I was up at 6. I changed my iPhone alarm to the Early Riser sound from something more raucous. I heard something on the radio that it is better to wake up to music than a shrill sound. Of course, these days, I’m up before the alarm goes off because the sun is already up. I walked Elsa, did my oil rinse. I actually did have a few dishes to wash even though I had dinner out last night. I made my Juice Plus smoothie, had my two cups of water, and made some notes for a blog entry.
After the Bikram class, I rinsed off and got dressed in the clothes I brought to class and went to Costco to get my 4 new tires. The car service area opens early. I got here before the store itself opened. As early as I got there, there still was one person before me. It took at least 5 minutes before I got served, and the clerk was helping the previous customer before I entered. By the time the clerk waited on me, there were 4 more people in line. In my experience, each encounter with the clerk takes 10 to 15 minutes, and I had already paid for my tires. That meant that the fourth person who came in after me would have to wait forty minutes to an hour before he even got to speak to the clerk.
I got a cone to put on top of my car, #1. They told me I should expect it to take 2 ½ hours. They would call me when the car was finished. I had brought my computer and planned to sit in the food area and type away. I did. I had to take a break because I had to go to the bathroom so badly. When I came out of the store, I got a phone call telling me that the car was ready. I didn’t note the exact time, but it was something like 11. It took an hour at most. But I got some work done.
Before I got my car, I went back inside the store to do some shopping. I bought salad. Orgain, a non-soy all veggie health drink mix, that was on sale. I use that with my Juice Plus, which is soy-based. I bought the maximum number, 6, and saved $30.
When I got home, I started cleaning out another cabinet. Yikes! I found half a dozen small cans of tomato sauce that had black gunk oozing out. I keep wondering how Mike felt about having some much more than he needed. Was this a gift he gave himself, the luxury of excess because, in his memory, his parents fought about money none stop? His father was an architect who worked for the state. He didn’t make a fantastic amount of money. His wife, Mike’s mother, tried to push him to earn more money. Or, did Mike feel about all the excess as I did? Did every unused item accuse him?
I put everything in the pantry that was unopened and unexpired into shopping bags to drop off at the church the next day. At the back of the second shelf of a cabinet, I found a container of chocolate or coffee that had been successfully penetrated by some creatures that left the shelf littered with something brown. I couldn’t reach the shelves to clean them. The cabinet is an awkward place. It was good for Mike, but I have to climb up on the counter to reach into it. I’m both too short and no longer agile enough to trust myself to get into that precarious position.
My student did wonderful work today. I have no idea why there was that angry period for me, but it’s over – that’s all I care about. The teacher had told me that she was reading on the first-grade level. I prepared material that is on a first-grade level as well as the fifth-grade text I’ve been working with. While her word recognition skills are not good enough on the fifth-grade level, they provide opportunities to decode longer words, and exposure to higher-level sentence structures and vocabulary. I find she is still missing -ar family even though we have covered it repeatedly. I always start from scratch. It is almost as if she has never seen it before. I must ask if she even remembers that we talked about already. Not that she should remember, I just want to know what I’m working with. Also, her teacher says she doesn’t know her division facts so she can successfully work on the division of fractions.
I walked Elsa. When I got home, I finally vacuumed the love seat sofa. I do for self-protection. I always get up from my nap with a new welt. I think spiders are living in it – small ones. Vacuuming seems to help. I also took the opportunity to clean the space between the ceilings and the walls where spider webs collect. Dorothy taught me to look up and see. I washed the rug in front of the love seat sofa by dumping water on it and vacuuming it up with that wonderful furniture attachment on my Rainbow vacuum cleaner.
I did more work on the blog before I ate dinner. Then I watched TV and cataloged more books. I walked Elsa, washed my face, brushed my teeth, and went to bed. Good night, Elsa, Goodnight, Mike.
