Monday, November 25, 2019

    I woke up around 3 am again and had a little trouble falling back to sleep. I felt fine when I got up at 6 am.  I packed my Bikram stuff in the car, fed Elsa, and went off to yoga.  Another good day. I'm still on the floor. I like it there because I have a clear sense when my back as straight as I press it against the floor.  When I'm standing, I don't get such good feedback.

    After Bikram, I went to my weekly PT appointment.  She was impressed by my progress.  I told her that I was confident that my problems with the right side of my back and glutes were over because the pain had moved into my upper back, neck, and head.  She chuckled, but she didn't disagree with my conclusion. Again, she gave me appropriate exercises, watched me do it, and told me when I was using the wrong muscles. Amazing!

    I went to the post office next.  I had to wait in the parking lot for a while before I saw a likely 'volunteer' to help me unload my packages.  I had two heavy boxes filled with books for the seminary and one lighter box filled with Mike's old polo shirts to be mailed to John, Jean R's husband.  I didn't close the last box because I wanted to figure out if it would be cheaper to send it priority.  

    The postal clerk I got is one nasty sour puss.  She never smiles and always looks like she's sneering at you.  She wears those over the top glue-on eyelashes.  When you look at her, eye to eye, they look fine.  When she looks down, you have to wonder if those lashes are alive and ready to attack. They're gross.

    The decision was that I had to repack the shirts in a priority box. Otherwise, shipping would cost me a small fortune.  I had to go to the end of the line, which wound up fine because it took me the length of the line to repack, seal, and address the box.

    The next stop was the Friendly Place.  I had been cleaning out the forever closest and our bathroom, getting rid of anything we hadn't used in 5 years and all the things that Mike would never use again: shaving cream, shampoos, toothpaste, some shirts, some food that was still individually wrapped but no longer in their cases, even some nail scissors.  I also included a small container of rubbing alcohol to sterilize the scissors if they decided they could be used.  They said they could use everything.  They would look through it and send me a receipt for the donations for tax purposes. 

    Then I stopped at the vacuum repair store.  The floor attachment bristles were half gone.  Rust had found the tool and broken the filament that held the bristles in place.  The woman told me that she would have to order a new part.  She needed the model number of the Rainbow vacuum cleaner I had.

    When I got home, I looked for the model number.  No luck.  I will have to take the vacuum in for them to find it.  When I went to the bathroom, I noticed a yellow puddle on my shower floor.  Only one explanation for that. What a good girl! Can't think of a better solution.  I ran the shower to wash it away.

    Judy called. We made plans for her to come over on Wednesday and start setting up for Thanksgiving. She wants to do some decorating.  I showered and ran off to school.  I arrived there at about 1 pm, which is late for me.

    I started working with the kids in Mrs. D's class.  I had to leave Mrs. B's class for last to make K my last student. She exhausts me with her mind games.  Yes, 8-year-olds can play some pretty vicious mind games.

    A couple of years ago, one student had quite a reputation for being a bully.  I once said to her, "Why do you have to be so mean?" She argued she wasn't' mean.  I said, "You enjoy upsetting and frightening people." She agreed that she did that. I said, "That's the definition of mean." She was surprised.

    The following year, kids told me how that girl had changed. She was one of the nicest people.  I liked to think that my words had changed her, but didn't know for sure until the next year.  

    I was working with a cousin of hers the next year who was now in third grade. She asked me if I remembered her cousin.  I said yes.  She repeated the words I said to her cousin.  Apparently, my words did have an impact. One never knows when well-placed words can change the course of a person's life- hopefully only for the best.

    I asked Mrs. D to send out B.  He had established that he had trouble with visual recall when he spelled ofas ewf. Oh, dear.  I taught him how to retrieve the image of the word from visual long-term memory. This worked pretty well.  He made some errors, and I encouraged him to use his recall, and then he would get the word correct. When I asked him which side of the brain the wrong word came up from, he said the left side. Both the correct and incorrect spelling came from the left side of the brain—new information.  I don't know what to make of it yet. How or why can both the correct and incorrect images come from the same side of the brain?   More concerning was that he confused run with fun and word with would. He had worked hard enough and was anxious to get back into the room for his math class, something he is very good at.  Before I left for the day, I warned Mrs. D that if she didn't get B on the audio file regularly, I would call B's parents and tell on her.  That was a joke if you missed it.

    I worked with R next. She is still at the K level.  I started with Sassy the Cat, a very low-level story that we have worked on repeatedly.  She had trouble remembering the word there, the first word in the story. Lord knows how many times we have worked on that word.  While there are many words she is more confident in within this story, she still misses his saying him instead.  I can get her to correct it by showing her that is is part of the word and then having her blend the [h] with the [i-s]. There were several occurrences of his in the story; she missed them all.  She had to start from scratch each time.  She is a cooperative, even eager student, undaunted by her severe limitations.  I have no idea yet how to help her. I just have to keep plugging away.  Maybe a door will open somewhere in her mind or in mine.

    N. came out next.  He read fluently in an M level book.  He is doing much better. Mrs. D thinks his problem is all attitude, but I never saw it. He clearly had issues when I started working with him. He was very proud of his improvement in spelling. He reminded me that he had gotten a 70% on his last spelling test, which was a big jump from the 35% he had been getting on his spelling tests.

    Then I went to D. from Mrs. B's class.  We did more work on the cross-body blending. He is showing improvement in this area.  I felt comfortable allowing him to blend two sound units immediately rather than making him say them separately first.  But I did recommend that he say at least three words a day individually, so he practices that skill for when he needs it.  Lovely boy.  I see the man he will become. Lovely man.

    When I got home, I went to work cleaning the lanai.  It hasn't been cleaned in a while. When I went to vacuum the couch pillows, I found some white stuff between the two.  That was confusing. How could there be that much dirt in this one spot under the couch pillows when the rest of the area was clean?  Ah, then I found one of those tubes for blowing bubbles.  That tube was from Sidney's last visit.  He must have sat on the couch and eaten something. It looked like the kind of mess a two-year-old would leave. 

      I went for my walk with Elsa and stopped off to visit Darby and Patrick.  When I got home, the kids were in the kitchen cooking up a storm.  I saw her cut some delicious looking string beans.  I asked if I could have some.  She said yes, there would be plenty of food.  I was writing this entry while they were cooking.  I actually missed their invitation to come to the table and share a meal with them.  I finally looked up and saw that they were ready to start the meal.  I jumped up to join them.  Wow! The food was delicious.

    While we were eating, Jean and Randy came by.  I was expecting them. The guy asked her if she would like some food.  She accepted his offer. The conversation switched to cooking.  The young woman and man were gracious hosts, although they were not expecting this company.  When the meal was over, Jean, Randy, and I moved into the living room. The kids did the dishes.  Very nice.  I figured I would be doing that since they had cooked. But who am I to object?

    I pointed out the memorial book that Mike's sister and cousin had put together to Randy before he sat on it.  The cover photo is one of Mike sitting in the painted church looking up.  Damon took it. He takes all the great pictures that capture us in real moments. He is the one who took that picture of Mike and me running that I posted.  Jean and Randy spent the rest of the evening looking through the book. Given their comments, I think I'm going to have to look at the book again and relish some of the photos of Mike in the various phases of his life.

    Jean and Randy left shortly before 9 pm. They had to drop their rental car off before their flight back to Arizona.  It is always nice to see them. 

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Musings:

    There are several young men I am currently aware of who feel they need for the love of a good woman to make them whole.  I don't know if that ever works. Well, I supposed it depends on how much healing has to be done.  Clearly, being around a person who loves and values you is healing, but not if you need that person to fill a hole the size of Kansas.  

    I believe the only person who can heal us is ourselves.  Those wounds are inaccessible to anyone else except us.  The love of another can provide us with stability in real-time as we deal with old wounds, but it wouldn't do the job alone. 

    I find these wounded people want to be the recipient of the love of a single person. They want a special love.  I have heard of those who are healed by the love of Jesus; Jesus's love is not exclusive; it is for everyone equally.  It requires accepting ourselves as flawed human beings who are just struggling to be the best people we can be. 

Sunday, November 24, 2019

    I fell asleep easily enough, but I woke up around three and had trouble falling back to sleep. Strange for me. I woke up around 7:30 and walked Elsa. I cleaned one of the bathroom drawers that I hadn't gotten to yet.  I think I'm pulling a Marie Kondo: I'm getting rid of everything that I haven't used in a while or brings me joy.

    Judy texted to tell me that she had an upset stomach, and Paulette would be picking me up for church around 9:35.  Jean R, Mike's first wife and the mother of their son, Damon, called just before I left.  I have been calling her daily since she had her open-heart surgery.  For the last two days, she has been sleeping when I called and hasn't called back. She told me that she had been under the weather because of a combination of medications she was taking but feeling better now.  

Jean and I continued to talk while Paulette drove us to church; I stayed in the car until the bell rang, announcing the start of mass talking.  We talked about our childhoods. We both lived in the Bronx, me in Parkchester, and her somewhere else. We named all the childhood games we played: handball against the sides of buildings, depending on the goodwill of people lived in those places,  hopscotch, jump rope, and a game where you had to bounce a pink Sterling ball while we recited, "A my name is Alice, my husband's name is Al, we live in Alabama, and we sell apples,' going all the way through the alphabet. You also had to lift your right leg and bounce the ball under it on Alice, Al, apples, and Alabama. Jean said she once completed the pattern ninety-nine times; her leg was killing her at the end.  We rode bikes and roller skates, but not the modern ones. Our roller skates had steel wheels and fit over our shoes like sandals.  It was easy for those skates to get stuck on a piece of uneven pavement, and down we would go. 

    I had to end the call when the bell for mass sounded. Paulette must have locked the car when she got out.  I pushed the unlock button on the passenger side door, and the alarm went off.  I went racing toward the church, assuming I was drowning out the priest, yelling for Paulette. She came to the door, car key in hand, and pushed the alarm button, but she was too far away for it to work. She handed me the key, and  I ran back toward the car and got the thing to shut up. While the celebrants of the mass had already gathered at the back of the church, nothing had been interrupted.    

    When I got home, I lay down for a while. I was expecting two kids in my home for tutoring around noon.  I worked with K first, who was in second grade. His report card says he's on grade level. But he only started speaking understandably recently. I had his older brother play the Quiet Queen audio file with phonemic transcription at night while he slept. That's when the improvement started. He knows most of the alphabet, except that at one point, he called the letter J, G. I noticed he had been absorbing the phonics he is learning in school, but he demonstrated that he had problems with automatic recall.  I checked out his visual and auditory processing  Both seemed to be okay.  I showed him how to retrieve words from long-term memory instead of decoding words each time. I taught him to identify the vowel letters in words. The vowel sound is always the keystone of every syllable. He picked up the crossbody blending technique quickly.  

    Then I worked with his sister, who is in 5th grade.  She was reading a James Patterson book written for children. Geez, Louise, that syntax is complex.  It was written as if the narrator was talking to the reader directly.  Whoever thinks written English is complicated, you should see what it is like to follow conversational English when it is written. Holy cow! I picked out some less complex sentences and showed her how to parse it using questions, drawing the answers directly from the text. Conventional reading lessons are designed to have children understand only certain aspects of the text: the why and when information that is not explicit. These lessons skip the essential part of helping students understand how to decode a sentence. As one of my third graders put it, 'It's like a puzzle we have to figure out." Precisely.  What is the relationship between the first half of a sentence to the second half? What is the relationship between the second sentence to the first one?  What is the relationship between the second paragraph to the first? No, it is not apparent. Or I should say, it is obvious once you get it. S. said the work we did helped her a lot. We'll see how it plays out in her school work.

    After they left, I lay down and read part of the NY  Times.  I couldn't sleep, so I got up and cleaned a bathroom cabinet, taped down the address on one of the boxes of books that's been ready for shipping for a week.  I couldn't go to the post office; I couldn't go anywhere because of my back.

    I sent out three blogs.  My Internet connection and then Yahoo were most uncooperative.  I kept a book by my side when I found I have to wait for something to download forever.

    Elsa and I did our evening walk. Because I prepared her food, Dr. Marty's mixed with her prescription food, before we left, she wasn't interested in going too far from home.  I didn't want to stop off and visit Darby today anyway. I feel a little sluggish. 

    Yesterday, Elsa and I stopped by, and I gave Darby two soft MELT balls after teaching her how to use them for her hands. She still has a lot of work to do before she regains control over her left arm after her stroke. She has made incredible strides in her walking.  There is only a slight hitch still left.  

    When I got home, I ate some dinner. After dinner, I sat in the red armchair and read more of The Master and His Emissary. This book will take some time to finish, but I do find the narrative sections going faster than the first part, which was detailed evidence on the different functions of the hemispheres. 

    I worked on the blog then. Elsa jumped up on my lap. For a while, I just sat and hugged her. We were bonding more every day. I balanced the computer on one of the arms of the chair and tried to type.  It was awkward, but worth it to have her sit still by my side.  Her position switched, so her head was resting on my keyboard but leaving me enough room to hit all the keys. I wanted to take a picture of her doing this.  I reached for my phone, and she moved.  She moved to lie right next to me on the chair while I work.  Lovely.  Not quite as good as having Mike around too, but way better than nothing.

    There are these little gnats that fly around at night. They're not too disturbing.  But one bug came along and landed on my screen.  I believe it was a termite. Damn! I just spent a fortune tenting the house and having it fumigated against termites.  They better not be moving back in this quickly.  Supposedly this procedure is supposed to be done once every ten years, not in under ten weeks. 

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Musings:

 

    The book on the brain hemispheres' functions talks about how the right brain deals with constant change, and the left deals with abstracted images or concepts.  These facts led me to think again about something I experienced when my dad died when I was 15.  My inability to remember his face struck me.  I thought it was trauma related at the time. But I no longer do. I can't remember Mike's either.

    I now think this is because we don't have a single image of the people we see every day.   We see their faces from so many different angles and so many different moods that we don't have one unchanging face for them.  I can remember Meryl Steep's face better than Mike's.  Trust me; she is not more important to me than he was and is. 

    I would imagine if we had a fixed image of the people we live with, we would have trouble recognizing them in all their different forms. Maybe over time, I will select one face, one I loved, one where he was smiling at me with love shining out of his eyes, and fix that in my mind as the Mike I knew and loved.  It was a face I saw often, but it was far from his only face. And that face was never photographed face on. I will only be able to find it in my memory.

    

Saturday, November 23, 2019

    I woke up shortly after 6 am without the benefit of an alarm.  My back felt great; my body problems have moved to my shoulder and the right side of my neck, bothersome but not debilitating.  I walked Elsa. For the last two days, she has been desperate to eat grass. This was not a problem before I changed her diet.  I am concerned that this very expensive food is not the best for her.

            On the other hand, I may not be giving her enough food.  I added more of her regular diet to the mix this morning.  There is no question she prefers her meals when Dr. Marty's is mixed in. 

    When I arrived at Bikram, I announced that I had folded up my walking sticks because I anticipated not needing them again. I'm confident because I know the problem has moved on to my shoulder and my neck. When I got back from the bathroom, I noticed that Heather's eyes looked red.  I asked her if she was crying.  Yes, she was so excited about my progress.  She came up and gave me a huge hug.  She said, "This is my life's work." She gets very excited when she sees people making progress.  She is not looking at the asanas; she's looking at our alignment and our overall health.  Bikram yoga proved a life-saver for her.  She radiates excitement about the process and serves as an inspiration for all of us. 

    The other day, Crista posted me in a Student Spotlight for the Bikram Yoga Studio here in Kona.  I had to submit a picture. She used the one of me and Mike that I sent to all of you of Mike and me in a playful mode. Heather read my post out loud. She asked everyone to post it on Instagram.  These posts serve as an advertisement for the studio.   I talked about the work I did and how much I valued the community. The latter is particularly true since Mike died.

    I have been doing pretty well.  I am not devastated by Mike's death.  I remember his mother saying that she stopped being a person when her husband died. She was defined by her relationship with him.  I was not defined by my relationship with Mike. 

    In McGilchrist's book, The Master and his Emissary, he says one side of the brain is interested in 'what' questions, and the other being interested in 'how' questions.   I am clearly a 'how' person, a person interested in the process rather than the fact of.  I don't think I ever completely thought of myself as Mike's wife.  It took me a while before it didn't sound strange in my ears, I mean a long, long time.  

    For me, my relationship with Mike was a process, all verbs.  We loved each other; we laughed with each other; we agreed with each other; we disagreed with each other; we ate dinner together almost every night;  we hugged each other frequently; we kissed each other frequently; we liked sitting quietly in each other's company; we trusted each other; we were committed to respecting each other's point of view even if we didn't agree with it – even though it was total nonsense; we supported each other; we provided shelter for each other; we celebrated each other's joys; we comforted each other when things upset us; we tried to understand each other (I know we both failed at times.); we celebrated each other's existence daily (birthday's meant nothing in comparison).  There are probably many more things: oh, we corrected each other – occasionally, we didn't overdo this.; we strove to be better people for ourselves and each other.  I still have occasion to look at things in our life together that gave Mike joy: his kitchen, his library with his 3800 books.  Yes, I'm stuck with them now, but I don't mind, yet, because I know how much pleasure they gave him.  I wouldn't have had it any other way. God, I loved that man. The miracle is that he had a high tolerance for my love, almost as good as a dog.  Hmm! Maybe better than a dog because human love is always more challenging to achieve because we are so much more complicated.  

    On the TED radio show today, they spoke about love and how destructive it can be, particularly romantic love.  Listening to it, it seemed they were defining romantic love as something that happens to you, something that renders you helpless to steer your course.  I must say,  I agree with that.  I was always disturbed when I found myself in romantic relationships that generated obsessive thinking.  I never had that with Mike.  I felt about him the way I feel about a warm and welcoming fire on a cold night. Delighted. I never lost my center. What I experienced instead was a sense of rightness.  For those of you old enough to remember the old coins operated phone booths which dotted New York streets, remember when you could tell when the coin landed correctly and when it didn't? That's what it felt like. There was a sense of rightness. 

    I don't remember being madly in love with him, but I remember thinking I could live with this man for the rest of my life even if he never changed.  He was enough. Mind, there is no way I would date the man Mike was at 33 if I were to meet him now.  He did change, as did I.  We changed in response to life and to each other, not just each other's needs but our own needs to change for ourselves. We helped each other become better people. 

    Fairly early on, I introduced the idea of co-creating. This is quite different from compromising.  Compromising assumes each person gives up something.  When co-creating, the end product is better than either one ever imagined.  We both understood the dialectic: thesis, antithesis, synthesis. One of the TED talk speakers spoke about seeing life as a work of art we each create.  Does that mean that we're in total control? Of course not.  It means that you work with the materials and tools you have to create something new. It is in accepting those limits and working with what is available that we create satisfying lives.  I loved co-creating with Mike.  He was a worthy opponent, a great partner.  As I said earlier, our relationship was made up of verbs rather than nouns.  I don't know if I miss him, but I miss everything we did together.

            On the other hand, as a result of my life with Mike, I am a much stronger person and prepared to face this life without him.  He helped me to become this person—hat's off to you, my love. Rest in peace.

    I walked Elsa. When I got home, I thoroughly cleaned the kitchen sink.  I have a grill at the bottom of the sink.  I love it, but dirt sticks to it, and cleaning it is a chore.  Once I finished with that, I set it on the counter. Then I threw poor Elsa into the sink for a bath. It's not her favorite activity.  Because I bathe her with a special soap, we have to stand there for at least five minutes before I can wash it off.  While I had her there, I took the opportunity to clip some mats that had gotten out of hand. I've been trying to gently pull them apart, but it takes forever.  Monday, I'm going to make an appointment for her with the Dog Groomer in town. I wanted to have the mats out before I put her in his hands.  Now he'll just have to deal with her lopsided hair cut on her ears. 

    I spent most of the day cleaning: the stovetop, the kitchen floor, the lanai carpet.  I also organized what I will be giving to the Friendly Place. I placed it all in a big box to drop off on Monday. It was a satisfying day.

 

Friday, November 22, 2019

     Mowgli's 43rd birthday.  I slept well. When the alarm went off, I just wanted to roll over and go back to sleep. I did hit snooze.  I wasn't looking forward to going to Bikram. That's new. I put on a polo shirt and sweatshirt as I do every morning, anticipating coolness. I was shocked to find I didn't need the sweatshirt.  It was unusually warm, especially for winter. When I left for Bikram and 7 am, the thermometer in my car read 79. Not good. This is a warm winter. Climate change? Will Hawaii some become unbearable? Well, maybe I won't be around to find out. That's the lovely thing about being old. 

    I did Bikram lying down, partially because I'm still concerned about triggering my back and partially because I still have so much to learn using the floor for resistance.  While my back is not bothering me, the right side of my neck and head is. I'm hoping this is a sign that whatever tension is being released by my postural changes is moving upward and out.

    I left for school around 12, arriving at 12:30.  I worked with D in Mrs. B's class first.  Again, we reviewed cross-body blending. Again, he started with his left hand rather than his right, touching his right shoulder first.  Oy vey! I worked on training him to ask the question, "Which hand do I use to write?" before he starts. He answered the question but didn't immediately understand that I wanted him to ask himself that question.  That took a little work.  Interestingly, he changed the question to, "Which hand do I draw with?" That explains a lot of things.  

    I also worked with him on his handwriting.  His letters are fairly well-formed, if somewhat peculiar in appearance. The apparent problem was his hand grip and, more importantly, his use of his fingers to drive the pencil's movement rather than his large back muscles.  I thought of an analogy: the fingers are the steering wheel, but the back muscles are the gas pedal, moving the arm up and down and back and forth.

    Then I worked with K. I am going to have to work with her last. She exhausts me with her antics. No, she's not funny; she's obstructive.  I discussed the final -e in love.  I pointed out that whenever you have a single e at the end of a word with more than three letters, you can count on it to be silent. She insisted that she pronounced it.  I pronounced that final e in love using the sound she said it made. "I lo-v-e my mother"  "Is that how you say it?" now there are kids who have problems with this concept, but not her. She must be reading at grade level already, at least when it comes to word recognition. Who knows what problems she has. She spends so much time playing mind games with me, I have no idea what she still needs. Do I recognize that this behavior is more her problem than mine? Yes. Do I enjoy dealing with it? No. 

    Next, I went to Mrs. D's room.  I worked with B. He continued to have problems with spelling and reading.  I dictated from a second-grade book to him.  I told him I wasn't expecting him to spell words correctly, but I wanted to see each sound in the word represented and in the correct order in his writing.  Lo and behold, he loved this activity.  It also became clear that he has some serious visual recall problems. He spelled of {ewf}. Interesting.  I asked him if he wanted to work on his visual recall. He said no.  It took me a minute to get him to tell me why.  He was enjoying the dictating activity too much. Okay.  Next time, we'll do both.

    Friday afternoon is fun time. I wasn't going to be able to get N to work with me.  I was too tired to work with R.  I proposed I go home and hang up my laundry. If I wanted to have the energy to work with all the kids, I needed to work with K last.

    On the other hand, I was feeling somewhat blah.  I think finding that picture of Mike and me laughing together has thrown me for a loop.  God, I miss him. I'm in withdrawal from love and laughter, but my life is not a misery.  Writing this blog definitely helps me a lot. I'm not quite sure why it has that function, but it does. Thank God for small favors. 

    When I got home, I hung up the laundry and continued working on cleaning out my bathroom drawers.  Mike was a hoarder; anything that came into the house found a place out of sight, usually with other items of the same nature. The floor in the bathroom was getting dirty. I didn’t want to wash it because then I would have to move the free-standing towel rack Mike moved after his death to remind me that he was watching out for me and that he loved me.       

I tried to do some reading.  I lay down on my love seat/anti-gravity chair to nap. It is not comfortable for me now with my neck tension.  I went to bed. When I woke up, my first thought was that it was morning.  Then I thought I didn't do the exercises the PT gave me to do yesterday. 

    I got up, washed the dishes from last night and this morning.  Elsa and I went for our walk.  I stopped off at Darby's and showed her how to do MELT for her hands.  She tried it once. Because of her fantastic visual-spatial memory, I suspect she will remember the pattern easily.  She said it helped her hand immediately. I wasn't able to leave a ball with her.  My stash of balls is in the room where the kids are staying. They have all their possessions in there, and I can't get into the cabinet where I store the balls. When they come home, I'll ask them to move the boxes in front of the cabinet. 

    I prepared Elsa's dinner.  I did buy Dr. Marty's raw, freeze-dried dog food, which Judy's introduced her to, and she will never be the same as a result. I'm supposed to give her a quarter of a cup of Dr. Marty's twice a day. But this Dr. Marty's cost four times what the dog food I am currently using, which is prescription dog food for sensitive skin, which already costs more than regular dog food.  I mix in about an eighth of a cup of dr. Marty's, and a quarter of a cup of the prescription dog food. As recommended by Dr. Marty, I put in hot water, let it sit for a few minutes, stir and serve. Elsa scarfs it up. It's a whole new world for her. While the food was soaking, I did my PT exercises.  

    I made my dinner.  Even I am getting fed up with my food choices. However, my hunger is so quickly satisfied that I don't think it makes too much difference in what I eat.  I read more of The Master and his Emissary over dinner.  Reading this book helps me to understand how my mind works.   I also think it will help me silence the verbal noise. It detailed which part of the brain makes the noise and which part of the brain is best suited for silencing it. 

    After dinner, I wrote the above.  I no longer go into the library.  This is going to have to change because I still have all those books to get rid of.   I am also going to have to repack one of the boxes of books.  There is no place without writing on it where I can write the address.  

Thursday, November 21, 2019

    My body felt great when I woke up. I did the yoga postures on the floor, scared that standing might trigger my hip problems and have me down for the count- again.  I described my hip/back problem as bi-polar; it's either very good or terrible.  When we got home, the young man staying with me and does Bikram asked me if I had learned anything new about my body. In fact, I had, but I couldn't remember what it was.

    Before I came home, I stopped off at Island Naturals to pick up some flax seeds to be ground up into my smoothie and some pumpkin seeds for my salad.  

    I was going to do cleaning today, particularly my bathroom.  I still haven't reassembled it from the tenting.  I want to clean out the under the counter cabinets before I do. It's one of the things which is holding me back.  I have to get down on the floor a reach inside. That's a challenge for me these days, even when my hip feels great.  The other obstacle is rearranging the free-standing towel rack and the box with the new toilet seat. 

    For those of you who don't know or don't recall, it is pretty clear that Mike moved those objects around- well after his death. I had had a nightmare as I woke up that morning that he had told me he was no longer in love with me and left me for another woman. That was the first such nightmare I had like that after he died. When I got up, the bathroom was radically rearranged. I checked with the young woman who was staying here.  She said no; it also made no sense that it would have been her.  She would have had to go through my bedroom with me asleep in bed. She wouldn't have done that.  Elsa couldn't have moved it. She's a twelve-pound dog; the towel rack would have been much too heavy for her to move; not to mention that moving it into its current position would have required her lifting the towel rack over a box that was lying on the floor and placing one its legs on top of the bathmat.  I don't think so.  Michael was the only explanation.  

    I had those nightmares periodically while he was still alive.  They were easy to dismiss when awake. If he did move the rack, he was clearly more upset by my nightmare than I was. I assure you, I never for a moment would have considered this a possibility when awake.  He wasn't that kind of guy- even if he hadn't been madly in love with me.

    At any rate, now I will have to move the towel rack to clean the bathroom. I don't want to. I tried to nap, but that didn't work. I finally got up and emptied the under the sink cabinet and cleaned the bottom of it.  I washed everything and set it all out to dry.  I played the TV series the Crown while I worked.  It relieved some of my stress.

    Yvette came to pick me up for our therapy session. It went very well.  I think the therapist is a little confused by us.  She doesn't seem to get that we already have a commitment to the behavior she prescribes. We are not coming to her because we are two people tearing at each other; we are coming to her because we want to understand each other's personalities better and learn how to relate to each other most effectively.  We articulated one significant difference in our temperament.  We each would benefit from having a little less of our own skillset and a little more of the others. We also talked about strategies we could develop to communicate when we are having difficulty with each other's behavior without resorting to old patterns that haven't been working.  Yvette and I were doing well on our own, but we both agree it is helpful to have the therapist there. She's like an emergency fire extinguisher if things get too heated.  Just having her there helps us modulate our behavior.  We both think she isn't used to people like us coming for therapy.  Yvette and I are both good people who want a better relationship.  We are not scratching each other's eyes out, spitting hateful words, or worse. We're good and want better.  Mike and I would go to therapists with similar needs.  I think they were confused about what we were doing there, or, better yet, they made up some bogus explanation that failed to describe our relationship.   Maybe in ten years, people will be using therapists to improve their lives instead of just saving them from total disaster. 

    Yvette was too tired to go out to eat after the session, so we went home.  I prepared Elsa's dog food: some of Dr. Marty's and some sensitive skin diet the vet prescribed for her.  I added hot water and waited three minutes, as instructed by Dr. Marty's, "wait three minutes and then stir." Elsa gobbles this food down.  Elsa and I went for her dinner time walk.  My body is holding up just fine.

    I made dinner.  It doesn't look good, as Mike's meals did, but it nourishes.  I eat to live; I don't live to eat, as Mike did. I had salad, frozen spinach, some bread, butter, leftover pot roast that Jean had brought over the other day, and my limeade drink with fresh limes from my garden.  It wasn't wonderfully presented as Mike did, but it will sustain my life.

    I read more of McGilchrist's book, The Master and his Emissary, on the functions of the left and right hemispheres of the brain.  He says that the right hemisphere is for taking in new information. Once that information is solidly learned, the left brain takes over.  However, if language is the sole providence of the left brain, and the left brain holds those letters and sounds in sequence, which the right brain doesn't do, which part of the brain learns new words? 

    I listened to some more of The Crown.  Queen Elizabeth is truly an admirable creature, even if she is about as interesting as a cabbage. What a way to live? One can only be grateful that one wasn't born to that life.

Wednesday, November 20, 2019

    Got up this morning feeling pretty good.  I took the dog for a good walk but not what we do when I'm confident my body will last.  I made my smoothie for the next two days,  took the garbage out for pick up, and thought of all the cleaning I could get done.  

    I decided not to Bikram because my priority is seeing D. in Mrs. B's class.  He is the one having problems with sequencing letters and blending. He needs support.  Last week, I worked with him, making sure he used his right arm and moving it from his left shoulder to his right across the midline.  Other disciplines work with this disorientation problem like Brain Gym. I am hoping that this exercise combining physical orientation and blending will resolve the issue.  I may have to do more.  I think I am going to incorporate oppositional movement, like walking in place and swinging his arms. 

    My second priority was my luncheon date with a friend.  I had already warned her I was down. I was hoping I could make it today after some conservative exercises at home—no such luck. Again, I was unable to walk upright. Damn!  

    I went down for a nap.  When I woke up, I did one of the exercises my PT gave me while rolling a tennis ball under my back. Voila!! That did it. I got up and felt just fine.

    I quickly took a shower and rushed off to school to work with D. I gave him an exercise to work on last week.  I had been concerned that he would do it wrong, internalizing a counterproductive habit.  I didn't know how long this break would last.  I had to hurry.

    D. had been working on his own.  He is a good guy who does his best in all situations. He is going to be a wonderful adult, a great husband, and father. You can see that already.  However, when I asked him to show me what he had done, he lifted his left arm and put it to his right shoulder instead of his right arm and put it to his left shoulder.  We write from left to right. When we blend sounds together, the first letter is on the left, and the next is on the right. 

    I asked him which hand he wrote with.  He uses his right.  I asked him if he ever used his other hand. He said no.  I told him to start by asking which hand he writes with. That will remind him which hand to use.  He was able to identify the individual sounds in words better, he was able to hold sound units separately better, and he was able to blend better.  There were a few moments when I held my breath, waiting to see what he would do.  He had to identify the sound of [th] in the word that.  He said [t] and then said no as he was about the pronounce [h].  I reminded him that the usually made one sound.  He placed his tongue in the right position but couldn't figure out what the sound was.  I told him to force air through his mouth. He did that.  He produced the unvoiced [th] as in thin instead of the voiced [th] as in that. This was a big step forward for him. He seemed to get better as we worked.  He will be able to continue on his own more. 

    However, I saw his handwriting. OMG! Does this boy ever need help!  Handwriting like that indicates a problem way beyond not being able to write neatly.  We have a new area to work on together.

    Then I went to Mrs. D's room. I just wanted to work with B. because he is still having problems confusing b and d and shows other signs of reversals.  I thought the cross body blending, crossing the midline, might help him with this too.  He was very tired and didn't want to work.

    I asked him if he had been playing video games all night. He said no, he had been playing with his brother. Well, that's good. What time did he go to bed?  11 or 12 midnight. What??!! We're talking about a 3rd-grade boy.  Then he said his 7-year-old brother went to bed later, as did his 12-year-old sister.  Where is his mother? She goes to be at 6 or 7 pm and gets up at 8 am, after the children leave for school.  I told him he has to be a big brother and make sure everyone gets to bed.  I wasn't sure of the appropriate bedtimes for children. I asked Mrs. D. to make sure he had that information.  Mrs. D. also said that B. said something about his mom being sick. I can only hope it's not too serious.  The children are clearly being neglected to their detriment. I hope we don't have to call Child Protective Services to get them better care. That's always a tragedy.

    When I got home, I went back on the sofa, scared that my leg might go bad on me again. Judy stopped by a returned my Kindle.  I knew I had taken it to her house, but we could not find it when I left.  She found it in the bed I had slept in under the quilt I had thrown on for extra warmth.

    I got up and did some work. I did some more sorting of food items.  I checked the sell-by-dates and threw several things out.  Some others I put in the pile for the Friendly Place for the homeless, and I asked Paulette if she wanted some of my containers of hair spray, which I will never use again. 

    The young woman staying with me was filling out paperwork for the renewal of her visitor's visa.  She needed me to sign a letter saying she had been staying with me since June 22. That's five months. Wow! Time really flies.  Can you imagine? It's been almost 8 months since I last kissed Mike. How can this be possible?

    It was the first time the young woman stayed home for the day when I wasn't incapacitated. We had a chance to talk and reconnect.  

    Elsa walked to the back door and requested a walk. I had never seen that before.  I didn't do too long of a walk, concerned that my leg would start acting up again, and I'd be stuck somewhere on the road.  We walked to Darby's house.  

    Elsa knew where we were going. Darby came out to greet me without her walking stick. Her progress is remarkable. The PTs working with her are impressed.  They said that the treatment she got right after her stroke was vital for setting a pattern of growth.  However, she is clear that the crawling exercise also has made a big difference. Every time she does it, she sees a difference when she gets up to walk.  The PTs have been focusing on her walking; she hasn't made as much progress with her left arm. I'm going to teach her MELT.  It might help her make more progress.

    This evening, my leg was so good that I did a short Charleston right in the middle of the kitchen floor without holding on to anything.

    I did some reading in the Four Agreements today.  Yes, I find the thinking simplistic.  Yes, I also know that the ideas in this book have been lifesavers for some people, just not me.

_____-_____-______

 

 

Musings:

    

    The author of the four agreements talks about how we are all dreaming all the time. Our dreams are what we are taught to think by others.  These dreams don't represent our true selves.  

Can you imagine what I think of all that? 

    Language is one of the things that is pushed on us as we are 'domesticated' as animals are domesticated.  For me, our cultures offer us ways of organizing the world around us. They are containers. Without those containers, we would be lost.

    In the 13th Century, Frederick the Great performed an experiment to find out our 'natural language' when we were not taught one by our parents. He had children with normal hearing cared for by adults who never spoke to them.  The assumption was that when their vocal cords matured, they would naturally speak some language. Freddy boy was expecting it to be the language of God, which he assumed would be Hebrew.  You want to guess what language they spoke? None. And they remained mute for the rest of their lives, those that survived this monstrous experiment.

    Yes, our culture confines us, but it also provides us with avenues of expression.  Whatever we do with our cultural model, it is always stamped with our individuality. That is inescapable.  We may even try to get away from it, but it is impossible. We are not robots with all the same wiring and programming.  

    Can culture be confining and even damaging? Of course, mainly if someone is raised in an abusive environment. But that doesn't make all cultural input bad.  Besides, we have to become artists inventing ourselves.  We have to learn to use what of the cultural model allows us the most expression and to modify the cultural model where necessary.  Do we have unlimited options? No. But, you know what? That's life. There are no unlimited options.

    On the other hand, what we know and believe is a dream because it does not absolutely define reality.  For my part, my concern is not how that 'dream' limits me, but how I allow that 'dream' to limit my understanding of others, how I assume my' dream' is the only truth. 

    I know that I am frightened by people who present their ideas as the only worthy ones. But my history has earned the right to find that frightening. My parents are refugees from Nazi Germany.  That people will kill other people because of who they are or what they believe is not an intellectual concept in my family. That experience has been passed on epigenetically.  It is a body knowledge, not just a knowledge of the mind.

    On the other hand, I might still have resonated with Ruiz's antagonistic view of enculturation when I was in my thirties, but no more. I no longer feel confined by cultural expectations or the expectations of my parents. Am I still living a dream? I'm sure. But it suits me.

Tuesday, November 19, 2019

    I set the alarm for 5:55 am, as I usually do when planning to go to the 7:30 yoga class. I was up by 4:30 and dozed until the alarm went off.  I managed to walk Elsa a short distance, but it quickly became clear that there wasn't going to be a lot of activity in my day.  When I got back to the house, I went right to bed and slept deeply until 10 am. Go figure!  I have no idea why I was so tired.

    I spent the day watching the rest of Single-Handed, editing the blog entries, and doing the exercises the PT recommended.   They are great exercises that make a world of sense to me.  I find myself wondering why no one gave me many of these exercises before.  I think Tom Ockler in Cleveland gave me two exercises on the same plane as some of my current PT gave me, but he never explained their purpose.  This PT gives me exercises and tells me what their goal is.  This allows me to check that I'm doing them correctly and incorporate the objectives into my daily movements. 

    I spent most of the day flat on my back.  I could get up to go to the bathroom and get some food, but the few steps involved activated my problems again.  Although I did the prescribed exercises.  After I was through, I couldn't get up off the floor.  I finally got up by crawling onto the sofa and then getting up from there.  

            I just saw this picture of Mike and me for the first time yesterday. Mike's son, Damon, took it, and somehow it wound up in my downloads without my seeing it, or I saw it at the time and didn't value it as much as I do now.  Love and laughter were the staples of our life together. 

    While we were both intellectuals, our conversational and thinking styles were so different that it felt like one of us was playing tennis while the other was doing soccer.  Our intelligence and verbal abilities served us well in our personal lives.  Mike was never afraid of me because of my verbal dexterity, nor did he stand in awe of it.  It just was. He was looking for a "worthy opponent," and he found it in me.

    We solved life problems together and our personal differences using our skills.  Mike liked to say, "Our marriage survived because there was always one adult present, and it wasn't always the same person." We were true equals.  

    The picture shows Mike leading the play. It could just as easily been me.  I miss him: the love and laughter he brought into my life.

    Jean and Randy delivered my dinner tonight and spent some time visiting.  It was good to see them and just talk and hang out for a few minutes. They're here from Arizona visiting their daughter and grandchildren. Dinner was delicious pot roast, carrots, mash potatoes with gravy, and salad.   Right after they left, the two kids who are staying here came home.  

    I believe some of my lower back problems are coming from further up my body, my scapula, my shoulder girdle, my right upper arm, the right side of my neck, and my head.  There are sores spots all along there. Yvette came in to say hello when she came home. She did some work on my neck and head.  I have been putting ice on those areas to see if it will buy me any relief in the lower part of my body.  She also asked if I had been using the red laser light my friend Katherine recommended. I had entirely forgotten about it.  I started using it.

    While Yvette was here, she noticed a big wet spot.  Randy had walked Elsa.  I know she pooped because he said she got it all over her.  He actually wiped some of it off.  Later, I got her on the bathroom counter and wiped her with a wet micro cloth.  I think she needs somewhat of a trim in that area.  The question still remained: Was that wet spot from her peeing or her wiping her rear end dry on the lanai carpet.  I think it was the latter because there is actually a streak of water. When Elsa pees, she doesn't move; her pee forms a neat circle of wet. 

    After dinner, I took to the sofa again and read more of The Master and His Emissary.  Some of what I learn is new, some is old stuff with no new insights, and some is old stuff expanded.  Whatever it is, it is endlessly fascinating. Jean asked how I could remember everything.  There are two answers to that question: 1) I don't. 2) I am looking for specific information to guide students who have reading problems with the BrainManagementSkills.  The more I know about how the brain functions, the more accurate my instructions can be on using the brain to learn. 

    Tonight I was reading about how the two sides of the brain get meaning out of contact with other humans.  The right brain is good at implicit understanding, and the left on explicit.  If there is right brain damage, someone loses their ability to understand metaphor, sarcasm, and irony.  They interpret everything very literally.  On the other hand, if someone is too dependent on the right brain, they will have abstract thinking problems.  The left brain sees the parts, the trees, the right brain sees the whole, the woods.  Amazing! And we can know all this because of the functional MRI, which allows us to watch which parts of the brain come into use when we perform specific actions.

    After dinner, I took to the sofa, read, and watched more of The Crown.  What a horrible way to live. I think you have to be dull as dishwater to make your peace with that life in today's world. It is so restricted compared to the way the common man lives. 

______-______-_______

 

Musings: Really a Mike and Betty story.

 

    I mentioned above that Mike's and my intellectual styles were very different.  Mike was linear and inductive. Mine is nonlinear and deductive.  My mind makes connections between things.  Once Mike and I were talking about Descartes.  Who knows what I brought up, but, boy, was he ever put out.  I related the discussion to something unrelated as far as he was concerned. This was a massive source of frustration for him.  He once said I was so bright, but I misused my mind.  

    Okay, at some point in our relationship, he got particularly frustrated because he never knew what would come out of my mouth next.  We actually went to see a therapist I was working with individually together.  

    He told her the problem, complaining that my mind wandered from one unrelated topic to the next.  I explained that I saw connections between the pattern of lampposts on the side of the road and something else. That was just the way my mind worked.  I then said, "I work with primary sources."

    He was outraged and said, "I work with primary sources; I read the original Aristotle and the original Aquinas."

    The therapist came to my rescue, "She a Phenomenalist," a school of philosophy. Mike's first Ph.D. is in philosophy. She spoke his language. 

    "Oh," he got it. Not only did he never complain again, but a year before he died, he actually said to me that he found me an endless source of entertainment because he never knew what would come out of my mouth next.

Monday, November 18, 2019

    I had trouble falling asleep because of the pain.  It usually doesn't bother me when I'm sitting or lying down.  I also went to sleep earlier than usual because of the pain; it was challenging. 

    When I woke up, I was still in trouble. I decided not to go to Bikram since I had a PT appointment.  I made that my priority—another amazing session. I asked the PT if all PT's were doctors of Physical therapy.  She said no. Anyone over 50 may only have a bachelor's; people in their 40s will have master's degrees. It is only in the last 10 years that they offered doctorates.  I told her in the past that the therapists I worked with could only work on precisely what the doctor told them to. Their range was minimal. She said she studied as much as she did to justify whatever she did because she could see the relationship of various parts of the body.  She told me that I was already straighter than I had been in our first session.  She did more work on my upper body and sent me home with exercises to do.

    I was planning to go to the post office to mail two boxes of books and a box of shirts to John but decided it would be too much for me. I went to Target to pick up some bouillon and some Hershey's chocolate kisses with almonds. I got out of the car, took five steps, and decided this would not be a good idea.  I got back in the car.  

    Yesterday, I had planned to ask the PT to write me a letter saying that I couldn't do jury duty because of my back problems, but I forgot when I was there.  While the pain comes and goes, it does come with some frequency.  Sitting on a jury doesn't sound like a great idea. I called Hawaiian Rehab to ask if I could get a note. After a few calls, I learned that Katy, the PT, could write it around 1:30. I was wondering how I would get it.  I was planning to ask Yvette.

    When I called someone in the office of jury selection to tell them my problem.  They said I had to have a note in by 2pm today; they also gave me a fax number.  I called the rehab back and gave them the information. The office of jury selection actually called me back to say that I was excused. It's hard for me to figure out. Some days it's like I have no problem, really no problem, and others I'm flat on my back, like today.

    When I got home, I assumed my place on my love seat/ anti-gravity chair because there's where the heating pad was.  I spent the day turning it on until it got uncomfortably hot and then turning it off. 

    Elsa spent a lot of time lying with me. She has become much more affectionate except that she still doesn't come to bed when I do. She slips in some time in the middle of the night after I've gone to sleep.  I have no idea why. 

    I binge-watched Single-Handed, an Irish police series, and worked on catching up on the blog and checking chapter 2 for the last time.

 

Sunday, November 17, 2019

    I'm still feeling the loss.  My guess the dream/nightmare about Mike not loving me anymore is impacting me.  Yes, I know my thoughts are entirely ridiculous; I mean really ridiculous. But thoughts like that impact my psyche. 

    I had an experience like that when I was nine. My mother started saying that she was going to give me up for adoption.  Our relationship wasn't the best, but I knew with every cell of my conscious mind that there was a better chance that she'd kill me with her bare hands than give me away. Nonetheless, I felt the impact of her words.  They hurt, terribly.  They scared me.  

    After a week of these daily threats, I walked up to her and said, "Either do it or don't do it, but stop torturing me." She was actually surprised; she also never did it again.  On my part, getting to the point where I could make a statement like that took a lot out of me.  I had to consider that she might do it.  I had to admit that my speech might result in her giving me up.  I was nine.  My conscious mind was pretty sharp but not strong enough to rise about the fear her threat caused.  It wasn't even strong enough to realize there was no way my father would allow her to do such a thing.  The trauma of that event has been so intense that it is only now I have thought about my father's role in this scenario.

    I am now a few weeks away from my 79th birthday; my conscious mind is still not strong enough to completely silence my nonconscious mind's thoughts.  It took me a while to figure out what was behind this leaden feeling.  Once I had the dream and asked myself what was behind this sadness, what came up clearly was the loss of Mike's love.  That is lost; he's not here to tell me I'm beautiful and he loves me daily, nor is he here for me to tell him that I love him so much it's silly. That's gone, regardless of the reason.  It would be good if I didn't have this additional burden that plays with my mind, making me think/feel he left me because he no longer loves me.  Wonder where I got that from? Let me see: could it be because whenever anyone said something nice to me, my mother assured me they only said they didn't care about me and didn't love me enough to tell me the truth. Only she was a dependable source of the truth, and that wasn't pretty.

    My right hip and leg weren't too bad this morning. I managed to walk up and down our block. By the time I was ready for church, things had taken a turn for the worse.  I sat through most of the mass instead of standing when called for. However, I did walk up to the altar to get the host.  

    The readings and the sermon were about the end of times.  There were warnings about listening to false prophets.  It said we would know when the end times were near because nations would be at war with nations and kingdoms with kingdoms.  Everyone would be mad at everyone else.  Does this sound familiar to anyone?  How are we going to turn this around?  I date this start of this with our attack on Iraq based on false information or the incorrect interpretation of valid information.  That upset what was left of the delicate balance of nations, and all hell broke loose.  How can we ever regain that balance?  If it were just in the USA, that would be one thing.  But I see the same all over the world. Of course, part of this violent reaction to the refugee crisis.  Now, who is behind many of these crises? I'd say the USA: our treatment of Latin American going back to our Manifest Destiny policy and, more recently, our treatment of the Middle East countries.  Whada mess!!!

    By the time I came home from church, I was in severe pain.  I lay down on my bed instead of my beloved love seat/ anti-gravity chair and slept.  I generally come home from church tired.  I think it reminds me too much of Mike. It pushes the missing needle up too high for me to cope.

    When I got up, I felt somewhat better.  I sorted some shelves in the library and packed up another box of books for shipping.  I didn't use wrapping paper but crossed out the brand name on the side of the box with duct tape. 

    My back started bothering me big time again. I sat down and continued watching Single-Handed, an Irish TV mystery series.   Walking Elsa was out. I hobbled to the edge of the driveway and said, "Please, Elsa." She had done her big business earlier today; I hoped that would be enough. If not, I am an expert on cleaning up – if my back allows. 

    I have jury duty starting on the 19th.  It only occurred to me today that I could probably have gotten out of it based on my pain level.  However, after spending a week flat on my back, I was 'cured.' I didn't expect it to come roaring back again.  It was only this Monday that things were so bad that I needed help getting out of bed. That was the 11th.  Reading over the information, I would have had to file an excuse by the 12th.  Believe me, I wasn't thinking about much else than my back on the 11th.

    I am going to see the PT on Monday. I may ask her to write an excuse that they may accept on Tuesday when I show up or not, depending on whether I can move that morning.

_____-______-_______

 

Musings:

    I've been running into people who sell the ideas behind the four agreements. I have trouble with a simple set of rules which can be applied to all of life.  However, I know people who have benefitted from trying to live by these rules.

    I've viewed these rule sets from the perspective of McAllister's book, The Master and his Emissary, about the functions performed by the two hemispheres. He dismisses simplistic statements about right and left brain function, saying that the left brain is reason and the right brain is emotion and presents research evidence.  This has led me to some insights.

    He says rule formation, the calcification of ideas, is a left-brain function.  From his description, I'm a strong, if not overly strong, right-brain thinker.  The right brain thinker sees contradictions in all reasoning, including their own.  That sounds like me. Everyone's thinking has value to me. 

    I realize two things: Many left-brain thinkers think complex thinking is unnecessary. They accuse me of thinking too much. They accuse me of living in my head. McAllister's research shows that the right brain uses reason and logic as much if not more than the left brain since the left brain calcifies ideas into fixed rule sets. He also says that right-brain thinking is intimately connected to the limbic system, the emotional system,

    I also realize that the four rules are useful for left-brain thinkers with a dysfunctional set of rules in their heads to start out with.  They are a suitable replacement for the rules they are currently following.

    However, no set of rules eliminates the impact of trauma.  You can't argue with a vet with PTSD about what reality is. Those rules have little effect on those automatic emotional reactions. They come from somewhere else in the brain. 

Saturday, November 16, 2019

    Bikram went well this morning.  I love this community. We greet each other by name; I got four hugs. Some people consider hugging select people part of their before or after yoga routine.  I was on the floor again, but I can feel my body get straighter. I can feel more action around my scapula.  This started yesterday when I was on the sofa. The sensation was so pronounced at times, I looked up the symptoms for heart attacks in women. 

    Nothing has gotten the fact that Mike is lost to me through as much using his car has.  I couldn't remember where he was; I had lost him.  There are different parts of my brain that have to reconcile all this information.  I suppose at some point, his loss will become part of my new normal. 

    I did some chores. I went to Costco, got gas, and picked up some items, including more salad.  When I got home, I selected the polo shirts Jean and John want me to send: only black, blue, green, and brown. I put those shirts in a bag and moved it into the library to be near the box of books I want to pack and get ready for shipping.  I actually packed up a box. I'll ship out the shirts and the books on Monday.  I also emptied one of the bags in the freezer from when the house was fumigated.  I need to sit down more than I like, but that's what it is for now. I also went down and picked a bucket of limes and washed them. 

    I played a lot of FreeCell and did a bit of writing on Chapter 2 of my book on teaching reading.  At 4 pm. I jumped into the shower to get ready to leave at 4:30pm for the Habitat Gala.  The executive director, Patrick Hurney, invited me and whomever else I wanted to ask.  That was Judy and Yvette. Judy picked me up, and we drove there together.  Yvette had been attending a yoga workshop in the afternoon and came on her own. 

    Judy and I were almost the first ones there.  Pat had told me it started at 5 pm, and we were there then.  Nothing was going on except the silent auction.  Judy and I wandered up and down the donation tables seeing what was available.  I found Yvette had offered one massage.  I wrote, "She's fantastic!!" on top of her sign-up sheet. 

    We had been told that there would be a tribute to Michael. He was the president of the board of directors at the time of his death.  Unfortunately, we weren't told when that tribute would occur.  Fortunately, I had my phone ready on video. Once I registered that it was happening NOW, I was able to catch most of it.

    The speaker was the current board president who had been active when Mike was around.  He spoke about how he came into the room like a whirlwind; he had so much energy.  He said that it wouldn't be accurate to say that he turned everything upside down because he did so much more. Mike completely reorganized the administrative structure of Habitat. His managerial skills were off the charts.  While the speaker was talking about Mike, pictures of him flashed on the video screen.  Several of the photographs showed him at the blitz build.  I visited him on that build.  He was like a kid.  He thought being involved with Habitat was the most fun ever. The speaker said that some people retire and don't get off their duffs, but it was the exact opposite with Mike.  He was busy and enjoyed every moment of it.  He said he should have been born rich so he could always have volunteered.  He had never been happier in his life.

    After the dinner, which was delicious by the way, it started to rain.  Now that's unusual for the beachfront. Judy and I hightailed it out of there.  Since Judy was driving, I had chosen not to take a purse with me. I did take my cell phone because I wanted to video the tribute to Mike. Judy carried my phone in her bag.  We were commenting as we went to the car that we had to make sure that I took my cell phone.  Once in the car, I looked in her purse to get my phone, but it wasn't there. Could we have dropped it? Could I have left it at the table?  I thought I will take her cell phone with me and call my phone along the way. Judy said to try it now in the car to see if it's there. Sure enough, it rang.  We still couldn't find it. But Judy felt a buzzing feeling under her. It must have slipped out of her purse as she got in the car.  It was easy to retrieve. All's well that ends well.

    When I got home, I wrote today's' entry and watched some tv on my computer. I should really go into the library and continue sorting books.