I ignored the alarm at 5:30 and got up at 6. Elsa showed reluctance to go out at this time too. If she is really uncomfortable with a two-mile walk or walking altogether, I don't want to force her. I got the harness on her and went out. First, I tried to call my friend Jean in Arizona. This is the second day I haven't gotten an answer. I asked her to text me to tell me what was going on. She said she was tired from the chemo and not up to a telephone conversation. Then I called my hanai sister, Jean, in Princeton. She said I always call her in the middle of her workday. She feels she has to keep going and get everything done before she's too pooped.
At home, I fed Elsa and mediated after I called Ford Motors and left a message for them to call me back; I wanted some information on what cars they have for sale. I just wanted to check it out. Besides the price, yikes! I don't like the color of the car at Kia. I see it as black, but the dealer assures me it is a dark, dark, dark blue, called Gravity Blue. It occurred to me that if I wind up being very unhappy with the color, I can have the car repainted. One of my concerns about color is, does it trap heat? Cars get hot enough here with the sun beating down on them.
I still have to check what the features are on the cheaper car versus the more expensive one. If the safety features are only on the more expensive one, that's the one I want, particularly as I get older and more dimwitted.
I went out to pull the blister mite-infected leaves off the hibiscus. I had B. pull out the nearby shrub, which was badly infected, by attaching one end of a rope to it and the other end to his truck. The gardeners will take the uprooted plant to green waste. Yesterday, I cut the infected leaves off this plant. I don't want those going into the green waste because I'm afraid they will infect other plants. I put them in a garbage bag and will have them go out with the trash on Wednesday.
When I got inside, I found Elsa had pooped on the wee-wee pad I had laid down in the shower the other. Fantastic! The pad had been sitting on my shower floor for a week. The first day I put it down, I followed her out the shower door into the yard and caught her pee on the pad. She's been walking over it to get out the back door since then, ignoring it. Apparently, she knew what it was for.
I had a Zoom tutoring session at 10:30. I made several phone calls. I called the vet to schedule an appointment for Elsa's dental treatment. It will be sometime in August. They are only doing that service on Thursdays for the time being unless it's an emergency. Next, I called Sears. Yes, my maintenance check-up was due, had been in April. I got appointments in July. I called the dentist to make an appointment. They've been up and running for a while but didn't let me know. I had a cleaning appointment just after the shutdown starter, which was canceled.
D., my tutoring student, did well remembering his multiplication facts and the before and after exercise. If he does as well on Thursday, I will start making modifications. I will add one or two multiplication facts and change the before/after exercise with the alphabet. He will still see them written out; he won't have to recall the letters from memory.
His reading comprehension continues to be excellent, but his word recognition was not as good as it was last week. He read cars as carts, etc. I attribute it to his being tired. I have been told that his mother allows him to play Fortnite forever and ever. That would make me brain dead.
He encountered a problem with the word hard. Once he had identified the vowel, I put consonants before it—bar, car. I asked him to picture the c-a-r word in his head, just picturing the letters. He said he could see the word, but not he didn't recognize it. Then I wrote the word on a piece of paper and held it up to the camera. No problem. Why was he able to recognize it when he saw it on paper and not when he saw it in his mind? Another problem to be solved.
After I was finished there, I headed out to the Ford Dealership to see what they had to offer me. The salesman was a complete joy to work with. I got more information from him than I had been getting from the other dealers. He didn't have a car for me. There were no plug-ins/hybrids on the island, and the Oahu dealership would not ship one. They checked. I think I would have gotten a better deal with Ford than I did with Kia. From what I could tell, the 2020 Fusion features are the same as the 2019 Kia Niro, and it was cheaper, but it wouldn't be available for six months. The Fusion was rated 8 out of 10, the Niro a 7-8 out of 10.
Not only was the Ford salesman a delight to work with, but it was also clear that the relationship between the general manager and his salesmen was good too. I turned around as I walked out to tell the salesman that I wanted to praise him to his boss. He said his boss had heard every word I said. The boss called from his office, confirming it. He appreciated his salesman's good work. He supported his interest in being a caring person, interested in helping people instead of just getting the best deal for the company.
There was a funny, awkward moment at Ford. I asked him how many Kilowatt-hours the Niro battery needed to fully charge the battery. He told me it took 24 kwh. I calculated 24 X .40=$9.60. Since the electric battery delivers 26 miles. That would have meant that every trip to town would have cost me $9.60. Wow! Then he realized he was giving me the kwh for charging the Niro EV, which is an all-electric and runs 250 miles on one charge. That's quite a difference.
After I left Ford, I drove right down to the Kia dealership to do the deed. I bought the car. I didn't feel great about it, but the deed was done. I thought I didn't have a choice. I needed a car, and it was the only plug-in hybrid on the island. I drove my Prius home while the salespeople from Kia drove the new car to my house. The Prius drove well until that last stretch on the Queen K. Going up Kaiminani, I had to drive on the shoulder and let cars pass me; I was doing 9 mph. Whatever, I made it.
Sometimes during the evening, I stomped on a good-sized roach in the kitchen. I figured I'd sweep in out in the morning. When I came back later, it was surrounded by ants. I love watching these babies do a cleanup job. I discovered where their nest was by watching them run back and forth. It's under my frig. I have a tiled floor. These ants went back and forth on the grout, not the tile. There were two columns. One set of ants went across a tile on the diagonal to get to their section of the grout. Amazing.
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