My cat, Lady Gray, actually makes a loud sound when she meows! Even with HAs I thought she was a silent meower. Who knew!

Yesterday I had a our clan get together - 14 kids and grandkids and two greats. So at least 3 to 4 conversations going on at once. And because they were all important to me the brain tried to listen to all of them rather than blocking out background noise. Talk about overload. They were all good about facing me and talking into my good ear when talking directly to me. One of the interesting things I discovered was when one first arrived for the first 5 minutes talking with them it was difficult to understand them then it seemed like the brain kicked in and recognized the voice and it was much easier. Each voice sounded like what I 'remembered'. No chipmunks or robots among them.

What I'm not sure of is if this was due to the HA or combination. I have the AB/Phonak and they 'talk' to each other. I was picking up noise on the CI side as well. By 9:30pm I was pretty tired.

I had spent the morning doing homework. For about two hours I used only the CI with the left ear plugged at least to some degree. I listened to an audio book and read the eBook along with it on the computer. I didn't seem to have any problem hearing every word. Mostly sounded normal. When I listened to oldies with just the CI I had the lyrics show - for the most part I didn't have any problems hearing the music, although it didn't sound like when I listened with both HA and CI (when it sounded normal). With just the CI the artist didn't sound like themselves although I could make out the words.

I'm not sure if when I'm wearing the HA and CI if the HA is doing the work and the CI is making the weird noise background. Or when I'm wearing just the CI and I'm hearing pretty well if it isn't my left ear with some hearing that is doing the work.

Bill's hearing aids had a problem and not working so he turned the TV up to full volume (his TV streamer wouldn't work) and I got blasted out of the house! He doesn't like using CCs - he has memory issues now. Ten days before he gets those puppies back - ouch!

Family are all busy calling on the phone (it streams into my ears) to give me practice on the phone. So I am getting a wide range of voices.

What was interesting yesterday is DIL Cindy has such a low voice everyone in the family has a problem hearing her - but for the first time I could actually make out what she was saying. Sort of a Lady Gray and her meow moment.

One thing is sure - my whole family will keep my feet to the fire and keep me honest in doing my homework! And they all had to inspect my 'headpiece'.

However, reading/listening to the book is driving me nuts as I'm a very fast reader and find it very hard not to get far ahead of of the 'speech'.. So I have to force myself to 'read along'.

Anyone have other suggestions for homework? Just asking for a friend lol.