The day was devoted to getting ready for Sandor's visit to publicly publish the blog beyond my email distribution. I started with Bikram. Thank God for Bikram. While I feel exhausted afterward, I always feel better. At the end of class, I pass out, well, fall asleep. I get so relaxed, it's hard to move when class is over.
I discovered a problem with the blog file I had set up. I have been working on editing the original entries in the update file. I read them, run them through Grammarly, run them through Microsoft's spelling and grammar check, and then add the entries to the public blog.
I discovered that I had a problem with the update file. There were repeat entries, and one was out of order. Figuring out how to determine which of the entries I would delete without deleting everything was crazy-making. I finally figure out a system for deciding what and where the duplicates were. I wrote down the entry dates and the page numbers. Rereading this, it sounds like it should have been easy. Maybe easy for someone else, but it wasn't for me.
Once I had straightened out that mess, I continued editing the early entries. I'm impressed by how much I wrote those first five weeks. The summary was: Mike was sick and in a hospital. He got sicker, and he died. I turned that into a 150-page document. I do love words.
I took a nap at some point. I have been upset by some unfortunate interactions with others. (I do not describe problems I have with others with respect for their privacy.) I find I am vulnerable in a way I wasn't before Mike died. Is it because he's not here to comfort me? I do find that when I ask him to send me love and comfort, I can feel it spreading across my chest like melting butter. It warms and soothes me.
I did rush off to school for a while, even though I had been working on getting as much done as I could on the blog before Sandor arrived. I was concerned about working with D. in Mrs. D.'s room. His problem is behavior. Mrs. D. reported that his behavior changed suddenly just before Christmas. I approached him yesterday to ask him if he was disturbed by his behavior and wanted my help. He said yes, and we talked about how it felt to behave in disruptive ways and how it felt to behave appropriately. He had mixed feelings. I assured him that wasn't unusual. We are all of two minds, at least. He told me that while he behaves this way at school, he doesn't behave this way at home.
When I spoke to Mrs. D. after school, she told me what she had observed about his parents' behavior. It's just as bad. He was hitting his brother. His parents told him to stop repeatedly. He ignored them. Mrs. D. told the parents that they had to set up consequences. The parents said they didn't want to do that because they didn't want him to make him feel bad about himself. Mrs. D. said they were threatening to deny him Christmas presents and then didn't follow through.
Ah, these parents mean the best for their child. Maybe they had parents who punished them, so they have swung to the other extreme, and they are committed to never treating their children that way. They are determining what is best for their child based on their own experiences. However, they are not looking at the child in front of them. It's tough being a parent.
When I met with D. today, I told him a story about a child who was allowed to do anything he wanted to, to hurt others, be rude, etc., and no one stopped him. D. said, "He felt like a ghost." I had thought invisible but had not spoken the word; ghost was his word. He also got the point that this 'story' was about him.
While his parents loved him and only wanted what they thought was best for him, I told him he couldn't count on his parents to set limits. He was going to have to deal with this situation himself. He's proposed that his parents punish him in various ways: deny him access to electronics, not give him Christmas presents. I told him those choices were not an option. Then he proposed that he make 'good choices,' which is the mantra the teachers and counselors in school teach.
I believe that if someone is willing to change, dealing with the wound is vital. I told D. we had to figure out how to help him, so he no longer felt like a ghost. I pointed out that everyone counted. Everyone made the world a better or a worse place, minute by minute. I asked him if he knew the difference when a student in his class was absent. See, each person makes a difference just by being there. We stopped around there. He's a bright child with a capacity for deep thought. This is going to be interesting. I don't think you can expect a nine year-old-child to make a 1800 turn overnight, but I have seen it. I always tell kids to think about who they will be when they're thirsty. Is this the person they want to be? With D., I also pointed out that if he continued on the path he was on now, he would be in deep trouble when he got to middle school.
While I sound like Saint Betty (Mike liked to call me that) in my dealings with this child, I don't have to deal with his behavior in class. I have a relative who drives me right around the bend, who has treated me and Mike badly. I can imagine that her problems drive her behavior, but I don't believe that I owe it to her to subject myself to that behavior. I have nothing, and I do mean nothing, to do with her. I feel sympathy with Mrs. D., who has to deal with the impact D. has on her classroom.
After that, I went to work with D. in Mrs. B's class. I didn't have a chance to work with him yesterday. Again, his reading of familiar words was fluent, but the moment he hit a longer word or an unfamiliar word, he 'guessed.' Let's say, his choices didn't have much to do with what was on the page. They never matched the letters, and they often didn't make sense in the text.
I was worn out. I told him he was driving me crazy with his habit of making these wild guesses on words that he must know he doesn't know. D. is a really good kid. He apologized. I asked him if where he got the information from on these words he missed. He told me it was from his brain's right side, the correct ones he got from the left side. I told him he had to discipline himself to recognize when he doesn't know a word, stop, and practice the decoding.
He was a little better. It may be that my losing my patience will pay off. I didn't attack him and tell him he was lazy; I just told him I couldn't stand what he was doing. We'll see. Was the impact of my behavior helpful or hurtful?
I rushed home after working with only the two kids because I was expecting Sandor. He was running late because he had a client he had to deal with at work. He texted me regularly to let me know that he was running late and when he left work.
When he arrived, bringing a scanner I asked him to bring, he discovered that he had forgotten the computer he needed to run it. It had the program he needed to operate that scanner and had the information on the blog on it. It was good to see him regardless. He is a loving man, and I enjoy his company and his interest and concern for me. We also could get some things done. He took the pictures of my mom as a child and a younger woman home to scan. I was also able to load up two boxes of written materials that Mike had collected. Some of the documents were Xeroxed copies of articles; some were copies of papers from his students at the seminary and men in the distance learning program for deacons. Also, there was a copy of another book he had written and his study notes for Latin and Greek from 1994 when he was preparing for his language exams for Catholic University. That man saved everything. Sandor said he wanted all of it. He said he'd sort it out and get rid of what he didn't need himself.
Since my house looked like a furniture store, I discussed the work I was doing to get acoustical soundproofing for Yvette. As it wound up, he had the same problem in his home. He wanted to soundproof the downstairs ohana so it could be rented. He gave me new information. He said he installed the same acoustical mat that I had and found it didn't make a great deal of a difference. He told me that he was in touch with a company that does acoustical insulation for expensive condos. There is this costly process with pretty much guarantees as much quiet as possible. I need to get their number from Sandor so I can talk to the company.
When Sandor saw my antique linens lying around and some of the stains, he said he had a fantastic solution for those stains. He had been visiting a relative who was changing her baby's diaper. There was some stain. She pulled out this spray bottle, sprayed, and the stain was gone, gone, gone. He asked what it was and went out and bought it. He said it's amazing. He has used it on stains on his clothes that he has treated over and over to no avail. He said he would bring me a bottle when he came back.
Sandor loaded up the two heavy boxes into his truck and took off. He had to go home, eat dinner, and get ready for his Bible study class tonight. While he was here, I called Judy, who had been driven over to Hilo to have her kidney stone treated. They were unwilling to blast it because there was so much inflammation in the area. They put in a stent instead. She said she wouldn't be attending his class that night. She said it wasn't because of the pain; she was recovering from all the drugs she had been taking to deal with the pain of the kidney stone. I have heard that stents can be painful. It's nothing compared to what she's been suffering from the stone.
When Elsa and I got back from our walk, Yvette had already come home. She was making dinner for us. Some sort of commercially made patty with meat, cheese and kale and a barley vegetable soup. It was all good. It's nice that we can do this every once in a while. Yvette is good about taking care of me when I need help and making a point of spending some time with me.
I had gotten an email announcing a new season of Grace and Frankie. 'When I got the site, I couldn't remember if I had seen the previous seasons. I started watching the season before the last one. I think I have seen it, but I don't remember much about it other than that she will be married to Nick in the season's final episode. It's still relaxing and distracting.
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