During Bikram, I worked on opening the hip' bowl.' It actually makes my leg feel better. For the first time in at least a year, I sat in the Japanese sitting posture to stretch out the top of my thighs. This is not to say that I can do this posture without supporting myself with my arms to keep my rear end from touching my legs. If I pushed for that, I would probably injure myself. On the first try, I noticed that the left knee was a few inches shorter than the right knee. A moment of concern; does this mean that my left thigh bone is really shorter than the right? If so, the only solution is THR. The second time I struck that position, they were even. I think I had to adjust my hips. We'll see as things progress.
After Bikram, I went to Safeway to pick up a salad package, dried cranberries, a multi-grain baguette, and, God bless Safeway, 11 Hersey's Milk Chocolate Bars with whole almonds which were on sale with a Safeway card. I have one of those.
When I got home, I saw the gardener at work, doing more weeding, and starting the trimming. They did some weeding 3 weeks ago, but this is the first trimming since Mike collapsed at the end of January. We missed February, March, April, and most of May. It was just too hard to call them and go on with the routines of life without Mike. Mike had been yelling at me to get a grip and call them. He was invested in having the property looking decent.
I checked my email first thing when I got home. I checked before I left this morning, but found no answer from Deborah from Raymond James, not even an I' m-out-of-the-office automatic reply. I had visions that Princeton had been bombed. I think the world news is weighing on me.
I called and got someone else to be told that she was out, but Geoff said he didn't know when she would be back. She either had an emergency. I'll find out eventually, but not today. Geoff was able to help me. I needed the bank's full address where Raymond James has my checking account because I had to provide information for a change in the direct deposit for the state of New Jersey Benefits and Pension Fund. He asked me if the information wasn't on the check. Yes, but not the street address, just the bank name, city, and state, not even the zip code. He had to search to find it. He emailed me the information. I finally was able to get that document out for processing.
I sat down to do some work on the blog when there was a knock on the door; my butlerrette, Elsa, announced a guest. It was my tutoring student. I was expecting her at 2pm, not 11am. I hadn't showered yet. I wanted to do some gardening before I cleaned myself only to get dirty again. I asked her if she wanted to get it over now or come back later. She chose later, but when she went out to the street, her grandmother had already driven away. We continued working on math. She is remembering most things except the procedure for double-digit by multi-digit multiplication. She even has a trick for reminding herself to remember it, but it doesn't always work. When she did one problem incorrectly, I used her reminder trick to cue her. It worked.
This girl has missed a lot of school, but she is a remarkable student. She has a decent intelligence, but moreover, she has excellent study skills. She always reads the directions. Given my experience with other students, it always blows my mind when she does this. She will also look up information from a previous page when she needs to instead of just sitting there, helplessly, saying, "I don't know." As I said before, she developed cueing strategies for herself that help her to remember.
Many years ago, my sister-in-law was a principal of a small private school. I remember her being excited about a math program that was based on real-life situations that students might typically find themselves in. I assume this helped them primarily with word problems. I haven't heard too much about it subsequently; in fact, I haven't heard anything about it. I guess that it wasn't as successful as people had hoped. I think I know why. The word problems in math books use large numbers and situations the students are not familiar with. The question is, how do you get lateral transfer of knowledge. How do you get students to apply the math they seem to know in life situations to math word problems? Well, I know what I do. I rewrite the question. I do it well enough now that all I have to do is reduce the numbers so I can figure the problem out in my head. With students who have trouble, I rewrite the problem, including their names and the names of their friends as well as reduced numbers. I am teaching them a strategy for using their real-life math experiences to solve complex math problems. I am teaching them to use the familiar to understand the unfamiliar. I use that strategy to this day when the solution to the problem isn't immediately obvious to me.
After she left, I called Rick at Raymond James. I needed his advice on how to deal with a little problem with the will. Mike wrote in the will that he wants the money from his life insurance to be bequeathed to August, his grandson. However, he made me the beneficiary of that life insurance policy, and I didn't remember him assigning it to August in the will. As it stands now, August would only be entitled to that money upon my death, which, with any luck, will be long after he is through with college, but who knows. I figure that if he has to wait that long, the money will be enough to pay for a college application fee for one of his children due to inflation.
Mike wanted the money put in trust for him. He would be entitled to do with the money as he wished at 25. Damon didn't like the idea. He said he didn't want him using the money to pay for video games. I told him that I would trust him to respect Mike's wishes more than I would trust him. Cylin was on the phone too; she laughed when I said that because she knew what I was thinking of. Our boy, Damon, is somewhat of a control freak. He would override Mike's wishes with his 'better thinking.'
As far as I'm concerned, I will do whatever it takes to honor Mike's expressed wishes. I loved making him happy. Fulfilling his wishes now makes me happy. It leaves me feeling contacted and working with him as I did in life. I told Damon about the bequeath on Sunday. He was excited because it means that he and Cylin will have help paying for August's college. Mike would definitely have wanted that. I want that. We're talking about different ways of accomplishing it without creating tax burdens for him or for me. I think Damon is going to have to work with his accountant to find out the possibilities.
Then I sat down and worked on the blog. I took a break to call the UCSF Medical Center to see if it was worthwhile returning an unused testing kit for a possible kidney donor. We have one. The guy on the line said it was okay not to bother, but I hate, hate, to throw things away that can be used by someone. This was a big difference between Mike and me. When we moved from Ohio to Hawaii, we had to get rid of a lot of stuff we wouldn't have a place to store; no basement or useful attic. Mike's solution was to get a dumpster. My answer was to sell what we could and give the rest to charities. I worked hard, and most of our possessions found a happy home. I will be mailing the kit to UCSF Medical Center. Hopefully, I'm not creating more waste with the mailing envelope then I would have if I hadn't mailed it.
Around 12:30, Cherry of T-Mobile called. I had received some documents from a company called Assurant, which provided coverage in case of damage or loss of my cell phone. I had found the paperwork a while ago but hadn't wanted to deal with it. Yesterday, I finally called. Mike's phone insurance had been canceled, but mine was still good. I thought, why not ask about the phone I broke when I dropped it in the hospital during Mike's 5-week stay. The number I reached was T-Mobile, and then Cherry connected me to Assurant. The woman at Assurant was rushed, and we had trouble getting on the same page. We tried three password options and had to give up. I promised Cherry I would try again tomorrow. She promised she would call me. I had planned to do it before 12, but then the student arrived unexpectedly at 11 and forced a change in my schedule.
Cherry connected me to Assurant. They still didn't recognize the first password I gave them. I tried the last 4-digits of Mike's social security number; bingo. I figured the date of breakage around February 22. They told me I only had ninety days to report the damage or loss, and my phone no longer qualified for the insurance coverage. Okay. Cherry called me back to see how it went. I explained the situation, not expecting anything. She went off to speak to her supervisor and returned to me to say that they would replace my phone. Wow! There were no more SE5s available, so they were going to have to send me an Apple 7. She said it's an upgrade, but I remember there were problems with some of the later phones. Either way, the care this T-Mobile customer service representative gave me was off the charts. It felt good to be so cared for even if I wind up with a phone that's harder for me to use.
I listened to Terry Gross on Fresh Air interview a doctor on elder care. As we already know, there has very little research done on the old. They have recently discovered that all those baby aspirins people were taking to prevent stroke can have adverse effects on the kidneys, mainly if someone is vulnerable and particularly if someone is on certain blood pressure medications. Oh, boy. Mike, Mike. It hurts so much to think that some of your illnesses could have been caused by all the medicines you were on. Me, I have been on 5 mg. of Lexapro for years, the lowest possible dosage, and high blood pressure medication while I was in the hospital with Mike for five weeks. In contrast, Mike was on the highest possible dosage of Lexapro; no, he was on a dosage higher than the highest recommended level. Also, he was on baby aspirins for years and years and years and years. I hate to think this was all preventable. I also accept that it was his choice of how to deal with life's challenges. He was very AMA. Me, I am very skeptical. Of course, my way of dealing with things can backfire too. I am resolved to think of it like gambling on a horse race; you place your bet and deal with the consequences of our choice. There is no horse called 'Forsure' in the race.
I called my friend Carol Greff in Ohio. She has been suffering from her own ailments. She told me that she is finally on a medication that is making her feel better. She is a real trouper. We became friends the first year I taught at Licking Heights. I was teaching in the combined middle school and high school. Fortunately, I offended some teacher, and she went after me. Since she was falsely accusing me of something, it was resolved that it was a personality conflict, and I was moved to another school. As it worked out, I was much happier working in the lower grades. I like working on the basics. When I have to deal with students who don't know those basics, having to help them complete their high school assignments is my vision of hell. The best part about that year in the middle school/high school was this friendship with Carol.
Yvette came up after I had finished dinner and was watching TV and cataloging books. She reshelved one shelf and emptied another high shelf of their books for me to catalog.
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