I watched the end of The English Game. It all worked out well; the working people got justice. Ah! I went to bed later than I should have. I got to read a little more of The Hidden Face of God despite the late hour.
The alarm went off at 5:30 am. I got up around 6:30. It wasn’t that I was tired; I felt I had no reason to get out of bed. The article was finished for now, and I hadn’t heard from Dorothy, Shivani, or Judy. I had some thought about writing another short-to-the-point article about how to divide multi-syllable words.
I had a 10:30 appointment with Ann’s student to help him with his reading. Zoom is driving me crazy. I think it is more of my fault than Zoom’s. D.’s mother said they were running late. She texted me when they were ready. I tried to get on Zoom; forget it. I just worked with him on the audio part of the phone.
I started asking him what he recalled from our session last week. He had read most of the book; I was only familiar with the section we covered together. He needed a little prompting, but I thought he did just fine. He included a detail that was in that chapter that I hadn’t read yet. Sounds good to me. When I observed him reading with Ann, it took half an hour to get through a whole chapter. Today, he read more than one chapter with breaks for reviewing decoding procedures and a few minutes here or there to discuss vocabulary words. His answers to my general questions were good. He also self-corrected misread words several times. That was particularly exciting.
There were only two spots where his old problems showed up. In one case, he read a sentence that made no sense to me. When I asked him what he thought it meant, he twisted the misread words into something that made some sense. Well, at least it held together grammatically. I challenged his interpretation of the sentence. He had trouble decoding one of the essential words. He had some problems identifying the vowel letters but even greater problems identifying the letter than came after vowel versus the one that came before. He knew what the letter was. His problem was with determining the difference between before and after. How am I going to work on that on Zoom?
After I hung up with him, I called K to work with her son K. I want to work with him a few times a day, just short sessions. I had his sister send me pictures of the text of a Magic Tree House book. It may be too hard for him, but not by much. He reads in a word-by-word manner, making him sound like he’s a poor reader, but D can say all the words, and he knows what they mean. If I’m right about him, he will be reading Harry Potter by the end of the summer.
We only worked with three or four sentences. As I suspected, K could read most of the words and knew what they all meant. I had to coach him to say two words as if they were one, using connected speech, so he got the rhythm right.
Judy called as I lay down for my nap. She had read my article. She was excited and said she could use this with Leon, her five-year-old grandson, to teach him how to read. Judy has read every chapter I have written, but nothing she has read so far inspired her interest in the process. If the book didn’t capture her attention, something is wrong with how I wrote it. I don’t know if the book is even necessary. Each chapter in the book is thirty pages; the article is six pages. Judy said she had to work hard to understand what I was saying. She proposed getting together with me and having me demonstrate the method. Then she will look at my writing and see how my words don’t clearly describe what I’m doing. This is fantastic! I can’t wait. We are planning to meet on Saturday. Of course, this will be in the yard with both of us masked.
We also talked about church starting up again on Sunday. I always went to church with Judy and Paulette. Now we were talking about going together or not going together. I would imagine that Judy is one of the safest people to be around. She has had the virus tested and confirmed. Paulette was around her daily when she was sick and didn’t get it. She is unlikely to ever get it; nonetheless, with a 10% chance of dying of the virus at my age, better safe than sorry.
I responded to Crista’s survey asking about what people wanted the yoga studio to do. I wrote that I felt that I could only participate if all the doors and windows were open during the class because of my age. I will join in Yvette’s driveway classes more.
I got a text from Yvette saying to reserve the yard area in front of her house for June 11. It’s her fifteenth wedding anniversary. I asked her if I was invited. I was sure I was. I couldn’t imagine that I would have to sit up here overlooking the party and be excluded. Her request is just so that I don’t schedule the gardeners for that day. I will have to remember not to say yes to them if they call to schedule for the 11th.
I feel like I have nothing to do. I have no idea what is going on. I can continue working on the article I started. Judy already gave me some food for thought. I had referred to the process as a game. Judy said that it was confusing because the word ‘game’ triggers expectations of points and competition. This game does not include those features. I have to use the word ‘play’ instead, play as in putting together a Lego structure using the directions and your problem-solving strategies.
I wrote Sandor the other day that I was looking forward to him coming over and picking out the books he wanted. He has been studying to be a deacon. He was supposed to the second deacon for St. Michael’s parish. Since Mike died, one fellow has been traveling from the other side of the island to serve as a deacon, but St. Michael’s hasn’t had one of its own. When Sandor is ordained in January, St. Michael’s will again have one deacon.
Once Sandor has taken the books that he wants, I can start searching for the books the seminary has requested. I got a text from him, asking if he could come over that afternoon to look through. I think he is going to need more than one day. If I had thought about it beforehand, he could have looked through the catalog and picked out the books he wanted. He felt terrible cherry-picking the books and denying the seminary of them. I would rather they go to him for any number of reasons. He will be the deacon for St. Michael’s as Mike was; he was a student of Mike’s, and he loved Mike. (Oh, well.) Also, I don’t have to search for the books, pack up those books, lug those books to the post office and pay to have them shipped to the mainland. It’s a win-win.
I only wish I had thought of his taking the books before I told the seminary to put together a wish list. They will be disappointed now. Many of the thousand books they requested will be gone already. If they were gone before they got the list, they would have to choose from what is left, and there would be no disappointment. Sandor took the seminary wish list with him. He will cross out the books that he receives from that list. Then I will know not to look for them.
Sandor stopped off at Costco before he came to my house. He offered to get something for me. I asked for my sweet kale salad mix, which they carry regularly. It wasn’t in when B. looked for it, and it wasn’t in again. Is it available at all? Is the problem at the production end or with the shipping? Sandor said he paid $15 for six cans of tuna. He said they are usually $11. This is a substantial price bump. I have plenty of frozen and canned food. I’m good for quite a while. I will check at Safeway to see how they are doing. Maybe this is just a problem with Costco, but that doesn’t sound logical.
I got a letter from the parish today. It detailed the rules for attending mass. First of all, you have to make a reservation. I suppose they have to limit the number of people who can attend to satisfy the social distancing restrictions. Everyone has to wear a mask; everyone has to sanitize their hands as they enter (please, bring your own sanitizer), everyone will be seated by the ushers, no one can choose their own seat. Every other pew will be empty, allowing the eucharistic ministers to walk upon and down and distributed the wafers. I was upset to hear that some people could receive it on their tongues. That means the minister is exposed and then passes on that exposure to the next recipient. Maybe there is some provision for them to clean their hands after. It wouldn’t be mentioned in the notice because it’s not something the parishioners have to do. It would have been nice if they had mentioned it.
I’m not sure if I should make a reservation. Going to mass and receiving the host has its benefits for me, but it is life-giving for some. It doesn’t feel that way to me. I would hate to think I’m taking someone’s place for whom this sacred act is of utmost importance.
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