The opposite of outrage isn’t inrage.

~ Lkvy ~ Leave a comment

Hi!

I’m a former hearing person. I was born in Canada, and grew up in a middle-class hearing family. I’m also white, straight, and cis. This means my life began with pretty much just one disadvantage: being female. Oh, and being an infant, but I outgrew that horrid phase.

Then I got deathly ill.

Do you know what happens when a cute little blonde three-year-old gets sick in Canada? Everything that could possibly be done to save my life, was done… and at no expense to my family. In the process of saving my life, though, the drugs that were administered destroyed my hearing.

Continue reading “The opposite of outrage isn’t inrage.” →

Final travelogue.

~ Lkvy ~ Leave a comment

I have just concluded my first week back at work post-vacation, but I’m still not finished talking about my vacation.

On Thursday the 19th, I took my gym-loving sister, Jenn, to the gym. Not the kind she usually goes to, but the kind I usually go to. My preferred type of gym has almost entirely padded flooring, and a lot of chalk dust. Jenn is a Crossfitter and, yes, she talks about it a lot but come to think of it, climbers also talk about climbing excessively.

Her being a crossfitter has the family commenting on her burly physique a lot. Dad in particular is strangely interested in the physique of others. He mentioned no less than four times that my brother had gotten really fat, and when I told him that I had visited two of my childhood friends, he asked whether either of them had gotten fat. It did make me wonder how Dad describes my  physique.

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This Island Earth.

~ Lkvy ~ Leave a comment

Ever since last winter, I’ve been warming up to the idea of moving somewhere warmer. As a disabled person over the age of 30, my options are pretty much limited to Canada, which isn’t very warm.

My issue with Montreal isn’t that French is the primary language. I can read French well enough to get by; I just can’t seem to dress warm enough to get through another winter.

My options?

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Victorian times.

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The plan was to take the bus from Jenine’s Burnaby digs to Tsawwassen where I’d catch a ferry to the island. Google gave me a travel time of an hour and half just to get from Burnaby to the ferry terminal. The ferry ride itself is about an hour and forty-five minutes long, but the journey is more like two hours if you take into account how long the loading and unloading takes. Finally, Victoria is another 30-minute drive from the Swartz Bay terminal.

This makes the grand total travel time of… FIVE HOURS.

Conveniently, while Jenine and I were discussing travelling, I mentioned that I had taken the sea plane once and loved it. In the process of explaining the experience, I ended up convincing myself to just transport myself to the island via Harbour Air. After all, I had barely 11 days to cram with enjoyable companions and adventures.

Time is money!

$207 and less than 45 minutes after leaving Burnaby, I was in Tammy’s arms.

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Relapsed friendship.

~ Lkvy ~ Leave a comment

I was about four years old when I met one of my very first Deaf friend, Jenine. We met at a camp for deaf children and their families. Our hearing parents became acquaintanced with one another at this camp which meant Jenine and I were able to pursue a friendship before school began.

Jenine was a troublemaker: whenever Mom would come to pick me up from her house, she’d hide my shoes so that I could stick around for longer! What a fucking clever kid!

Being a year older, she started high school before I did, and found her “crowd”. We still spent some time together, talking about our love for horses, visiting the mall to look at posters, and shoplift whatever we could fit down our sweatshirt sleeves. Jenine became more rebellious as the years went on whereas I just became paranoid about stuff like going to jail for shoplifting lip balm. She experimented with drugs, and the most extreme thing I had ever done was finish a 32oz cup of Slurpee. I was a jittery teenager for so many different reasons.

Shortly after Jenine graduated high school she had a child, then I literally put some distance between us when I moved to Calgary.

When we tried reconnecting in 2008, we discovered that we were still too different.

Would 10 years change anything? This is what I set out to find out when I met up with her in Burnaby on Thursday the 12th.

Continue reading “Relapsed friendship.” →