I woke up at 6:30, even though the alarm was set for 5:30. I have a remarkable ability to sleep through anything. I did wake up to pee during the night. I felt urinary tract irritation again. I immediately took an AZO pill so that I would be able to function during the day. My problem is clearly not an infection because it clears on its own. I gave the pineapple to B, so that couldn't have caused the problem. I ate some of Amy's frozen enchiladas last night. They were delicious. It may be the peppers in her food that trigger the problem. What a shame! I like her food. I like Mexican food.
My leg still bothered me. I walked up and down my street, staying close to home in case I had to pee. However, my leg was much better today. What did I do differently? I used Yvette's trigger massaging machine on my glutes, the muscles on the left side of my back, and the left side of my abdomen. After that, I could bend my left leg further without discomfort. This has always been the question, how much of my hip problem is caused by the loss of cartilage in my hip joint, or how much is caused by soft tissue issues all over my body? I've been aware of problems with my left leg or the left side of my body since my early thirties. When I was in my late forties, a massage therapist commented that the muscles on the left side of my back were actually swollen. I had no problem with my hip at that time. Conclusion: there is more going on with my body than meets the X-ray's eye.
I spoke to Dorothy as I walked. We shared family stories. She has different stories about family events than I do, and I love hearing them. I also learned more about my mom as I heard how Dorothy experienced her.
I have to call Progressive today. Oh, boy, was I not looking forward to that. I have identified why the insurance on Mike's Ford is $400 more expensive than the other two cars. He had an accident in May of 2018 in Kauai in a rental car. I vaguely remember it. I would call the car rental company because I was sure we had insurance with them. I thought I would have to check with National to prove that, but that was unnecessary. When I looked up the incident on Progressive, it said there was no charge to Progressive. That means National had to have informed our insurance company. In addition to the rental car insurance cost, I have put out $1500 for my own car insurance. It was a bumper dent. I could have paid it out of pocket, and it would have cost less. Besides, I took Mike off the insurance. I have no idea why the insurance penalty was still in effect. Every conversation I have had with Progressive goes like this: the accident is attached to the VIN number, period end of sentence. Does that mean if I sell the car to someone else, they will be charged higher insurance premiums because that car was associated with an accident? No, of course not. This is crazy-making.
I screwed my courage to the sticking point and called Progressive. I got one woman who did the usual, "There's an accident reported on this vehicle." Then she got rid of me and sent me off to some irrelevant department. That guy sent me to someone who seemed to know what she was talking about. She said the higher charge wasn't a penalty charge; it was because the car was an SUV. I will have to check with my local insurance broker if that makes sense. Josh looked up the Blue Book value on the car. It's $1800. How can there be such a high premium on such a car? More research is called for.
I kept myself busy while I made that call. I cleaned my stovetop and made tuna fish salad for tonight's dinner. That helped a lot to comfort me and keep me calm. I felt better because I was moving and doing something productive. I felt stronger.
At 9:00, I started running a wash. Solar energy kicks in during the summer, so all the electricity I use is free. At 10:30, I had my Zoom tutoring appointment with D.
This went much better today. I wasn't exhausted, and D. did somewhat better. This is a slow process, two steps forward, one step, and sometimes two or three back. When he makes a mistake on a word, he stops more frequently, and sometimes, he will figure it out on his own. However, today, he had to decode two words, and I had to remind him of the procedure from scratch. He read picked for plucked. The good news was it was the correct meaning. I told him that he had made sense and gave him a choice if he wanted to decode the missing words. He said he did. He started with the first letter in the word. P. That only works if the reader is secure with large chunks of the word beforehand. For example, if he had seen luck in the word, starting with the p and adding on luck would have made a lot of sense. But he didn't, so it didn't. The procedure is, if you are still determining the word, START WITH THE VOWEL. I don't know how many times I have said this to this boy. I would think that he would qualify as learning disabled by any standard measure. The question is still, can I help him overcome his memory problems? If I can't, let's classify him as learning disabled. If I can, well, he's not learning disabled. The term only means, "I don't know how to help this student." Maybe no one knows.
Again, Daniel asked to work on the reading before the math facts and the sequencing exercise. I visually cue the math facts. That was much more successful. He said he had been working on both the math facts and the sequencing exercise on his own. I asked him what he was doing so I could pass it on to other students. Often, students will think of things I haven't.
While today's work indicated that his visual memory may be better than his auditory, that does not mean that he shouldn't develop his auditory recall skills. He needs both. We all do. One can be better, but D.'s problem creates limitations for him.
After the session, I spoke with his mother today. I want her to post the math facts we are working on in various places in the house: one sheet with the multiplication fact 9x4=36, one without the answer, 9x4=, one with the addition fact 9+4=13, with the answer, and one without. She asked about having him repeat the problem. I had found that his repeating the problem didn't work for him.
I distinguish between active and passive rehearsal. Active rehearsal involves speaking or writing. Passive rehearsal consists of hearing a voice or seeing an image in our minds. It's different. They involve other mental circuits. When D. said the problem out loud, he had no recall. When he remembered my voice in his head, he did. As I spoke to his mother, it occurred to me, how about saying the fact and then hearing 'his own voice' in his head? The trick is hearing the facts in his working memory.
At one point, his mother offered to buy multiplication flash cards. I told her not to do that. I advised her to work with just the four facts we had been working with. I explained that we were working on getting the memory circuit built, not learning math facts. Once the circuit was secure, then we could add more facts for him to remember. If too many facts are added, his system would feel overwhelmed, forcing him to revert to old, familiar, safe circuits. Those don't work for him.
After I got off the phone, I called Josh and told him I wasn't willing to pay that much more for the insurance for a car he was driving. I held on to Mike's Ford because Adam was borrowing it. Then Adam offered to buy it. Damon asked me not to because he wanted to drive his dad's car when he visited Hawaii. Damon only visits twice a year for four or five days at a time. I told Damon if he wanted me to keep the car so he could use it when he visited, he should contribute to the insurance bill. He wrote back, saying there's no point in holding on to it only for his sake. He can rent a car when he comes. I don't want to be without a car altogether. Is it worthwhile getting my Prius fixed for that purpose?
I just heard from B. today that Hertz is selling its whole fleet. It went bankrupt and is going out of business. I told Josh he should look into that. He contacted me and said he had checked the Bluebook value for the Ford. It's under $2000 for the car. He offered to pay my $2000 and take the car off my hands.
Adam, who hadn't been driving the car for a while, skateboarded over to my house to give me the key to the Ford and money to cover his share of the car insurance. Okay, another chapter closed. We talked about his wife and the wait for her labor to start. We have been waiting since the 4th. They decided they had miscalculated. It was due between the 19th and the 23rd. Judy called me at 4:30 to tell me the labor had just started. She was putting out an APB for prayers.
After Adam left, I drove to town to drop off my broken Rainbow vacuum at the repair shop. I broke it when I poured water into it, trying to get a plastic filter out to clean it. With Scott's help, I did get it out, but it never worked again afterward. I waited for several days and tried again. It still didn't work. I had given up.
The lady at the shop, who is not the technician but knows a great deal about them, plugged it in. It purred away, and water poured out of the bottom of it. Where that water came from is your guess as good as mine. I wanted her to let it keep running to see if it continued its good work. She was upset by the water pouring out on her desk. Instead, I took it home. I made one more stop at the bank to cash Adam's check.
When I got home, the 'miles' available on the car's electric motor was 6. I had used 18 miles. It is still remarkable. I had used zero miles on the three-mile drive down the hill, really mountain, from my house to Queen K. I plugged it in first thing because I wanted to use the solar while it was available. Then I got the vacuum cleaner out of the car and plugged it in. Again, it ran like a happy animal. A little bit more water came out. Wow! This is good news.
Before I took my nap, I cut off a slice of the sourdough bread Steve and dropped off the other day, slathered it with butter, and popped it in the microwave for thirty seconds. Hmm!
While driving to town, the illogic of that high insurance premium on the Ford. The yearly premium on the Ford is equal to 2/3 of the value of the car. That doesn't make sense. I tried calling my local Progressive agent. She's a lovely lady but no more equipped to deal with logic than anyone else I've spoken to.
She told me that my rate was high because of the accidents with the car. Mike's in November 2018, Shivani's call for roadside assistance on 11/27/19, and Adam's accident in February 2019. It took me several times for her to remember that I said that not only was Adam not driving Mike's car when he had his accident, but his car was parked, and he wasn't even on my insurance at that time. If that accident counts against the insurance, that means that if someone hits you while parked, the repairs are paid for by their insurance, but it still counts against you. What!!??? She went back over and over, saying he was driving Mike's car. I had to start all over again. She was rearranging the facts to fit her narrative. Then she told me to call Progressive and straighten it out. I told her that no one at Progressive had any idea. She really had done all she could do to help me. She knew no more than anyone else did. She finally hung up on me. I should learn not to argue with people who insist on rearranging facts to suit narratives. She was trying to help me, but she wasn't. She just had a bad rhetorical habit.
No comments:
Post a Comment