Mowgli's 43rd birthday. I slept well. When the alarm went off, I just wanted to roll over and go back to sleep. I did hit snooze. I wasn't looking forward to going to Bikram. That's new. I put on a polo shirt and sweatshirt as I do every morning, anticipating coolness. I was shocked to find I didn't need the sweatshirt. It was unusually warm, especially for winter. When I left for Bikram and 7 am, the thermometer in my car read 79. Not good. This is a warm winter. Climate change? Will Hawaii some become unbearable? Well, maybe I won't be around to find out. That's the lovely thing about being old.
I did Bikram lying down, partially because I'm still concerned about triggering my back and partially because I still have so much to learn using the floor for resistance. While my back is not bothering me, the right side of my neck and head is. I'm hoping this is a sign that whatever tension is being released by my postural changes is moving upward and out.
I left for school around 12, arriving at 12:30. I worked with D in Mrs. B's class first. Again, we reviewed cross-body blending. Again, he started with his left hand rather than his right, touching his right shoulder first. Oy vey! I worked on training him to ask the question, "Which hand do I use to write?" before he starts. He answered the question but didn't immediately understand that I wanted him to ask himself that question. That took a little work. Interestingly, he changed the question to, "Which hand do I draw with?" That explains a lot of things.
I also worked with him on his handwriting. His letters are fairly well-formed, if somewhat peculiar in appearance. The apparent problem was his hand grip and, more importantly, his use of his fingers to drive the pencil's movement rather than his large back muscles. I thought of an analogy: the fingers are the steering wheel, but the back muscles are the gas pedal, moving the arm up and down and back and forth.
Then I worked with K. I am going to have to work with her last. She exhausts me with her antics. No, she's not funny; she's obstructive. I discussed the final -e in love. I pointed out that whenever you have a single e at the end of a word with more than three letters, you can count on it to be silent. She insisted that she pronounced it. I pronounced that final e in love using the sound she said it made. "I lo-v-e my mother" "Is that how you say it?" now there are kids who have problems with this concept, but not her. She must be reading at grade level already, at least when it comes to word recognition. Who knows what problems she has. She spends so much time playing mind games with me, I have no idea what she still needs. Do I recognize that this behavior is more her problem than mine? Yes. Do I enjoy dealing with it? No.
Next, I went to Mrs. D's room. I worked with B. He continued to have problems with spelling and reading. I dictated from a second-grade book to him. I told him I wasn't expecting him to spell words correctly, but I wanted to see each sound in the word represented and in the correct order in his writing. Lo and behold, he loved this activity. It also became clear that he has some serious visual recall problems. He spelled of {ewf}. Interesting. I asked him if he wanted to work on his visual recall. He said no. It took me a minute to get him to tell me why. He was enjoying the dictating activity too much. Okay. Next time, we'll do both.
Friday afternoon is fun time. I wasn't going to be able to get N to work with me. I was too tired to work with R. I proposed I go home and hang up my laundry. If I wanted to have the energy to work with all the kids, I needed to work with K last.
On the other hand, I was feeling somewhat blah. I think finding that picture of Mike and me laughing together has thrown me for a loop. God, I miss him. I'm in withdrawal from love and laughter, but my life is not a misery. Writing this blog definitely helps me a lot. I'm not quite sure why it has that function, but it does. Thank God for small favors.
When I got home, I hung up the laundry and continued working on cleaning out my bathroom drawers. Mike was a hoarder; anything that came into the house found a place out of sight, usually with other items of the same nature. The floor in the bathroom was getting dirty. I didn’t want to wash it because then I would have to move the free-standing towel rack Mike moved after his death to remind me that he was watching out for me and that he loved me.
I tried to do some reading. I lay down on my love seat/anti-gravity chair to nap. It is not comfortable for me now with my neck tension. I went to bed. When I woke up, my first thought was that it was morning. Then I thought I didn't do the exercises the PT gave me to do yesterday.
I got up, washed the dishes from last night and this morning. Elsa and I went for our walk. I stopped off at Darby's and showed her how to do MELT for her hands. She tried it once. Because of her fantastic visual-spatial memory, I suspect she will remember the pattern easily. She said it helped her hand immediately. I wasn't able to leave a ball with her. My stash of balls is in the room where the kids are staying. They have all their possessions in there, and I can't get into the cabinet where I store the balls. When they come home, I'll ask them to move the boxes in front of the cabinet.
I prepared Elsa's dinner. I did buy Dr. Marty's raw, freeze-dried dog food, which Judy's introduced her to, and she will never be the same as a result. I'm supposed to give her a quarter of a cup of Dr. Marty's twice a day. But this Dr. Marty's cost four times what the dog food I am currently using, which is prescription dog food for sensitive skin, which already costs more than regular dog food. I mix in about an eighth of a cup of dr. Marty's, and a quarter of a cup of the prescription dog food. As recommended by Dr. Marty, I put in hot water, let it sit for a few minutes, stir and serve. Elsa scarfs it up. It's a whole new world for her. While the food was soaking, I did my PT exercises.
I made my dinner. Even I am getting fed up with my food choices. However, my hunger is so quickly satisfied that I don't think it makes too much difference in what I eat. I read more of The Master and his Emissary over dinner. Reading this book helps me to understand how my mind works. I also think it will help me silence the verbal noise. It detailed which part of the brain makes the noise and which part of the brain is best suited for silencing it.
After dinner, I wrote the above. I no longer go into the library. This is going to have to change because I still have all those books to get rid of. I am also going to have to repack one of the boxes of books. There is no place without writing on it where I can write the address.
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