It is Sunday, July 12 and there are only 166 days until Christmas, and no the lovely Elaine will not bend on the Christmas music issue.  Today we remember the birthdays of Josiah Wedgewood, George Eastman and Andrew Wyeth.  On this day in 1543 King Henry VIII wed Catherine Parr his sixth and last wife, in 1862 Congress authorized the Medal of Honor and in 1962 the Rolling Stones had their first performance; it was at the Marquee Club in London.  In Northern Ireland it is Orangeman’s Day, in Rhodesia it is Thodes Day and in the Central African Republic it is Independence Day.

My question for today is directed to those of you who either live alone or spend a lot of time by yourself.  Do you find that you spend a good deal of the day talking to yourself?  Or, at least talking out loud as you go through the day?  I do.  Before the lovely Elaine retired, I used to speak out loud to myself all day.  Generally, I did it as a way of reminding myself of what had to be done and what had already been accomplished.  It was a way of having a checklist without having a piece of paper that I would usually lose anyway.

The problem now is that I spent a couple years doing that while the lovely Elaine was at work.  Now she is home and I still have the habit.  She complains that she never knows if I am talking to her or myself.  I find it amusing that she has to spend time figuring out if she is supposed to respond or not.  She does not.  The other evening, I got up from the love seat in the living room and began talking as I went into the kitchen.  When I came back, she complained that she did not understand anything that I had said.  I said that she didn’t have to because I was not talking to her.  I got the look.  I think she also said something else unkind, but I am not sure if she was talking to me.

Another issue that I am experiencing, along with many of our friends, is my hearing is going.  I can attribute some of it to having spent over three years as a jet engine mechanic in the US Air Force.  Some can be blamed on getting older and some because I do not always pay attention to conversations.  To be honest, if a discussion topic does not really interest me, I feign attention, nod my head and smile when the others do, chuckle when they do, etc.  This is a practice that works well when I am at a party or some other large gathering. 

Because of music, other people talking and just general ambient noise I cannot always hear a complete conversation.  In fact, I once spent the better part of an evening at a function where I did not hear most of what this one woman was saying.  She held court at the table for most of the evening and I simply responded based on how the others at the table responded.  I wondered later how many of them heard what she was saying.  Wouldn’t it be funny if no one actually heard her and we all just responded to her cues? 

We recently went to dinner with friends of ours.  They are a few years older than we are and they have the same auditory issues that we have.  The restaurant we went to was not real loud, but it was busy and there was the usual clatter and clamor.  We spent the better part of the evening repeating ourselves because not all of us were able to hear what was being said.  We kept having to lean in or across the table so that our conversation could be heard.  I am relatively confident that not one of us heard everything that was said.

Even more entertaining was an evening we spent with a small group of friends.  We were out on the deck at our friend John’s house and we were having a pleasant evening.  But let me set the scene for you.  Present were John and his wife, the lovely Elaine and I, John’s friend Charlie and two other friends of John’s who have strong Russian accents.  The two with the accents were the youngest, next were Elaine and I and then the other three were the elders.  One of the interesting parts of the evening was the fact that there could be several conversations going on at one time.  Not so much because we were chatting in small groups, but more because we did not know that the others were talking.  What most of us needed were those horns that old people were always shown holding up to their ears so they could hear.  There was a lot of “What did he say?” followed by the response “I have no idea.”  You see, we talk out loud to ourselves because that is the only way we can hear what we say.

The lovely Elaine and I are still getting ready for the big move.  We have used enough bubble wrap to cover the house we are buying and the one we are selling.  The good side of that is that once we unwrap everything, my grandsons will be kept busy for days popping it all.  That should make us popular with our new neighbors!  We have spent a considerable amount of time trying to decide on paint colors.  What makes some of this difficult is that two of the rooms need to match our existing furniture.  In an effort to get that choice right, we have been sitting in a room by a window looking at color chips next to pillows from the couches we are trying to match.  What fun!  I will let you all know how it all comes out.

This week our fact tells us that men who are castrated are less likely to go bald.  History tells us that they will have much higher voices, too … but I digress.  Frankly, I think that is a rather extreme measure.  I would rather give the Rogaine route a try first.  Realistically, being bald would be a lot less extreme.