My leg hurts in ways orthopedic surgeons anticipated. No, I am not ready to give up. Let's see what happens as I progress further. This discomfort, too, may pass. I 'limped' as I walked today. At least, it felt like I was limping. I dropped my weight onto my left leg instead of controlling it. This allows my left foot to relax even more. When I came home, I observed my walk in the picture window. Guess what? I didn't look like I was limping. Go figure. I will continue with this modification and see what happens. No, my left leg did not hurt more as I dropped my weight on it. I hear that people' baby' the leg that hurts. I do the opposite. I put as much weight on it as I can stand. That has helped me. I don't recommend that someone who doesn't know how to be moderate try something like this without guidance.
I downloaded the pedometer app on my phone and compared the number of accumulated steps with the count on my pedometer. They're never the same. If I have the phone in my pocket and the pedometer on the cuff of my shorts, the step count is higher on the pedometer by almost a thousand. If the pedometer on my waist while the phone is in my pocket, the step count on the phone is higher.
I spoke to Jean R. in Princeton, my hanai sister, Mike's first wife, and my real sister, Dorothy, living in Lawrenceville. I got good reports on the weather for today. Somewhat warmer.
Jean has been involved with prison reform for years. Currently, she is working for the release of nonviolent prisoners during the pandemic. Prisons, like nursing homes, are incubators for the virus. Social distancing is impossible. Jean argues that people over 55 who have several medical problems should be released even if they committed a violent crime when they were nineteen. She argues that if they have not acted violently in prison, they are unlikely, doubtful, to still be a threat to society.
I heard that we started using prisoner release here in Hawaii for nonviolent prisoners. Then it came out that at least two men with violent histories had been released and promptly been violent. After speaking to Jean, I found myself wondering if they were seniors or really inappropriate releases. One was guilty of domestic violence. Apparently, the victims of domestic violence were not being informed about the release of their abusers. Not good. Is it a case of incompetence, corruption, or compassion? If they are seniors, which was not mentioned in the broadcast, it would be compassion.
Dorothy and I talked politics and language, mainly linguistics. She told me that language teaching methods have switched to discovery approaches. As always, they are going too far. Now you have to discover it all on your own and never state a rule. One extreme to another. When will people recognize that we have both functions in our brain? The point of having both is so we can use them both for our survival.
This discussion clarified what I want to say in my chapter on teaching traditional phonics. I am introducing a way for students to learn phonics through discovery; it's a procedure. No, I do not think we should completely abandon teaching phonics facts explicitly. I don't even think we should abandon short daily lessons on phonics. I realize that as I'm writing the book, I have been overemphasizing the discovery method because I'm advocating the development of this skill. I have to be careful not to add to what I know will happen anyway; there will be groups of people who swing to the extreme to the other end. That's what happened with the Whole Language approach. The argument for this method has validity, but not to the exclusion of explicitly decoding strategies for teaching word recognition.
Kingston was leaving this morning. I texted B and Elijah to tell them to send him up. They said he was leaving in a few minutes, and there wouldn't be time for him to come up this morning to work. I will have to call his mom and set up daily Facetime sessions. The first challenge will be finding an appropriate book to work with. We won't have the same book. I will ask his fifth-grade sister to find the easiest book she has at hand. I can modify the sentences by breaking a long sentence into two or three shorter sentences. If necessary, I can have his mom or sister dictate a few sentences to me. I can type them onto my computer and have them at hand in both the original form and with any modifications I want to make. This should be interesting.
I had a good night's sleep and a long nap. It's a rainy day. My house is in pretty good shape. I don't have significant projects to work on. I try to do something every once in a while, just to get movement in. I don't like the idea of endless sitting. I completed over 7,000 steps on the walk, but I would like to be up to 10,000 before I do my dinner walk.
I don't do the 'temper tantrum' exercise right now that my leg is in discomfort-pain. I do shallow squats, and I hang from the molding above my bedroom door. I was reminded of the door-hanging exercise when I came across something from Katie Bowman the other day. She is a biomechanist, which means she's an expert on how we use our bodies for all movement. I've read a lot of her material, but nothing lately. The hanging feels great, but it makes me cough.
For the past week or so, my left leg has been hurting when I lie down to nap on my back. It was actually interfering with my sleep. So sad. It sometimes bothered me at night, too, when I slept on my side instead of my back as I do when I nap. Now, it's gone again. I think the 'limping' I did this morning helped. I rechecked my walk in the glass door on the library to see if I looked as if I was limping. No, I don't. I looked balanced. Okay, I guess I'll keep going on this and see what happens.
I grabbed Elsa and treated her skin infections with infrared light. It does seem to help. I will be able to give her less medication.
Judy called last night to say, "Guess where Howard and I were for the last two hours?" Without hesitation, I said, "The vet." Judy asked if I had already heard. No. While my guess was correct, my reason for the guess was dead wrong, unfortunately. They weren't at the vet with the little Japanese, white-eyed finch; they were there with one of their dogs, Beau. He was unable to pee. His timing was perfect- just as the vet was closing for a long holiday weekend. He is going to need an operation to remove a kidney stone, which is blocking his urethra. Oh, boy.
I have been reading the Oxford University Press books, A Very Short Introduction. I have already finished one on Islam, and Plato and now I'm reading one on Marx. What I'm learning about his thinking is a surprise. I knew he was influenced by dialectical thinking, but I had my own idea of what that was about. I'm sure that my idea is on the right track in the abstract, but it misses the specifics of Marx's thinking.
On the one hand, I think how great it would have been if I had discovered these books before Mike died. We could have had discussions about them. But maybe not. Mike relished his role as a teacher. He had two Ph. Ds under his belt, both involving philosophy. A real discussion might not have suited him. As I have said before, his idea of a conversation when we first met was he talked for 35 minutes, and then I got to ask appropriate questions. Guess what. That didn't sit too well with me. Nonetheless, we negotiated life very well, in which neither one of us was a certified expert.
I have some pictures of him sitting on my kitchen counter and one on the dining room table. We have dinner together every night, and I speak to him often. Not about philosophy but about his concern and love for me and mine for him. That suits me fine. I can amuse myself with my own philosophical thoughts, but there is no substitute for the love he had for me. Boy, was I ever lucky!
On one of my walkabouts, I put the chair pillows back on a high shelf. I had taken them down to put on the chairs in the backyard to work with Kingston outside. Once they were on the shelf, I moved the step ladder over and worked on straightening out the game and puzzle boxes to look neater. Then I took down all the orthopedic braces Mike and I had collected over our 45 years. If there were a few more, I could have put together a local Lourdes display. There were more in a drawer. I will keep one back brace and two wrist braces since my wrists are giving me trouble. I will wash some of the braces, soaking them in Oxy Clean powder in a Home Depot bucket. Who knows how long I've had them? I think one of the back braces I've had since the 90s.
My eyes are bothering me. The computer screen becomes blurry after a while, and my eyes itch. It is one reason I have to take breaks from writing. I took a TV break. I had been watching a taut scene from Unorthodox. The heroine was in danger. She actually wound up being kidnapped in broad daylight by her husband's friend. Fortunately, he let her go. I watched the rest of the show now after dinner without having to worry about the outcome. Ah!
While on our before-dinner walk, a car stopped. It was Karen with her dog Cookie, actually Cookie Dough, because those are her colors. Elsa and I run into them regularly on our walk.
I made it home in time to watch the sun go down. I did the Bikram beginning breathing exercises and half-moon while I watched. It's incredible to watch that circle of light get smaller and smaller and then just slip away. How can it be that easy?
No comments:
Post a Comment