A little brother, a boyfriend, firefighters and a gumbo recipe

(no it’s not the start of a bad joke)

Today I have several things to share with you!

I’ve been dating someone for a few weeks. His name is Theoden, he’s a firefighter, a rock enthusiast (yes, I’m crazy about a drummer, what a cliche!) and draws really well (he made me want to get back into it, maybe I’ll post something on which I am working on at the moment but it takes time).
We met when they needed an interpreter after finding a lost child who happened to be deaf. He was the only one in the barracks who didn’t try to flirt with me by flexing his muscles.
It was his humor that made me crack at first, but what made me want to go further is that he is deeply kind and very cultured.

His friends at the brigade learned that I love to cook and in a joking tone they challenged me to cook for them, challenge accepted!

To help me in my task I have my little brother Søren come for the weekend. I invited him for this “event” because I know that fire trucks fascinate all boys.

The first part of the challenge already comes from the choice of the recipe. Several times when I went to see Theo there (yes, I play taxi drivers, he doesn’t have his car license. He drives a motorcycle but this one is in the garage), I understood that in his team, the sun is starting to fail for some.
They are big guys who eat well, so we needed something that holds well.
I have a relatively tight budget given their number but I am used to cooking for not very expensive.

For these reasons, I decided to go with an exotic dish reminiscent of travel and the sun, a typical dish from New Orleans (I have wanted to cook Cajun since my grandmother made me reread the Mayfair saga Witches for our play. ^^’), the Gumbo. I chose a Chicken Gumbo because I was told to avoid seafood.

Gumbo recipe:

You need for 4 people:

50g butter (or oil)
50g flour
2 smoked sausages (330 g)
4 chicken breasts (600g)
1 can of crushed tomatoes (optional)
2 carrots (optional)
1 green pepper
1 sprig of celery
1 large white onion
1 garlic clove
2 tbsp Cajun spice blend (or 1 tbsp paprika + 1 tsp cayenne pepper powder + 1 tsp garlic powder + 1 pinch pepper)
1 pinch of salt
1 liter of water
250g long grain white rice

Achievement:

Prepare a brown roux: In Louisiana they do it with oil instead. I didn’t have any on hand so I made it with butter. In a saucepan, melt the butter. When it is melted, add the flour and spices then mix. Cook, stirring all the time, until it turns brown. Book.
Cut the smoked sausages into rounds. Heat a skillet and brown the sausages for about 3 minutes on each side. The idea is not to cook them but to lightly grill them.
Meanwhile, cut the chicken breasts into cubes. When the sausage slices have grilled well, remove them from the pan and brown the diced chicken for 3 to 5 minutes on each side. Book.
Split the peppers in half, remove the stem, ribs and seeds. Wash them and cut them. Peel and chop the onion. Wash the celery stalk and cut it into cubes, do the same with the carrots. Peel and press the garlic clove.
Return the roux to the heat in a cast iron casserole dish. When it is hot, wet with the liter of water, little by little. Stir constantly and bring to a low boil. Then add the vegetables, the diced chicken and sausage.
Cover and cook for 45 minutes over low heat and covered. At the end of this time, uncover and simmer for about twenty minutes uncovered.
(For a shrimp or crayfish gumbo, omit the meat and poach them in the sauce 5 to 6 minutes before the end.)
Meanwhile, prepare the rice by immersing it in a large volume of water. Let it cook for the time indicated on the package.

Serve in the same container the rice and the meat, and drizzle with broth.

We all had a great time and all the members of the team present surprised me by learning a few signs in sign language, with more or less talent, but it touched me a lot. I was invited to become their regular cook so maybe I will do it again!

At the end we showed Søren around the hangar, it didn’t last long then everyone had to leave for an intervention but I will never forget the stars in his eyes when they let him fly from one of the trucks.

My Theo hold a blog because of me! He talks about Rock music and his social impact to the world. There is olso some of his drawings, please take a look 😉 (there is a cartoony portrait of me! :D)

Drum&Draw

Take care of you and your loved one and see you later.

Some News

I come back to you to give you new information.

I found a place to stay. My friend Priya has offered to host me and my cats in a roommate!

I met Priya by chance on a forum about deafness at the very beginning of the COVID lockdowns. She is a psychologist and was looking for information for one of her patients and we became friends before we could meet. Since then, I have often worked with her as part of my job or to serve as her interpreter. We developed a certain complicity and I, who didn’t want to rely too much on Grandmother’s shoulders, am delighted with her proposal!

Poor thing, she doesn’t know what it’s like to live with a deaf person. I hope she won’t regret it or at least that she will be able to put up with me!

Det betyder meget for mig, mange tak Priya!

Today I no longer have a home.

If I write this article, it is to warn you that there may be a little disruption in my next posts. Indeed there was a fire at my house last night and I find myself in the hospital.

Don’t worry too much about me, I’m fine but not having been able to hear the fire alarm. I had smoke detectors which flash light in addition to the alarm but being asleep, I was not warned and I inhaled a little too much smoke before being able to evacuate so I was kept under observation for 24 hours.

My house was not completely destroyed by the flames but it will not be habitable for a while.

In short, more fear than harm. I just lost memories and some stuff but it’s just material.
I’m going to live with my Grandmother until things get better.

I’ll post when there’s something new.

Take care of yourself and your loved ones and see you soon!

A woman tried to throw her hot coffee in my face at dog park!

Nyx disappeared from the frame right when I took the picture! >.<

Ok, that was 1 hours ago. I took Nyx out and took him to the dog park. There, a woman, her companion and their dog were about to enter. Of course Nyx was very happy to meet a new friend.

She was like wagging her tail and waiting for that dog to be unleashed, when that woman tried to release her dog. Nyx must had interrupted them, apparently this woman got angry at Nyx for no reason.

She tried to hit my dog and maybe his dog was growling at Nyx. I don’t really know since I can’t hear so I came in, to call Nyx over. Well, unfortunately, that woman threw coffee at me, BUT lucky I stood a bit further from her and didn’t get « coffee splashed » on me.

She seemed so angry and yelling at me for no reason then left, her partner was like ho no and tried to calm her down. She just simply left and I had no clue what was going on. Honestly, I never thought that someone would throw coffee at me… 🤣🥲

Yep, it happened just like that and then people came over to see if I was okay. I was like I’m all good peachy and utterly clueless about what had just happened recently. So bizzard lol

Nix didn’t do anything to that dog and all she wanted was to smell that dog’s ass & play with. What a day !

It was definitely not her day today at all but dude don’t throw hot coffee to someone else!

I hope everything goes well for you. Take care of yourself and your loved ones and see you soon.

Living with me means:

Accepting that: I make noise, the doors slam when you get up, the vacuum cleaner at 2 a.m., footsteps all day, the barking dog, startle everyone present when I turn on my computer because I did not see that the volume was turned up fully, accept to wear earplugs and that the walls shake when I listen to music and suddenly the death threats of neighbors in mailboxes …

Accepting that I jump all day long: In the morning at breakfast when someone tries to give me a kiss or a hug from behind, when I thought he was out and when I turn around I see him in the room, when someone touches me while I’m concentrating on a TV series.

Living with me means: accepting to repeat what I’m told when I’m tired, accepting that I isolate myself for a little while when we’ve been surrounded by people for a while in the evening, accepting not to speak when I’m drive, accepting to take off his mask to talk to me …

It is also accepting that: I am grumpy when I am hungry, in winter I sleep with socks on, I am not really but then really not patient when I expect something and I spray the responsible person with questions. out of my frustration, I turn around in the street to try to pet all the little cats and dogs that might cross my path and my daily craziness.

But that’s not because I’m deaf, but just because I’m hungry, cautious, boring, , have a problem with anything that purrs and licks my fingers and finally, I’m totally nuts!

Yes, I know … Living with me is complicated, but I cook well!

My suicide attempt.

This article is going to be about suicide and if it is a very triggering subject for you, which I can obviously understand, then do not hesitate to withdraw from the article so that you can take care of your well-being.

Earlier this year, I lost a childhood friend and today is suicide prevention day, so I want to dedicate this post to her and her family. Finally I want to take the opportunity to share my story with you, even if it costs me a lot to talk about it.

I was 13 or 14 years old and at that time I was a little chubby and I was only 1.45m tall. I was called “Haven Gnome”, “Garden Gnome” in danish. Finally, this is what a bunch of girls told me day after day. To this was added mockery about my deafness, my ears sticking out and they kept harping on me that I was less than nothing.
With my friends I pretended that it did not reach me and I kept silent with my family … I was good at letting nothing appear.
At night, under the duvet I cried until I fell tired. My suicidal thoughts started at that time.

One day, I went out jogging alone to lose my so-called excess weight. Of course, I didn’t hear the man who approached me from behind until he dragged me by force, his hand over my mouth, in an underground parking lot.

If you allow me, I will not go into the details of what happened at that time.

My assault was the last straw, I cracked. When I got home, I took Dad’s sleeping pills box and swallowed all of its contents.
I was so bad at that time, that I wonder if even without this event, I could have attempted my life.

I woke up in the hospital. What saved me was that I lost consciousness lying on my side and threw up some of what I had ingested. After a stomach wash everything went back to normal, I was very lucky, I didn’t have any physical damage.
Psychologically it was something else. I suffered from ogoraphobia for approximatively a year and dysmorphophobia for almost 2 years. I saw myself obese when I was not.

Then I met a boy who loved me for what I was, what I was having trouble conceiving, but thanks to this relationship and with the help of my family and Daria, a family friend who is a photographer, I gradually learned to get used to my body. And I realized that in 2 years I had gained 20 cm and that my curves were distributed in other places.
Today all is well in the best of worlds for me.

Reflection on suicide

Seeing that I never talk about what I did, (it’s the first time I talk about it openly since) I often hear my friends, who are not informed, saying that suicide is something stupid and they don’t understand how someone can do that. But suicide is not a stupid thing.
Let me explain.

I can only speak for myself, because that is what I believe and not something that I know. To say that suicide is a stupid act, it would already have to be reflected by an healthy mind, which would make a bad decision. But the peculiarity of a suicidal person is that his mind is anything but healthy. So you can’t really say that this is something stupid.

In my case, when I was so desperate, my attempt was never thought of. My brain was like disconnected, as if it had tripped. I can still see myself doing all my gestures but at no time did I think of the consequences. It’s a bit like my brain has tripped and my body acted automatically, going into the bathroom and opening that bottle, like I could have been on the roof to throw myself into the void.

I don’t want to give advice or anything about how to detect whether someone is suicidal or not, I’m not qualified for that. What I can say, however, is that you shouldn’t blame yourself if you haven’t seen any warning signs. Already being close to a person, I think that naturally we do not expect them to hide their unhappiness from us to the point that they can harm themselves. Finally personally I always did everything to hide my malaise from my loved ones because I did not want to be more of a burden than I was already for them as a deaf person.
The fact of not being able to imagine that the loved one can harm himself, combined with the fact that he hides his unhappiness, is to say that it is almost impossible to predict the suicide attempt of a loved one.

Denne artikel er dedikeret til Maggie og hendes familie, som alle mine tanker er rettet til.

Nyx deaf guide dog

In general, people have heard of guide dogs for the blind, but did you know that there are guide dogs for the deaf?

Nyx is one of them, she helps me in everyday life, she is my ears. But how can she help me?
Well here are some small examples:

She can warn me when someone knocks on the door and can’t find the doorbell >.< (I have a lighted doorbell that I normally use when people are not afraid to use it, like parcel deliverers !!!!)
She helps me a lot in the kitchen, because she alerts me when the oven stops or when my timer is over.
She warns me by telling me when a vehicle is behind me, and thus prevents me from ending up in a pancake!
To wake up, I have my phone on vibrate, but it may happen that I do not feel it if I have had a somewhat restless night, and well Nyx serves as an alarm clock. (Well, it is a bit too wet for my taste!)
She alerts me when someone calls me on the street.

Having daily help was a sine qua non condition for my dad to let me study in a foreign country like France last year, so we started looking for this type of help but unfortunately the farms are still very rare.
And dogs are very expensive, because their learning is complex. Their training costs between 10,000 and 12,000 euros per dog.
Each dog is first welcomed by a host family. For sixteen months. Then, they joined a center where, for six months, they were trained in recognizing sounds and the behavior to adopt for each of them …

To get Nyx, I sold my car and worked very hard. Fortunately for me, with my type of deafness, where the implant does not work, I had state aid, and a privileged place on the waiting list.
Yes, the other problem is that since there are few dogs, it takes on average 3 years to get one.

To be able to acquire one of those hairballs, beyond selling a kidney and having a foolproof patience, there are a few conditions to respect:

Have a document proving your “handicap”;
To be of age ;
And of course be able to provide all the care your pet needs.

I hope that one day these animals will be much more accessible for deaf people.

In the meantime, if you are a parent of a deaf child and you cannot afford it, I still advise you to get a dog, a cat, a ferret, a rabbit… or any animal. Being deaf tends to lock us in a lot, contact with animals helps us a lot to open up to others.

Deaf-hearing couples.

This is just a little personal reflection, on a question that I am often asked at the association: “How does it happen in a romantic relationship between a deaf and a hearing person?”

I speak here only from my point of view and my own feelings. I do not pretend to have absolute knowledge, on the contrary, I ask myself a lot of questions on this subject. If you have your own opinion, I would be happy to discuss it with you in the comments.

Many of you must be thinking, “But what does being deaf have to do with having a girl or a boyfriend? “
And although being deaf or hard of hearing (it is surely a bit the same for other handicaps), we always wonder if it will have an impact on our love life.

In a relationship between deaf people, it is “easy”. We have the same concerns so we understand each other. It is less embarrassing to repeat a sentence that you will have misunderstood, whether orally or in sign language.
With a hearing person, it’s very different. We are afraid of annoying the person who interests us by dint of having them repeat and doing so that they are disinterested in us.
Sometimes just announcing that you are deaf (or hard of hearing) is enough to scare some people away.

Between a deaf person and a hearing person, there is always a gap, because we do not live in the same world.
It is not a bad thing or anyone’s fault but it is so then it requires efforts of both parties to try to understand each other.

In the book “Finding Zoe” by Brandy Rarus, the deaf author describes her relationship with a hearing man. It was idyllic at first, but the more she got involved in the deaf culture, the more her boyfriend seemed to move away, which ended their relationship.

No matter how much a person can be involved in deaf culture, whether they have studied the subject or have deaf family … A hearing person will never be what it is to be deaf and what it brings.
In the past I’ve already loved, many times and each time I’m apprehensive of how the other will take the fact that I’m deaf.

How I am when I’m dating!

I’ve always had a close core of friends but I’m a very reserved person so I’ve done a lot of online dating, be it Okcupid or even Tinder! (yes I was desperate!).
But I never knew how to explain the fact that deafness was a part of me. I didn’t want people to reject me because of this. (It’s already happened).

Making contact :

After a few days, the time for the first Skype comes. It always makes me nervous. Indeed, I often have to ask them to type what they have to say and I think it must be a disadvantage to have to do it, it can annoy.

The encounter :

Me afraid to go to a first date! (I know I’m a good actress!)

Then we get used to it but at some point comes the time for the first meeting. As for everyone I suppose, there is the apprehension of “the-meeting-of-the-first-time”, but to that is added also the fear of “how-the-devil-is-that- communication-will-work ”! Fortunately for me, I read very well on the lips but according to the diction of each one, I need a time of adaptation, and to that is added that I am 100% deaf and not implantable, so I cannot help myself with the sound I would have heard to understand part of the conversation if he does not speak sign language.

The family presentation :

Finally if all his moments are going well, there is the presentation to the family. Personally I always apprehend, because that is when she realizes that you are deaf and that this is not harmless in everyday life, suddenly they do not know how to react and it can be very embarrassing.
With my first boyfriend’s family, it went very badly. I felt like the attraction of the evening, in the wrong sense of the word. I felt like the highlight of a freak-show! I was harassed with questions about my deafness and none about our couple …

Besides that in these kind of meetings, people often talk at the same time, which is very complicated for us to follow the conversations all the more since often several discussions get entangled at the same time which we totally lose … we ended up following our boyfriend like a disarmed puppy, and we feel very stupid…

Conclusion :

Be careful I don’t want to discourage deaf-hearing relationships, on the contrary my only two important stories were with a hearing person and they were wonderful. It exists and it works, but it requires investment on the part of the hearing partner, taking a minimum interest in deaf culture and sign language because it is a part of us.
On our side we must also make an effort to welcome them into our little world of ours by being compassionate and patient when they are awkward or when they find it difficult to understand us.
As in all couples, there are two of us. Efforts must therefore be made by both parties!

Does it make noise?

Today I found my friend Pia !!!

We went to my deaf club to join a group of teenagers whose parents work. Yes, we played nannies, but in exchange, there was pizza!
Two of them, Tadeus and Morganne, are newly implanted so the discussion turned to their new ability to hear. And I must say that we had a lot of fun.

Morganne first told us about the sun, she was convinced that it must make noise, a bit like the hum of an engine, but in fact not. Then she told us about her astonishment, when for the first time she heard the sound of her fingers rubbing paper, a gesture that she thought inaudible before.
Finally she told us about cats, which annoy her because sometimes they make noise, and sometimes they act without making it.

Little Isabelle, deaf from birth, asked if the ice melting in the sun made noise. Everyone turned to Pia, the only hearing in our group who was very sorry to disappoint her by telling her that no.

Then I noticed Tadeus staring at my chest. I started to feel embarrassed, then without looking away he spoke.

“Do you know what surprised me the most? It’s that the boobs do not make noise, it really looks like! “

At that moment, Pia’s nose who was drinking his coke was transformed into a fountain and the whole assembly laughed out loud.
Once Pia’s nose drained, she could tell us that she found this conversation fascinating, because she questions what was only “obvious” to her.

This article does not do justice to our laughter but I hope you enjoyed it anyway!

Difficult to be deaf in times of Corona virus.

For 3 months, with all these masks in the street, I have the impression of living in an episode of Naruto. Yes, you should be happy if you are a manga fan, but personally I find it oppressive!
Ok it’s hard for everyone to live, I understand that it’s complicated for everyone, but imagine that when you leave your house, you no longer hear any sound, a deafening silence?

When I leave my house, I can no longer communicate with anyone. Everyone is masked, so I can no longer read the lips of my interlocutors. And I can no longer speak sign language. Indeed, many signs are based on facial expressions. It’s a bit like if you had to start talking overnight without using vowels.
Fortunately for me, I am lucky to be with my family at home, but I have a thought for all deaf people who must or must have been confined alone at home.

To receive the information, I am happy to see that the newspapers have started to offer interpreters more often. However, they are often very small in the corner of the picture and it is not always very easy to understand them even when you have good eyesight. To this must be added that many deaf people suffer from Usher syndrome which, in addition to giving profound deafness, causes a progressive loss of visual acquittal going as far as blindness.

I can only imagine that, I have my family to keep me up to date but to know that a crisis of such magnitude is going on and not being able to get information properly, all this added to the feeling of ‘isolation…

Some of us are going through a very difficult time so if you have a neighbor, a friend or even only a deaf acquaintance, while respecting a safe distance of course, try to communicate with him without your mask to see how he feels right now and if he manages to get well informed. In any case, he will be infinitely grateful.

Either way, whether you are deaf, hard of hearing or hearing, take care of yourself and your loved ones!
As for me I say see you soon! 😉