So, a few people got the explanation, if they were lucky enough to stick around a couple times but it was mostly my girlfriends who got the full disclosure of my deafness. I'm sure people knew about it, they aren't completely invisible, but I usually didn't bring them up in conversation. My roommates knew about them because they had seen me take them out before bed. But, with one group of girls, I finally started talking about them and addressed the elephant in the room. Don't get me wrong, I never felt like my hearing aids made me any less than who I am, or held me back, but I spent most of high school just going through the motions with them. I didn't really have much of an opinion about them, they were just part of my daily routine, like brushing my teeth. But when I never spoke about them and if there was an issue, it was awkward. Like taking them out for soccer games in the rain and then not hearing my teammates, orrr having to change a battery in the middle of class, or forgetting to put them on and not being able to hear anyone all day or the amount of times I asked "What?". So I didn't really acknowledge that I had them until my senior year of college, I wish I did talk about them earlier because it's easier now. The girls I was friends with my senior year called me their "Deaf Friend", which I gladly accepted because it's funny, and it's true, and it's me. When I got comfortable with it, I even took Squeaks out and let them try them, but since they are molded to my ears the aids didn't fit correctly but they still got the general idea (right guys?). It was all in good fun, it was a piece of acceptance I didn't know I needed. And now, I use "I can't hear you, I'm deaf, rememberrrr" with my family and I'm kicking myself because it took 21 years to use that as an excuse to get out of stuff.
OKAYYYY so now that I am done rambling, the short of the story is, I am hearing impaired, I don't really fit in with the deaf group (I don't even know sign language, prob should learn that), but I don't fit in with the hearing either. I am my own category and I am fine with it. It makes me me and you know what if something is loud and annoying, I get to literally turn my ears off. So I'd say I am pretty lucky. I like being the Deaf Friend, and if anyone is going to make fun of me for not being able to hear, I just won't listen to them. (Did you catch that, haha, I'm hilarious).
One more thing, it is totally fine to ask me if I have on hearing aids, in most cases I will tell you anyways because it will come up in one way or another (especially because I crack an "I'm deaf" joke almost every day). Please don't feel awkward around me because I have a device that helps me hear you, like I tell the kids at camp: they are like glasses but for my ears.
The story of my parents figuring out I was hearing impaired goes like this: I was a wee lass, napping in the middle of the afternoon-pretty typs for a baby. My mom was vacuuming and don't ask me why, but thought it was a good idea to vacuum the room I was sound asleep in. By the time she realized what she was doing, she also realized the obnoxious noise did not wake sleeping little me. In fact I didn't even stir. So that raised the question. Lucky for us, one of our closest friends is an audiologist (hearing doctor). She did some exams and turns out, Hannah is slightly hearing impaired. I don't know the exact terms of my hearing loss, but its not enough to be qualified as deaf but I'm not part of the hearing world either...basically I can't hear below certain decibels, so I can't hear whispers, low tones and certain high pitches.
So what happened next? I dont know! Between birth and 3rd grade nothing was totally done to help my hearing, but in third grade I got my first pair of hearing aids. THEY WERE AWFUL! I hated them, and through my hate I did not wear them. The school nurse often scolded me for not wearing them, but I just couldn't. They were uncomfortable and the were easily visible. I mean they were hot pink and green, and like the pair your grandfather wears, its hard to miss them. On top of that, I already had pretty bad asthma, and I had a nebulizer that I made frequent trips to the nurses to use, so I didn't want to add hearing aids to my machine-for-life list. I was nervous that I would be made fun of for having them to wear them so I just did not hear very well for the first thirteen years of my life.
Imagine these but instead of being nude colored mine were hot pink and green (these are my waterproof ones I just got, they also have Bluetooth to sync with my iPhone which is awwwwwsome, the music goes right to my ears!)
"What?" is a very common phrase in my vocabulary. I asked "What?" several times throughout the day, because I could not hear what anyone was saying. My schoolwork suffered because I couldn't hear what the teachers were saying, and I didn't care, I just wanted to fit in. So my solution was to get really good at reading lips, which I did, and in fact I can still read peoples lips across the room and know what they're saying (so watch out y'all). But the worst was at sleepovers; when the lights went out I could no longer see the lips, and that's when everyone started whispering the good juicy stuff, like what their older sisters were doing, what they would do if they were Rose on Titanic, and who the cutest boy in the 4th grade was. So sometimes I would strain to hear and try to add to the conversation but then I talked so loud I usually got us in trouble with parents for still being up. But sometimes, when I had no idea what was being said I would just pretend to sleep. That sucked, it really did, I'm still bitter about missing the good gossip.
Then there were the times were when people would be talking to me and I couldn't hear them so I would just nod and smile and then they would be waiting for an answer, that was always a "What?" moment. Or the reason I don't know a single correct song lyric from a song prior to 2003-deaf me could never figure out the songs, unless they were reaaaaally slow. My solution to this was humming the tune of the music and not even making words but noises that sounded like they could be words, I thought I was sooo clever. Haha that must've been really funny to see/hear. But I HATED getting called out on it, like I'm sorry I can't fucking hear what these people are singing at me, it's not my fault I'm deaf... I also, and to this day, did not like answering the phone. I do not like not being able to read the lips of who is speaking to me, it is just uncomfortable and I get anxious that I wont be able to hear everything and then I have a slight panic attack. Then there were the times I was scared of getting lost or left behind in stores because I wouldn't be able to hear my mom calling for me. But the worst was when I was scared of the house burning down while I was asleep. I didn't think that I would be able to hear the smoke alarm go off and would sleep through it, thus burning to death. I went to sleep scared of this every night until I was old enough to realize that there was NO way that I would sleep through that. So most of my irrational fears stem from my hearing loss, the only one that doesn't is my weird fear of my teeth falling out, I haven't figured that one out yet.
Fast forward through elementary school to the spring of 2003. I'm in 8th grade and my two best friends are AWL and MM. We were WEIRD to say the least. They were the first ones who got me realize the hearing aids were to help me, not to put a stain on rep and make me a loser...but that is probably because I already was one,hahaha. Anyways, my parents and the family friend-audiologist put their feet down and made me start wearing hearing aids. Lucky for me, the designs from 1997 have drastically changed and a new pair of hearing aids were constructed. The looked like the ones I have now, fit right in my ear, instead of wrapping all around and all over the place. These were more discrete and much more comfortable. So in the early weeks of getting my hearing aids we decided they needed a name. We were in an assembly and I was showing them to people, and when you close your hands around them they make a REALLLYYYY annoying noise (feedback) and thus they were dubbed "Squeaks". I'd like to send out a thank you to AWL and MM for helping me find the humor in these things, if I didn't learn to laugh at them they would probably be on my "my life sucks because" list instead of the "things that make me unique" list.
(Squeaks today)
Squeaks in the early days went through some rough times, I did not really have a place to put them when you take them out, so they got lost, eaten, and forgotten about. (Side note-these get taken out for sleeping, and for going swimming, or showers, or if you are playing in the rain). Let's start with the funniest story:
It is now the Summer of '05, my neighbors have a pool that we spent every day at. Like I said, no container for when I take them out, so I would usually just put them on a table with my rings and towel. Well, did you know dogs like the smell of ear wax? I didn't! So we come in from swimming all day, and after my ears dried out I was looking for Squeaks to put them back on so I could hear again...welp, the right one was missing! We found it near the dog's food dish, allllll chewed up hahahaha it was hilarous. They felt bad, but I thought it was a riot.
In high school I was on the swim team, I did winter league for the school and a summer league. So everyday Squeaks got a break from work during practice and meets. Well this had 2 main issues, 1 it is hard as fuck to hear in those pools with 2+ swim teams of kids between the ages of 4 and 18, regardless of having hearing aids or not, those places are not built with acoustics in mind. 2, sometimes I forget to take them out before jumping in the pool :X WOOPS. So then I would feel like a fool, have to dry the aids out, and more than once this had permanent damage on Sqeaks and I have had a few replacement Squeaks, (RIP to all those Squeaks lost at sea). Even last summer, as age has made me the wiser, I still forgot to take my ears out when my JOB was to lifegaurd and that was part of my everyday routine...ugh, still paying for those replacements almost twelve months later. NEW EARS ARENT CHEAP! Speaking on last summer's job, my co-workers loved my deafness, haha I even had a rap name, cause you know during breaks lifegaurds rap...anyways my nickname was Deaf Bananas, so be on the lookout for some sweet beats..
College and Squeaks mixed nicely, even on my sloppiest nights I remembered to take those bad boys out when I went to bed.(PS by this time I finally got my shit together and got a little box to put Squeaks in when they were not in use) However, it was on nights of sleepovers that it was weird. If I didn't bring my box, Squeaks either stayed in, ugh and made the awful feedback noise in my ears all night, or I had to hide them. I hid them under pillows, in my shoes, sometimes in little spaces I found like on window sills or dressers. But I hid them because it was just easier to pretend I didn't have them, then have to explain to someone what they were since hearing aids aren't something every 18-21 year old would be accessorizing with...So, a few people got the explanation, if they were lucky enough to stick around a couple times but it was mostly my girlfriends who got the full disclosure of my deafness. I'm sure people knew about it, they aren't completely invisible, but I usually didn't bring them up in conversation. My roommates knew about them because they had seen me take them out before bed. But, with one group of girls, I finally started talking about them and addressed the elephant in the room. Don't get me wrong, I never felt like my hearing aids made me any less than who I am, or held me back, but I spent most of high school just going through the motions with them. I didn't really have much of an opinion about them, they were just part of my daily routine, like brushing my teeth. But when I never spoke about them and if there was an issue, it was awkward. Like taking them out for soccer games in the rain and then not hearing my teammates, orrr having to change a battery in the middle of class, or forgetting to put them on and not being able to hear anyone all day or the amount of times I asked "What?". So I didn't really acknowledge that I had them until my senior year of college, I wish I did talk about them earlier because it's easier now. The girls I was friends with my senior year called me their "Deaf Friend", which I gladly accepted because it's funny, and it's true, and it's me. When I got comfortable with it, I even took Squeaks out and let them try them, but since they are molded to my ears the aids didn't fit correctly but they still got the general idea (right guys?). It was all in good fun, it was a piece of acceptance I didn't know I needed. And now, I use "I can't hear you, I'm deaf, rememberrrr" with my family and I'm kicking myself because it took 21 years to use that as an excuse to get out of stuff.
OKAYYYY so now that I am done rambling, the short of the story is, I am hearing impaired, I don't really fit in with the deaf group (I don't even know sign language, prob should learn that), but I don't fit in with the hearing either. I am my own category and I am fine with it. It makes me me and you know what if something is loud and annoying, I get to literally turn my ears off. So I'd say I am pretty lucky. I like being the Deaf Friend, and if anyone is going to make fun of me for not being able to hear, I just won't listen to them. (Did you catch that, haha, I'm hilarious).
Living life, one decibel at a time
One more thing, it is totally fine to ask me if I have on hearing aids, in most cases I will tell you anyways because it will come up in one way or another (especially because I crack an "I'm deaf" joke almost every day). Please don't feel awkward around me because I have a device that helps me hear you, like I tell the kids at camp: they are like glasses but for my ears.
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