Blogger's Choice Awards

I have been given a couple of awards and I am now passing them out..,


This award was given to me about two months ago. (Sorry, Kacie.) I didn't mean to let it take so long to mention this. With all the insurance denials, appeals, and approvals, I had a lot on my mind.

There are no rules with this award (my favorite kind). So everyone who reads this post and/or is on my blog roll, is welcome to copy this award and add it to their sidebar if they wish. :) Please, don't hesitate to take it.

Thank you, Kacie. Love you, too.




The second award is called:


Breazy gave me this award.

Here is what she says about me:

This beautiful mother of two has opened my eyes to a genetic disorder that I didn't even know existed. Shari has Usher Syndrome Type II. Her posts are centered around how she deals with life while dealing with hearing loss and loss of sight. I admire Shari for speaking out and teaching others about her disorder, also for sharing her day to day life. Thank you Shari, you have taught me so much about appreciating the "little things" in life.

Aww, shucks, I'm blushing here. But honestly, this is what I meant to do with this blog. Just to share what I can and can't do and how I just "do." I adjust (sometimes) and move on. That's all you can do. I pray every day for a cure and God's guidance. This is a very rare dual sensory disorder and a lot of people have no idea it exists. There are many misconceptions about hearing loss and vision loss. Like for instance, not all 'blind' people who use canes are totally blind. They may have some vision, so don't judge a cane user if you see one at the store reading a magazine at the check-out line or not all blind people have good hearing. I am glad that I am educating my readers. I always worry that some people may see it as a "pity blog" when it's more about how I feel and I am sure many may go through the same grieving process (denial, anger, depression, etc.) if they faced a certain condition. I have up and down days just like anyone else. Hugs to all.

Breazy, I do enjoy reading about about your family on your blog, too. I love "watching" your kids grow up. It is a breath of fresh air. :)

Here are the rules:

Put the logo on your blog.
Put a link to who awarded it to you on your blog also.
You need to nominate 7 other bloggers for the award and put links to them also on your blog.
Finally, leave a comment for those you've nominated- so they know they've received a special award.

This is always the hard part. I wish everyone could get this award. It's really a fun way to show how you appreciate their "blogmanship" and posts they share on their blogs.

Drum roll please...(or hands waving in the air and feet stomping for attention-grabbing vibrations)...my nominees are, in no particular order:

1. Wendi: She's a beautiful mother (of two teenagers) who who woke up one day in April and realized she suddenly lost the remaining hearing in her second ear. As she struggled to adjust to life with silence (and a few tinnitus jingles along the way), she, too, opted to get cochlear implants. And she was BRAVE!! She got BOTH ears implanted on the same day....the day before my surgery. Kudos to Wendi. I cannot imagine total silence unless I turned of my hearing aid in my better ear. She is also a terrific writer. She's very detailed and expressive. I look forward to sharing our experiences as we adjust to hearing with CIs.

2. Beth: She is a beautiful mother of three grown boys. She is also an excellent writer. In fact, she has some of her work published. (I'm impressed.) She loves to read books and posts reviews of books that leave me hanging so I have to bookmark the books so I can read them at a later time. (Sigh, so many books, so little time.) She also has a wonderful sense of humor and it shows in her posts. I never know what to expect when I visit her blog: A review, a humorous incident, or something that will make you jump to conclusions only to see that it is "innocent."

3. Kacie: She is a beautiful mother of three and we share something in common; We both have Usher syndrome Type 2. She started blogging to share her journey with her new guide dog back in January. I was so excited for her. Recently, she has had some issues with her guide dog and had no choice but to retire her dog due to her nervousness in stormy weather and any thundrous noise, such as a motorcycle firing up. She can't guide Kacie in those conditions and it is not safe for either of them when she freaks out like that. A guide dog needs to focus on its job and can't be distracted. My heart goes out to her. I hope that she can be matched with a new guide dog. That means retraining, which involves time away from her family and believe me, that is a hard thing to do when you have little kids at home. Even when a dog is trained to guide a blind/legally blind person, it's not always foolproof. Some dogs become aggressive or timid or something else may come up, but they are rare incidences.

4. Laurie: She is a beautiful mother of four. She has bilateral implants (done one at a time) and is thankful everyday that she is able to hear again with the gift of sound from cochlear implants. I love her quote, "As long as I live, I'll hear waterfalls, birds, and winds sing." by John Muir. I love that. She writes about hearing issues and her family. You can feel the love she has as you read about her family, beliefs, hearing issues, and her dogs. She's a great advocate for people with hearing loss. Kudos. We need more people like her. :)

5. Kila: She is a beautiful mother of three boys. That's quite a handful. She's one of those very organized people that keep up with photo albums and scrapbooks. (Don't you envy her? Winks.) She started out writing journals about her kids and wanted family members to keep up with what was going on by blogging online. She is a mother through and through. She worries about sunburn and any emergencies that may come up. The words she uses to type about her kids just emit love. You just KNOW she loves her kids, even when they are at their worst. She is a fellow Wisconsinite and roots for the Packers, too. Go, Pack, Go!!

6. Abbie: She is a beautiful young woman who, like Wendi, suddenly lost the hearing in her better ear. She woke up from a medical procedure (not hearing-related) to a world of silence. She got implanted in one ear and is having a lot of success with it. She is now persuing the option to implant her other ear. She is a wonderful writer and you never know what to expect. She always keeps me amused. A recent example: She was on a subway and asked a man a question. He had the bluest eyes she's sever seen. She fell instantly in love with him. She was trying to come up with something witty to say, but then he got off the train at the next stop. She watched her future husband leave and fall into the arms of his lover...a man. She exclaims to herself,"That figures!! He's gay!!" She is refreshingly original and unpredictable (i.e., "...looking at me like I have my magnet on too tight" or "...take one look at me in my birthday suit is enough to scare a buzzard off a, ahem, sh*t wagon."). I always look forward to reading her posts from beginning to end.

7. And last, but not least, Becky: She is also a beautiful mother of two boys. She shares tidbits about her kids' antics and I do love the way she writes about how her three-year-old talks, in toddlerese. From "It'th icky" to "I cwy cwocodoile teows." For me, as a person with hearing loss, I struggled big time when my kids were learning to talk. I had to do a lot of pointing and guessing. I managed to teach them the sign for "more," "drink," and "please" when they were a year old. That way I knew if they wanted "more" food or something. Perhaps she is the modern day Erma Bombeck? She's a wonderful writer and loves to "invent" her own words like I do. One example is: Daycation. Just going off, driving a few hours to a place to explore and relax without spending a fortune.

There you have it. The seven nominees. May they enjoy putting this (DUST-FREE!!) award on their e-mantle (sidebar). Let's give them a round of applause (or hands waving in the air), please. As far as I am concerned, everyone deserved this award. We are all unique writers in our own ways.

OXOX

Starting the New Year with a ROAR!!

I wanted to start the new year with a bang, or rather, a ROAR!!

A few days ago, Laura awarded me with the Roar with Powerful Words award. This award is passed to bloggers who make an impact with powerful words. A big impact.

Thank you, Laura. I started this blog as my input, my voice, to educate the world about a rare recessive disorder that affects both hearing and sight. Talk about a double whammy!! It's mind-blowing and devasting. Being born hard-of-hearing, it was such a shock to find out that there is a disease that actually takes away your sight, too. All you can do is move on, find ways to deal with it, and keep adjusting. Always. Every once in a while, the disease eats away more of your vision and you have to adjust. Walk slower. Get brighter lighting. Keep your gaze fixed on an object that was dropped. If you don't, you "lose" sight of it and have to back away to see it again. Life is all about adjustments to changes.

I am a shy person by nature and I thought that blogging would be my way of advocating about Usher syndrome. Who knows what the future would bring? Maybe I'll do more to advocate for Usher syndrome.

I will quote the rule of bestowing the award to other bloggers:

"As part of this honor, I’m to name three things that I believe most important to powerful writing and then pass on the award to five blogs I believe deserve recognition."

Advocacy-I like reading blogs that have a voice, a passion for what means so much to them. It could be something simple, but if it touches my heart, it qualifies as powerful writing. I learned so much from other blogs, other lives that are affected by something they have no control over, yet they go day to day, plugging through. It helps me stay grounded. Sometimes I admit I wallow in my own pity party, but so many people have their own problems. We are all fighting our own fight, whether it's an on-going struggle or just sharing struggles/experiences that have been overcome.

Integrity-I like simple honesty in a blog. The writer has left an imprint of his/her soul in the blog. It's credible and easy to empathize.

Thought-provoking-Blogs that make me think and leave such an impact on me.

I've chosen five blogs that I think deserve the Roar, whether the blog is a quiet purr or a rumbliing roar.

Drum roll, please....

1. Jennifer (A Work in Progress) is an amazing woman. She is deaf and has five children. She attends church regularly and is always on the go. Sometimes I just get exhausted reading about all the things she's been doing. She's chronicled her cochlear implant journey. She kept going when the first one didn't work as well as she had hoped, but she still kept at it, making sense of the new sounds. Then she had the opportunity for a second implant. Her world has opened up again. With this amazing technology, she is able to hear again. It's so inspiring. She is an advocate for cochlear implants.

2. Laurie (Laurie's Dance with Sound) is another person I admire. She also has bilateral cochlear implants. Her world opened up for her as well. She is also a strong advocate for cochlear implants. It's made me think that maybe I should look into the cochlear implant option and see if I could at least regain my hearing through technology. (Of course, it would be great if they could so something like that for our eyes as well...)

3. Eileen (A Life of Triggers) talks about her job as a social worker in a school. I never realized how many children are abused. She's a very strong person who went through a lot growing up and took in her sister's child like her own. Her daughter is bipolar and she talks about her struggles with that, too. I think she's amazing and deserves this award. She's an awesome person.

4. Michelle (Full Soul Ahead) is a mother with a child on the autism spectrum. She is always finding ways to help her daughter cope with things we take for granted. Something small, like a substitute teacher for a day or a sudden noise or movement, would affect her daughter. It's wonderful to see how much she's grown and adjusted. I really didn't know a lot about children on the spectrum. I have learned so much. Thank you, Michelle.

5. A newcomer to the blogosphere...Kacie (See No Evil, Hear No Evil) just made her debut. Why have I chosen her? After all, she just started blogging. Because she was one of the first people I started talking to about coping with Usher syndrome. She helped me so much. I was so depressed about "hanging up the car keys" and giving up more of my independence. I also KNOW that she will have her strength and "roar" shine through right from the start.

Of course, I had a brother and sister with Usher syndrome, but it was sooo wonderful to talk to others about Usher syndrome. She's a strong advocate for Deafblindness. She's an active member of a deafblind association in her state. She inspires me. If you think I am "brave", you have to meet her. I feel like such a wimp next to her. She uses the cane and will now chronicle about her journey with a guide dog. Yes, she's going to journal about her experience-learning to be part of a team, training with a guide dog. Please go over there and welcome her to the blogosphere. She's a wonderful friend. Someday I would love to meet her in person.

So there you have it. Please go and visit them and see why I think they deserve this award.

Happy New Year. God bless.

XOXO

Colors of Friendship

I received The Colors of Friendship award from Amrita. She says this of her nominees:


"They color my life with the beautiful hues of friendship. Although we come from different backgrounds and cultures we share the same spirit of friendship."


I couldn't have said it better. We are a spectrum of color, diverse in our customs and upbringings, but we are human with the same feelings. We are all united in some way and not so different if you think about how we love our families...we feel the same things. The Internet has brought people closer together somehow...the world doesn't seem so huge and untouchable.


Thank you so much, Amrita. :)


There aren't any rules as to how many people can be nominated for this award that I can see. I would like to pass on this award to:

Hillgrandmom of Life on a Hill

Mrs Grumpy of I Promise Not to Laugh During the Seance'

Beth of BooksETC

Kila of Mom to 3 Cubs

G of Simply Said

Sara of Reasons to be Cheerful

Jennifer of A Work in Process

Breazy of A Breazy Life

Karma of JewBu Quest

I am Hip

Karma of JewBu Quest has bestowed me with the Rockin' Girl Blogger award. I rock. In other words, I am hip and awesome. ;)



Thank you, Karma. I am honored and humbly accept the award.

There are so many great bloggers out there that deserve this award. (Sorry, guys, it's gender specific.) I can only give out five. (Who makes these rules anyway?) All my readers rock.

I narrowed down the list in no particular order to (and it was not easy, because I would want everyone who doesn't have one to get one):

MrsGrumpy-I Promise Not to Laugh During the Séance

Jillie-NURSERATCHED

Beth-Blind as a Bat

Amalia-Caring for Bear-

Word Imp-Word Imperfect

I LOVE playing Word Imp's "fictionary" game. You get creative and make up a definition as wacky as you want. It's fun and you get to expand your vocabulary. She starts it with a word and gives her own "definition" of it. Then commenters give their definitions. The next day she edits the post to include the real definition. She also narrows it down to the top three and has everyone vote for their favorite definition. I used to play it all the time, but my creative juices get low some days. Other days I just get "busy", but I still LOVE her blog.

Keep on rockin'!! :)