Day 187: Sense of Hearing

I am grateful for my hearing. I try not to take it for granted because I know there are people who have never had the pleasure of hearing, who have lost their hearing as they have aged or had a traumatic experience, or who have hearing that is not 100% for a variety of reasons. And while I try not to take it for granted I know that I do without realizing it. With my hearing I get to know the sound of my children's voices and laughs, the sound of my husband, the horns of vehicles, the tweets of birds, the soundtracks that accompany movies, etc. I even get to hear the sound of my own voice - which in my head sounds WAY different than it actually does - that I don't particularly like but it's still I privilege I don't want to take lightly. When I see videos like the one I have included below I remember how grateful I am for my hearing.

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A dime a dozen

"It's said that in the year 1796, the first U.S. dimes were produced for circulation. Hence, it would make sense for this phrase to originate sometime after." Read more here . Today the phrase carries the meaning that something is cheap or without value if it can be lumped in with other similar or exactly-like things. It's more of an insult than anything.

Butter someone up

There are two probable origins for this idiom and I think both are equally plausible. The first one is that when you spread butter on bread you are buttering it up like one would do when trying to flatter someone. The second is in ancient India there was a practice of throwing balls of butter at statues to ask for favor, i.e. buttering them up. ( source ) When we use the phrase today we generally mean that extreme flattery is used to gain information or favor. It's not always necessarily a compliment.

Life according to van Gogh...sort of

There are two ways of thinking about painting, how not to do it and how to do it; how to do it -- with much drawing and little color; how not to do it -- with much color and little drawing. Vincent van Gogh in a l etter to Theo van Gogh, April 1882 Life is a little bit like today's quote from van Gogh. Some of us live life focusing on the drawing - the details - and have very little color. Others of us go for the color and forsake, to a degree, the drawing - the details. Unlike painting, according to van Gogh, one is not wrong over the other but somewhere in between the two would be the best I would think. If you look at some of van Gogh's paintings I feel like you can see where he might have struggled between the "how to do it" and the " how not to do it" (as he admittedly loved color so much but knew he had to focus more on the drawing) and that seems to be reflected in his life as well. In the end he wasn't able to find the ...

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