Mike's death; Betty's life...

Friday, October 16, 2026

Friday, January 31, 2025

Wow! It rained so heavily that the gutters were overflowing. It was the kind of rain where one step out, and you were soaked through to the skin. The morning walk was out.

I had a seven am appointment with Shelly, my therapist/ life coach. Wednesday night, I realized I had double booked Thursday at 10 am. I had Shelly and an appointment with the cranial sacral therapist. I had my first appointment with the latter, and she cost more than twice what Shelly charged. I had to cancel Shelly and offer to pay. Shelly offered a Friday appointment at 10 am. Was I free? That’s when I had Hula. We agreed to noon her time, 7 am mine. That’s a good time for me any day.

I was delighted to report my progress to her. I told her about my conversation with the leader of the Grief Recovery workshop. She tried to kick me out of the class ‘for my sake.’ It was clear to me she was uncomfortable with me and wanted me out. Despite all the false assumptions she made, I stayed calm and assertive. It was the combined calm and strength that was a hallelujah moment. For an update, I finally got through to the leader that 1) No, I had never taken a grief recovery class based on Kubler-Ross’s work, 2) No, I did not think the whole process was wrong, 3) I only objected to the way some of the ideas were presented, and I thought the problem could be resolved by framing the ideas differently. She assumed I objected to some of her presentation because I had learned it from someone else. That I came to those conclusions on my own was so far out of her understanding that she did a 180. Now, my objections posed no threat, and she could hear what I had to say.

I have had therapists lay trips on me forever. It usually triggered me. I wasn’t. I’ve only faced a situation with serious consequences once before and responded as I did now, calmly with a clear view of what was going on and humor.

The first time was with Mike. We had been together for over 10 years. He wanted me to go to therapy over a problem in our relationship. When we got up in the morning, I had given the topic some thought. I concluded that Mike also had a role in creating this problem. His ex-wife had a similar problem. It would be helpful if he resolved his role in our problem as well as me.

I said this to him on Friday morning as he headed to work. He came home Friday night upset. He had to talk to me. I thought he had lost his job. No. The problem was I had said he had a role in our problem. He said that wasn’t what we agreed upon in our relationship. I assumed he was talking about me telling him he had a role in our problems, not just me. I laughed and told him I never agreed to that.

That night was the only night in our marriage when we went to bed with a threat to our marriage. The following day, we went to the 8 am Mass together. As I prayed for a solution to our difference, I got that even if it was the end of our marriage as he threatened, I had had a good time and had no regrets. As we walked out of the church, I told Mike what I got. He said he got the same thing for himself. For both of us, our marriage had been good enough. Fortunately, he was prepared to continue. Thank God. We never resolved this issue. The therapist we got wasn’t very good. I don’t know if it would have worked out differently if she had been. We were both pretty stuck.

I also shared my experience with the Kaiser therapist my PCP recommended. It was an online session. I check his website. He does pretty much everything Shelly does. I was proud I was willing to try someone new. My experiences have not been good. Now, I have Shelly as backup. I’m not desperate. It’s a great luxury. The only problem I encountered with the Kaiser therapist was biases he expressed that it was better to be one way versus another. That he endorses my way is not a comfort.

I sure as shooting didn’t have to water the 42 shrubs today. At 9:30 am, I left for my Hula class. It was still raining, but I could make it to the car without getting soaked. It was 69 degrees at 9:30. That’s the temperature before the sun comes up, not at 9:30.

I arrived at the Community Center for the Hula class, wondering if it had been canceled. Our local schools hadn’t been canceled. Neither had the school on the east side of the island been canceled. I saw the door was open when I arrived. The rain was light enough that I got in there without getting soaked. I was surprised to find it was comfortable inside despite the open-air structure. The two side walls are not solid. They’re just grills. The ocean is right outside. The high winds and intense rain were gone. The Hula teacher devoted most of the class to practicing basic steps. We worked on a choreographer dance for the last fifteen minutes. It was all good.

I went to Target after the class, mainly to get a Citronella candle, as recommended by the guy at Diamond Irrigation.

I called Joe, the service manager at Kia, to tell him the car still wasn’t charging correctly. He asked if I could bring it in today. I said yes if he had a loaner. He didn’t know but would by next week. I wasn’t in a hurry. I learned that if I checked the car as it was charging and discovered it had stopped in the middle of the process, I could restart the charging process by turning the motor on and off. However, I didn’t think I could rely on this trick forever. Joe said he would call when he had a car available.

Thursday, January 30, 2025

We were under a weather alert all day. Honolulu had 60 mph winds. We had strong winds. The wind blew the fronds of the palm trees so hard they were all on the north side of the tree trunk. I didn’t go out for a walk with or without Elsa. When I went to the mailbox, I put on glasses to protect my eyes from debris. Elsa made it out the doggy dog for her pee but chose the lanai carpet for her bigger business. She was okay going out the doggy door because it was on the north side of the house and protected from the strong winds. By the evening, the effect of the wind on the yard was evident. I didn’t lose any plants. The wind had a positive effect; it did a lot of pruning. For the palm trees to look good, we need gardeners to saw off the drooping fronds and the spent ‘flowers’ and fruit. My palm trees all looked lots better but the yard was a mess.

Five of the large Bismarck palm fronds came down. They weigh a good 10 lbs a piece, basically the weight of a bicycle. Darby asked me to limit the number I pack into the trash barrel I deliver to her home. I packed in three last time. It was too much for Patrick. Two is the limit on those babes.

I had an appointment with a cranial sacral therapist Darby and Patrick see. I had a very good experience with a cranial-sacral therapist at Hawaiian Rehab. My PT recommended I see her. She made a huge difference in my back pain. Darby sings Tomi’s praises each time she sees her, actually ‘they.’ I don’t know if Tomi’s sexual orientation is ambiguous or if she is just supportive of those whose is. Either way, I concur. She is a spectacular.

As I left Tomi’s office, she recommend I do a lymph drainage series. Nothing she does is cheap. She recommended it particularly because of all the surgeries I had had: rotator cuff, two cataract, hip replacement, shoulder replacement and elbow reconstruction. The first three were short, sweet outpatient surgeries. The last two were three and five hour surgeries, a two week stay in the hospital and a three week recovery at home. The amount of toxic chemicals pumped into my bodies for those five weeks left me feeling like I had smoked four packs of cigarettes. I haven’t smoked for 45 years, but I did for 19, often finishing off two packs a day. I know what it feels to have poisoned myself. Flushing my system sounds good to me.

I made two stops before I went home. First, I stopped at Farm and Garden to get the formula for the horticultural oil to spray some shrubs that were blighted by some insect or another. I think the oil suffocates them.

I got the highly made up clerk at Farm and Garden. She’s my favorite. She is the most meticulously made of woman I’ve ever seen in my life. it’s a work of art. She also wears earrings she makes and sells there. I once asked her how she got into the business. She had been a sales rep for some agricultural company. She didn’t answer the question I asked. How did a woman so involved with her appearance wind up in this field in the first place. Whatever. She knows her business cold. Darby told me it was this woman who came in and organized their business. At any rate, she looked up the formula online.

I had looked it up online under the company name without success. It looks like they weren’t selling the product I had anymore. Mine is undiluted. All they showed were the spray products with the diluted solution. This woman typed in formula for horticultural oil in the address line. Bingo! She got her answer: two table spoons to a gallon of water.

I got a text from Shauntel as I left Farm and Garden. Today was food pantry day. The session with the kids is shorter. I was glad for the excuse not to go. I needed to get home and recover from the session I had with Tomi.

I did stop at Diamond Sprinkler to get instructions on how to insert the plastic connectors into the tubes. I was in no hurry. I was still hand watering each of my 42 shrubs. I needed to do that anyway to check the wild chickens hadn’t torn up the roots when they dug a depression for the dirt baths.

The only student I had today was fourth-grade GV. We continued to work on his problem with the visual distortion of the letters. They moved around in his head. Sometimes, letters are obscured. He presents with symptoms I have never seen before. They’re a form of the spin. It moves from in to out but more as a loop than a spiral, as he sees it, moving from right to left. The loops follow the right hand rule pattern, which should be positive but are not. The other unfamiliar pattern here is the speed of the loops. They don’t accelerate or decelerate. The speed stays constant. I have never seen this before- or no student has ever described it that way before. I always asked if the spin speeds up or slows down, but I have never given the option of the speed remaining constant.

I experimented with some psychological work. I’m inclined to move very slowly with him. I’m not sure why. I sense a fragility that makes me cautious. Instead of leading him through the work, I describe and propose to see if it feels right and propose we do it in the following session. The psychological work were the releases. “Release anything bad about your hatred of this movement in my brain, keep anything good about your hatred or anything you still need.” Then, we do the same thing releasing the love we have of that brain behavior. I find that just describing the work has an impact. It becomes an option the student hadn’t considered. If it’s right, the unconscious will do the work in the student’s sleep.

I texted my local doctor with questions about the difference in the calculations in my heart function. The results of echocardiogram showed and EF of 60-65% and the results of the stress test showed and EF of 74%. Since the echocardiogram tech told me a reading over 70% indicated a problem, I was concerned. Dr. Reed cleared the problem up. The 60-65% was my resting heart rate; the 74% was my heart rate under stress. It was a good thing that it could up its pace when needed.

At the last minute, GV mentioned his mind always presents two visual images. I’ve done work with that before. I have the student write each word in a designated column. One with the right spelling, and the other they way they want to spell it. It’s cleared up problems for a number of students. I think it’s a developmental delay. While both sides of the brain receive the sensory data about the letters, the left is the side of the brain designed to process the letters ‘correctly.’ Dehaene says the information from the right brain gets passed over to the left brain in the functional reader.

I went down to Diamond Irrigation to get a lesson on how to insert the connectors into the irrigation tubing. One of employees showed me. Take a lighter and gentle warm the open end of the tube; insert the connector. He made it look easy. I tried to do it myself and had no difficulty. Then I tried to start the lighter. I couldn’t do that. The guy removed the child safety. I still couldn’t do it. He went out to his car to get another lighter he thought would be easier. It was a barbeque lighter. I couldn’t work that one either. Judy turned me on to a lighter I could operate. It’s a rechargeable lighter with a small electric charge. You put the wick between the two terminals. The charge moving between the terminals ignites the wick. The guy told me to buy a citronella candle at Target to use.

Wednesday, January 29, 2025

I had the Twins today. Twin E spelled wire as whyer. I love it. That spelling makes more sense than the real one. What I love about this method of working on spelling through dictation is it provides opportunities to review phonics rules. With Twin A, I reviewed several patterns. Two possible pronunciations for ull are bull, full, and pull versus dull, gull, and hull. lull and mull. We also covered the rule of changing y to I and adding the suffix, as in

sleepy +ly= sleepily, easy +ly easily, and noisy +ly noisily.

Fourth-grade GV has problems with visual recall, too. In his case, letters are shifting and disappearing. Holy cow! And I’m just learning about this now? I know I asked the question before. I wondered if he had experienced spinning. He said no but didn’t volunteer a description of what he experienced. Today, he drew the pattern. I love it; what ‘experts’ argue movement isn’t the problem and then the kids can draw the movement pattern. It differed from the ones I’m used to seeing, or my other kids accept the menu I lay out even though I always ask if they experience something else.

GV’s movement pattern moves from the right side of his head to the left. He is possibly overusing his right brain, and his brain is trying to get him to use the left brain.

I gained insight into the reason for the effectiveness of the Grief Recovery program. When working with a ‘therapist,’ you get compassion; when working in a small group where everyone shares their experience, you get kinship.

Father Boyle of Homeboy Industries in LA argues for this. People need kinship, preferably with compassion. Fr. Boyle runs a recovery program for ex-LA gang members and believes in the value of kinship in any form of recovery.

Is it possible to have kinship without compassion? Of course. That’s what gang membership is about.

I work to establish kinship with my students in my attitude, if not in my words. My kinship with them is based on our shared humanity; I do not treat them as my equals in all ways. I am the adult. I am the professional.

I don’t think one culture or one way of looking at the world is better than another. No social system is all good or all bad. ‘Advanced cultures’ are not better than ‘primitive’ ones. The educated are not better than the uneducated. No one group has cornered the market on all the goodies- unless you mean the material goods or the tools of violence. Unfortunately, that is possible. To that status, add an unhealthy dollop of arrogance and bibbidi-bobbidi-boo; you have an end to universal kinship. That’s the rule of might makes right and puts an end to kindship in its extreme form. To be remembered, there are circumstances where the ‘highest-ranking officer’ must be considered correct. That’s in combat. Someone has to be in charge. There’s no time to sit down and discuss options in a crisis.

Wow! It rained so heavily that the gutters were overflowing. It was the kind of rain where one step out, and you were soaked through to the skin. The morning walk was out.

I went to Target after the class, mainly to get a Citronella candle, as recommended by the guy at Diamond Irrigation.

Tuesday, January 28, 2025

Tuesday, January 28, 2025

      It was a Ulu Wini day. Second-grade KJ worked on low first-grade text. She had trouble seeing the relationship between sentences within the paragraph.
  I reviewed the words: "Jack said, "Snow." "What did you say?" asked Tom, opening his eyes." Where was Tom when he said that? She said outside. Like so many poor readers, KJ doesn't visualize the scene. She does not build a picture from the words.
   Third-grade TC did better on the sight words with improved automatic processing.
   Second-grade NV shows slight improvements in word recall. She says the ones she knows faster but is having trouble learning new ones. I did a visual exercise with her. I asked her to spell her name and then to recite the letters backward. She was flawless. Her visual processing of letters is outstanding. I couldn't do this when I first learned it. Why is she having that much problem learning the words? I asked her to 'see' the word and then asked her mind for the name of the word. It took a while, but it did come up. She told me she lost the word list I gave her. She is making an effort.
Second-grade MK is moving ahead rapidly. When we started, she couldn't read the first 25 words with ease. Today, she finished 201-300. This completes the list of sight words through the third grade. She needed some help with some of the words. She could 'decode' them accurately without coming up with the correct pronunciation. I worked on using context to figure out the word. She read earth with a long /e/. I used the word in a sentence with the pronunciation she decoded. She was a little confused but rapidly caught on to the idea of using context to figure out what the word was.
Last, I had 6th grade RM and ML. I worked on comprehension. Again, the problem was using the information in the first sentence to understand the meaning in the second.
   When I got home, I had one more session with seventh-grade RC. This situation has had an unpleasant impact. I have seen improvement in RC's spelling and reading. However, when I ask her if she sees an improvement, she says, "I don't know. "Drives me crazy. To boot, her mother whines about her spelling. She misspelled words on her birthday request list in November. I asked her mother to have RC write the same words now. She didn't do that, so I asked her to do it. She wanted one of three vinyl records. She misspelled the word vinyl. She spelled the names of the artists perfectly. Okay, she misspelled one word three times. I started believing her mother suffered from a form of Munchhausen's. I wanted out.
   Today, I upped the grade level of the work. Today, RC told me the teacher marks her spelling, and she makes many mistakes. This is the first I heard of it. She agreed her problem was with multi-syllable words. I just had her spell multisyllabic words from a seventh-grade text. When she works with me, she represents all the sounds. When she spells on her own, she doesn't. She didn't include the n in vinyl; she spelled it viyl. Her problem is a problem I find with many kids. They have greater difficulty identifying the syllables in a word than they do identifying the phonemes. My instructions are: 1. Identify the individual syllables 2. Then, focus on one syllable at a time, ignoring the others. This proves difficult for the students I work with. I don't know how it plays out in the general population.
    However, what I learned today is RC has problems with visual recall. My Ulu Wini kids can do the Neurolinguistic Program's visual exercise with ease. They can spell their names forward and backward. Then, they can't 'see' an unfamiliar word. With these kids, there is no conscious control over their mental processes. They're naïve learners. RC is not naïve. Her verbal skills are quite sophisticated. Well, I thought that from something she read to me, she said she had written. When I was her age, I copied text right out of the encyclopedia.
   I asked if she enjoyed drawing. Yes. Ah, that's a right brain activity. Spelling requires left-brain involvement. I told her to focus on the left side.
   When we focus our conscious attention on a part of our body, the nervous system directs blood to provide the fuel for whatever we need. I had RC focus on her hand first so she could feel the difference. Then, on the left side of her brain. She has to hold her focus there when she retrieves a word from her long-term memory. We worked on the word victim, the last word we had worked on before I started the protocol for focusing on the visual working memory for letters. She recalled v-i-c-t-i. That was pretty good for someone who never used this process before.
   About 7 o'clock, my phone rang. It was the leader of the Grief Recovery Class. She told me it would be better for me if I dropped out of the class. The class process couldn't help me; my pain was too great. I had wept deeply over something that my mother witnessed in Nazi Germany on the streets of Berlin. I told her I had already benefited from the class. She should stop bull-shitting me. She was uncomfortable with me because I challenged something she said. I was incompatible with the process. No, I liked the process, so I named three things I liked. There was only one thing I thought was wrong, and it wasn't even wrong with the program. It was her presentation that was wrong. A slight modification would eliminate the problem.
   She kept trying to convince me this was all for my benefit, which was almost comical. She was a rigid thinker and couldn't tolerate someone who would challenge her thinking. As it turns out, it had less to do with her thinking than her verbal expression skills.
   She stayed on the phone with me for over an hour. Kudos to her. I have had trained therapists who wouldn't engage in meaningful dialogue with me. The situation resolved after she told me 'about her experience' with another group. They refused to/couldn't follow the program protocol. In the small groups, it's one person talking at a time. The listeners do not ask questions, make comments, or make suggestions. The listeners don't touch the speaker or offer them a tissue. The listeners just listen. They can nod, laugh when appropriate, and even cry. But that's it. The group she had trouble with didn't follow those rules. The leader disbanded the group and offered to work with the participants individually. Only one person accepted her offer. That person explained the other participants had participated in another grief program. They couldn't adapt to the Grief Recovery program's method. I asked her why she was telling me this. She said because it was her experience. Yes, but why was she telling me the story. Because I had participated in another grief program. No, I had not. Oh. The penny dropped. She finally could hear I appreciated the genius of this program. Wow! Did she ever lay a trip on me! This happens to me a lot.
   I appreciated I scared her. That did concern me. That and the possibility that my intense crying scared the other students. I know several appreciated my speaking out or agreed with my objections. That couldn't be the problem. I was concerned that I would be the only one attending the class on Wednesday. If they were uncomfortable, or even if the teacher was ineffective, I was prepared to drop out. However, I didn't trust the teacher's perception of the situation, not when she was ready to lay such bogus trips on me. That suggested she was out of touch with reality. We would see where it would go tomorrow.

Sunday, October 4, 2026

Monday, January 27, 2025

I went to bed shortly after 9 last night, anticipating an early rise. I was so anxious about the day ahead; the only thing I was good for that evening was binge-watching Elementary and playing Free Cell. I had to catch the 7 amflight to Honolulu to get to the Kaiser hospital for medical testing in Honolulu, specifically heart-related tests: a stress test and an echocardiogram. I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed by 2. I got up to pee several times but forced myself to stay in bed. Why, I have no idea. I had the alarm set for 4:45. I got up then, walked, and fed Elsa. I had packed everything except for electronics and their chargers before I went to bed. I had asked Darby to pick me up at 5:50. She was in the driveway by 5:40.

It only takes 10 minutes to get to the airport. This time, the reservation number worked. TSA wasn’t a problem. The airport has been reconfigured since I flew last in 2019 when I returned from my five weeks in Honolulu while Mike lay dying. The waiting area was familiar. The plane started loading at 6:30, as I thought it would.

I had an appointment for these tests at an earlier date. I made it to the airport by 6:30 for my 7 am flight. I didn’t have the complete reservation number and had to speak to a clerk. The guy told me I had missed my flight. The door closed at 6:30. Everyone I told about this was shocked. Our small local airport was recently converted to a small International airport. Half an hour before flight time is all you needed. It was still all I needed. The flight this morning didn’t start boarding until 6:30. The clerk lied to me.

Today, I arrived safely in Honolulu and then went to the shuttle area to wait. I arrived shortly before 8. I asked some airport workers when I could expect the shuttle. They didn’t know. I set my alarm for 9. If it didn’t arrive by then, I would take a taxi. After 45 minutes, another worker walked by. I asked about the Kaiser shuttle. He said the shuttle pick up/ drop off was moved to the other end of the airport. I walked down there. The next shuffle would be too late for me. I got a cab for a mere $25. Whatever, I got there on time.

Check-in at admissions went smoothly. I had to go to Room 345. I found a sign for ‘stress test’ but no room number. Someone asked me what I was waiting for and directed me to room 345, a large waiting area with check-in.

My next stop was nuclear imaging. A lovely Asian man, Hong, took me to a side room, inserted an intravenous needle, washed it out with a saline solution, and then put in the dye for the imaging.

I asked him why the saline. It’s a test to determine if the needle has been properly placed in the vein. If not, there would be a bulge under my skin. If it’s the saline, no worries. It would quickly be absorbed. If it’s the medication, there are two problems. First, my body wouldn’t consider it as friendly as the saline. Second, an expensive medication has been wasted. Clever. No bulge: we were good to go. I had to wait 45 minutes before the imagining to let the dye do its work.

For the imagining, I had to lie on a hard table, curved to cradle my body, with my arms over my head for 15 minutes. When that was through, it was back to the waiting room until I was called for my stress test.

I had a chemical stress test rather than a treadmill one. The chemical stresses the heart, duplicating a challenging run that I didn’t think I was capable of. I was hooked up to a special ECG monitor and administered the drug. It set my heart racing. They monitored my heart rate and blood pressure. It took all of 10 minutes. The medication that set my heart racing was working itself out of my system. Nurse Tim told me to bend my knees and keep bouncing my toes. When I did this chemical stress test in 2018 as part of my test to qualify as Mike’s kidney donor, I had no adverse reaction. This time, I was nauseous. It wasn’t terrible. I was worried I’d throw up all over myself and whatever else was in my way. Tim gave me a shot of caffeine, which counteracted the impact of the heart-racing drug. Hmmm! Isn’t that what caffeine does to our hearts, causing them to race? Tim explained that’s why I couldn’t eat any caffeine for 24 hours before the test; it was an antidote to the medication.

Then, I was off to get my echocardiogram. Seeing my heart pulsing on that monitor was awesome. I loved my heart; what a fantastic organ. It works so hard to keep me alive. I am so grateful for what it does for me. I read recently that people find fire and water fascinating. I think watching the heart do its thing on a sonogram is right up there with the other two.

I asked the tech why she got into this field. It’s always interesting to discover a person’s history. Each one is different. The tech had been in the military. When she left, she had to find another profession. I don’t remember why she chose sonogram work, but I do remember why she decided on cardiology instead of OB/GYN.

She did an OB rotation at a high-risk clinic. She couldn’t take it when the sonogram showed the baby wasn’t viable. She reported one incident where the fetus was missing both kidneys. The parents refused to accept the baby couldn’t survive; it was doing well in utero. The parents couldn’t understand the baby was being served by the mom’s kidneys. Once born, that support would be gone.

As for my heart, the tech told me my heart looked better than most of the 40-year-olds she examined. Of course, she doesn’t see a random sample. Most of the people who come to her know they’re in trouble. I’m the outlier. My doctor was being super cautious, as the results attest.

I returned to the nuclear medicine area, where I had the imaging work done. Tim removed my intravenous and handed me a printed copy of my results. He said it was all good. I read, “74% calculated left ventricular injection fraction,” Tim said that was a good number. The echocardiogram tech told me the healthy range was between 55 and 65; 70% indicated a problem. Anything higher or lower was not good. Unfortunately, I said something to Tim, revealing I had that information from the other tech. I tried to cover my tracks and say I had found the information online. When I got home, I checked what the Internet had to offer. It said a high of 75% is normal.

The Kaiser travel bureau had scheduled me for an 8 pm flight. I thought it was because earlier ones were booked. Nope. I had to wait until the results of the stress test were back. They were in before I was through with the echocardiogram; I was free to go home. I was told I had to go to the airport and get Hawaiian Airlines to change the flight. I had to wait for the airport shuttle from the hospital. I had just missed one. I had an hour’s wait. Changing the flight time was easy. The clerk got me on a 4:45 flight, three hours earlier than the one I had.

The hour-long flight was smooth, with only one dip and dive. I engaged in conversation with the person sitting next to me, a lovely young woman. She lived on the Big Island and wasn’t a tourist. She worked for the University of Nations, an evangelically oriented religious institution. Everyone I meet from that school looks amazingly beautiful, with remarkably clear eyes and glowing skin, a picture of good physical and mental health, and a testimony to whatever they do. The school doesn’t have the best reputation among the people I know; I’m not quite sure why. But it’s obviously an outlier.

Mary worked in HR. Her job was to travel to a site where groups of missionaries were sent. She was returning from South Africa, where she went to evaluate the work of the group sent there. She listed a good half dozen other countries she had been sent to. She had been traveling for two days. The first flight was 12 hours, the second 9. This 1-hour flight was the last leg of her trip home.

Darby picked me up and dropped me off where she parked my car. When she picked me up in the morning, I left my car in the driveway. I got a call and a text from Nina. She and Dean walked past my house and heard Elsa barking like mad. They went in to check if everything was okay. Elsa knew them well and greeted them warmly. Then, I got a text from Yvette saying she had Elsa down with her. I should let her know when I get home. She only does that when Elsa is on a barking jag, and she’s only on a barking jag when I leave the house without driving away.

I asked Darby to move my car. I told her where my car key was. She didn’t just leave it outside my property; she drove down the block far away from the house, afraid Elsa would smell the car on the other side of the fence. She also checked on her several times during the day. I am so lucky, and so is Elsa.

When I walked into the house, she allowed me to pet her and then ran around like a maniac, releasing the tension of the day.

I finally got to eat. I wasn’t very hungry anymore. That’s what a day of fasting does for you. Then, I got a phone call from the woman who was running the Grief Recovery Group. She wanted me to drop out. She framed it as she was doing it for my sake because I couldn’t benefit from it, given my disagreements with the work. I made it plain I valued the work we were doing now, the homework, the small groups with their behavioral rules, and the grief histogram. There was only one aspect of the program I disagreed with. She still insisted I didn’t value what the program had to offer. She offered to work with me individually to help me with my deep sorrow over the generational grief that haunted me. Holy smokes! I don’t think so.

She finally went on and on about a group she had where people couldn’t follow the small group rules: one person talks at a time, that person reports on what they wrote in the homework, no discussion, no verbal responses at all, only nodding and smiling, no touching, don’t even hand the speaker a tissue. The group in question kept falling into discussions, making suggestions, and engaging in ways contradictory to the formula. I finally said, “Why are you telling me this?” She said, “This is what happened to me.” That group had to be disbanded. She offered to work with people individually. Only one person accepted her offer. At the end, that person said, “You have to understand. All the participants had been in a different grief recovery group based on Kubler-Ross’s work. There, participants are encouraged to comment.” Again, I asked, “What is your purpose in saying this to me?” She finally said, “You’ve participated in another grief training group and refuse to adapt to this one.” I told her for the second time that I had never participated in another grief recovery group. She accused me of that after the second session. I told her then I hadn’t. She couldn’t hear it. She has trouble imagining that I came to my conclusions on my own. I don’t think she does. She’s prepared to accept the menu and do the best she can. I voiced objection to certain didactic statements. The program says no one can tell you what you think and feel, and then it tells you what’s right and wrong. One member mumbled, “I did what my culture told me to do.” I argued that her presentation suggests that everything we’ve done up to this approach is wrong.

I also told her while I in no way would let her get away with saying she thought I should leave for my sake, I was concerned about the other members of the group and her. If their discomfort with me was great enough, they would not feel safe doing the work. I had considered leaving after the second session. I said so to one of my small group members after she said she was so glad I was in her group. Her reaction to me came as a total surprise. She said she would make me keep coming. Another group member echoed my opinion of the narrow-minded approach to certain concepts. It’s not just me. It’s just I’m the only one prepared to take on the leader and face what did happen, expulsion.

In the end, she finally heard what I said repeatedly: I thought the process was brilliant, except for some of the beliefs. She heard what I had said over and over that I valued the structure. She then asked me not to speak out in class but to speak to her privately if she had any objections or questions. I agreed. Kudos! To this woman. She’s an army brat. People who come from career military families have a tough time with dialogue. She hung in with me for an hour. She didn’t slam down the phone or threaten me. She did much better than most of the therapists I’ve worked with in my life, with less training and experience. I have great admiration for her.

Sunday, January 26, 2025

Yesterday, I mowed the large backyard area. Today, I mowed the strip running parallel to the street. There's not much grass growing now; it's our dry season. Grass, as I remember it from the East Coast, does not exist in my yard. The only blades that grow long are the seed spikes. I never heard of them when I had a full lawn. This lawn looks like a scruffy beard. I mow it because I like mowing, which gives the lawn a neater look.

Fourth-grade MH's parents texted me shortly before 2 pm asking if I could meet with her at 2. At the time, I was on the phone with my friend, Jean, doing our daily water meditation. I got off and worked with her. She continues to have trouble repeating the words as dictated. I don't consider this a problem when students delete a word here and there, but her deletions frequently alter the sentence's meaning. I will make mistakes like that, trusting too much in my ability to correctly glean the meaning of the words with a quick scan. When I write, which I do a lot, I often leave out the word not more frequently than I would like to admit. In me, it's a sign of hurrying; in MH, I'm afraid it's a sign of something else.

In reading about the polyvagal theory, I'm learning more about fear responses. I am familiar with the list. Traditionally, it was just fight and flight. The freeze response to a threat was included in the lists later. Wiki lists research on the response as early as 1975. I don't know when it was included in the list of survival responses. It is described as the response of prey animals. It's a protection when death is inevitable. It also has a positive survival response, like not moving when a hunter searches for you. Movement is a dead giveaway. However, if the freeze response becomes chronic, it can cause anxiety. My best guess is if any of the defensive responses become chronic, it can produce anxiety.

I heard a story about a school bus full of children who were kidnapped for ransom. They were placed in an underground bunker equipped with air and water. The bunker started to collapse. The driver and an older child went to work digging their way out. They freed everyone.

A psychiatrist was interviewed. How many children did he think would be traumatized by the event? He said, "Oh, one or two. The rest should be fine." The only one who had a successful life was the boy who worked with the driver to dig them out. The feeling of helplessness is deadly.

I would say surrender is always deadly. I heard that continued fighting in the face of sure defeat is also deadly. I can imagine. It is literally deadly in the face of malicious captors, or it's a path to madness.

Saturday, January 25, 2025

It was Dean and Nina's day. Elsa and I said, "Yay!" They brought me a dozen eggs. In the last four days, their hens have laid 12 eggs a day. They delivered a dozen to Darby and then Xui on their morning walk. First, I wanted to respond to Dean's comment about Nina last time.

Dean, Nina, and I see the same dentist. When Dean recently had his teeth cleaned, Roxy discovered we were friends. She asked Dean why we were friends. He said I was a good intellectual companion. Then he looked at Nina and said, "Unlike her. " Oh, boy.

The first thing I did was tell Nina that Mike and I never had intellectual conversations. Our mental styles were very different, and so were our ideas of how to conduct a conversation. When I met Mike, his idea of conversation was he talked for thirty-five minutes, and then I got to ask appropriate questions. As far as Mike was concerned when I met him, someone should only speak about subjects they are experts in. I never presented or considered myself an expert on anything; I didn't have a Ph. D. in anything, no less two, as he had. However, I did feel I had the right to express my thoughts on a subject. Someone could disagree with what I had to say and present conflicting ideas or information. I think Mike agreed with that last part. It took me close to twenty years to get Mike to change. I told him the purpose of the conversation was to learn more about the person, not some abstract subject. His response was, "Oh!" he changed after that.

I mowed the large lower lawn, pruned and weeded, and picked up a small bucket of nuts from the Bismark tree, which littered my front yard and left me feeling like I was walking on an unstable platform.

I started reading The Pocket Guide to The Polyvagal Theory. In the traditional view of the autonomic nervous system, it is divided into the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems. The polyvagal theory divides the parasympathetic nerve into the frontal and dorsal vagus nerves. While the sympathetic nervous system triggers fight and flight responses to danger, the dorsal vagus nerve triggers inaction, as in surrender to death and playing dead to escape the attack, and the frontal vagus nerve for positive social interaction.

The book's subtitle is "The Transformative Power of Feeling Safe." Sounds lovely. I find many of the students' problems result from a fear being perceived as unacceptable. As those who read my updates know, I believe feeling safe is rare, sometimes even in our homes, where there is no physical threat, active disapproval, or exaggerated approval. Extremes of approval or disapproval don't correspond to reality. We understand excessive disapproval amounts to gaslighting. In either case, excessive approval or disapproval, someone is trying to convince us not to trust our perceptions of reality. When a parent does that, they are damaging their child's ability to function in the world as it is. We lose our footing in the real world.

When Darby came over at 5:30 to do the evening walk with Elsa and me, she told me the last load of green waste was too much for Patrick. It wasn't the quantity; it was the weight. Those Bismarck fronds are enormous and heavy. Patrick had no idea how I got them into the trash barrel and then rolled it down the street. Answer: I did what women do: I used leverage instead of strength. I braced the trash barrel against the fence. It would have tipped over with the first frond if I hadn't. I have to check with Darby: would Patrick prefer I not pass the Bismarck fronds on to him or just fewer of them in one load?

Friday, January 24, 2025

Yesterday, the contractor installing my neighbor's ten-foot rock wall 'accidentally' dropped a rock while I was working in that area. I was in no physical danger. The rock wall was a good 15 feet away and behind a chain link fence. I believe it was meant to frighten me. I thwarted that man from getting a job worth thousands of dollars. While his product is good, he intimidates people into hiring him. I'm not sure if this is what my neighbor asked for or if this contractor bullied him into getting it. The perpetrator was more successful than he anticipated. I was fresh from dealing with the realization of how much my parents' traumas, particularly my mom's, impacted me. She didn't recover from her traumas and passed it on to me and probably my sister, both epigenetically and through her treatment of us. Also, my sister and I carried the grief from my mother's loss of her dog when she was nine. My mother was sick for two weeks when her father had Lord put down.

I had Hula class today. before I went, I used the chain saw to cut the large branches from the Bismarck palm. Three fell the other day. if I had been under the tree at the time, I would have been injured. I planned to load them in the trash barrel and roll them down to Darby's when I got home.

I did better in the Hula class than I had done before the break, which started right before Thanksgiving. My arm was stronger than I expected. However, I was developing problems with my legs. I wasn't sure if these problems predicted greater mobility down the road or serious issues that would limit my mobility. My left leg started buckling on me. I'm sure it has to do with my efforts to straighten out my spine. We'll see. My leg didn't give me any problems during the Hula class, and my left arm lasted much longer than it had before it gave out.

Afterward, I went to the bank, deposited two checks, and exchanged two hundred dollar bills for fives and tens. When I got home, I thought I would rest. I didn't. Elsa and I went to visit Paulette and get Kangen water refills. I don't know if the water works. Melissa, my doctor friend, doesn't approve of any form of filtered water. She's a big fan of tap water, saying it provides the best supply of minerals.

Paulette and I sit on the open lanai and talk while she throws a stuffed toy mouse to Elsa. It's really so healing to sit comfortably with a friend and chat. Our relationship becomes more and more delightful. I felt great afterward.

The Grief Workshop brought difficult feelings to the surface. That feels risky. When they come up, I fear they will dominate me. However, I find they're easily dissolved by a positive moment. It's easy for me to be distracted from them and enjoy what is before me.

I have always believed that the only way to deal with a problem is to face it head-on. I have been in therapy most of my adult life, which doesn't mean I always have the courage to do it. Unfortunately, most of the therapists I worked with did damage. I don't know if there were any good ones out there or if I just found those who didn't know how to relate to me. Most of them laid trips on me. While they added to my burden, I managed to get something out of each situation. Perhaps I just got to act out my repetition compulsion. They certainly reminded me of my mother, who never had anything positive to say about me. However, my mother, while tragically misguided, really adored me. The therapists didn't- not that they should have. In interacting with them, I could limit the time I spent acting out with the people in my life who counted.

I tried to load the three huge Bismarck fronds that fell the other day. The wind made it impossible. The fronds were over three feet long and across. I decided to wait for a calmer day.

I spoke to Yvette yesterday about the ten-foot rock wall my neighbor put up. It's an unusually high wall. At its lowest point, it's about four feet, and at its highest ten. While I think it's weird, Yvette is grateful for it. It blocks her view of the room the neighbor built in the middle of his yard. I noticed it the other day. My neighbor left the lights on at night. Yvette said the light was visible in their bedroom before the wall went up. Typically, Yvette and Josh see no artificial light from their bedroom at night. I can see a few distant yellow streetlamps from my bedroom. I consider them my nightlights. They don't bother me when I sleep. My blanket blocks the view.

When people make an effort to define love, several definitions come up. there is the behavior of love: commitment, obligation, duty, and sacrifice. These are valuable traits to have in a relationship, but they don't include the pleasure and joy of being in that person's company. What makes for that? The dictionary defines love as intense feelings of deep affection.

I'm viewing it from a neurological point of view. We feel connected and joyful when our brains synchronize in harmony. That's what heaven is about. Pictures depict angels playing harps. Music is the metaphor for harmony. The harmony I am referring to is in the brain. It doesn't require music. It can respond to speech, movement, or a common understanding.

Neuroscience shows how the brain activity of a group of unrelated people will synchronize when watching the same presenter or movie, particularly if they respond to the presentation in the same way. That lovely mutual humming feeling is incredible.

But that resonance can happen at any frequency. I suppose we all have our preferences. Harmony, like oxytocin, is not always peaceful. While a mother and child can generate oxytocin, so can a marauding band out the kill. Perhaps we should say there are limits to the frequency. Hm! I can think of an exception even to that. people bonded in military combat develop that closeness, that deep affection which is present even when they're not engaged in an effort to kill others.

Thursday, January 23, 2025

I worked in the lower garden, watering the 42 shrubs and blowing the green waste on the driveway from when I trimmed the plumbago. I blew as much as I could between the branches. It will break down and serve as fertilizer.

My neighbor had hired a team to replace a rock wall that was right up against a chain link fence that bordered my property. My neighbor's property is five feet higher than mine at the lower end. A rock wall had been built there when the houses in this development were built. They hadn't been cemented into place. The rocks were tumbling, held in place by the chain link fence. I expected my neighbor to replace the old rocks and build the rock wall to the level of his property or the level with the top of the chain link fence. Yesterday, I discovered he was building that rock wall ten feet high at the bottom point. My neighbor's property must have been filled in to make it level from front to back. My property was leveled out at the top. The rest is the original slope created by the lava flow. My neighbor's undeveloped property was never modified one way or another. Where it abuts my property, a 10-foot rock wall holds the soil in place.

The contractor building the wall on my neighbor's property did other work for him. He is an aggressive salesman, close to a con man who bullies people into buying his services. My neighbor's rock wall could cost in the neighborhood of $75,000. Building a rock wall over 6 feet without a special permit is illegal. My neighbor does a lot of work on his property without a permit. Some of it will be grandfathered in when the crack-down comes. Most homes will be dismantled if the county office decides that all unpermitted work must be taken down. The country made getting a permit a long, complicated, expensive process. People avoided it. Mike and I had work done that we never permitted.

My neighbors are immigrants. They're here legally, but all immigrants are concerned now. I heard Trump was planning to include children born in the USA to immigrants for deportation. Then I heard it was only the children of illegal immigrants. But hey, we're halfway there; why not go further. I'm reminded of "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson. The message: if you live in a world where it's okay to do bad things to others, never assume you won't be next.

Darby thought my neighbors might have had this massive, expensive rock wall built to enhance their chances of getting green cards. If you provide employment for others or spend enough money, your chances are better. I don't know all the details, but it is a challenging course. I know the story of my parents' naturalization. They applied as soon as they could. My mom arrived here a year and a half after my dad did, and she got her citizenship before he did. When he applied, the waiting period was five years. When she applied, it had changed; it was only three. A quick check on the Internet showed that the US government first issued Permanent Resident cards in 1978. These cards later became known as Green Cards. My parents arrived in the US in the 1930s. They would never have been issued those cards. It's a scary time for all immigrants these days.

I only had 4th grade GV today. Our last session focused on GV's irritation with his five-year-old brother. I recommended he initiate a positive activity with him. He had. His brother spurned him. GV was devastated. I asked if he did this with anyone else. No, just him. This was hard for me since I had a similar experience with my younger sister as an adult.

My family has a pattern of younger siblings rejecting the old one. I didn't resent her at her birth. My problem had been with my parents before she was born. I hoped she would be a solution to the problem. She wasn't. The realization that my situation would never improve was hard. But I didn't blame her. In my husband's case, he resented his sister when she was born. Since Mike's defense was arrogance, ( I called him an equal opportunity arrogator.), there was a long term impact on his sister. In my sister's case, she had to deal with my hysteria and willingness to take on our mom. It didn't make for a peaceful home life. Both our sisters disliked us. Then, it went on to the next generation. My sister-in-law's younger daughter is angry at her older sister for a slew of things. I'm not saying Mike and I didn't add to the bad family situation, but we weren't the cause of it.

But back to GV's problem. Younger siblings would usually give their eye teeth to have the older sibling's attention. Older siblings often blow off the younger ones as an annoying pest. While GV experiences his younger brother that way, he is also sensitive to his baby brother's rejection of him. I think GV is a delight, but does he have friends his own age? Does he have a crew to hang with that confirms his value? I'm almost afraid to ask. What if he's more comfortable with adults than children his age? I'm concerned about how to handle it. His mom says it's just brother issues, but it doesn't have to be that way. I watch children down the street with a large age gap, six years, and the older brother does play with his younger brother. There's a severely handicapped brother of seven in the mix. Even that brother gets attention from his siblings. I imagine this situation is an unusual one.

When Joseph, my tenant, got home from work, I told him I heard he was a good teacher. He teaches the religious education class for the 5th graders on Sundays after Mass. I can imagine he's a good teacher. He's interested in ideas and loves to learn from others. Being questioned and asking questions isn't seen as a challenge to his point of view but as an opportunity to expand his understanding of the topic. He's one of the few people I've ever met who feels this way. Mike didn't even operate this way. He wasn't intimidated by a question that challenged his thinking, but he didn't welcome it either.