Me and Deafinitely Girly

I’ve been so busy recently that I haven’t had time to write my daily updates – I miss it because it’s strangely therapeutic. I also love it when people leave comments on my blog, letting me know they’ve been in similar situations to the ones I’ve written about.

One of my recent favourites has been from Dee, on my Quackers post here. She let me know that she once vacuumed the driver footwell of her car with her head pressing against the car horn without realising and caused the whole neighbourhood to come dashing out and see what the ruckus was…

This made me chuckle lots, and I also realised that walking down the street with a clucking handbag is not the end of the world. Neither is being too busy to blog every now and again, but I just worry, that if I don’t, I will miss this wonderful interaction from people across the world.

It is amazing how through Deafinitely Girly, I’ve encountered so many new people. From Speak Up Librarian, who I actually met when she was in London on holiday to a guy who emailed me this week to ask if he could include my blog in his college essay. It always makes me realise, when I feel isolated or alone because I miss out on general group chitchat or long gossipy phone calls, that I’m really not. There is this whole world out there that I can communicate with daily through Deafinitely Girly, email and text.

I love being Deafinitely Girly because she’s helped me learn to love me – the real me. The me, who before I started to blog, would have a 6-monthly wobble about being deaf, accompanied by lots of feeling sorry for myself and sentences beginning with ‘If I wasn’t deaf…’

She was the girl that often used to say either out loud or in her mind, ‘I can’t do that because I’m deaf’ and quite often that was just an excuse really. And she was the girl that wasn’t quite sure of her worth as a person in relation to her disability.

When I look back at how I was pre-Deafinitely Girly, I barely recognise myself. I was a different person.

I have a lot to thank this pink-mad, girly, ditzy, and quite frankly a little bit bonkers alter ego for really, because she brought me back to life.

Meeting Speak Up Librarian!!!!!

After a week off, I'm hoping it won't be too difficult to kickstart my brain into action today. It was smart enough to hit snooze on my alarm clock a bunch of times this morning so hopefully, it'll be smart enough to do what it's paid to do.

Anyway, my lovely week with The Rents went very well – from the ballet at Covent Garden to walks in the sunshine –I think we all had a good time. And, after they left to go home yesterday, I went into town to meet an American in London – a fellow deaf blogger called Speak Up Librarian.

We met last year through our blogs and when she mentioned she was coming on holiday to London with her son, The Chatterbox, I jumped at the chance to meet her.

And it was lovely. We had dinner, chatted about our writing, and she told me about some of the other deaf bloggers she had met up with since she arrived.

I was sad to say goodbye too, especially as she lives so far away, but the great thing is that by reading each other's blogs, we'll know what the other one is up to until the next time we're in the same city.

Anyway, this blog is up somewhat later than usual today because I went on a lunchtime run with my colleague The Triathlete at lunchtime. Honestly, I was dreading it, as my running has somewhat fallen by the wayside recently. But honestly – I loved it!

Four miles later and I felt invigorated and swept out my Monday Grump. Hurray!

We’re going to make a regular thing of it, along with The Lawyer and have vowed to spur each other on.

It’s nice to have my interest in running renewed – just in time for summer to try and shift some of my double-figure figure back into single figures again!

Bring it on!