I stopped back at Kaiser Permanente to pick up a release of information form. I need a full accounting of my services and prescriptions for tax purposes. Then I headed home.
I am on a kick to get this place straightened up a la Mike. Actually, I'm doing some things that were not a concern for Mike. I am cleaning. He just needed things organized, neat. Clean wasn't as much of an issue for him.
The first thing I tried to do was clean up the termite droppings from the bay windowsill in his office. Those dropping had been accumulating long, long before he died. They were just so hard to reach with his books, the printer, and the computer in the way. Now I had a clear shot. I tried to use the Shark vacuum cleaner first, but I couldn't get the hose to release to use the attachments. I went and got my Rainbow and headed to the guest room, where I vacuumed the walls and the baseboards. I don't think it looked cleaner, but the water in the tank told me that I had gotten some dirt off the walls.
When I finished that job, I decided I could use my Rainbow to reach the terminate droppings. It still involved reaching over the desk and the printer, but I thought I could do it. I did. Now, I can see if the expensive tenting job I paid for is making a difference. I think I have seen more termites since they tented then house than before. I was told they were the most reputable exterminating company in town. I paid a lot more money to get these folks to do the job. I still can't help but wonder if they actually apply the insecticide or just tented the house.
I called Paulette, Judy's sister, before I had left for school. I hadn't heard from Judy in two days. She hadn't answered my phone calls or my text. Paulette told me she was okay while still struggling with the stent from her kidney to her bladder. She was very busy. She had to take care of Luke for a full day.
Paulette lost her husband ten years ago. I told her I was missing Mike more now than I had before. She said that had also been her experience. The first year she spent all her energy adjusting to how his death affected her daily life. It was once those activities slowed down that the absence became front and center. She complains about the same loss as I do: someone to cuddle with. She started crying. I thanked her for opening herself up to share her story with me. I know I'm not alone; I'm hardly the first 78-year-old woman to have lost her husband, but it helps to hear it from someone else.
I showered next and headed out to school. I wanted to be home by 2 pm when Sandor was planning to come by to launch the blog publicly. As I walked to the third-grade building, I saw some of my students walking the other way. Mrs. D." s class was off to the library. I started working with Mrs. B.'s students. Both teachers had subs today so they could attend a workshop.
I started with D. in Mrs. B's. class. The last time I worked with him, I gave him what-for for making wild guesses when he didn't know a word that had no connection to the meaning of the text or the letters. I decided I was going to set a limit.
I told him he could only make three wild guesses before I would end the session. Mind you, this child is not deliberately negligent. He just has trouble changing his mental habit. I was hoping that this threat would add some incentive, up his adrenaline to help him focus. He immediately made two and groaned. I realized that my standard was too harsh, mainly since he was able to identify some of the words he didn't know correctly. This method seems to be working. He is giving more effort to discerning which words he does not know and not just calling out anything that comes to mind. I'm not expecting him to decode the word correctly on his own; he only has to say I don't know that one. I will lead him through the decoding process each time until he can take over, or I decide it is time for him to do so.
When he did miss a word, I reviewed the decoding procedure. He still has problems reversing letters and sounds. I have to remind him each time to use cross body blending and how to use it. As the session progressed, I decided the standard I had set was too harsh. I proposed that I keep score for both the words he guesses wildly and the ones he recognizes he doesn't know. As long as there are fewer words he wildly guesses versus the ones he identifies as unknown, he's okay. He liked the adaptation I made. The session came to a natural end.
Next, I worked with I., who asked me to work with him the moment I entered the room. I asked him if he wanted to work on a book from the classroom or my material, the Carpenter stories using word families. He said my material. He still had trouble consistently recognizing the word his. I didn't create a challenge for this kid; he is making every effort to do the best he can.
I asked him again if the letters were moving about in his head. I remembered that last time, the movement pattern followed the right-hand-rule when the thumb was placed in the center of the forehead. I told him to release the spin out of the front of his head. Following Barbara Brenden's rule, it should have been out the back of the head. This time I told him to do it that way. He did and experienced a change. I told him to listen for the sound of a child crying on a roller coaster ride. He was able to do that. I then asked if it was more or less relaxing to listen to that child cry. He said more. I said that was good, and he should continue. Children often tell me it is less relaxing to listen to that child cry. In that case, I tell them to stop listening. Relaxation tells us we are moving in the right direction. Tensing up creates resistance.
After he did the release, he reread the story and said he wanted to go back to the classroom. I don't know how many times he has read this story, and he still has problems remembering the words. I know this child is making every effort. As he headed into the room, I called him back, remembering I had prepared a StoryJigSaw puzzle for that first story. I showed him how it worked and did the first paragraph with him. He did the other two independently while I went across the atrium to work with D. in Mrs. L.'s third-grade class.
The other day I did some work with D and discovered that his reading wasn't that bad; he just had trouble decoding longer words. Mrs. L. said his real problem was his inability to pay attention. I told her that was her problem, with a smile. I thought more of it when I left.
The first thing I asked D. was if he wanted to change and do a better job paying attention. First, he said no. I asked him why. He said something about how he was improving. I finally realized that he was expecting me to lay a trip on him to make 'good choices.' When I told him I didn't expect him to know how to get better on his own, and I was here to see if I could help him, he was more open to my help.
I asked him how he felt in class before he acted out. He said, bored. I asked him if he felt the boredom in his body, and if so, where? He said his whole body except his legs. I asked him if he liked that feeling or didn't like it. He said he didn't like it. When I asked him to grade the feeling on a rate of 1 to 10, 1 being the worst, he gave it a 1.
I told him to have the part of his brain by his forehead tell the back part of his brain to, "Let go of anything bad about his hatred for that feeling and keep anything good or anything his still needed." He told me he couldn't do it. I suspected he was trying to let go of the core feeling of 'boredom' instead of his hatred for the feeling. I drew a small circle with a bigger one around it. I told him the little inner circle was his feeling of boredom, and the bigger one was his hatred for that feeling. He got it immediately and did the release. I asked if he found it relaxing or not. He said it was relaxing. Great! He kept going. That I asked him to "Let go of anything bad about his love for this feeling, keep anything good about his love for this feeling or anything he still needed." As he did that, he changed his posture putting one of his feet up on his chair. I asked him if this felt weird or if he was uncomfortable with the feeling. He said no. Well, that was it for the day. I sent him off to the library, where the rest of his class had gone.
I texted Sandor as I left school to tell him I would be home soon. Sandor was coming over to do some more work on the blog. He had texted me to tell me that he couldn't get into the site we had set up named "with Mike; without Mike." I told him, why don't we just change the site name to "Mike's death; Betty's life." It actually sounded better to me than the original title. He agreed, and we went with that rather than driving ourselves nuts trying to recover the other site.
He set it up and asked what picture I would like on it. I chose the one of Mike and me running together in the church parking lot. Yvette caught that picture of us. I don't know if this is what she meant to catch at the time, but it is a remarkable action picture capturing the playfulness between Mike and me. I had to leave at 4 pm to go to the family therapy session with Yvette. Sandor headed out saying he would launch the blog at 12 am so it started on January 24, the one-year anniversary of Mike's pancreatitis attack, which killed him five weeks later.
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