Fox Hollow College
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I have to admit that the lady who writes this blog is dumb. It takes me a long time to ‘realize’ some things and then connect that with actions. The example of the UA at the gym is one example. “Realizing” that I was allowing HIM to control MY gym sessions took me a long time. Now that I HAVE realized that I need to control my time at the gym, I can actively change my attitude and change things.
My SIL and my cousin-in-law/good friend have both suggested that I ‘kill him with kindness.’ This is an interesting approach, but having thought about it, I really don’t want a gym buddy relationship with him. I don’t care where in the States he is from. He is oblivious to, or doesn’t care about, the fact that he is being obnoxious and personifying the “Ugly American” stereotype. His behavior won’t change. My inner problems with it can and will.
My other recent example of my dumbness is in the use of my hearing aids. Yesterday there was a group of people very close to the seat I was using at the side of the cafe. They were catching up with each other and having a good time. They would get quite loud at times, laughing and speaking loudly. It took me until I got home last night to ‘realize’ that I had the means to control my irritation in THAT situation, too. I have a phone app to control my hearing aids. It has taken me almost a year of wearing them daily to finally ‘realize’ that I could use my phone to turn 1) make sure the ‘voice boost’ button was turned to ‘off,’ or that 2) I could turn my hearing aid settings DOWN to lessen the irritation, or even ‘off.’ DUH!
It brings to mind something I’ve remembered for years. My great grandmother, grandfather, grandmother, and great aunt all lived together in a house in Missouri. I loved to go visit them. My great grandmother wore large hearing aids that had chords on them that went around her neck like a necklace. She kept the chords inside the neck of her dresses. People would be talking, sometimes directly to my great grandmother, when she would put her hand down the neck of her dress and turn her hearing aids off – sometimes mid-sentence!
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Today is my normal Thursday. I’m almost ready for my housekeeper to come tomorrow. I’ll be doing my water bottle exercises today and finishing writing posts for the blog, then going to the cafe.
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I wrote an article yesterday about the power and Internet wiring in Chiang Mai and included a sketch where I tried to capture the flavor of that. It’s called, “Chiang Mai – 1st Impressions – Power and Internet plus my Sketch.”
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