I woke up at 6 but decided to stay in bed. I think I was motivated by the complaints coming from my leg. I felt that it needed a rest. I got up at 7 am and took Elsa for a longish walk. Then I continued with the ironing.
Yesterday, I discovered that my phone wasn’t recording appointments. No matter how many times I tried to enter them and they didn’t register. I called Apple support. This nice lady stayed on the phone with me for an hour, trying one thing after another. She finally got it—something to do with iCloud. I was worried that I was going to have to replace the phone. That meant a two-hour drive over to Hilo to find a Mac store and a two-hour drive back. Boy, was I relieved when she found the problem.
I continued with my ironing. This will come to an end soon. When I sorted through my laundry basket for the rest of the ironing, I found only one more shirt. That made a total of seven dress shirts, some long-sleeved and some short. I also found five more pillowcases and another tablecloth. I think Mike and I saved every pillowcase we ever bought. I haven’t counted them yet. I’ll do that before I pack them all in.
Then it was off to church for the noon mass for Mike. Paulette and I made arrangements to leave early to take a look at the cemetery for ideas for the gravestone. Judy said she pointed out a particular monument to Cylin at the internment. It used a lava stone as the base. This possibility creates more problems rather than less. How do you find an appropriate lava stone? How do you attach granite to the lava stone? How do you attach the brass plating? How do I get my information engraved on either the stone or the brass after my death? Too many questions?
There were only a few people at the mass. There were several there, specifically for Mike. I asked Brenda, who was sitting in front of me, how to reserve masses for Mike on October 27 and March 3 of next year. She said she would take care of it.
During mass, it occurred to me that I should have burned a yahrzeit candle. This is part of the Jewish tradition. The candle burns for 24 hours on the anniversary of someone’s death. I was running late and thought it unlikely that I would find one at our local Safeway. On the east coast, they’re available in any large grocery store. I remember looking for lox in a local chain grocery store in Ohio. Forget it. They had no idea what lox was.
When I thought of going to Safeway to pick up a yahrzeits candle, I started lusting after a Hersey’s Milk chocolate with whole almonds bar. I stopped off at Long’s Drugs, where I could be sure there was no yahrzeit’s candle and picked up two bars. I ate one on the way up to school.
I started working with N. and D. in Mrs. D’s room on writing. They’re both are mute when it comes to expressing their thoughts. I finally found a way to get something out of N. The topic was trash. I don’t know what they were supposed to write about it. Could it be anything, or did it have to be something specific, like how to solve the problem of too much trash? I had worked on this topic with N. before. Today he had written, “Trash isn’t good,’ repeating the idea with different words. I thought that was pretty good for him. He was writing sentences and had produced several of them. Better than nothing.
I asked him to make an image of trash. Where was it? The ocean. On the surface or underneath the surface? He expressed the idea that this trash was a bad thing because it killed the fish. Pretty good. I had to pull every sentence out of him, but it wasn’t too hard. I think he sees words and images as unrelated. Words are something you give to the teacher. There are words they want, and those are the ones you are supposed to give them. They have no concept of expressing their own thoughts. When I worked on creative writing projects, I always started with an image—a color, perhaps. Then ask what object they see with that color. Where is this object? What is happening to this object? This is a prewriting activity. I find that many kids have no idea that their ideas are interesting, no less valuable. I did the same thing with D. and got an interesting story about pig bones left on the side of the street by some folks who had killed one, eaten it, and just left the trash. (We’re in Hawaii. We have wild pigs here, known as boars. Horned creatures that can do you a lot of damage.)
I worked with another child who was having behavioral problems. No initials and no classroom teacher’s initials. He has fallen into a pattern of disturbing other people and lying, lying, lying. Oh, boy. I talked to him about it a little but got nowhere.
I went back to work with M. in Mrs. D.’s class. He is having problems with just word recognition. He says he has made progress, but Mrs. D. says she doesn’t see much. I’ve only worked with him four or five times so far. I don’t have a clear sense of what the problem is yet.
As I left, I contacted Adam, who was going to come over to show me how to use the doTerra products I ordered through him. He was going to set up a program for me. It will involve taking some capsules. Let’s see how I do with this. I am game to try it for a month to see if I feel better, look better, as promised.
I was planted on my love seat sofa because my leg was boring me when Adam arrived. I told him to let himself in, and then he followed my directions to find a box cutter to open the doTerra packages. While he was filling out my prescription form based on what I said my problems were, Dorothy called. She had just read about my vision problem in the blog. She was concerned that I had the same problem she had. She went to the eye doctor with some vision problems. The doctor took one look, told her to go home, sit in a darkened room, and come in the next day for emergency surgery. Her macular was detaching from her retina. She was concerned that I had the same problem. I don’t know. I have been served up two different opinions as to what my problem is.
Adam and I had an opportunity to speak a little about ourselves afterward. It was a delight to get to know him better. I realized as we were talking that I never got to see him full face because we had never had a conversation when he wasn’t doing something else at the same time, mostly dealing with his kids.
I ordered three yahrzeits candles online. I’ll be ready next year. Hopefully, I will remember where I put them on March 3 next year, the second anniversary of Mike’s death.
I sorted greeting cards. I have a truckload. Like Mike, whenever I got some in the mail as part of a charity appeal, I just added them to the pile. I rarely send out cards; second, I have a huge pile, many without envelopes. I sorted them by categories, birthday, thank you, get well, blank, putting them in quart zip lock bags, and labeling them. Really? Are these worth the effort? Oh, well, It was fun and made me feel like I was doing something to create order. See, I am a lot like Mike; I too need order.
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